BRUSSELS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11669, 8 April 1916, Page 11

BRUSSELS.

SPY INFESTED CITY. THE HAGUE, February 26. So far as a considerable number of* tile people of Brussels are concerned, the German occupation constitutes a moral as well as a physical martyrdom. A private correspondent ■whose letter has reached here through a friendly diplomatic channel says that the German system of espionage has reached such a point that the more nervous minded of the people live in a state of perpetual dread. "There is an army here of more than fifteen .hundred spies," he writes. " These are well paid, but they are paid by results; they live extravagantly and when funds are low more victims must be made. There are spies of every grade and species. " There is the society woman, such as that relative of von Bissing who succeeded in forming a little court of her own and who herself attends the society teas in private _ houses_ and at the fashionable confectioners in order to exercise her espionage ; there is the one-time factory agent who, taking advantage of his pre-war connections, worms himself into financial and industrial circles; there is the officer's or professor's wife who frequents middle class coteries; there is the demi-mon-daine who keeps an eye on the theatres, the cafes and the boulevards; and there are men in-hundreds who penetrate like ants into the innermost recesses of private life. "The letters we receive from our dear exiled friends we may neither keep nor answer for a domiciliary visit may be made at any moment, and on the slightest pretest, or none at all, both men and women may be hurried away to the kommandantur, and thence to prison after a mockery of a ' trial. 5 "Two days ago I was reading the war report posted at the corner of the Boulevard Botanique and the Rue Royale. There we were, a silent little group. A man joined us and began to Tead the news aloud, with painful slowness, almost spelling out the words. Coming to a number lie read ' seven thousand' instead of 'seventy thousand,' the words appearing on the notice board.

" He got 110 further. A man forming, part of the group placed his hand on his shoulder and dragged him along to the kommcindantur. We were lucky to escape arrest for having heard liim make tile blunder. "In tbe tramway car from Brussels to Terrueren I saw a man arrested because he carried a parcel wrapped in a copy of a London • paper, the date of which was September. 1914. "In the Rue «e Flandre I saw two brewer's men being marched off as prisoners because, after unloading a heavy barrel of beer, they had remarked, ' The Kaiser himself could not do it as neatly.' " I could cite hundreds of astonishing facts, but it would bore you, as they are all more or less of the same category."