The Cordova daily times., 1923-03-21
By MAJ-GEN. SIR F. MAURICE


 LONDON, March 21-The written announcement of the arrest of an Ital- ian military spy at Zagreb, in Jugo- Slavia, is first report since the war of such an incident, common enough before 1914. The cynic is not likely to | lose the opportunity of pointing out that this incident has taken place be- tween two nations both of whom are members of the League of Nations. It is one more instance of the in completeness of the guarantees of se curity which the League at present offers and of the urgent necessity for making them complete. It shows also that unless and until these guarantees are made complete the conditions of 1913 will quickly be reproduced in Flu rope.
 Considered Necessary l While it is generally agreed that the spy system is objectionable, it is usually held to be an unpleasant ne cessity. For this reason in the years before the war the continental na tions maintained elaborate secret ser vices, on which they expended large sums of money.
 In particular, the German military secret service was supposed to be elaborate and highly efficient, while grave anxiety was often expressed be- cause we had no secret service on anything like a corresponding scale. The number of stories of the activi- ties of German spies in this country in the years preceding the war was legion.
 lessons of the war is the surprisingly small value of the information ob- ] tained by military spies in time of peace. I doubt if any commander on either side obtained from that source any information which was of real value to him in making his original plans or in fighting his first battles, with the single exception of the in- formation Germany obtained as to the state of the Belgian fortresses and of the best. way of attacking them.
 German Spies Useless
 The German spies in this country produced nothing of any value to the German generals at the outbreak of the war. Our counter-espionage pac- tically killed their spy system in this country on mobilization.
 For some years before the war our General Staff had arranged with the French General Staff that if we were to send an expeditionary force to the help of France the bulk of it would land at Havre, which would be our main base in France and the accom- mediation at Havre was carefully sur veyed by us for that purpose.
 Our Expeditionary Force began landing at Havre on August 10, 1914, and it began to move forward to it's place of concentration, near Maubeuge on August 14, the concentration of this mass of troops being virtually com plete by August 20. Of~this movement the Germans were in complete ignor- ance.
 l Both Sides Ignorant
 On August 20 Von Moltke told Won Kluck, who was marching toward Mons:
 1 "Disembarkation of the English at Boulogne and their employment from direction of Lille must be reckoned with The opinion here, however, is that large disembarkations have not taken place."
 | It was not until the battle of Mons had been raging for several hours that Won Kluck was aware that he was confronted by our Expeditionary Force, while as late as August 27 he still believed that we had disembarked at Calais and Boulogne.
 On the other side the ignorance was only little less complete. The French, who had also maintained an elaborate military secret service in time of peace. were quite ignorant of the extent of the training and eff ciency of the German reserve forma- tions and of the speed with which these could be placed in the front line This was one of the chief causes of the breakdown of their original plan. 1 Underrated Germans
 Joffre was not aware until August 23 of the strength of the great Ger