The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1934-02-05
SPY INDUSTRY
KEEPING VAST
NUMBER BUSY
Half Million People Declar'
ed so Engaged in En-
rope; Arrests Few
BY RALPH HEINZEN ,
I1,;..d Press Staff Correspondent

BY RALPH HElNLEN
United Press Staff correspondent ,
PARIS. Feb. 5. (UP):-Up and
down the highways OF Europe
through the smart. cosmopolitan
hars of Paris and Riga, Vienna
and Sofia. at the gathering places
along the Riviera, the Dalmatlan
coast the sports slopes OF the
| Abs the spies are rampant. ,
A half million over-JeWeled'
glittering beauties and steely-
eyed. silent men are hard at work
in the espionage industry. Eu-
! rope is honeycombed with spy
gangs. There are spies and super
spies, spies who spy on other
spies, and. closing their ranks
, thousands of secret S ervlc e
sleuths, who wage unrelenting war
on this under-cover gentry.
The recent breaking up in Paris
of the now-famed "International
Spy Syndicate" which would
contract for bit of spying OF
any sort, naval. military, eco
nomic, for a price-and the arrest
of "La Zelle Sophie" near the
French Rhine frontier fortified
tions with a machine gun of g new
model under her skirt were but
two of many victories by the Sc
cret services.
Saying is the best paid profess
sion in Europe today; the risk is
great, but the records show less
than 800 espionage arrests thru
all of Europe during 1888. I'm,
employment in other trades anu
professions has swung thousands
of jobless to the lucrative work
of spying.
Paris. Berlin, Vienna. London
and most of the other capitals
are spy conscious. On the records
of police in all these countries are
the photos and descriptions of
most of these spies. There are
card-indexes which enable the Sc
cret service to trail them; an ex-
change of information between
police of various countries has not
made the spy's path any easier.
Yet spying goes on.
French secret police officials ad-
nit that espionage has reached its
greatest proportions in history.
Before the war, there was a little
discreet. almost polite espionage
going on but it was confined to
| keeping general tab on new arms,
new warships, and if occasion
presented, acquiring a naval code
here or there.
Since the war, no self-respect-
ing government is without it's
army of spies. They are legion
and they swarm everywhere. Ger
/ tain French nationalist newspapers
declared that half the foreign
workmen engaged in building the
French frontier Notifications were
foreign spies. This was never Of
fcially denied.
Commercial and economic spy
ing has been added to the mill
tary and naval espionage of other
days. The steel and chemical in
dustries are particularly bothered
bv espionage; even Paris dress
makers have had to adopt sys-
TEN of passports for authentic
buyers to prevent piracy and spy
ing of models.
SPY DOCUMENTS SEIZED
When French police broke up
the international Syndicate. they
found that this group had ramiti-
cations in the United States, Eng
land, Finland, Germany, Russia,
and Japan. Experts have worked
for weeks to tabulate seized cor
respondence and documents, most
of which had to be translated, and
they still have months of work
ahead of them.
| This syndicate is typical of the
present-day spy gangs. 1t worked
for a number of governments and
industrial groups but was under
no single flag. It's field marshal
was a woman, Lydia Stahl. Rus
sian born, American educated,
master of arts at Columbia Uni
versity. cosmopolitan hammered
and bejeweled.
Police accuse two other Ameri-
cans, Robert Gordon Swift and
his wife, Marjory Talley Swift, Of
being major lieutenants. He was
an aviator who had quit flying
she was just out of Vassar. Yet
Paris police proclaimed her the
most skilled of espionage workers,
able to throw off the best French
detectives as she dashed through
buildings with double entrances,
leaving police at one door as she
CONSTIPATED 30 YEARS