But to return to my adventures. My Government had learned of the impending pourparlers between Britain and Russia; it knew that Baron B's instructions would contain the conditions which Russia considered desirable. What was necessary was to secure these instructions.
Now, my tutor had, long before this, seen to it that I should be on friendly terms with various members of the Baron's household; and he had been especially insistent that I should pay a good deal of attention to the young daughter of the house, whom I shall call Nevshka. I had wondered at the time why he should do this; but I obeyed his instructions with alacrity. Nevshka was charming.
Soon I saw the purpose of this carefully fostered friendship.
"The Baron will spend this evening at the club," I was informed. "He will return, according to his habit, promptly at twelve. You will visit his house this evening, paying a call upon Nevshka. You will contrive to set back the clock so that his home-coming will be in the nature of a surprise to her. The hour will be so late that she, knowing her father's strictness, will contrive to get you out of the house without his seeing you. That is your opportunity! You must slip from the salon into the rear hall but do not leave the house. And if, young man, with such an opportunity, you cannot discover where these papers are hidden and secure them, you are unworthy of the trust that your Government has placed in you."
I nodded my comprehension. In other words I was to take advantage of Nevshka's friendship in order to steal from her father I was to perform an act from which no gentleman could help shrinking. And I was going to do it with no more qualms of conscience than, in time of war, I should have felt about stealing from an enemy general the plan of an attack.
For countries are always at war diplomatically. There is always a conflict between the foreign ambitions of Governments; always an attempt on the part of each country to gain its own ends by fair means or foul. Every man engaged in diplomatic work knows this to be true. And he will serve his Government without scruple, for well he knows that some seemingly dishonourable act of his may be the means of averting that actual warfare which is only the forlorn hope that Governments resort to when diplomatic means of mastery have failed.
So I undertook my mission with no hesitation, rather with a thrill of eagerness. I pretended to be violently interested in Nevshka (no difficult task, that) and time sped by so merrily that even had I not turned back the hands of the clock, I doubt whether the lateness of the hour would have seriously concerned either of us. Oh, yes, my tutor who, as you of course have guessed by now, was no mere tutor had analysed the situation correctly.
As the Baron was heard at the door, I drew out my watch.
"Nevshka, your clock is slow. It is already midnight."
Nevshka started.
"Come!" she exclaimed. "Father must not see you. He would be furious at your being here at this hour." In a panic she glanced about the salon. "Go out that way!" And she pointed to a door at the rear, one that opened on a dimly lit hall.
I went. I heard the Baron express his surprise that Nevshka was still awake. I heard her lie beautifully, I assure you. And I remained hidden while the Baron worked in his library for a while; scarcely daring to breathe until I heard him go up the stairs to his bedroom.
He was a careless man, the Baron. Or perhaps he had been reading Poe, and believed that the most obvious place of concealment was the safest. At any rate, there in a drawer of his desk, protected only by the most defenceless of locks, were the papers a neat statement of the terms upon which Russia would discuss this Persian matter with England.
I returned home with my prize, to find my tutor awaiting me. He said no word of commendation when I gave him the papers, but I knew by his expression that he was well pleased with my work. And I went to bed, delighted with myself, and dreaming of the great things that were to come.
Next day we left St. Petersburg. A German resident of the city had telephoned my relatives, warning them that a few cases of cholera had appeared. Would it not, he suggested (Oh, it was mere kind thoughtfulness on his part!), be best to let the young prince return to Germany until the danger was over? His parents would be worried. Indeed, it would be best, my "relatives" agreed. So with regret they bade me good-bye; and in the most natural manner in the world I returned to Berlin.
Wilhelmstrasse 76 again! The round-faced man again, but this time less military, less unbending, in his manner. I had done well, he told me. My exploit had attracted the favourable attention of a very exalted personage. If I could hold my tongue who knows what might be in store for me?
That was the end of the matter, so far as I was concerned. But in the history of European politics it was only the beginning of the chapter.
It may be well, at this point, to recall the political situation in Europe, as it affected England, Russia and Germany at the time. Even two years before in 1905 it had become evident to all students of international affairs that the next great conflict, whenever it should come, would be between England and Germany; and England, realising this, had already begun to seek alliances which would stand between her and German ambitions of world dominance. The Entente with France had been the first step in the formation of protective friendships; and although this friendship had suffered a strain during the Russo-Japanese War, because of the opposing sympathies of the two countries, the end of the war healed all differences. The defeat of Russia removed all immediate danger of a Slav menace against India. To England, then, the weakened condition of Russia offered an excellent opportunity for an alliance that would draw still more closely the "iron ring round Germany." Immediately she took the first steps towards this alliance.
Now, Russia stood badly in need of two things. War-torn and threatened by revolution, the Government could rehabilitate itself only by a liberal amount of money. But where to get it? France, her ally, and normally her banker, was slow in this instance to lend and it was only through England's intervention that the Tsar secured from a group of Paris and London bankers the money with which to finance his Government and stave off revolution.
But more than money, Russia needed an icefree seaport to take the place of Port Arthur, which she had lost; and for this there were only two possible choices: Constantinople or a port on the Persian Gulf. In either of these aims she was opposed by Britain, the traditional enemy of a Russian Constantinople, on the one hand, and the possessor of a considerable "sphere of interest "in the Persian Gulf on the other.
So matters stood, when in August, 1907, but a few weeks after my masquerade, an Agreement was signed, providing for the division of Persia into three strips, the northern and southern of which would be respectively Russian and British zones of influence; providing also, in a secret clause, that Russia would give England military aid in the event of a war between Germany and England!
Meantime what was Germany doing?
She had, you may be sure, no intention of allowing England to best her in the game of intrigue. Her interests in the Near East were commercial rather than military; but she could not see them threatened by an Anglo-Russian occupation of Persia. Then, too, she was bound to consider the possible effect on Turkey, in which she was taking an ever-increasing (and none too altruistic) interest.
The details of what followed I can only surmise. I know that in the interval between my trip to Russia and the signing of that Agreement, on August 31, the Kaiser held two conferences: one on August 3, with the Tsar at Swinemiinde; the other on August 14, with Edward VII., at the Castle of Wilhelmshohe. And when, on September 24, the terms were published, they were bitterly attacked by a portion of the English Press, not so much because of the danger to Persia, as because of the fact that Russia got the best of the bargain!*
* You will find an interesting account of the effect of this treaty upon Persia in William Morgan Shuster's valuable book, "The Strangling Persia."
Had the Kaiser succeeded in having these terms changed? Who knows? Certainly one can trace the hand of German diplomacy in the events of the next seven years, most
of which are a matter of common knowledge. The steady aggressions of Russia in Persia during the troubled years of 1910-1912; the almost open flouting of the terms of the treaty, which expressly guaranteed Persian integrity; the constant growth of German influence, culminating in the Persian extension of the German-owned Bagdad Railway; the founding of a German school and a hospital in Teheran, jointly supported by Germany and Persia; and finally, the celebrated Potsdam Agreement of 1910, between Russia and Germany, in which Germany agreed to recognise Russia's claim to Northern Persia as its sphere of influence, which provided for a further rapprochement between the two countries in the matter of railway construction and commercial development generally, and which has been generally supposed to contain a guarantee that neither country would join "any combination of Powers that has any aggressive tendency against the other."
And England did not protest, in spite of the fact that the Potsdam Agreement absolutely negatived her own treaty with Russia and made it, in the language of one writer, "a farce and a deception!" Why? Was it because she believed that when war came, as it inevitably must, Russia would forget this new alliance in allegiance to the old?
England was mistaken if she believed so. Russia Imperial Russia was never so much the friend of Germany as when, neglecting the war on her own Western front, she sent her armies into the Caucasus, persuaded the British to undertake the Dardanelles expedition, and, following her own plans of Asiatic expansion, betrayed England!
As I write Kut-el-Amara is creating a great stir in the Allied countries. The Indian Government has been severely blamed for sending General Townshend into Mesopotamia with insufficient material, medical supplies and troops. The official explanation was that the force was employed in order to protect the oil pipes supplying the British Navy in those waters from being destroyed by the enemy. There was no doubt in my mind at the time, in spite of the fact that I was in prison and communication with the outside was very meagre, that this was not the real reason. Subsequent developments have shown and the abandonment of the inquiry instituted by the British Government about this affair only further supports my contention that Russia intended to use England's helpless position to secure for herself an access to the Persian Gulf. The Grand Duke Nicholas himself abandoned the campaign on the Eastern front to go to the Caucasus. The Gallipoli enterprise which turned out to be such a monumental failure was undertaken upon his instigation. Do you think for one second that if Imperial Russia had thought England was able to capture Constantinople, a city which she herself had been wanting for centuries, she would have invited England to do so? The fact is that the Gallipoli enterprise tied up all England's available reserves so that the English could practically do nothing to forestall Russian movements to the Persian Gulf. The Government of India, realising the danger, sent General Townshend upon the famous Bagdad campaign rather as a demonstration than as a military enterprise. I will quote from my diary which I kept while in prison:
"Just read in the Times: 'British moving north into Mesopotamia to protect oil pipes and capture Bagdad.' I don't need to read Punch any more, the Times being just as funny. My dear friends, you didn't move up there for that reason. You went up there so as to be able to tell your Russian friends that there was no need to come farther south as you were there already."
That is the story of my little expedition into Russia and of what it brought about.
As for me, I was sent back to Gross Lichterfelde, where I abruptly ceased to be a young prince, and became once more a humble cadet. But only to outside eyes. Dazzled by the success of my first mission, I regarded myself as a Superman among the cadets. Life loomed romantically before me. I told myself that I was to consort with princes and beautiful noblewomen and to spend money lavishly. The future seemed to promise a career that was the merriest, maddest for which a man could hope.
I laugh sometimes now when I think of the dreams I had in those days. I was soon to learn that the life which Fate had thrust upon me was set with traps and pitfalls which might not easily be escaped. I was to learn many lessons and to know much suffering; and I was to discover that the finding of my "document "was only the beginning of a chain of events that were to control my whole life and that its influence over my career had not ended.
But at that time I was all hopes and rosy dreams of my future, of myself, occasionally of Nevshka.
Nevshka! Is she still as charming as ever?
CHAPTER III
A BOTANIST IN THE ARGONNE
Of what comes of leaving important papers exposed I look and talk indiscreetly, and a man dies.
IN spite of my dreams and extreme self-satisfaction, I found the atmosphere of Gross Lichterfelde as drab and monotonous as ever it had been before my masquerade. Discipline sits lightly upon one who is accustomed to it solely, but to me, fresh from a glorious fortnight of intrigue and festivity, it was doubly galling. Yet there was one avenue of escape open to me that was denied my fellows, for I was required to pay a weekly visit to my tutor in the Wilhelmstrasse, there to continue my studies in the art of diplomatic intrigue.
It is a significant comment upon the life at Gross Lichterfelde that I could regard these visits as a kind of relaxation. Surely no drillmaster was ever so exacting as this tutor of mine. And yet, despite his dryness and the complete lack of cordiality in his manner, there was somewhere the gleam of romance about him. To me he seemed, in a strangely inappropriate way, an incarnation of one of those old masters of intrigue who had been my heroes in former days at home; and my imagination distorted him into a gigantic, shadowy being, mysterious, inflexible and potentially sinister.
,We studied history together that autumn; not the dull record of facts that was forced upon us at Gross Lichterfelde, but rather a history of glorious national achievement, of ambitions attained and enemies scattered a history that had the tone of prophecy. And I would sit there in the soft autumn sunlight viewing the Fatherland with new eyes; as a knight in shining armour, beset by foes, but ever triumphing over 4hem by virtue of his righteousness and strength of arm.
Then I would return to Gross Lichterfelde and its discipline.
Yet even at Gross Lichterfelde we contrived to amuse ourselves, chiefly by violating regulations. That is generally the result of walling any person inside a set of rules; his attention becomes centred on getting outside. American cadets at West Point, so I have been told, have their traditional list of devilries, maintained with admirable persistence in the face of severe penalties. At Gross Lichterfelde one proved his manliness by breaking bounds at least once a week to drink beer and flirt with maids none the less divine because they were hopelessly plebeian.
In the prevailing lawlessness I bore my share, and in the course of my escapades I formed an offensive and defensive alliance with a cadet of my own age against that common enemy of all our kind, the Commandant of the school. Willi von Heiden I will call my chum, because that was not his name. We became close friends. And through our friendship there came an event which I shall remember to my last day. It gave me a glimpse into the terrible pit of secret diplorhacy.
Often at the present I find myself living it over in my mind. If I have learned to take a lighter view of life than most men, my attitude dates from that time when a careless word of mine, spoken in innocence, condemned a man to death. I will try to tell very briefly how it came about.
The Christmas after my excursion to St. Petersburg I was invited by Willi von Heiden to visit him at his home. His father was a squireling of East Prussia, one of the Junkers. He had an estate in that rolling farm land between Goldap and Tilsit, which was the scene of countless adventures of Willi's boyhood.
Just before we left Gross Lichterfelde yes, even there they allow you a few days' vacation at Christmas Willi received a letter and came to me with a joyous face.
"Good news!" he cried, "we are sure to have a lively holiday. Brother Franz is getting a few days' leave too."
I had heard much of Willi's older brother, Franz. He was a young man in t
he middle twenties, an officer of a famous fighting regiment of foot, one of the Prussian Guards. Willi had dilated upon him in his conversation with me. Franz was his younger brother's hero. From all accounts Franz von Heiden was possessed of a mind of that rare sort which combines unremitting industry with cleverness. His future as a soldier seemed brilliant and assured.
"Where is Franz?" was Willi's first question when we reached home.
I shall be long forgetting my first impressions of the man. I had been looking for a dry, spectacled student, or a stiff young autocrat of the thoroughly Prussian type, which I, like many other Germans, thoroughly disliked and inwardly laughed at. Instead, I found another chum.
Franz was an engaging young man of slight build, but very vigorous and athletic. I found him frank, friendly, unassuming, apparently wholly care-free and full of quiet drollery. From his first greeting any prejudice that I might have formed from hearing my chum Willi chant his excellences was quite wiped away. And as the days passed I found myself drawn to seek Franz's company constantly. I have no doubt it flattered my vanity always awake since my exploit in St. Petersburg to find this older man treating me as a mental equal. It seemed to me that he differentiated between me and Willi, who was quite young in manner as well as years. At times the impulse was very strong in me to confide in Franz, to let him know that I was not a mere cadet, that I had been in Russia for my Government. Luckily for myself I suppressed that impulse luckily for me, but very unluckily for Lieutenant Franz von Heiden, as it turned out.
My Adventures as a German Secret Service Agent Page 3
