The Defence of the Realm (6 page)

Day in, day out, the ceaseless work of getting information and throwing dust in the eyes of others goes on, and the final result of it all, as far as we are concerned, is this: that a German General landing a force in East Anglia would know more about the country than any British General, more about each town than its own British Mayor, and would have his information so methodically arranged that he could, in a few minutes, give you the answer to any question you asked him about any town, village or position in that area.
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Le Queux's own fantasies scaled new heights in 1909 with the publication of another best-seller,
Spies of the Kaiser: Plotting the Downfall of England
, which claimed that England was awash with ‘a vast army of German spies':

I have no desire to create undue alarm. I am an Englishman and, I hope, a patriot. What I have written in this present volume in the form of fiction is based upon serious facts within my own personal knowledge . . . During the last twelve months, aided by a well-known detective officer, I have made personal inquiry into the
presence and work of these spies, an inquiry which has entailed a great amount of travelling, much watchfulness, and often considerable discomfort.

In the last chapter of the book, the heroes, John ‘Jack' Jacox and his friend Ray Raymond, almost pay with their lives for their fearless investigations. In December 1908 they are presented with Christmas crackers by a group of apparently good-natured Germans, but are alerted just in time by a detective-inspector to the Germans' real intentions:

‘They intended to wreak upon both of you a terrible revenge for your recent exposures of the German system of espionage in England and your constant prosecution of these spies.'

‘Revenge?' [Jacox] gasped. ‘What revenge?'

‘Well,' replied the detective-inspector, ‘both these [crackers] contain powerful bombs, and had you pulled either of them you'd both have been blown to atoms. That was their dastardly intention.'
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Edmonds was well aware that this and other episodes in
Spies of the Kaiser
had been produced by Le Queux ‘out of his imagination', and probably regarded the claim that the book was ‘based upon serious facts within [Le Queux's] own personal knowledge' as the kind of artistic licence indulged in by writers of popular thrillers. But he took seriously the ‘dozens of letters telling . . . of the suspicious behaviour of Germans' sent to Le Queux by excitable readers of
Spies of the Kaiser
. Edmonds also continued to take Le Queux himself seriously. In his unpublished reminiscences written many years later after Le Queux's death, Edmonds refers to him as his ‘friend'.
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Le Queux was more plausible in person than in print. He appears to have persuaded Edmonds, as he persuaded Sir Robert Gower MP, who wrote the foreword to his official biography, that his ‘interest was directed solely to the welfare of his country'.
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R. B. Haldane, the Secretary of State for War in the Asquith government, was at first bemused by the extraordinary reports of German espionage which Edmonds presented to him. Unlike Edmonds, Haldane remained anxious to build bridges to Berlin. After the outbreak of war he was to be hounded from office for his alleged pro-German sympathies. His initial reaction, when confronted with Edmonds's evidence, was to conclude that the alleged spies were really ‘the apparatus of the white slave traffic'.
⁵⁴
Some of Edmonds's evidence, for example that concerning suspicious Germans with photographic equipment in Epping ‘occasionally visited by women from London for weekends',
⁵⁵
did indeed lend itself to this interpretation. Edmonds, however, ‘persisted', though – as he admitted
later – ‘I was very nearly thrown out of my job for my pains.' Finally, Haldane yielded to Edmonds's persistence and allowed himself to be convinced of the spy menace. ‘What turned the scale', in Edmonds's view, was a letter from the Mayor of Canterbury, Francis Bennett-Goldney (soon to become Conservative MP for Canterbury), who reported that he ‘had found two Germans wandering in his park, had talked to them and invited them in to dinner'. After dinner, the two men had revealed to a stunned Bennett-Goldney the sinister purpose of their apparently harmless excursions: ‘Their tongues loosened by port, they told him they were reconnoitring the country for an advance on London from the ports of Folkestone, Dover, Ramsgate and Margate.' Even when recounting this remarkable episode many years later, Edmonds seemed unaware of its unusual irony.
⁵⁶
Germans and Britons had reversed their national stereotypes. Two funloving German tourists had played a British practical joke on their British host who had reacted with the incomprehension commonly associated by the British with the humourless Hun.

At a deeper level Haldane's readiness to believe such remarkable tales of German espionage reflected his enormous respect for the ability and professionalism of the German General Staff. He impressed on Vernon Kell ‘the excellence and precision of their planning',
⁵⁷
and considered them fully capable of creating a dangerous and extensive spy network in Britain. In March 1909 Haldane set up, with cabinet approval, a high-powered sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence to consider ‘the nature and extent of the foreign espionage that is at present taking place within this country and the danger to which it may expose us'. The chair was taken by Haldane himself.
⁵⁸

Edmonds told the first meeting of the sub-committee on 30 March of a rapid rise in ‘cases of alleged German espionage' reported to the War Office by the public. Five cases had been reported in 1907, forty-seven in 1908 and twenty-four in the first three months of 1909. Edmonds gave some particulars of thirty of these cases. Following Haldane's advice to ‘lay stress on the anarchist (demolitions) motive', Edmonds emphasized the ‘aggressive' nature of German espionage, claiming that it aimed not merely at intelligence-gathering but also at preparing the destruction of docks, bridges, ammunition stores, railways and telegraph lines ‘on or before the outbreak of war'.
⁵⁹
There was, however, nothing personally eccentric in the belief held by Haldane and Edmonds that German agents would be used for sabotage. In the decade before 1914 the influential
Journal of the Royal United Services Institution
, which was read widely throughout the British armed forces, included several articles on the possibility of a German invasion of Britain, and sabotage operations being conducted in Britain prior to mobilization.
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Spy scares in the Edwardian media: the
Graphic
uncovers a non-existent lair of German spies in Essex in 1908.

When presenting the evidence of German espionage to the Committee of Imperial Defence sub-committee in 1909, Edmonds acknowledged, ‘We have . . . no regular system or organisation to detect and report suspicious cases, and are entirely dependent on casual information.' Counterespionage at the Admiralty was in an even sorrier state. Captain R. C. Temple of the Naval Intelligence Department told the sub-committee that his department, which did little more than collate information on foreign navies, was unable to carry out any ‘investigations into espionage' at all, and therefore passed on reports that came its way to Colonel Edmonds. In presenting his evidence to the sub-committee Edmonds ‘laid great stress on the fact that none of these cases were reported by the police authorities, and that he was indebted for information regarding them to private individuals'.
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He seems, at the very least, to have been insufficiently surprised by the failure of the police to detect a single suspicious German as well as insufficiently sceptical of the information supplied by ‘private individuals'.

An unknown number of the reports of suspicious Germans presented by Edmonds to the sub-committee had been investigated by Melville. Among them was a report of Germans taking photographs in the West Hartlepool area who Melville was convinced were spies.
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Shortly before the first meeting of the sub-committee, Melville sent his assistant, Herbert Dale Long, to investigate German spies said to be living in East Anglia. In his reports Long referred to the Germans by the codename ‘tariff reformers' or ‘tr'. (The issue of tariff reform had split the Conservative government in the years before 1906 and was still a live issue in Liberal Free Trade Britain.)
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The same acronym, also used by Edmonds, was later employed (capitalized as ‘TR') by the first Chief of SIS, Mansfield Cumming, who sometimes referred to Germany as ‘Tiaria'.
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On 23 March 1909, a week before the first meeting of the sub-committee, Long reported that the alleged German agents at various East Anglian locations had disappeared by the time he arrived:

[I] have failed to discover tr agents at any of these places and I believe it can be taken for granted that none are residing there at the present time.

There can be little doubt, however, that the party's [German intelligence] emissaries here worked the district; the proprietor of the Ship Hotel at ‘Reedham' – H. Carter – vigorously denounces the conduct of two agents who he observed were particularly active making notes and drawings in favour of the movement last summer.
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The evidence of German espionage presented by Edmonds to the subcommittee now appears flimsy. His first twelve cases concerned ‘alleged reconnaissance work by Germans'. In half these cases the suspicious persons were not even clearly identified as Germans. The most farcical ‘reconnaissance' report seems to have come, appropriately, from Le Queux (though, like other informants, he is not identified by name and is referred to only as a ‘well-known author'):

Informant, while motoring last summer in an unfrequented lane between Portsmouth and Chichester, nearly ran over a cyclist who was looking at a map and making notes. The man swore in German, and on informant getting out of his car to apologize, explained in fair English, in the course of conversation, that he was studying at Oxford for the Church, and swore in German to ease his conscience. He was obviously a foreigner.
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Edmonds's second category of evidence consisted of twelve cases of ‘Germans whose conduct has been reported as giving rise to suspicion'. There was at least one real German spy on the list. German archives confirm that Paul Brodtmann, managing director of the Continental Tyre Company in London, had been recruited by the Nachrichten-Abteilung in 1903 to report on British battleships at Southampton and had also sent several reports to the German military attaché in London.
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Another possibly authentic spy on Edmonds's list was Herr Sandmann, who had taken photographs inside the Portland defences which were published in the German periodical
Die Woche
. If Sandmann was a spy, however, his liking for publicity raises some doubt about his competence. Edmonds's third and final category of evidence consisted of six ‘houses reported to be occupied by a succession of Germans which it is desirable to watch'. Once again Le Queux (‘a well-known author') seems to have supplied one of the examples: ‘A series of Germans come and go at 173, Powerscourt Road, North End, Portsmouth. They receive many registered letters from Germany.'
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From such mostly insubstantial evidence Edmonds deduced the existence of an ‘extensive' German espionage network in Britain directed, he believed, from a special office in Brussels. ‘The use of motors', he believed, ‘has facilitated espionage, as it enables agents to live at a distance from the scene of their operations, where their presence excites no suspicion.'
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At least one member of the sub-committee, Lord Esher, was less than impressed with Edmonds and described him in his journal as ‘a silly witness from the WO': ‘Spy catchers get espionage on the brain. Rats are everywhere – behind every arras.'
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Probably to test the limits of Edmonds's credulity,
Esher asked him whether he ‘felt any apprehensions regarding the large number of German waiters in this country'. Edmonds remained calm. He ‘did not think that we need have any apprehensions regarding the majority of these waiters'.
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Esher's initial scepticism gradually waned as the War Office revealed the extent of its concern. Whatever doubts remained on the sub-committee were successfully dispelled by the chairman. Haldane had a reputation for having not espionage but German culture on the brain. John Morley, the Secretary of State for India, complained that he ‘wearies his Cabinet colleagues by long harangues on the contribution of Germany to culture'.
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Thus when Haldane told the sub-committee that it was ‘quite clear that a great deal of reconnaissance work is being conducted by Germans in this country', some of it probably to ‘enable important demolitions and destruction to be carried out in this country on or before the outbreak of war', his views conveyed unusual conviction.
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