The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1916-01-08
SWARNS WITH SPIES
Baltic Ports Crowded With
Agents of Many Nations.
Heroes, Too, S%mugelers, Exchange
Gamblers and FueitiVes Are There
Many Women in Thrones
of Secret Workers.

Stockholm.-Just now the Baltic is
the sea Of adventure. Normally it is
a dull, insipid sea. After war be-
gan the Baltic woke up a little, but
it's liveliness was limited by Grand
Admiral Tirpitz's command of the sea.
Now about ten British submarines,
backed by some Russian submarines.
have awakened the ordinarily quiet
waters. All Baltic ports are nests of
espionage, adventure, patriotic hero
ism and roguery, chiefly the last
named.
Stockholm ignores the war, but it
is full of Russian and German jobbers
who gamble in exchange. Copenhagen
is the chief center of German espion-
e. The saloons and f%ourth-rate no.
tells are thronged with German agents.
Libau, since Won Hindenburg cap
tured it last summer, is the headquar-
tiers Of a German motorboat corps
which does scouting in Riga gulf.
Hernosand, OXelosund and other
small Swedish eastern ports are the
homes of scores of marooned German
merchant captains whose ships have
been torpedoed or bottled up.
The liveliest places are Haparanda
and Tornea, frontier townlets on the
Tornea Elf river, which divides
Sweden from Russian Finland. These
townlets, 80 miles from the Arctic
circle, are crowded with spies, con-
traband smugglers and fugitive pris-
oners. The Russian gendarme Colonel
Abassoff discovered two German spies
in Tornea recently. With six gen
darmes he pursued the suspects to
Karungi, further up the river, and be-
sieged them in a house. After a two
hour battle the two Germans and
four Russians lay dead.
In coming here from Copenhagen,
via Malmo, one has to cross the
sound, the entrance gate of the British
submarines. The sound is an inter
national waterway, but it is also ter
r%itorial. being less than three miles
across at the narrowest point. The
Swedes own the east side and the
Danes the west. The other entrances,
the Great and Little Belt, which are
entirely owned by Denmark, were
mined against submarines in October,
1914.
Danes and Swedes could not agree
about mining the sound. The Swedes
regret this, for the submarines have
disturbed the halcyon calm of the Bal
tic and injured Sweden's trade with
Germany.
After England had got at least foul
submarines through, Germany mineC
the sound. Mines were planted in ;
big triangular patch in the south ant
German patrol boats were set to watcl
it. At least two English submarines
have got between or under the minei
and more may come any day.
I From the Malmo steamer could b,
seen Germany's tremendous meas
ures against submarines. South o
the mine field, on the horizon, is
. forest of masts and tunnels belong
? ing to the big hotilla of cruisers, CUR
> boats. armed trawlers and motor pa
troll boats. Their business is to watc
: for and destroy submarines that &c
past the mines. Ahead of the lotill
flew a hydroplane. The Malmo steam
g er captain said that when he ha
sailed a boat south a few days befor
he had counted about fifty Germa
craft of different kinds all on the lool
out. From the sound down to tn
q broad water between Sweden an
Rugen island every mile of sea has
small German warship on the watcl
At Copenhagen the police brougt