The note-book of an intelligence officer

Front matter

Class Book

Copyright^0.

CDEflRIGHT DEPOSIT;

Foreword

In arranging the material for this book, I have not invariably followed chronological order, except in the period covering the battles of the Somme, Vimy Ridge and Arras.

The chapters on Lloyd George, Nbrthcliffe and Raemaekers, for instance, are for convenience placed consecutively, although in reality the interviews on which they were based took place some months apart.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I New York to Liverpool. .... 3

II American Publicity 11

II American Publicity

December 20th. I brought with me to England several letters of introduction to Lord NorthclirTe which I sent to him this morning by messenger ; it is in England considered execrably bad form to mail an introduction.

His answer came very promptly, arriving this evening at six-thirty, as I was busy writing at the St. James Club of which I have been made a temporary member. He invited me to lunch with Lady NorthclirTe and himself to-morrow at one fifteen, at their house in St. James Place.

December 21st. I arrived at Lord Northcliffe's house promptly at the appointed hour. There were at luncheon eight people in all, among them the editor of the "London Times," the New York correspondent of the NorthclirTe papers, and the head of the British Red Cross (a brother of Lord Derby, the new minister of war) .

We discussed at some length the failure of Great Britain and the United States better to

II comprehend each other's point of view in matters relating to the present war.

A fellow American who was also a guest at the luncheon and who like myself had only recently arrived in England, joined me in protesting that there was a great deal of reason for America's unenthusiastic point of view of English affairs and a great deal of stupidity on the part of the British Government in handling neutral nations. The British members of the party seemed much surprised at this attitude which we two, nevertheless, stoutly maintained.

December 23rd. Lord Northcliffe sent for me to-day and asked me to write out the opinions on American publicity which I had expressed at luncheon the day before yesterday, in order that they may be published as an article in the "London Times" of next Tuesday.

Once one has acquired a bent towards authorship, one seems unable to break off the bad habit of bursting into print.

December 26th. I finished my article for the "Times" yesterday and submitted it for Lord Northcliffe's approval.

It appeared to-day as follows : 12

American Publicity

"The Times" (London), Tuesday, December 26.

BRITISH PUBLICITY IN THE UNITED STATES

As an American publicist, I wish to congratulate the "Times" upon the excellent letters it is printing in advocacy of more effective publicity in the United States. . . .

It is no exaggeration to say that 90 per cent of our American citizens have no adequate conception of what Great Britain is fighting for, nor any just appreciation of the splendid part she is playing both on sea and land. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, Americans are asking the German-taught question, "What is England doing — besides making France fight for her? And what business is it of ours, anyway?" What other result could Britain expect from her policy of discouraging American correspondents and limiting their publicity to official communiques? There are at the present date only two American correspondents attached to the British Armies in France. There ought literally to be hundreds. When the logical results of the policy of your Press Censorship began to manifest themselves in the United States the only apparent reaction which manifested itself in England was that the British became exasperated with the non-comprehension of the Americans, thereby widening the growing breach and playing directly into Count von Bernstorff's hands. Great Britain certainly "has been had" by von Bernstorff.

Many American writers like myself have steadfastly striven against the rising Teutonic tide ; we know that Great Britain is fighting our battles, and feel that the widening breach in sympathy between the two halves of the Anglo-Saxon race is a deplorable calamity which will prove disastrous to both parties.

Far from encouraging American authors, the British authorities met them with hindrances and suspicions, and although offering no substitute, have denied them the opportunity to manufacture pro-British publicity. I do not venture to criticise the work of the British Press censorship within the Empire, for I know nothing of the problems there to be faced. However, if I were to be quite frank as to its application to the United States, I should be forced to state that it could not have been more destructively inefficient. It is in strong contrast to the German propaganda, which has been most assiduously carried on ever since the war began. Germany made mistakes at first, but she was willing to learn her lesson.

She began by categorically telling the American people what they were to believe. Ready-made news was crammed down their throats, and Dr. Dernburg was sent to America to superintend the cramming. His failure was "kolossal" ! but Germany learned from his mistakes. She not only recalled and repudiated Dernburg, but henceforth, under the guidance of that expert in American psychology, Count von BernstorfF, she used highly effective indirect methods.

Meanwhile the British authorities have scarcely deigned to pay any attention to American publicity.

American Publicity

What little news has been reluctantly allowed to filter through has been altogether unsuited in source and substance, for American consumption. It has been coldly official. It has possessed no human or ethical appeal. It has been impersonal. It sometimes tampers with or suppresses the truth.

In England, where contradiction is impossible, it may be effective to affirm that the submarine campaign is an utter failure, to conceal the fact that a certain unmentionable super-Dreadnought had been lost, or to prophesy a glorious victory at the Dardanelles; when, however, such items are given out in America in open competition with a wide-awake and aggressive German publicity bureau, the result is disastrous. Their untruth is promptly proven by incontrovertible evidence, and the Germans scream gloatingly, "Once untruthful, always untruthful."

The American people are very much like the British in the matter of publicity. If you try to drive them north they positively insist upon going south.

France has known how to reach the sympathy of Americans, and her publicity has been extraordinarily effective. It has been personal and has evoked enthusiasm. It has been written to a great extent by American soldiers in the French army, each of whom is an endorsement of France. The presence of every American participant is widely advertised by the French. He is decorated whenever there is the least occasion for doing so. He is encouraged to write of his experiences. Articles and books by American soldiers of France are published by the score. Alan Seegar's poetry of the Foreign Legion is widely known in America and his death at the Somme was as much regretted in the United States as was that of Rupert Brooke in England. Robert Herrick, one of our best novelists, joined the American Ambulance with the avowed purpose of writing a series of books from the viewpoint of a participant. I was permitted to write and publish the' "Note-Book of an Attache" without ever submitting it to the French Censor. There are only about 500 Americans in the French Army, yet in the United States, we hear something about them every day. The newspapers are full of their doings; every item of news from them is justly considered as an endorsement of France. In consequence of France's shrewdly managed publicity America is whole-heartedly pro-French.

If British publicity is to be effective in the United States, it must be widespread. It must be written not by one but by scores of reporters. Nor should it be written exclusively by correspondents, whether English or American, for the writings of the mere spectator tend to make of the war a cinema, which will never lead to moral rapprocliment. Because Ian Hay was a participant in the war, albeit not an American one, the publication of his book in the United States and his extended speaking tour shared with the books and speeches of Frederick Palmer the distinction of being the only redeeming bits of British propaganda. They have given the American public its first insight into

American Publicity

Britain's true part in the war. Bruce Bairnsfather's drawings and Raemaekers' cartoons, still too little known in the United States, would prove an invaluable influence to mould public opinion.

It is the testimony of the participant, and above all the American participant, which is most effective. If we Americans are to begin to appreciate that Britain's battle is our battle, we must be allowed to know that 30,000 of our young men are fighting in the English and Canadian Armies, sharing the aims and ideals, the sufferings and the privations of those armies. These men are so many American endorsements of Great Britain's policy, and yet their presence in those armies is unknown in the States. I myself learned of it only two months ago on a chance visit to Canada.

You in England should encourage your American soldiers to write publicity for home consumption. They know their audience. Their presence in the ranks is proof enough of their loyalty. Trust them. Aid them to recount their experiences and to tell of the dangers they have shared in a righteous cause. The British Empire fights in a just war and may well allow pro-Ally Anglo-Saxons to tell all the truth and then let the American public draw its own conclusions. If your authorities treat pro-Ally Americans with distrust and suspicion, they must expect to inspire like sentiments in the American public.

Eric Fisher Wood.

St. James Club.

Ill

January 15th, 1917, For the purposes of organization the British censorship is divided into three principal departments: The Naval Censor, who examines wireless messages and searches couriers found upon the high seas; the Cable- Telegraph Censor; and the Postal Censor.

Of these three the postal censorship is by far the largest and most important. It employs nearly five thousand people, the majority of whom are skilled linguists.

Probably no single thing which the war has brought forth, excepting only the invasion of Belgium by the Germans, has so generally irritated and aroused the American public as the British Postal Censorship, which pries into all its letters without the politeness of offering the slightest apology.

Yet it seems fairly evident that there must be some adequate explanation for its existence and some excuse for its intrusiveness,

In order to pass profitably the necessary period of waiting while my commission in the British Army was being put in order, I decided, soon after landing in England, to study the Postal Censorship and try to worm the truth about it out of the British authorities, — whom I fairly expected would throw every possible hindrance in my way, under the pretext that to explain the censorship might in some remote way furnish the Germans with information of military value. I not only wished to satisfy my own curiosity in the matter, but felt that to offer a solution of the problem to my countrymen through the medium of the "Saturday Evening Post" would be a slight contribution to a better understanding between the two countries of Britain and America.

I soon found to my surprise that the British authorities were only too ready to have me pry into the censorship, and the heads of the organization placed only one restriction on my activity, which was, that I should not approach the problem hastily, but should devote enough time to the investigation to gain at least a grasp of its fundamentals.

Until the recent change of government brought with it a relaxation in the habitual British policy of reticence, no writer had been privileged to examine the inner workings of the censorship. Mr. Lloyd George, however, is an extremely democratic premier, and believes not only in making every citizen of the empire his partner in the business of government, but also, so far as possible, he desires to take neutrals into his confix dence.

The previous British Government did not fully appreciate the importance of allowing neutrals to comprehend the difficulties which sometimes forced it to take drastic action. The last thing the new government wishes, is to seem to act in an arbitrary manner, or to refuse to explain the overwhelming justifications which invariably precede the promulgation of restrictions.

When I asked the officials to whom I brought introductions from America whether I might be allowed to penetrate the mystery which had hitherto surrounded the censorship, they expressed the greatest willingness, and after I had been put upon my honor not to betray information that might be of military value to the enemy, I was accorded the entire freedom of the censorship departments.

I was introduced into its various divisions by

& naval officer of high rank. It was early one afternoon when we started out to visit headquarters, in a building called Strand House, which is located in Portugal Street, in the most ancient parts of the City of London, and only a block from the original Old Curiosity Shop, made famous by Dickens.

On our way thither I expressed the hope that it would be possible to see nearly everything before dinner, so that I might outline a magazine article that night and finish it the next day. The officer's only answer was an enigmatical British Navy man's smile, upon observing which I quickly added that the censorship was certainly worthy of careful study ; and that I should, therefore, return the next morning, if by chance any interesting tag-ends had been left unnoted in the present visit.

As we approached Portugal Street my escort pointed to a huge modern office building, six stories high, covering a small city block and informed me that it was Strand House. To say that I was astonished would be to state the case mildly.

I was still more surprised to learn that the Wireless, the Cables and the Postal Censorship Departments were so large that they had to be accommodated in separate buildings; and that, moreover, the Postal Censorship not only fills Strand House but also several other large buildings in London and Liverpool, each of which is sub-divided into scores of departments.

During the afternoon, which seemed to pass with uncommon rapidity, I was presented to a number of the chief executives. Seven o'clock arrived before I had met them all or had even begun any examination of the building.

I returned early next morning, thinking that I might by lunch-time finish the inspection. I ended by staying all day ; and when evening came I had not been able to see thoroughly more than a tenth part of what that one building contained.

I stubbornly made up my mind to see the thing through if it took a month; for, even before I started, I had determined to avail myself to the full of the permission which had been given me to gain a comprehensive idea of the censorship and to write an accurate and well-studied account thereof; so back I went for a third day — and then a fourth.

Days grew into weeks. It seemed as if every time a new detail was mastered several additional essential and hitherto undetected items were discovered during the process. The executive staff soon commenced to accept my presence in the censorship building as a matter of course. After a time they began to regard me almost as one of themselves. I was allowed every privilege the executives themselves possessed, and was even given desk room for my writing and note taking, in that Holy of Holies, the censorship code room. I was allowed the unrestricted run of all the censorship buildings, and was permitted, alone and unhindered, to pry into all the sacred nooks and corners.

I wandered from floor to floor and from building to building. I visited all the establishments in London; and then traveled to Liverpool to study the four huge buildings there devoted to the censorship of American mails.

I was, in reality, attempting a detailed study of an organization akin to some great commercial enterprise made up of scores of branches, each dealing in a different product. The censorship reminded me in many ways of a Chicago meat-packing factory, where pigs are injected suddenly at one end and undergo a rapid sequence of surprises until they are ejected in various forms at the other end. The packing factory is said to make use of every part of the pig except the squeal. The censorship, however, goes one better than this, for it uses even the squeal. German squeals are, in fact, one of its most valuable and meaty extracts, for they indicate precisely where the war pinches the enemy, and enable the pinching to be proportionately increased. The censorship has, in fact, been largely designed and built up along lines indicated by German squeals.

When I had devoted something over a month to the study of the censorship I was still very far from possessing a complete knowledge of its organization. But I had begun to comprehend its importance and had arrived at a thorough appreciation of the fact that its suppression would give free play to the German spy system throughout the world, would subject Great Britain's cities to the danger of destruction by German incendiaries, would expose the lives of her statesmen to assassination by German agents, and would rob her of many of the fruits of her hard-won sea control, by enabling the enemy to obtain many of those sinews of war from which he is now cut off.

One of the rooms in the Library of German propaganda.

Some of the expert linguists in the Uncommon Languages

Department.

The British Postal Censorship.

In 1914, when the European war became imminent, Great Britain looked to her Foreign Office and to her army and navy to protect her from her enemies, and to be her weapons of defense and offense; and she regarded the Royal Flying Corps and Scotland Yard as their principal auxiliaries.

The censorship of cables was a proceeding that had been foreseen and quietly planned for by a few farseeing staff officers ; but the postal censorship had not been taken into consideration at all, for the simple reasons that it was nonexistent and that no one had even begun to realize the manifold advantages, defensive and offensive, to be gained by an examination of the mails.

To-day the censorship is more important than Scotland Yard or the Royal Flying Corps. Save only the Fleet and the Expeditionary Force, it is the most effective weapon Great Britain possesses; and she would be almost as unlikely to abandon her army or her navy as to dispense with their most valued collaborator.

The censorship has to-day developed into a most extraordinary organization — one of the most extraordinary in the history of the world. It also sets a new precedent for government departments ; for, instead of becoming a serious expense to the nation, it not only pays its own cost but even yields the empire a fabulous profit.

While Britain's army costs her more than four billion dollars a year and her navy more than three, the censorship actually saves the government something like half a billion dollars a year ! The total annual expense of its operation is only about two and a half million dollars; and it almost repays this sum in each average working day.

The British Censorship was very humbly born in the first days of September, 1914, in the basement of the General Post Office, in King Edward's Building. In the hurry and anxiety of the days of Mons, Le Cateau and the Marne its advent was unnoticed and unheralded. Its original staff consisted of a dozen volunteers, and its sole purpose was to open letters sent by regular mail from England to Germany and submit them to a cursory examination, with the idea of suppressing any that openly and frankly carried information of military value to the enemy.

No effort was made to interpret the hidden meanings of the spy, to detect his code or to bring out his invisible writings. Letters to Holland,

Denmark, Belgium, and other countries along the German frontiers, were thought to be innocent and were allowed to pass without examination; at first, no organized effort was made to prevent the transmission of messages by courier, by agent, by wireless or by carrier pigeon.

To-day, the British Censorship exercises systematic control over all communications that cross the seas, whether they travel by sailing vessel or steamship, by cable or courier, by wireless or telephone. Each month it minutely examines fifteen million messages ! No secret means of communication is too cleverly conceived to evade its watchfulness ; no bit of information is too trivial to escape its interested inspection. It supplies the armies and fleets of the Allies with news of the enemy's military and naval plans — "intelligence" it is technically called — which far exceeds in quantity and quality anything that could be furnished by the most perfect Secret Service.

The members of the censorship trade department, many of whom were selected at the outset of the war for their already wide knowledge of business, have so steadfastly studied, in the aggregate, all German and British trade correspondence that to-day they know more about the

n market conditions of the world than ever mortal men have known before.

It is a well-known fact that the Allies now do nearly all their buying of war material through common commissions. There is, for instance, a wool commission, through which the entire wool supply for all the Allies is purchased; and there are similar commissions for every other staple article of trade. This is called "unit buying," and is largely carried on in accordance with the information that has been collected, tabulated and supplied by the censorship, which prevents unscrupulous army contractors from fattening upon exaggerated profits at the expense of the war-stricken Allies, and thus saves literally hundreds of millions of dollars for the Allied treasuries.

The censorship collaborates with the navy in helping to maintain the vise-like quality of Britain^ blockade of Germany. It sends the Fleet advance information of the ultimate destination of every important cargo crossing the seas. The total value of cargoes already condemned in prize courts amounts to many hundred millions of dollars ; and the censorship has not only furnished evidence in ninety per cent of all convictions, but

HOTEL ROANOKE

BUFFALO. N.V.

J, n

HiL^ /wr

2 & ^

George Sanders, the native-born American citizen, whose recent arrest caused so much excitement, has been under observation by the Federal Secret Service for more than six months, because on August 18, 1916, he wrote the following letter to Mr. H. Warnken, Delmenhorst, Oldenberg, Germany, a copy of which was duly forwarded to Washington by the British Censorship:

Hotel. Roanoke, [Translation] 156 West Chippewa St.,

Buffalo, N. Y.

Wear Mb. Warnken,

You will, no doubt, be not a little astonished to receive a letter from the U. S. A. It is Sanders your former apprentice at the Gas and Water Works at Delmenhorst who writes you. ...

"Pour weeks ago I was released from prison after spending eleven weeks Under arrest; very many powder-mills were blown up here and so the scoundrels, the silly swine, locked me up. . . . Nothing was proved, but I am under suspicion. Ha! ha! evil seeds flourish. They are fighting at the front, — and we??;; — Censor, thoughts do not cost anything and are free from censorship. Do not for a moment suppose that the American People have anything to do with the crazy government. . . .

The People are stupid, they only know what work is and their god is the dollar, that is all.

Men born here have asked me whether we have motor-cars, gramaphones, electric light, etc., in Germany. And these Kaffirs, these yokels believe all that they are told by the English papers. . . ."

Should this letter reach you please send me an answer to the address given below; letters are always forwarded to me. Many greetings and au revoir.

Yours,

(Signed) George Sanders,

S.S. 2 "George Washington," • • Hoboken, N. J. U. S. A.

has nearly always discovered the existence and value of contraband cargoes in time to forewarn the Admiralty of their approach days or even weeks before they enter the war zone.

Almost invariably it reveals in advance the ultimate destination of contraband shipments, which, consigned in the first instance to neutral countries, are really intended for reexport into Germany; and reveals it in time to permit of their being detained for trial before a prize court. It helps to annihilate Germany's export trade by withholding all correspondence relating thereto, and by seizing all German goods forwarded by mail. In a hundred ways it assists the navy in preventing Germany from obtaining supplies, money or credit from foreign countries, and thereby brings nearer the ultimate victory of the Allies.

It also detects illegal transactions by British subjects. It has entirely stopped home trade with the enemy, even by the most roundabout routes; it has made it impossible for unpatriotic British individuals to send securities out of England and thereby avoid possible conscription of their wealth ; it has practically suppressed profitmaking transactions, commonly referred to as

"munition mongering," by those British firms not yet under government control. By withholding their mail it has, to a large extent, put a stop to the activities of certain German agents who, in all parts of the world, are engaged in raising the cost of foods and munitions by sending fictitious and extravagant offers to buy broadcast among dealers of neutral and Allied countries.

The censorship each week intercepts and destroys tons of enemy propaganda sent out from Germany to neutral and Allied countries ; it forewarns the local governments of Ireland and India of seditions encouraged by Germany ; it sealed the fate of Roger Casement before that unsuspecting individual had left Berlin.

It prevents enemy spies from sending military information to Germany, and in many other ways counteracts the German Secret Service. It discovers, tabulates and co-ordinates the minutest details in the lives of important German agents throughout the world. It could convict hundreds of German- American citizens of treason against the United States; and has, in fact, frequently furnished the American Government with information regarding German plotters and disloyal German- Americans, thereby rendering valuable assistance to our State Department. It gave the tip that ultimately led to the conviction of Fay, the German dynamiter, and to the expulsion of Boy-Ed, Von Papen and Dumba.

It protects not only the British Empire but the world in general from enemy plots, and forestalls the destruction of factories and the assassination of officials.

In spite of its importance and the vastness of its scope, the censorship is as yet little understood even in England. Because it causes petty annoyances for the average citizen, it is, therefore, treated by him with marked hostility. Grouchy Britons, who would consider it unpatriotic to vent their ill humor upon the army or the navy, make fair game of the censorship. Its very newness, its lack of precedent and the silence with which it works have all led to misconstruction and misunderstanding. The aeroplane and the submarine, which have developed from nothing in as short a time as fifteen or twenty years, have yet been well understood and thoroughly appreciated by the general public, because their work is conspicuous and spectacular.

The British Censorship, which has sprung up like a mushroom in as many months, has failed, even in England, to win public sympathy — because it is so unprecedented, because it works behind closed doors, and because it has been far too preoccupied with self-development to publish briefs in its own behalf.

Until the present time it has been inarticulate toward the public at large. In the famous words of the two-fisted man with teeth it "speaks softly, but carries a big stick."

The censorship is so new and has grown so rapidly that orders of precedence and promotions by seniority have yet to put in their appearance. It is, thus, almost unique among British institutions, in that youth and age, renown and obscurity, title and commonalty, all share alike in the opportunity for preferment. Ability is the sole passport to promotion. The two principal executives for American mails, for instance, were respectively twenty- four and seventy years old at the time of their appointment ; and several now most important heads of departments were totally unknown before the war. People of title work patiently and patriotically as mere translators, without any thought of employing their social or political importance as a lever for promotion. Nowhere is the wonderful new democracy of

England more in evidence than in the department of the censorship.

Though most of the higher executives were, even before the war, men of wide experience and training, yet they began at the bottom of the ladder in the censorship and won their way to the top by sheer ability. New problems and novel difficulties have had to be faced; and the present chiefs have all succeeded because they possessed originality and imagination, as well as courage and perseverance. They have had no textbooks to guide them. They have had to make their own precedents as they went along. They have sailed uncharted seas.

Taken all in all, they are a cosmopolitan lot. They have been gathered together from the farthest corners of the British Empire, and are especially interesting for the contrasts they make, one with another. They include among their number a member of the Foreign Office, a broker, several college professors, a sailor, an author, three soldiers, a colonial administrator, a special constable, two prominent business men, and a college athlete but recently graduated from his university.