FOREIGN SPIES IN ENGLAND.

Waikato Argus, Volume V, Issue 309, 2 July 1898, Page 2 (Supplement)

FOREIGN SPIES IN ENGLAND.

It has probably, struck nearly every Britisher at some time or other as beiug remarkable that, while Great Britain is the envy of the world, isolated, hated, and dreaded by nearly every other nation, nothing is ever heard of attempts of foreign Governments to procure military and naval secrets by the employment of spies, as we know has been the case in connection with other nations more or less frequently of late. To those to whom the thought has occurred, it may come as a surprising bit cf news that foreign espionage exists in Great Britain on a greater scale than in any other country in the world. Stories of attempts to steal important State secrets do not often leak out because those who know of them realise the possible results of a sudden upheaval of public opinion, and the facts seldom get past the doors of the Admiralty or War Office.

But more than one daring and ingenious attempt has been made in the last few years by foreign agents here to get hold of valuable State information, the loss of which would deprive us of no Email portion of our power should wc enter into a conflict with the nation possessed of the betrayed secret. Not very long ago the Admiralty was thrown into a ■ state of considerable anxiety by the suspicion, which grew as inquiries were prosecuted, that two or three minor clerka were in secret communication with a foreign Power, who had purchased for a sum unknown some details of an improvement in torpedodestroyers we were at the time making. How the fact leaked out we aie not in a position to say, but, without being accused or having a reason specified to thern, the suspected clerks were immediately cashiered. The affair was not of grave importance itself, but it serves to show that Wi are not entirely free of men who ate willing so sell " their brightright for a mess of pottage "—the nation's honour and supremacy for foreign gold. The navy being, as all the world knows the strong right hand of the British nation, the main endeavours of foreign Powers to obtain our valuable secrets are devoted to the Admirablity, not in the hope that they stand no. possible chance, but in the hope that accepted Government plans may by accident be returned in their stead. The idea seems a highly improbable one, and the plan hopelessly barren. Nevertheless, the6c foreign spies persist in their clumsy attempts, and no sooner have one set of plans been returned to them than they send others with the same hoped for object. As it happens, the majority of these estimable gentlemen are well known at the Admiralty, and special precautions are taken to prevent any possibility of even the smallest detail of a Government plan being returned with or in mistake for any of their decoy ducks. Consequently the profession must be rather doleful.

On one occasion, however, owing to a mistake made by a minor official, accepted Government plans were returned in the place of the impossible plans of one of these men o:E bad intentions. The accepted plans were, as it happened, of the highest value, and the foreign spy would have had every reason to congratulate himself and his Government employers had he become possessed of them. Happily, however, the error was discovered almost immediately after the dispatch of the plans, and a messenger was sent post haste to St. Martin's-le-Grand to stop tho letter, which, with the ready assistance of the post office officials, he was successful in doing. What would have been the result had he failed, we can only guess at. Probably the spy would have been arrested before he could part with or copy the plans. Even if he had been so fortunate as to be able to do that, we should as likely as not have been thrown into war with the foreign nation who had set the robbery on foot. A high official of tho Government assured the present writer in a recent interview that, in many cases where foreigners take clerkships in Great Britain at salaries Britishers would scorn, they are able to do so for the simple reason that they are in direct pay of their respective Governments, who employ them to learn all they can, by fair means or foul, concerning those things it is in the interest of foreign countries to know about us, and which are carefully guarded secrets here. It is because of this elaboate system of espionage that big army and navy contractors are very loth to engage foreign clerks in their offices, and are willing to pay double salaries to Britishers rather than risk the chances of employing a spy. The seriousness of this statement is perfectly obvious, when we consider the enormous number of foreign clerks employed in great manufactories, and a lurid light is thus thrown upon the hitherto mysterious problem of tho foroign olerks undercutting Britishers. We need not say that only a small percentage of the former can have been carrying on espionage here, but to know even that'is so is a startling awakening from the general fallacy that we aro free from foreign spies. Tho same authority told me, that a certain celebrated firm of ship builders at one time employed a number of German draughtsmen, who gavo every possible satisfaction. But it chanced one day that certain important papers, relating to a valuable improvement in men-of-war engines, were missing, and tho most exhaustive search failed to throw a light upon their disappearance. Some few days later, the papers were discovered just as though they had never been lost : and certain circumstances aroused grave suspicion, which was attached to one of tho German draughtsmen. Secret inquiries showed that the plans had been taken from tho office and traced, after which thoy were returned to their pigeon hole. What became of the tracings of the plans can easily be gathered from tho fact that three months later tho German Government began making engines on this improved plan, which has, however, since become obsolete in our navy iu consequence of much more valuable and important improvement;;. But from that to thi=, every man in that shipbuilding yard and office hns been a Britisher bom and bred.—Tit Bits.

" There can be two opinions about everything " but as " there is no rule without an exception, the exception proving the rule," there cannot be two opinions about The Waikato Argcs having the. largest circulation of any paper in the four counties in which it principally circulates—viz., Waikato, VVaipa, l'iako and Raglan. The advertising public are fully alive to this fact, as the columns of the paper prove.