THE DEILLAHS OF THE WAR.

Woodville Examiner, Volume XXVIII, Issue 4627, 7 May 1915, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE DEILLAHS OF THE WAR.

ROMANTIC STORIES OE SPIES IN PETTICOATS. Whatever disqualification women may labour under in other fields of man’s work, she has little to learn from him in the amiable arts of spying. Indeed, many women possess in a very marked degree tiie gifts of subtlety and diplomacy and the talent for disguises and ‘‘playing a part,” which are the equipment of a successful pryer into secrets. It is said that for a generation “almost every act of military treachery that has developed into a public scandal hav been instigated by members of the fair sex.” General do Cisscy, French Minister of War, would have gone to his grave an honoured man if he had not fallen under the spell of a bcafuiful German spy, Baroness de Kaula, whose domestics rifled tiie secrets of his portfolio while he was dalle mg with thou mistress over the luncheon-table. Even more seductively dangerous was Madame Limousin, daughter of a noble German house and wedded to a I'rench magistrate, who caught in her toils General Thibaudin and a number of staff officers, md, after luring State secrets from them, brought them all to disgrace and ruin. UtU'oii clt*s the most iuied aide-de-camp of the Austrian Emperor, owed his downfall to bis infatuation for a lovely Muscovite Princess. One evening, so the* story runs, the Princess discovered on a sofa, alter the Barons departure from her boudoir, a slip of paper revealing valuable secrets of the Austrian War Department, which she promptly communicated to St. Petoisburg —with the result that the amorous and indiscreet Baron soon found himself lodged in the gloomy fortress of Przemiszy. And more recently General 1 aranoff and three Russian colonels pawl

with their lives for selling to Austria the Russian plans of mobilisation which iiad been wheedled from them by the lovely adopted daughter of General Paraim tf.

RECENT FEATS. And these are but a few of the many cases in comparatively recent years in which woman’s wiles and woman’s beauty have succeeded in stealing State secrets where the cleverest of masculine spies might well have failed. Of still more recent feats of female spies the following romantic stories are told. Two years ago, a young German lieutenant, called Schorveder, of the Posen garrison, lost hiv heart aifiS_ offered his hand to the beautiful Fraulein Ida Mullerthal; but as the lieutenant had no resources beyond his small army pay the prospect of their union scoined very remote. As fate would have it, the condition of the young lovers, became known to a Russian lady spy, who saw in it an opportunity for doing a good stroke of business, Abaking the of the lieutenant she dangled a dazzling bait before his eyes—she was willing to pay him the enormous sum of £o,UU(J for a plan of the Posen fortress, which he could so easily supply. The temptation, offering the prospect of an eailj marriage to the girl he loved, proved uresistible and lie accepted the seductive offer.

The difficulty which faced the conspirators- was iiow to convey cue pmn to Russia with the least risk ot detection, and her the fiancee’s clever brain came to the rescue. “ Why not have it tattooed on my back?” she suggested. A could then make the journey to St. Petersburg with little tear of detection.” This ingenious scheme was promptly adopted; the lieutenant had some skill in the art of tattooing, and in a few painful hours to the young hiclj tiie required plan was imprinted on hei shoulders in Indian ink; and thus decorated she was able to make her way unsuspected to the Russian capita as a preluue to her'wedding-ring and the Happiness which had seemed so remote. Unlv a few months ago a gunner in our Navy was sentenced to tour years durance as a penalty, in the words ot the judge, for being “ trapped by a woman in the pay of a foreign country. It was at a music-hall that the unhappy man had first met the woman who was to prove his undoing. She was beautiful; he was weak; and within a tew weeks she had him in her tods Given a designing woman and an infatuated man, tiie rest was comparatively easy. By alternate coquetry and thieats to see him no more unless he consented o do her will, she induced him to put hei in possession of certain naval seciete known to him—a weakness which no doubt he is now bitterly regretting. A similar victim of a woman’s wiles was a German soldier named Retold 1 , who, a year or so ago, succumbed to the charms of a beautiful young teachu named Marie Petersen, at lvieL The course of love, however, did not long run smoothly: for before he hadl been engaged many days Mane told hei - er that she would be compelled to leave Kiel and him, unless he would consent to give her information she wanted plans indicating the situation of mines in certain ports and the formula of Germany’s smokeless powder. In vain did Dietrich protest that he could not play such a treacherous part, Marie was resolute, and by hei terns and pleadings at last succeeded m oieicoming her lover’s scruples. I u atoly the Delilah had already come under the suspicion of the authontie , inquiries proved that she was a v ren . f-py, and an end was promptly put to her activities. , ... „r A few years ago the fascinations ot a young lady visitor to the ' Rock

played havoc with tiie hearts, of our garrison at Gibraltar. Among the officers there was a keen rivalry for her smiles, lier companionship and her partnership in dances. It was not long, however, before the less infatuated of them began to notice that her knowledge of military matters was more than a guileless girl should possess, and that her curiosity about the defences of Gibraltar was more than a little embarrassing. The seeds of suspicion thus sown, inquiries were set on foot, with the result that tiie young lady was identified as a spy in the pay of Germany, and was politely but firmly told to take her dangerous charms elsewhere.

oERYED THE HIGHEST BIDDER. Last sirring the adventurous career of 1 Rosa Lang-ieiu was revealed to the ] world in a Berlin court of law, from | which sue was sent to serve two and a : half years of imprisonment as a reward i for her misguided activities. Rosa api pears to have been a young lady of cenj siderable versatility, ready to betray | the secrets of any country if sufßicentjly paid for her work, in Frankfort, l Berlin, Paris and many other towns | she added largely to her salary as a I lady clerk by an indiscriminate traffic I in military secrets, until at last Nomei sis overtook her at Hamburg. Here i she so successfully practised her seductive arts on a locksmith employed at the dockyard that she induced him to steal a number of drawings of naval machinery; but before she was able to profit by them tiie clutch of the 'aw was on her shoulder and she found herself in a Cologne prison. But the female spy, like the poor, is everywhere and always with its. 'iliere is scarcely a nation of Europe ’.vliidi has not a long list of those Delilahs on the pay-roll of its Secret Service, masquerading in some foreign country in a wide range of roles from governess, milliner and shop-assistant-to the lady ,of rank and fashion. A story is even ' told of a lady spy under the roof of

one of our leading statesmen. For years she had been the trusted and highly-respected governess, a woman as far above suspicion as Caesar's wife. Then one day came the dramatic dis covery by the statesman’s wife of copies or confidential documents and plans of some of our Fast Coast tit fences which in a moment of carelessness she had left exposed to view in her bedroom.

i MORE “KULTUR.” I In another case known to the writer i an equally trusted governess i,f long service was found in the possession of bombs, with instruction written 'n German for their use on a neighbouring j railway bridge of strategic.!, i.uporti ance. 1 Male spies have eevn masqueraded as ; women, as the following story from the ! seat of war proves : : “ One was picked out of a train here at D—— yesterday, and shot out of hand in the station yard. He was dressed like a Sister of Mercy, and laid been sitting opposite a ladvj a professor in the Lycee of V -. She had noticed the “woman’s” hands— big, course hands—and all her movements were clumsy. So the lady went to the station-master and pointed him out. “The captain was at the station, aud went to look at the party, and after , some minutes of examination which ; mode the Sister of Mercy very nervous, ' she wa- asked for her papers. She shoved her hand into her bosom from above, just like a man does when he dives into his breast pocket, and not from the side, as nuns do when they take things from their corsage, and that confirmed all suspicions.”