Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-08-25

officially ungrateful, but unoficially, in more
ways than one, gratitude was attested by one
OF our leading representatives in Europe.
This agent was a German government en-
plOye, in a post of trust and importance in
one of the government departments. There
news Of various sorts came his way, news OF
the kind that the Germans Strove to hide and
the allies to obtain. Often he knew ahead OF
time of changes in policy or plan. That news
he conveyed to the American Secret Service
by a means clever as it was simple. From
motives satisfactory to himself he played this
double game for years, beginning before we
entered the war.
President Wilson heard through him before
he heard from tAe German foreign office that
Germany had decided to commence the un-
restricted submarine warfare that brought us
into the war. That explains why those days
OF January, 1917, saw discreet preparations
for our entry into the war which would prob
ably become inevitable.
Once we were in, this man played his game
harder, at even greater peril. Throughout
our 10 months participation in the war he
sent us Information of value perhaps second
to none we received. 1t included advance par
ticulars of the great German offensive of
March 81, 1918, and other German plans for
the crucial campaign that ollowed.
Toward the end of the war he told of the
split between German political and military
leaders over the question of immediate peace,
then of the rise to power Of the Independent
Socialist party that preceded the German
revolution. He was never caught, nor even
suspected. Publication of his name would
amaze Germany.
Amazing, too, would be the full story Of
what Americans within Germany were able to
do for their country. Col. Nicolai. head of
the German Intelligence, knows some of it,
but not all. Some Americans who. for one
reason or another, had remained in Germany
until April, 1917, when we entered the war,
Waged there or from neutral countries little
secret wars of their own.
QUITE a little American spying in Ger
many and various other ends of the earth
was done by Russian secret agents.
One of the sardonic quirks of the secret war
was that a good part of the old Imperial Rus
sian military intelligence service worked for
the American secret Sarvice-and. glad of the
chance. This was not the Czarist secret
political police, the Okhrana, notorious fore
runner of the equally notorious Soviet Cheka.
When official title of the
American Military Intelligence in France as
Ga designates the military intelligence Sec
ton as a whole-heard of these men, or some
of them, in the Fall of 1917, they were truly
out of luck. Trained all their lives as spies,
scarcely knowing now 10 DO anything else,
they had nobody for whom to spy. The Rus
sian revolutionary government did not want
them. Their firm had failed, and they were
seeking a new connection. That connection
was the Americans.
They were quite useful to us. We employed
them on piece work only, but they got upward
OF 100, 900 American dollars for doing it. Their
groups had been established for some time in
Asia. In many parts of Europe, especially
neutral countries bordering Germany, whence
they penetrated almost at will into the for
hidden empire.
They had contacts and connections at stra-
tegic points there. established often long before
the war, the very thing our new service lacked.
Also, they had been trained in all the tricks
and ruses of espionage. So We gave them a job
at the Krupp works at Essen that produced an
untold story of Big Bertha.
The average reader first heard Of Big Bertha
on the March morning in 1918 when she threw
~ miles into Paris an eight-inch shell whose
explosion Jared the civilized world. It had
never been done before. But earlier than that
March day, allied secret services had expected
the jar. They had heard of Big Bertha.
ONE Winter day months before Col. Cam
panole. head of the American Military III
telligence, had surprised the CO. mess at Chau-
mont by exclaiming in the heat Of argument:
But the Germans have a gun that can reach
Parish, then r~elapsing hastily into his usual
golden silence about his work.
The rest had given the Ssh Sh!" department
the laugh. Ordnance experts had figured out
that 1t was impossible. Col. Campano.e said no