Eye of the Morning
The Popular Dutch Dancer Who Played the Rôle of German Spy to Her Cost
A story redolent of intrigue, adventure and a kind of romance is that of “Mata-Hari”—which is Japanese for “Eye-of-the Morning,” and is the name by which a Dutch dancer was known in the rendezvous of the light world of the European capitals before the war. Her real name is Marguerite Gertrude Zelle McLeod, and in 1917 her public and dashing career of art and adventure came to an abrupt stop by her arrest, trial, condemnation, and imprisonment, under sentence of death, in the prison of St. Lazare, Paris. She was condemned as a German spy, the specific offense being the betrayal to the Germans of the secret of the new, carefully guarded war weapon, the Tank. Reams have been written about this woman since her arrest, but nothing probably that would have anything like the interest for the public that will attach to the “memoirs,” the writing of which, reporters say, was her prison occupation.
Among the stories published at the time was one in the New York World in October, 1917, that presented what was known of her connection with the leak of the tank secret. The success of the tank depended largely on the element of surprise when it was put into the fighting front. Therefore the planning, construction and shipment of tanks to the Somme were conducted with the utmost possible secrecy. Necessarily, however, a certain number of persons in France and England were in a position to know; but, as it took a good many months to get the machines in readiness and habituate a crew to their rolling, pitching, sickening motion, the circle of those who knew more or less about it increased, and in some way not yet explained, Mata-Hari learned something of the secret. It is rumored that a member of the Chamber of Deputies inadvertently gave her her first information. The World said the rumor was strengthened by the fact that Mata-Hari had plenty of coal for her apartment during the fuel famine that winter. That in itself is proof enough to everybody of her intimacy with some high official, as few people, short of Deputies, had influence enough to obtain a hundredweight of coal during the bitter months of January, February, and March.
“In any event, Mata-Hari learned vaguely of tanks early in 1916, when the Krupp guns of the Crown Prince were daily booming nearer and nearer to Verdun in that terrific struggle which was to mark the turning-point of the war. Mata-Hari also learned that the tanks were being constructed in England, and would be shipped to France via certain ports—and she got the names of the ports, too.”
Suddenly, Mata-Hari, then in Paris, decided to return to Holland, her native land, explaining to curious inquirers that she married a Dutch army officer with a Scotch name (McLeod) who had divorced her and that she was going to arrange a settlement.