Odd People

by Basil Thomson

  When he found that acquittal was hopeless he tried to carry off the pretence of patriotism at his trial, but after his conviction he made two unsuccessful attempts to commit suicide. Unlike the other spies, he was sentenced to be hanged and was executed on 5 July 1915. He had some ability, for he wrote English very well and was profuse in written accounts of his adventures.

  The next spy to be arrested in England was a Peruvian whose father was a Scandinavian. Ludovico Hurwitz-y-Zender was a genuine commercial traveller, though far better educated than most men of his calling. In August 1914 he went to the United States with the intention of coming to Europe on business, for he was already the representative of several European firms in Peru. Probably it was not until his arrival in Norway that he got into touch with the German Secret Service agents, who were then offering high pay for persons with the proper qualifications who would work for them in England. It happened that the Cable Censor began to notice messages addressed to Christiania ordering large quantities of sardines. Now, it was the wrong season for sardine-canning and inquiries were at once made in Norway about the bona fides of the merchant to whom the messages were addressed. He turned out to be a person with no regular business, who had frequently been seen in conversation with the German Consul. The messages were then closely examined for some indication of a code. They had been dispatched by Zender. On 2 July, Zender was arrested at Newcastle, where he had made no secret of his presence, he professed great surprise that there was any suspicion against him and freely admitted that he had been at Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh. In none of these places did he appear to have transacted any real business and on account of the season the experts in sardines laughed to scorn his suggestion that his order for canned fish was genuine. When all arrangements had been made for his trial by court-martial Zender demanded that certain witnesses should be brought from South America for his defence. The proceedings were therefore postponed for eight months and it was not until 20 March 1916 that it was possible to bring him to trial. The witnesses that had been brought at great trouble and expense could really say nothing in his favour and in due course he was found guilty and executed in the Tower on 11 April, nine months after the date of his arrest. Zender was the last German spy to be executed in this country during the war. Others were tried and convicted, but for various reasons the death sentences were commuted to penal servitude for life.

  It became evident throughout the war that the only form of espionage that is really worth undertaking is the gathering of intelligence just behind the enemy lines and on the lines of communication. To be of any real value in an enemy country a spy must be highly placed. The enemy must, in fact, buy someone who is in naval and military secrets, for even the ordinary citizen of the country is very rarely in a position to give useful information. As the war dragged on the Germans became increasingly concerned with the question of morale. They had based their air-raids and their submarine campaign upon false reading of the British character. They thought that they were breaking down the war spirit and that it was becoming evident that the British would be tired of the war before they were.

  Perhaps the most astonishing figure that bubbled up to the surface during the war was that of Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch Lincoln. That a Hungarian Jew should succeed in being by turns a journalist, a Church of England clergyman and a Member of Parliament in England shows an astonishing combination of qualities. His original name appears to have been Trebitsch. He was born at Paks, on the Danube, about 1875. His father, a prosperous Jewish merchant, had started a shipbuilding business and Ignatius was intended to enter the Jewish Church. He made a study of languages and when he was little more than twenty he visited London. On his return to Hungary there were quarrels between father and son and in 1899 Ignatius went to Hamburg and was received into the Lutheran Church. Later he crossed to Canada to assist in a Presbyterian mission to the Jews and when that mission was transferred to the Church of England Trebitsch changed his denomination. He had a gift of oratory and made some impression in Canada. When he came back to Europe he applied for an English curacy, was ordained and appointed to the parish of Appledore in Kent. It cannot be said that he was a successful curate. Probably fiery oratory in a strong foreign accent would not have appealed to a Kentish congregation under any circumstances. He left his curacy and went to London, where for some two years he supported himself as a journalist.

  About 1906 he came into touch with Mr Seebohm Rowntree, who was so much impressed with his abilities that he engaged him as his private secretary. Mr Rowntree was at that time in close touch with the leading Liberals and this brought Lincoln, as he then was, into constant communication with the organisers of the party, who at last put him up to contest the unionist constituency of Darlington in the Liberal interest. Who can fail to admire the audacity with which this election was successfully fought?

  The House of Commons is no more impressed with fiery oratory in a foreign accent than a Kentish congregation and Mr Lincoln was glad to absent himself from the House in order to undertake an inquiry into economic conditions on the Continent, which would bring him into close communication with notable personages, for high politics had fired his imagination and he began to regard himself as destined to become one of the future great figures in European history.

  I do not think that when the war broke out Lincoln had any idea of giving information to the enemy. He had lost his seat in the House of Commons and he was in financial straits, but his first inclination was undoubtedly to offer his services to England. The first step was to apply for a position in the Censorship for Hungarian and Romanian correspondence and for the short time of his employment he is believed to have done his work conscientiously, but he was not popular with his colleagues and their treatment of his friendly overtures must have galled him. The iron entered into his soul and from that time he was definitely anti-British in his sympathies.

  His first act of disloyalty was to attempt to obtain admission into our own Intelligence organisation. He professed to be able to tempt the German Fleet out into the North Sea, where it could be destroyed and for that purpose he proposed to cross to Holland and offer his services to the German Consul. Though his application was rejected, he did succeed in obtaining a passport and on 18 December 1914 he arrived in Rotterdam. The German Consul, Gneist, was a very active espionage agent and Lincoln appears to have made some impression upon him at first, for he did entrust to him some valueless information to carry back with him to England. With this he again pestered the authorities to take him into the Intelligence Service, but he was so coldly received that he took alarm and left for New York on 9 February. Here he made a living of some kind by journalism, in ignorance of the fact that the authorities in England were investigating a certain signature to a draft for £700. It transpired that Lincoln had forged Mr Seebohm Rowntree’s name for that amount. Chief Inspector Ward, who was afterwards killed by a Zeppelin bomb, was sent over to the United States in connection with the extradition proceedings and on 4 August 1916, Lincoln was arrested. After the usual delays in such cases he was brought to England, was tried at the Old Bailey and received a sentence of three years’ penal servitude. When his sentence expired in the summer of 1919 it was intended to send him back to his own country, but at that time Bela Kun was in power and the plan had to be deferred. When the communist government fell the deportation was carried out and in September 1919 Lincoln found himself again in Buda Pesth. The atmosphere of that city, just recovering from the communist orgy of misrule, did not suit him. He went to Berlin and renewed his acquaintance there with Count Bernstorff, the former German ambassador at the United States. It is said in Germany that the extreme right will swallow anything. Their political sagacity has never been conspicuous. Kapp was at the moment secretly preparing for his putsch and it surprised no one when it was reported that Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch Lincoln had solemnly been appointed Propaganda Agent to the short-lived Kapp government. How many days the appointment lasted is not quite certain, but
apparently even Colonel Bauer found him more than he could manage. The troubled waters of Central Europe are the only fishing ground in which a man such as Lincoln could hope to make a living. We may even hear of him again.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE LAST EXECUTIONS

  IRVING GUY RIES was a German-American who had been recruited by the Germans in New York. He landed at Liverpool in the guise of a corn merchant, though in private life he was actually a film operator. After a few days spent at a hotel in the Strand he, too, visited Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh and went through the routine of calling upon a number of produce merchants as an excuse for his journey, but, like the other spies, he did no genuine business with them. He returned to his hotel in London on 28 July after a fortnight spent in the north. He was more careful than most of the other spies, for he preserved copies of every business letter that he wrote. Unfortunately for him, his employers had not kept him properly supplied with money and by ill chance the Censor intercepted a letter addressed to him from Holland which contained the exact amount of the remittance usually made to spies. Ries carried an American passport and the first step taken was to ask the American authorities to withdraw from him his passport in order that it might be examined by experts. It proved to be forged and on 19 August late at night the police went to Ries’s hotel and arrested him just as he was going to bed.

  He was a grave and measured person who answered all my questions very deliberately and thoughtfully. On one point he refused altogether to be drawn. He would not tell his true name, but he explained that this was only because if the name ever came to be published it would give pain to his relations. About his movements he was frank enough. He explained that he would have already left for Copenhagen if the Americans had not required him to surrender his passport. Among his effects was found a letter from Rotterdam, directing him to meet a certain person in Copenhagen and report to him the result of his investigations in England. He was asked to account for this and he immediately dropped all the pretence that he was in this country on genuine business. ‘I am in your power,’ he said. ‘Do what you like with me.’ There was no doubt whatever that he was a spy, but his case differed from the others in the fact that it could not be shown that he had ever sent information to the enemy. In fact, it seemed clear that the Germans were adopting new tactics and that they intended in future to send spies on flying visits to England and get them to come and report the result of their observations verbally. He was tried on 4 October, was found guilty and sentenced to death. He took his condemnation with perfect philosophy. He spent all his time in reading and he gave his guards the impression that he was a man who had divested himself of all earthly cares and felt himself to lie under the hand of Fate. If he expected that the American government would press for a reprieve and would be successful he never showed it.

  On 26 October he was removed to the Tower and as soon as he knew that a date was fixed for his execution he called for writing materials and made a full confession, giving at the same time his true name. This, of course, cannot be published in view of the considerations that had made him conceal it when he was arrested. He was permitted to shake hands with the firing-party and he said, ‘You are only doing your duty, as I have done mine.’

  I have said that throughout the war there was no case of espionage by any Englishman, but there was one curious exception. In November 1917, it came to our knowledge that a young bluejacket who had deserted his ship in Spain had gone straight to the German authorities in Madrid and given them such naval information as a bluejacket might be in possession of. He had then given himself up as a deserter and had been discharged from the service. He had since obtained work in a munitions factory in the north of England near his home. He was arrested at Barrow and sent to London and so uneasy was the Labour situation at the time that a strike was immediately threatened until the nature of the charge was explained to the responsible leaders.

  The young man did not attempt to deny the charge. He was the youngest of a family who were all serving in the war in some form. His explanation was that he went to the Germans in Spain in order to find out their military secrets but, though there could be no doubt about the facts, there was doubt about his mental condition and as his family made themselves responsible for his future good behaviour he was discharged to their care.

  Courtenay Henslop de Rysbach was a British subject, but his father was an Austrian naturalised in this country. De Rysbach was a music-hall artist, who, on the outbreak of war, had an engagement in Germany. He was a comedian, one of those who can sing and juggle and play tricks on bicycles. Like the other foreigners, he was swept into Ruhleben and when the Germans separated those who favoured Germany from the others and accorded them better treatment he began to listen to suggestions that he should undertake work for the enemy. He was removed to Berlin to undergo a course of training. From Berlin he went to Zurich and to Paris in the guise of a British subject who had been released from internment on account of his health. He landed at Folkestone on 27 June and at once found himself free to move about the country without restriction.

  One day the Postal Censor detained two songs addressed to a man in Zurich. One was called ‘The Ladder of Love’ and the other, ‘On the way to Dublin Town’. The songs were signed ‘Jack Cummings, Palace Theatre, London’. No such person existed and for some time there was nothing to indicate the sender. An examination of the songs with a suitable developer brought up between the bars of music an account of what the writer had seen in this country. De Rysbach was then appearing at a local music-hall in Glasgow with a female trick cyclist. As soon as his identity with Jack Cummings was established he was brought to London and put through a detailed examination. It transpired that after his arrival in this country he had attempted to obtain a post in the Censorship, though employment in that department can scarcely have been more remunerative than his earnings in the music-halls. He told us that with a view of gaining his liberty he had promised to serve the Germans, though he never intended to fulfil his promise. He admitted that he had been supplied with a secret ink made up in the form of an ointment, but declared that he had thrown it away while crossing Lake Constance and had kept only one tube as a souvenir. Being a British subject he was tried at the Old Bailey before a judge and jury. The jurymen were so far impressed with his story that they disagreed. Probably he expected then that he would be released, but he soon found that he was to undergo a new trial. In October 1915 he was found guilty and sentenced to penal servitude for life, though his guilt was really greater than that of several of the spies who had been executed. His name was not made public at the time; only the fact that a British subject had been found guilty of espionage was disclosed and the newspapers began to wonder why a British spy had been so leniently treated. Soon after his sentence de Rysbach offered to give much fuller information about the German espionage methods on condition that he was released. His offer was not accepted.

  De Rysbach was not the only Ruhleben prisoner of whom the Germans made use. Among the British subjects interned were, of course, certain Germans who had been naturalised in this country. Among these was a German Jew – we will call him Preiznitser – whose history is instructive. He came over to England as a boy and in furtherance of his ambition he obtained naturalisation. He married an Englishwoman and rose to be manager of his company. In the course of business he was in Germany on the outbreak of war. It is doubtful whether he had any real national allegiance at all, but certain unguarded utterances had aroused the suspicions of his fellow prisoners, who made a clandestine examination of his personal effects. Among these were discovered copies of articles apparently furnished to German newspapers, abusing the allies and particularly the British. There was one paper, evidently the copy of a letter, in which he suggested that he should act as a guide to Zeppelins attacking England, on account of his intimate knowledge of the English roads through motoring in the course of business.

  A few days before this Preiznitser had disappeared from the p
rison and it soon became known among the prisoners that the Germans had released him. Some of the British then made it their business to have the copies of Preiznitser’s incriminating letters conveyed to me. After some weeks, for some unexplained reason, the Germans put Preiznitser back in Ruhleben and it may well be understood that his reception was neither flattering nor cordial. In fact, his life became such a hell that he determined to escape. That was his story. How far it was true, how far the Germans connived at his escaping it was impossible to determine, but he did arrive in England and he did present himself at my office, without knowing that I had in my possession copies of his letters written from Ruhleben. It was there that he told the marvellous story of his escape.