MI5 in the Great War

by Nigel West

  According to English law, van der Goten could not be tried for any offence committed in Holland; there remained the fact that on the boat he had accepted a definite mission for a person whom he believed to be a German agent.

  Through the courtesy of the French Intelligence Service, Gremling and Theunissen were brought over to give evidence at the seminary of evidence taken on 10 and 11 September and also at the court martial which was held on 24 September. The exhibits included the four reports which van der Goten had furnished during May and the interrogation of 18 June, the passport showing that he had come over as a railway official and a piece of paper giving the approximate size of the plan which van der Goten had shown to Krichel. The Belgian Auditeur-General was represented at the trial.

  Van der Goten was tried under DRR 48 and found guilty of committing an act preparatory to a contravention of DRR 16 with intent to assist the enemy. He was sentenced to be shot but at the prayer of the Belgian government the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

  Van der Goten’s wife cast him off and eventually went to live with Theunissen. This circumstance, possibly coupled with van der Goten’s reiterated appeals for justice, induced the Belgian government to take up his case and ask that he should be handed over to the Belgian military on the grounds that the sentence inflicted was somewhat severe and put out of date by the ending of hostilities. It was decided that the Army Council had no power to hand over the prisoner but only to remit the remainder of the sentence. The Belgian minister therefore appealed for this act of clemency but the Army Council considered the crime committed by van de Goten to be a particularly heinous form of espionage and that a remission of the sentence was not only in itself undesirable but impolitic as it would be used as a precedent and encourage the making of other appeals on behalf of other criminals.

  *

  Jose do Patrocinio, journalist, was the son of a Brazilian journalist who had achieved fame by procuring the abolition of slavery in Brazil and had also evidenced sympathy for Great Britain during the Boer War. In 1912 when at Santos, Jose do Patrocinio made the acquaintance of a French dressmaker named Josephine Antoinette Conqui, and she became his mistress. The couple came to France in 1913 and lived in Paris and at Nice. In 1914 Patrocinio was given a post in the Brazilian consulate at Antwerp, where he acted chiefly as courier, Conqui returned to Nice. In September he was sent to Liege to pick up Brazilian subjects, and subsequently carried official documents between Le Havre and The Hague via Southampton. He returned to Brazil early in 1915 and was subsequently posted to Amsterdam, where Conqui joined him on 19 July. In 1917 the Brazilian government reduced the pay of all its officials and Patrocinio’s was reduced to £10.7s.9d a month. Finding it difficult to live he applied repeatedly for an increase of pay or for funds to enable him to return to Brazil.

  Patrocinio was in debt for some £60. At the end of July he applied to the Brazilian minister for passports for himself and Conqui with a view to going home. The minister, who had wired asking that Patrocinio’s salary should be raised, urged him to wait some months but could give no guarantee of a rise of pay. Patrocinio determined to go home and proposed to travel via England and France where he intended to marry Miss Conqui. The event brought to light Patrocinio’s real motive for the journey. Through the introduction of a pro-German Brazilian journalist, Patrocinio had known a certain Loebel intimately since 1916. Loebel, hearing of his straits, suggested there was an easy way of making money and introduced him to a German agent named Ben Levy. Levy offered Patrocinio first £1,000 to procure for him a false Brazilian passport and afterwards, shifting his ground, he engaged Patrocinio to go to England and France to ascertain when the next military offensive would take place. Patrocinio was instructed by Loebel in the use of secret ink, was given a long list of addresses in various countries to which to send his reports and one address at Frankfurt-am-Main. He was to spend six or seven weeks in France, to collect there military information only, and then to go to Switzerland and to write thence to Frankfurt for his pay.

  On embarking at Rotterdam, Patrocinio and Conqui were seen by two witnesses taking affectionate leave of a suspect Belgian named Francois Albert Hertogs. They were thrown into utter confusion by a young Frenchwoman who innocently asked them whether they knew one Ben Levy; Patrocinio lost his head and mentioned Ben Levy to Roels, a Belgian courier, who already suspected him, and Roels then forced Patrocinio to confess.

  After warning the captain of the vessel to look after Patrocinio, Roels went ashore and laid the information with the British vice-consul. In the evening he made Patrocinio write a signed statement concerning the affair with Levy and Loebol. Patrocinio then sought protection in apparent frankness and the usual story that he had accepted the mission in order to inform the British authorities and protect other young men.

  When he landed at Gravesend he made a voluntary statement to the port officer but this declaration differed in some particulars from the written statement made under pressure from Roels. Meanwhile the British consulate had sent over a précis of the information lodged by Roels, and of a report from a Russian source that Patrocinio had received 1,000 francs on presenting his visa’d passport and 3,000 francs on embarking. It was supposed that Hertogs had brought him the money.

  At the port 299 francs was found on him and Conqui. Patrocinio explained that this sum represented his savings which did not tally with the reason he had put forward for his journey to Brazil. Also, there was found among his papers a passport issued at Berlin in 1918 to a Brazilian journalist named Avila. This Avila had arrived in Holland from Brazil on 30 July 1916 in order to attend a prize court in connection with consignments of coffee made by La Companie Nacionale de Café de Santos to Malmo and Stockholm. Avila had landed at Gravesend on 21 September 1916 saying he had lost his papers in Holland. He had denied that he had visited Germany but was unable to explain satisfactorily how he had spent the interval between 30 July and 21 September. Subsequent search of Avila’s effects had resulted in the discovery of a telegram from Johann Serte sent in Holland of La Companie Nacionale. The telegram referred to a remittance of £60 and a payment made to Patrocinio. Avila, who was reported to have carried documents for the Germans in a mirror, was allowed to go to New York with a no return permit. He turned up at Zurich in March 1917.

  Patrocinio was interrogated as to his possession of Avila’s passport and the meaning of this telegram. He explained that it referred to a payment he had received for acting as interpreter to Avila; with regard to the passport, he could give no satisfactory explanation of having it in his possession. With regard to the Belgian Hertogs, Patrocinio stated he had met the man only the day before embarking at Rotterdam and Conqui admitted knowing Hertogs the man, but denied that she knew his name. Enquiry however showed that from 21 to 31 August Patrocinio had frequented Hertogs’ company in Coomans Hotel, and Hertogs was reported to have said that he knew Conqui was a German spy. Hertogs was the son of a coffee planter, domiciled at Antwerp but resident in America during the war; Hertogs had remained at Antwerp during the German occupation and had escaped into Holland on about 30 August 1917. Enquiry made by the Belgian Secret Service elicited no proof that the man was a German agent but certain facts showing that he had had suspicious dealings with German officers.

  Besides Loebel and Levy, Patrocinio had admitted to the Belgians that he had been on friendly terms with a German agent named Lieber (possibly a figment of his brain) and with Delaraye, a Brazilian engaged in illicit trading in rubber.

  Patrocinio had also stated that he had left collars etc. impregnated with secret ink and his list of spy addresses in Coomans Hotel, but no trace was found of them. On the other hand, Tinsley succeeded in procuring a mass of correspondence which Patrocinio had left behind in his rooms at Amsterdam. This showed that with the connivance of the Brazilian consulate in Amsterdam and of the Brazilian legation in Berlin he had acted at one time as intermediary for correspondence passing between Berlin and Brazil, and had probably employed
stewards of one of the Dutch liners to carry the letters. Besides, it established his contact with many suspects of whom the most interesting are the following: Suzanne van Damme, a known German agent, of van Gelder & Son, Bingel 230, who supplied him with funds, and Eugen Nobel, an American consul, had been in close touch with Charles Hastings. Subsequently Tinsley discovered that Felix V. Versaille a suspect, Frederick Lambertus Falck, suspect; Maringer, a well-known German agent of many years’ standing; and Madame Schory, daughter of Aime Moll interned in England, and herself a deportee of July 1916, had all been in touch with Patrocinio.

  The fact that the man was in debt, which he strenuously denied, was also proved. Patrocinio had been interrogated on 7 and 10 September and on the 11th he was confronted with Mr Roels. He was again interrogated on 10 October. His statements varied in some particulars but the fact remained that he had admitted the spy connection voluntarily, and that the only evidence showing that he might have intended to use secret ink were three ball-pointed pens found in a lacquer case. One of these had been used but the test did not reveal the presence of secret ink. There remained only a letter from Suzanne van Damme from which it was dear that he both knew her and made appointments to meet her. Regarding this woman it would seem that there was no clear evidence that she had ever received spy letters from England.

  Lieutenant Henry Curtis-Bennett was instructed to prepare a case against Patrocinio under regulations 18, 48 and 18A. Sir Archibald Bodkin then wrote that these regulations applied only to offences committed in England or ‘perhaps on board British ships on the high seas’ and that even ‘preparatory’ acts, acts ‘not sufficiently proximate to the substantive offence as to amount in law to an attempt to commit such offence,’ committed abroad were chargeable here only in so far as they were relevant to and explanatory of actions committed in this country.

  In point of fact Patrocinio had committed no offence in any place within British jurisdiction, and there was no evidence that he had come over with intent to spy. Even the possession of Suzanne van Damme’s address was not incriminating since he had made no attempt while in England to communicate with her. Moreover, it was a question whether van Damme was a spy within the definition of DRR 18A, since her activities were confined to countries other than Great Britain. In addition, the circumstances in which the address was found gave no reasonable ground for suspecting Patrocinio of communication or attempted communication with a spy.

  Sir Archibald Bodkin pointed out that the regulation required simplification so as to include as offenders persons who before their arrival in this country had been visiting or in communication with an enemy agent abroad unless they could prove that they came to this country on legitimate business and did not know or suspect that the agent was a spy. He suggested also an enlargement of the definition of spy to include a person reasonably suspected of acting as an enemy agent, thus abolishing the need for proving actual or attempted communications. Legal action was taken in the sense indicated. Patrocinio was recommended for internment under DRR 14B on the grounds of his hostile associations and of the suspicion that he was a German agent; the order was made on 29 November.

  Repeated attempts to procure his release or transfer to the Brazilian authorities broke down the first time on the opposition of MI5 and the second time presumably on that of the Foreign Office. Patrocinio had appealed to the Advisory Court which decided that if the Foreign Office saw fit, on grounds of policy, he should be sent back to Brazil provided the Brazilian minister would pay for his journey and undertake that he should stay in Brazil till the end of the war, and that until such arrangements were made Patrocinio should remain in custody. A deportation order was served on Patrocinio on 23 January 1919.

  Conqui, about whom there was considerable doubt and who was too stupid to be dangerous, had been released on 16 September 1917 and had left for Brazil with a no return permit on 23 February 1918.

  After the case of Patrocinio, an undoubted enemy agent against whom no offence could be charged, DRR 18A was redrafted so as to include as an offence, communication with an enemy agent within or without the United Kingdom; previous to coming to this Kingdom; the definitions of ‘communication’ and ‘address’ were enlarged to cover activities and places within and without the United Kingdom, and the definition of ‘spy’ was altered so the expression ‘enemy agent’ would include any person who is, or has been, or is reasonably suspected of being or having been employed by the enemy either directly or indirectly for the purpose of committing an act either within or without the United Kingdom which if done within the United Kingdom would be a contravention of these regulations, or who has, or is reasonably suspected of having, either within or without the United Kingdom, committed or attempted to commit such an act with the intention of assisting the enemy.

  *

  Mrs Luise Mathilde Smith, nee von Zastrow, was born at Nieder Heidesdorf Schleslen, Germany in 1867. She went to live on the Riviera in 1896 and later on moved to Venlo where she kept a house described varyingly as a boarding-house and a charitable institution. Once also she mentioned having a boarding-house at Lugano. She returned only once to Germany and that was on the occasion on her father’s death in 1913. In February 1915, Luise von Zastrow married Dr John Henry Smith at the British consulate.

  Dr Smith was a photographic chemist, a man of parts and highly respected by those who knew him, a native of Kirkcaldy, Fifeshire, who had been educated at the Dublin College of Science and then at Zurich where he graduated as a Doctor of Philosophy. He worked on chemical research in Milan, and at Gateshead married a Swiss lady in 1886 and a year or two later returned to Switzerland for his health. Driven out of business by German competition he moved to Paris in 1907. He is stated to have remained there until the outbreak of war, when his business closed down. Dr Smith’s first wife died in 1908. Of their large family three daughters played some part in the second Mrs Smith’s story. Kelly, an imbecile, who was in an institute at Lausanne; Clara, who was in a situation at Zurich; Florrie, aged twenty-three, who for four years had earned her living in Spain, first as a companion in the south, and then in a German firm in Barcelona. Clara and Florrie were born in Switzerland, their native language was German. In marrying Dr Smith, Luise von Zastrow displeased her family; the marriage however was a happy one. She never regretted it and there is evidence to show that up to the time of her sentence she was on good terms with Florrie and even after continued to do her duty by the sick daughter, and was treated with affection by Clara.

  After the outbreak of war, Mrs Smith and her husband were reported to have stayed at Venice until Italy joined the Allies. Then they moved to Switzerland and returned to England in October 1916, leaving some trunks and furniture at Lausanne. They settled for a time at Romiley in Cheshire and later on moved to Manchester where Dr Smith occupied some small post as a lecturer and research worker.

  On her arrival in England, Mrs Smith’s German origin was reported to the Chief Constable of Cheshire, who verified her passport, directed that observation should be kept upon her and informed MI5. The address was put on check. An intercepted letter from Florrie Smith at Barcelona caused the branch to procure further particulars about the family and later on it was known that Mrs Smith and her mother were corresponding through the intermediary of a lady at Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Various harmless letters passed and as the police observation brought no result; the check was cancelled in May 1916. The following year Florrie Smith returned from Barcelona to take up war work and be with her father. The port officer drew attention to the fact that she spoke English and French imperfectly and had corresponded for years with her father in German.

  She applied for a post in the Cheshire Censorship and MI5 supplied the few particulars known to them about the girl. It does not appear that she obtained her post but later on she was at work for the War Office in London and filled the duties of a typist and translator of Spanish.

  Letters of March, May and August from the Chief Censor at Cape Town showed that Mr
s Smith had attempted to smuggle cuttings of pro-German Swiss newspapers excluded from South Africa to von Zastrow at Grootfontein. The cuttings were concealed in parcels of tea and calico, and in balls of fancy cotton and worsted. The first two letters arrived in June when the existing legislation had made no provision for dealing with such cases, but Mrs Smith’s correspondence was put on check.

  But by July 1917 regulations 24, 24A and 24B had been to a great extent redrafted and these were issued in their new form on 17 July. Under DRR 4E (3) it was made an offence to transmit through the post any written or printed matter by any indirect route or method involving evasion of the censorship. Mrs Smith despatched the third parcel on 20 July; notice of its despatch was received by MI5G on 30 September. The bureau, having ascertained that Mrs Smith had contravened the order decided on prosecution and consulted the Censor as to procedure. As however it was the first offence brought to notice under the new regulation, the Censor could give no help, but acting on the order of the DSI wrote to Mrs Smith warning her that she had committed an offence. Mrs Smith received this letter and composed one in return inquiring what the nature of her offense might be but this she did not post. The letter was afterwards found among her effects.

  While action against her under DRR 24B was being considered a letter which she wrote to her mother from Hampstead on 6 October was submitted to the bureau. The context, which was in a simple arbitrary code about fishing and pheasant shooting, showed clearly that it was written in answer to a question put by ‘Hildchen’ as to the results of the U-boats and airship campaign. Mrs Smith expressed the view that the Germans must not expect too much of the submarines, a certain number of ships were sunk but the ships were cleverly handled and people were restraining their appetite. Still, the results of the campaign were beginning to make themselves more felt and many more boats were at work than earlier in the year. As for the Zeppelins, the losses were greater than the results and the campaign made bad blood needlessly but the U-boats she wished every success. Hampstead was not worth a visit.