The Spy Net

by Henry Landau

  The leaders knew that Prussia and the rest of Germany would never willingly agree to this separation, which would cut them off from the sea, and that, as soon as the revolution had quietened down, they would be attacked, unless they obtained help from the Allies. Surely, the Allies would support them; it would be a means of removing the German fleet from the sea, never to return, and it would help in the dismemberment of Germany, which they had heard the Allies intended to accomplish.

  Ways and means were discussed. Why not set up a Hanseatic League under the protection of England, and ask the British to send some part of their fleet to Hamburg and the other ports? This would prevent interference from the rest of Germany. Quick action had to be taken, while yet they were masters of the situation. A delegate had to be sent immediately to England to open up negotiations. Their eyes fell on Johnson: he was obviously the man to send along; he had been an eyewitness of everything that had happened; he could tell the British that they meant everything they said, and that they really had complete control of the local government.

  I still have a mental picture of Johnson as he shouted at me in his excitement: ‘There is no German fleet left – the sailors have all mutinied. On the arrival of the British fleet in Hamburg, the admiral in command will be given an official reception and he will be entertained at a banquet at the Senate House. The old Hanseatic League, under British protection, with Hamburg as its head, will then be publicly proclaimed!’

  If Schultze had not been sitting next to him with his array of official documents, signed by the Hamburg Soldatenrat, giving him full power to negotiate, I would have thought that six years of detention in a German prison, in wartime, had deranged Johnson’s mind; for although I knew all the events which I have already outlined, the Kaiser had not yet crossed the frontier, the Armistice had not yet been signed, and there was considerable rumour that the Germans were about to stage a revolution, hoping that the emissaries of the people would get better peace terms from the Allies than the old wartime leaders would have been able to secure.

  Full details were immediately telegraphed in code to London, and I was still waiting for instructions, when I suddenly had news that the Kaiser had fled from Berlin, and had arrived at German GHQ, at Spa, only a few miles from the Dutch Limburg frontier. Leaving my assistant in charge at Rotterdam, I dashed down to Maastricht so as to be able to direct our operations at closer quarters; Colonel Oppenheim wanted short interval reports on everything we could possibly find out as to what was happening at Spa.

  The German sentries and surveillance on the frontier had become demoralised, and quite a number of refugees were coming freely across the frontier; we could, therefore, arrange for a quicker transmission of information from the interior to us. Train-watchers’ reports were no longer important. Every road in Belgium was now filled with the retreating German Army; the trains could no longer carry them. The roads had now to be watched; promeneurs had to be kept continually behind the German Army reporting their movements as they fell back. My headquarters were now in Maastricht, and I had a direct courier to Colonel Oppenheim at The Hague. Sleep was forgotten; more work was in hand than I could possibly cope with.

  I never returned to Rotterdam. After witnessing the crossing of the frontier by the Kaiser, I penetrated into Belgium, throwing discretion to the winds, and from personal observation sent in reports on the retreat of the German Army as it filed past my eyes.

  No wonder then that I lost track of Johnson and Schultze, whom I had left in the hands of my assistant. Many weeks later he told me that the British government had refused to negotiate with Schultze. With more political sagacity than was shown later at Versailles, it realised probably that, for a permanent peace, conditions had to be imposed on Germany which would not interfere with her economic existence. A nation of Germany’s size had to have an outlet to the sea; and sooner or later, if taken away from her, she would fight to regain it. Furthermore, the British undoubtedly foresaw that the sailors of Kiel, Bremen, and Hamburg, and the Soldatenrat throughout Germany would eventually lose control of their local government, and that they were only the torch lighting the revolution which was to culminate in the formation of the German Republic.

  Within a few hours of the news that the Kaiser had arrived at German GHQ in his flight from Berlin, I was on my way to take up my headquarters at Maastricht, the principal town in Dutch Limburg, and only some 30 miles from Spa, that pretty little Belgian watering-place with its fine chateaux and villas, whose comforts the Kaiser and his staff had enjoyed earlier in the war, and where those trenches and dug-outs were constructed, several hundred miles from the Front, in which the Kaiser was photographed to appear as if he were among his soldiers in the firing line. Here now the whole German GHQ had taken up its quarters.

  Our agent there reported not only the presence of the Kaiser, but also of the Crown Prince, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and a host of others. On 8 November, we heard that the socialists under Kurt Eisner had deposed the King of Bavaria, and had declared a Bavarian Republic. On 9 November, we read in the newspapers the decree of Prince Max announcing that the Kaiser had decided to abdicate, and that Ebert was appointed Chancellor.

  I was not surprised, therefore, when late that evening I received a report from our agent that barricades had been thrown up around Spa to prevent revolutionary troops coming there from Aachen to fetch the Kaiser, and that the Kaiser himself intended crossing into Holland that night. I dashed to the Dutch commanding officer, whom I knew very well, and with whom I had had lunch that day at the Maastricht Club, to tell him the news.

  ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘we have just been informed from The Hague that the Kaiser is coming across the frontier at Eysden, at 7 a.m. tomorrow. I have received orders about interning him. Do you want to come along with me?’ I gladly accepted his offer, and at 6 a.m. I found myself keyed up with excitement on the way to Eysden, following the automobiles of the Dutch Army officers and other officials.

  In my mind’s eye, I can see the picture today as clearly as I saw it then. It was a fine morning, but at that early hour there was a ground mist, which made visibility somewhat difficult. I waited on the platform of the station at Eysden chatting to my officer friends. By and by, a train was signalled coming through from Visé, the Belgian border station adjacent to Eysden; it was the Kaiser’s own special train, consisting of three or four coaches.

  After a few minutes had elapsed, we saw several grey Mercedes cars draw up at the frontier; from them there alighted about a dozen figures in grey military uniforms, with long capes and spiked helmets. One was the Kaiser in the uniform of a field marshal, another General von Platen; the others were officers of the Kaiser’s own staff and household, who were following him into exile. The group came on to the platform at Eysden, and there, about 15 yards from where I stood, they were formally interned by my friend. After this the whole group entered the Imperial train, prepared and waiting for them.

  It was one of the most impressive events of my life; not so much because of what I saw (the whole ceremony only took a few minutes – it might have been the internment of any group of officers crossing into Holland) as because of the realisation that I was watching the writing of ‘Finis’ across the life of a man who had been a demi-god in his own country, the almighty war lord, whom I had seen on many occasions riding with pomp and ceremony through the streets of Berlin, and who had so long disturbed the peace of Europe.

  I wondered, as I looked at his grim white face, what was passing in his mind. He was pleasant to the Dutch officers, and outwardly appeared calm. He lit a cigarette and offered a cigar to my officer friend. Inwardly he must have been in a turmoil; it was undoubtedly a piece of clever acting. He had probably spent several sleepless nights before arriving at his momentous decision. He had been inclined to defy the politicians who demanded his abdication, but when Hindenburg and the general staff declared they could no longer protect him from an army seething with revolt, he had hastily fled. Here on the platform, however, he did
not have at all the air of a fugitive. In uniform, surrounded by his officers, he was dignity personified; one would have said he had just arrived in Holland on a visit to the Dutch court.

  All day, the Kaiser remained in his train at Eysden, while the Dutch Cabinet was deciding on their course of action. That night, van Karnebeek, the Dutch Foreign Minister, and Rosen, the German minister at The Hague, arrived in Maastricht. Once again I followed the Dutch officials to Eysden, but as the meeting took place in the train behind drawn blinds, my trip was fruitless. I was informed, however, by a Dutch officer, that the train would leave Eysden early the next morning to convey the Kaiser to the chateau of Count Goddard Bentinck, at Amerongen, where he would remain temporarily until a definite place of internment had been found.

  Early on the morning of 11 November, I got up to watch the train go by at a crossing near Maastricht. All the blinds were drawn, as I thought they would be, but the passing of the Kaiser fascinated me; I wanted to see the very last act of this drama which I had been witnessing.

  There was some mystery attached to the Kaiser’s coming to Holland. I heard several rumours to the effect that the Queen had sent a secret emissary to Spa, offering him an asylum in Holland; but whether this was so I do not know. Everybody was now wandering what had happened to the Crown Prince. The Kaiser gave no definite information about him, except that he would probably cross into Holland later on. It was rumoured that there had been a family quarrel, which was borne out by subsequent events. We were not without news of him for long.

  Once again I was lunching with my Dutch officer friend, after a busy morning sending reports to Colonel Oppenheim. We had just finished off an excellent partridge, and were waiting for the next course, when my friend was called out of the room. He dashed back a couple of minutes later, grabbed his sword, excused himself, and rushed away with the remark that the Crown Prince was at the frontier, at a point farther north than where the Kaiser had crossed. In the evening, he told me that the Crown Prince was staying temporarily at the chateau of Countess Wolf-Metternich. The first request of the Crown Prince, after crossing the frontier, was that he did not wish to see his father, or to be interned in the same place with him. Later, he was removed to the Island of Wieringen.

  One more event was to happen which again focused my attention on the Kaiser. Months later, when I was installed in my office in the rue Stevin in Brussels, liquidating all the British secret service organisations in Belgium and occupied France, I received a visit from one Rubigny – a fictitious name – who, together with a fellow French agent, had been seized many months back by German Secret Police on Dutch soil and dragged several yards across the frontier into Belgium. The Dutch were powerless to do anything about the matter; the Germans declared that they were on Belgian soil when arrested, and as there were no other eyewitnesses, it was simply the agents’ word against theirs. The two were condemned to prison in Liège, and when they were released at the time of the Armistice, three years of their life had been spent in confinement. Rubigny seemed a broken man; he raged against the Germans, especially against the Kaiser; he cursed them for the dirty trick they had played on the two of them, and swore he would get even. I tried to calm him, but without much apparent effect.

  Shortly afterwards I got news from Holland that Rubigny had been arrested by the Dutch. Apparently he had tried to bribe the Kaiser’s cook to poison his Royal master. I intervened with the Dutch authorities; I pleaded that his false imprisonment by the Germans had probably affected his mind. He was released by the Dutch and deported to Belgium. I never heard from him again.

  CHAPTER 21

  LIQUIDATION OF THE SERVICE

  THE WAR WAS over, but not my work. At one time and another during the course of the war, the British secret service had employed over 2,000 agents in Belgium and occupied France, of whom more than 100 had been shot, and several hundred had been imprisoned. The British government could not walk off and leave these people; pensions had to be paid, some form of compensation had to be given to those who had been imprisoned, decorations had to be awarded, and a history had to be written of the organisations in the interior.

  I was the logical person to be appointed to the task, for the details were locked up within me, and I alone could tell in most cases what the services were that each organisation had rendered. No written records had been kept. In the settlement of claims, my presence was necessary to decide what was authentic, and what were the merits of each case. I gladly accepted the mission. I could not wait until the Germans had got completely out of Belgium; I dashed across the border at the first opportunity to meet the brave men with whom I had been working so long. Many I had never met. I wanted to see them, face to face, to talk over the hundreds of incidents which had occurred, to compare notes, to find out reasons which had led up to arrests, to unravel mysteries which had baffled me in Holland – in short, to talk over the great adventure in which we had all played our parts.

  I was deeply moved and excited at the prospect of seeing them all. For two and a half years I had sat in Holland running out invisible lines of communication, as it were, into a void, across the German barrier into Belgium, weaving to the left and to the right to make contacts one by one with those who had been so eagerly alert to serve their country. And now I was on my way to meet these hidden watchers whose lifelines I had held in my hands, whose faces I did not know, but whose innermost thoughts and anxieties had been so intimately my own. It was the most dramatic moment of my life.

  The logical place for me to head for was Liège; it was the headquarters of the Dame Blanche or ‘White Lady’, the greatest of wartime Allied secret service organisations. In Liège I made my way hurriedly to an address which was engraved on my mind, one which St Lambert had communicated to me orally in Holland, and which I had never entrusted to paper. Warned of my coming, the two chiefs, and the heads of the organisation in each of the Belgian provinces, were waiting for me. As I entered the room where they were gathered, and I stood before them in the uniform of a British officer, they acclaimed me with emotion, and saluted me as their superior officer. I was overcome with their fervent expressions of welcome and loyalty. I found myself in the presence of a group of austere, almost ascetic-looking people, all much older than myself. Three were priests; the others were college professors, engineers, lawyers, and members of the professional classes.

  I realised immediately why the ‘White Lady’ had been such a success; here were gathered together some of the most brilliant brains in Belgium, men filled with the highest ideals of patriotism. By the respect which they showed toward their two chiefs, I sensed the discipline which they had imposed upon themselves; I realised that their militarisation was not a fantasy, but that it had been carried out to the letter; these were the officers of a military organisation.

  The two chiefs made an indelible impression on me. The one, tall, thin, with dark penetrating eyes and a black scrubby beard, breathed authority. I felt that here was a man who was accustomed to being obeyed; in pre-war days he had been an engineer, high up in one of the Belgian administrations, and it was probably there that he had learned to command and to organise. The other, a professor at the University of Liège, was an exact contrast – a small man with light hair, a long beard, blue limpid eyes, and a voice as soft as that of a woman.

  After a luncheon in my honour, I was closeted with the two chiefs, and to them I outlined briefly my plan of action: they were to furnish me with a complete history of their organisation, showing the role played by each member; give me a list of all their members; provide me with full details concerning the two who had been shot so that I could procure for their families a pension from the British government; and, finally, so that I could arrange for repayment, they were to hand me an itemised statement showing the various sums which I had authorised them to borrow. Not a word did I say about the military status of which, on my own initiative, I had so boldly assured them; I was guiltily conscious that it was going to be extremely difficult to gain
the consent of either Belgium or England to confirm such an arrangement, and I must confess to the mean hope that, now all was over, militarisation might not seem so important to the ‘White Lady’ as it had been in the early days of organisation.

  But when I had finished outlining the requirements for liquidation, I was immediately put on the mat. I realised that the only thing to do was to tell them the truth. They were so overcome and so aghast that I promised I would move heaven and earth with the British authorities to make good their word to their followers, for they had all enrolled themselves in the organisation as British soldiers, and had even taken an oath of allegiance. Later the British Army council was eventually won over to treat these brave men as soldiers, and the Belgian authorities, after a protracted struggle, also consented to come into line.

  It was late in the afternoon when our talk came to an end. From Liège, in a car which the ‘White Lady’ kindly put at my disposal, I set out for Brussels. It was now 25 November, and Belgium was free of the Germans. As soon as I arrived in Brussels, I started looking for a suitable house and office. They quickly found a house for me on the rue Stevin, a stone’s throw from the British embassy, and there within a few days, with a cordon bleu as cook, and with an excellent man as valet and butler, I was comfortably installed. My next step was to call on Sir Francis Villiers, the British ambassador, who had arrived by now, and to him I explained my mission. This fine old man, together with General Lyon, the military attaché; Gurney, the first secretary; and Charles, the third secretary, I was to see again and again during my stay in Brussels; they greatly facilitated my work, and backed me up whenever I needed any assistance or information from any of the Belgian ministries.