Odd People

by Basil Thomson

  dropped. One had made a huge crater in Kingsland Road, one was found in a garden unexploded at a depth of 8 feet and another had gone through the roof and floor of a stable and was found embedded at a depth of 7 feet. This one weighed 150 pounds, it was 36 inches in circumference and would have done great damage had it exploded. It appeared that the Zeppelin had followed the Great Eastern line as far as Bishopsgate Station, where it dropped a bomb and had then followed the branch line towards Waltham Abbey. From Waltham Abbey it turned east towards the coast and was not heard of again, until we learned long afterwards that she was the LZ 38 and that a few days after her return to her hangar near Brussels she was destroyed in her shed by an English airman. She could climb 10,000 feet with a cargo of 1.5 tons of bombs.

  The business of the police was now to organise bomb shelters, a very difficult business in a city such as London. It was unfortunate that the East End, where the houses are small and unprovided with cellars, should always be the first to suffer from Zeppelin attacks and the danger of improvising shelters was that unless the roof was absolutely proof against penetration the shelter might well become a death-trap. This actually happened in Dunkirk, where a house was demolished by a high-explosive shell fired from a distance of 25 miles, when the cellar was packed with people. The cellars in Dunkirk were covered with a skin-thick brick arch, which would scarcely resist the impact even of a small bomb. Though people worked heroically far into the night to dig put those entombed in the cellar, when they reached them, all, to the number of more than forty, were found dead of suffocation.

  The object of the Germans in making Zeppelin raids on London was to produce panic and a cry for peace. It did neither. Even in the East End, though there was great alarm, there was no panic. A few months ago, when discussing the war with a highly placed German, he said, ‘No one but a person who knew nothing about national psychology would have thought that one could terrorise a northern nation like the British by Zeppelin raids. If you had retaliated by air raids on Berlin you would only have succeeded in stiffening our war spirit. It may be different with the Latin races. There we might have produced panic, but with a northern race the idea was so futile that no one but a Prussian general would have conceived it.’

  But while there was no panic there were great hardships, as a visit to any of the Tube stations in the east of London on the night of an air-raid would have shown – the stairs crowded with half-awakened and hungry children, the platforms so packed with humanity that there was not a vacant square foot. I used to wonder how many of these children would feel the permanent effects. On the whole, however, young children between five and thirteen really seemed to enjoy air raid nights. They were full of excitement and you would take them out of bed wrapped in blankets and give them unexpected meals. It was a little grim when one knew the reality to hear from infant lips, ‘Oh, Daddy, I do hope there’ll be an air raid tonight.’

  One incident in connection with the Zeppelin that was brought down at Cuffley was never quite cleared up. As the airship approached the ground the crew began to tear up their papers and throw them out of the car and two fields were so littered with the fragments that they looked as if there had been a local snow-storm. As soon as the news spread spectators in every kind of vehicle overran the place and among the fragments of paper collected by the Air Service with a view to piecing them together was found the name of a Belgian woman with an address in London. The woman was sent for and it was found that she had moved to that address only ten days before. It transpired, however, that she was in the habit of giving her name and address to strangers in the street. On the face of it, an address obtained during the last ten days and found among the papers of a German Zeppelin was disturbing, for it implied that a German officer had been in London a few days before the attack. I think the explanation was that one of the spectators had brought the address with him and had dropped it in the field with the other fragments.

  It was a humorist who commanded the aircraft that came over on 8 September 1915. When over Wrotham Park, Barnet, he dropped a hambone attached to a small parachute inscribed with a fancy portrait of Sir Edward Grey, on whose devoted head a bomb is in the act of falling. It was inscribed in German, ‘Edwert Grey, poor devil, what am I to do?’, and on the reverse, ‘In remembrance of starved-out Germany.’

  There were many jokes about the anti-aircraft defences in the early days. It was alleged, for example, that one of the guns posted near the Admiralty was in charge of a librarian and that one of the first executive orders of the new First Lord had been, ‘Stop the librarian from firing off that gun.’

  Early in 1916 there were curious stories about the German foreknowledge of the weather conditions in this country which they could have acquired only from spies. It was said that after the raid in October a conversation was overheard in a café in Rotterdam, in which a full description of the damage done by bombs in London the night before was given and that of three places named as having been hit by bombs two were correct. This conversation took place about noon and the news could have reached Rotterdam only by cable or wireless. It was suggested that the wireless operators on some of the neutral boats began sending messages as soon as they cleared from England, but though most careful investigations were made we were never able to discover that there was any leakage of this kind.

  General von Hoeppner has told us the German side of the air-raids. At first the enemy hoped to cause panic; then to keep our airmen away from the Western Front, which they think was accomplished. But by the end of 1916 they recognised that the Zeppelin attacks were a failure. The Allied airmen were so successful in bombing the hangars in Belgium that the Zeppelins were withdrawn to the Rhine stations and the distance they had to cover was then too great even for the newest airships. They were then turned over to the navy for scouting purposes. The daylight air raid on London on 13 June 1917, under Captain Brandenburg, filled them with joy because all the machines returned safely owing to our shells bursting too high and our machines never really having got into touch. The attacks on favourable nights in the winter of 1917–18 were maintained, he says, with the object of keeping our airmen away from the Western Front.

  In January 1915 the Germans produced a propaganda film for the edification of neutral countries. An American who was carrying it to the United States consented to show it to diplomatists and officials at the Ambassadors’ Theatre. The film displayed the usual German ignorance of the psychology of other peoples. Part of it was not ‘faked.’ We had the Kaiser standing beside a road with his staff, while picked troops marched past. His hair was quite grey and there was a hollow shadow in his cheek. His movements were nervous and jerky. At one point he had been told to look at the camera, which he did stiffly and gravely before getting into a car and driving off. There were pictures of engineers carrying out sapper operations at high speed; reviews before the Kings of Saxony and Bavaria; the huge monument erected to Hindenburg in Berlin; a mass meeting; diplomatic presentations to the Sultan, with Enver Pasha in the foreground; the Sultan sitting under an awning receiving Balkan diplomatists; several spools of the Danish Army and navy manoeuvres intended to give the impression that Denmark was on the German side and was mobilising. Then came the ‘fake’ spools. You saw German soldiers feeding hordes of Belgian and French children under the title, ‘Barbarians feeding the Hungry’ and there were rows of colossal grinning German soldiers, with the title, ‘Sehen Barbaren so aus?’ (Do Barbarians look like this?), which provoked the comment that no barbarian had ever looked quite so unattractive. Then there were English prisoners grinning all over with delight while they worked for the Germans under the stern eye of Prussian soldiers. It was propaganda laid on with a trowel.

  One of the great dangers at the beginning of the war was the form of the first Treasury notes. It was recognised that if these were forged in any quantities public confidence in the currency would be shaken and people might refuse to accept our paper money as legal tender. In 1915 the expected forgeries began to a
ppear. It was reported that a considerable quantity of the ‘G’ series of £1 and 10s. Treasury notes was being circulated in London. The method was that a man would go down a street calling at small shops, buying some inexpensive trifle and tendering a note, for which he took the change in silver. Specimens of the notes showed the forgery to be remarkably good. No one but an expert could have detected the imposition, especially at dusk, which was the time of day usually chosen for passing the notes. We felt that we were on our mettle. After a week or two information reached us, no matter how, that an ex-convict E— was the distributor, though not the printer, of the notes, for which his price was half the face value. At this price he was prepared to sell any number to persons whom he could trust. It was his practice to make the sales on Saturdays, for on Fridays he disappeared to some mysterious rendezvous whence he obtained the notes.

  Now E— could have been arrested at any moment, but it was no good arresting him while the printer remained undiscovered, for a man who could reproduce a watermark that would almost pass muster by daylight would most certainly not discontinue his operations because a minor confederate had been arrested. All our efforts, therefore, were turned towards the discovery of the printer. One of our own men bought some of the counterfeits and, in order to convince the forgers of his good faith, it was necessary that he should pass them. It was impossible, of course, that he should pass counterfeits and therefore the counterfeits had to be exchanged for genuine notes, a very expensive proceeding when it extended over several weeks. But the matter was growing serious. It was computed that at least £60,000 worth of false Treasury notes had been put into circulation and it was necessary to spend a considerable sum in unearthing the conspiracy. A free hand was given to me and then events began to go a little quicker. It was found that E— used to meet a few other choice spirits for card-playing at a little office in Jermyn Street. He had been traced one Friday to a paper merchant, where he bought the very best kind of typewriting paper and the samples we obtained showed that such paper had been used in the forgeries after the false watermark had been impressed upon it. We knew also when he had left his flat in a taxi with the paper, but further inquiries showed that this taxi did not carry him to any particular destination: it was stopped in mid-street and paid off, and from that moment all trace of E— was lost. But that evening there he was at the card-party and there, too, was our man. As the evening wore on, a few friends dropped in and among them a young man who lost his stakes and always paid in little sums that suggested change for a 10s. note; it was also noticed when he was staking his money that his fingers were stained with printer’s ink. When he had left the place in disgust our man drew a bow at a venture. ‘I used to know that young fellow,’ he said. ‘He used to be a clerk in your old registry office in Leicester Square.’

  ‘No, he was not,’ replied E— shortly. ‘You are mistaken.’

  But our man persisted. ‘I remember him quite well now; his name was Brown.’

  ‘You are mistaken. He was never a clerk. He is a printer and his name is W—.’

  With this slender clue the police proceeded to scour London for a printer named W— and at last, on a wooden gate in an unpretentious street in north London, they discovered the almost obliterated inscription, ‘W—, Printer’. The gateway led into a yard, and from it ran a little carriage road through a tunnel under the house to a stable and coach-house in the rear. But this gate seemed permanently to be locked. The police now rented a window on the other side of the street and sat down to wait. Three days passed; Friday approached and as the dusk fell the watchers saw E— come down the street and kick on the door.

  A few seconds later it was opened from inside and he disappeared. Then Chief Inspector Fowler, who was in charge of the case, marshalled his men about the door and waited until it should open again. The delay seemed interminable, but at last, long after dark, the door did open and E— was in their midst.

  Never in its history had that quiet street been startled by such an uproar. E— was wheeling round, spouting streams of notes from his pockets like some sort of centrifugal machine and emitting wild beast howls, which were intended to alarm his partner in the stable. The whole neighbourhood was raised. The street was carpeted with notes like autumn leaves and E—’s resistance had resulted only in a modification of his features that would have puzzled his nearest friends. The police, too, had not gone unscathed.

  When E— had been secured they vaulted the gate, went through the tunnel and knocked on the stable door. It was opened by a young man in his shirt-sleeves who, on seeing the police, fell flat on the floor in a faint. The place was crammed with machinery; notes still damp were lying on the press and it was observed that the forger had gone one better than the legitimate printer by introducing into his die a numbering device. You had only to turn the handle of the press to forge £1 notes until your arms tired. There was, besides, a very ingenious device for watermarking which must not be divulged. Nor was this all. When this forger’s den came to be searched there were found the lithographic stones on which had been printed certain forged postage stamps that had formed the subject of a criminal action some years before. In fact, this expert printer had been making a fine art of forgery for some years. The next morning I visited the place with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Sir John Bradbury, whose signature was on every treasury note and then and there, while Sir John fed in the paper, the Chancellor of the Exchequer turned the handle. It was the first instance in history in which the Chancellor has been guilty of forging the currency. The notes were so good that when they took specimens from the press they thought it well to write ‘Forged’ in large letters across each note for fear they should get mixed up with genuine notes. Steps were at once taken to issue a new note which would be proof against fabrication.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE GERMANS AND THE IRISH

  AS SOON AS war broke out, the veteran John Devoy, together with Judge Cohalan and other sympathisers, put themselves into communication with Bernstorff, the German ambassador, von Papen, the military attaché and Boy-Ed, the naval attaché in Washington. The war with Germany was to be made the supreme opportunity for establishing a Republic in Ireland. Naturally, the Germans were ready to make use of any means that might embarrass their enemy and they were as ready to help the Irish revolutionaries as they were the Indian. Devoy was in no lack of funds, for besides the money which he could always collect from Irish-Americans, he could draw upon the German Secret Service funds. The Germans described him as one of their ‘agents’.

  During the early months of the war James Larkin, of the Irish Transport Workers, appeared in America on platforms decorated with the German and Irish flags intertwined and no pains were spared to make it clear to Americans that German and Irish interests were identical.

  During the autumn of 1914 Sir Roger Casement was in New York. At that time all that was known in England was that he was in clandestine communication with Bernstorff. It was not until many months afterwards that his real scheme was disclosed. His proposals to the Germans were that he should go over to Berlin and form an Irish Brigade out of the Irish prisoners of war and that his brigade, with the assistance of a German military force, should effect a landing in Ireland when the time was ripe, but that in the meantime the German government should furnish the Irish volunteers with great supplies of arms and munitions in order that, when the time came, they should be able to take the field and welcome the invaders. A document (Casement called it a ‘Treaty’) was negotiated and signed between 23 and 28 December 1914.

  I do not believe that any disloyal thought had entered into Casement’s head before the war. He had been for many years in the service of the Foreign Office as a consular officer in west and east Africa and Brazil; he had published accounts of atrocities by the Belgians on the Congo and by certain Peruvians in Putumayo; he had been knighted for his services in 1911. In view of his subsequent conduct, it may be well to bear in mind that he wrote to the Foreign Secretary on 19 June 1911,
in terms somewhat extravagant for the moderate honour of a Knight Bachelor which had been conferred upon him. This letter was read at his trial.

  Casement sailed for Norway in October with a Norwegian servant who afterwards gave some information about the voyage. The vessel was stopped by one of our auxiliary cruisers, but Casement was not recognised. While he was in Norway he circulated a fabricated story which, however, he himself may have believed, that the British minister was concerned in a plot against his life; but when Bernstorff was urged to make public capital of this he replied that it would be better to wait for confirmation. In fact, in adopting this cautious attitude he was doing no more than Casement’s former official colleagues had always done.

  Casement arrived in Berlin on 2 November. Soon after his arrival he had an interview with Zimmermann, of the Foreign Office.

  He asked Devoy to send over an Irish-speaking priest and in due course the Rev. John T. Nicholson was dispatched from America via Italy and Switzerland to become Roman Catholic chaplain at the internment camp in which the Irish prisoners were being collected. The expenses of Casement’s journey are believed to have been furnished by John Devoy.

  Throughout 1915 the real direction of Irish affairs was in the hands of John Devoy and Bernstorff, who was acting through him. The process of arming the Irish rebels was not proceeding quite smoothly. Von Papen had purchased for use in India or in Ireland 11,000 rifles, 4,000,000 cartridges and a number of revolvers, but the Germans were quite firm in their view that these could not safely be landed in Ireland. Instructions and information were carried to and fro by Devoy’s messengers who, as American citizens, could travel about Ireland very much as they liked. But early in February 1916 Devoy began to change his waiting policy. The Irish volunteers had become increasingly active. There was the threat of conscription, for though Ireland had been exempt from compulsory service Devoy expected that the leaders in Ireland would be arrested and that then, when everything was in confusion, conscription would be enforced. He decided, therefore, that there must be a rising on Easter Saturday, 1916, on the occasion of a review of the Irish Volunteers and that the Germans must land munitions in or near Limerick at some time between Good Friday and Saturday. He was also counting upon German military help as soon as a rising had begun.