The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1921-03-10

I come known. In some manner or | other, never brought to light, the cret, and by threats of exposure blacknrailed him into delivering up copies of the mobilization orders. We first secured wind of it by agents in Petrograd reporting the removal of large sums of money from a Petro- grad bank to the Dresdner bank in Berlin. They could find no business transactions behind the money pay ments. Investigation disclosed that at stated intervals the colonel came to Berlin under an assumed name and drew from this account
 "A few days later a committee of three German and Austrian officers visited the colonel in his apartment in Prague. He broke down and con- fesSed and explained how the Rus SianS had blackmailed him into trea- son, after which he had accepted the money and continued in their ser vice. The senior officer informed the colonel that he would be given fif-
 teen minutes to arrange his affairs
 Whether one of the officers handed the old colonel a pistol as he walked alone into the next room I can't say but in a moment there was the sound of a pistol. The colonel had with his own hand carried out the penalty for
 traitors
 and what was especially interesting to the German general staff, is the liberality with which the Russian es- pionage system paid their agents. An
 examination of the bank transactions of the dead colonel established that the Russian government had paid this one agent alone in the series of years he had been in their service the amount the German Reichstag gave the German army to conduct their military intelligence for an en- tire year; not for one country but the entire world service"
 The Germans changed their sys- tenn during the war Money for the work was more plentiful and there was no time to carry out the patient
 planning necessary to the opening of sources of information of the quality type. The result was that agents be- came more numerous, and their value fell accordingly.
 Germany's knowledge of the secret methods of her own spy service did not prevent her from falling a vic
 tim to the unknown terrors con- jured in her own mind of the dan gers from French and Russian agents.
 The first day of mobilization in of how automobiles were. transport ing French gold straight across Ger
 many from Trance to Russia
 In the excitement of the first days the general staff believed the rumor and issued strict orders that every automobile should be stopped by guards. As there was a guard about every mile or two, it meant holding up and seriously delaying the auto mobile couriers speeding over the country with mobilization orders. An officer who was shot at five times in getting to the post to which he had been assigned. estimates that the German staffs gullibility in believ- ing such a yarn delayed the mobiliz- alton at least twenty-four hours.
 Another testimonial to the reality Of Germanys, spy phobia is the wife of a prominent business man in Der lin. Born in England, and a Ger man by marriage, she was arrested during the first weeks of the war charged with being a spy. Again the charge was ridiculous; she was i'm pr1soned only short time, but when she came out her hair was white. She refused to discuss the trial But her white hair bears silent witness to the prosecutors sincerity in at tempting to prove her a traitor.
 The continental spy systems seem to depend chiefly on the services of Erfaltors, not on the resourcefulness and sang froid of picturesque story book types. Avarice and greed stim- ulate the service, not fervid patriot