VII | “M. I.”
In writing the story of Military Intelligence I feel as though I were picking my way along a narrow and slippery path which is bordered on either side by precipices and is in places obscured by fog. On the one hand, I am in danger of unconsciously overemphasizing the mysterious and sensational aspects of the subject; on the other, of making it appear more commonplace and prosaic than it really is. And, at every few steps, I find my progress hindered by the veil of secrecy which necessarily enveloped certain activities of the division during the war, and which it has not been deemed wise entirely to lift with the return of peace. And there is still another difficulty. The public has in a large measure obtained its conceptions of military intelligence work from the novels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mr. Robert W. Chambers, and Mr. E. Phillips Oppenheim. So, if the pages of this narrative are not filled with alluring adventuresses of dazzling beauty, cloaked assassins, secret agents flitting about the countryside in high-powered cars, German barons disguised as head waiters, mysterious signals flashed by night to lurking U-boats, messages written in invisible ink, and midnight meetings in subterranean chambers, my readers will be disappointed and dissatisfied and will probably believe in their hearts that I am holding something out on them.
The story depends, after all, on the angle from which you look at it. I know an officer of the Military Intelligence Division who goes about on tiptoe, figuratively speaking, with his finger always on his lips. He is so tight-mouthed that Colonel House seems garrulous beside him. This officer has been of enormous service to his country, and the importance of his work fully justifies the secrecy and mystery with which he surrounds it, yet his duties have been performed at an office desk in Washington, with a table of logarithms at his elbow, and, so far as action and adventure are concerned, his life has been about as exciting as that of a professor of mathematics. I know another man, likewise connected with the Military Intelligence Division, who, assuming the guise of a workman, succeeded in obtaining admission to the councils of the I. W. W. and of criminals operating in the forests of the Northwest, and who did more than any single person, perhaps, to unearth the conspiracy which had for its object the crippling of our airplane programme. For weeks on end he carried his life in his hands, for, had his identity been suspected, he would have met a sudden and mysterious end by knife or bullet. Yet he speaks of his adventures as casually as though he had been in no greater danger than a Fifth Avenue policeman.
The fact is that the truth lies somewhere between the extremes represented by these two instances. The opportunities which have been afforded me to investigate the subject lead to the conclusion that, though Military Intelligence is, in many of its phases, as hard-boiled and unromantic as Standard Oil, it is nevertheless thickly sprinkled with incidents and episodes which would have provided material for the creators of LeCoq and Sherlock Holmes. Though a fairly careful perusal of the files of “M. I. D.,” as the Division of Military Intelligence is commonly referred to in the army, discloses no evidence that German spies of the caliber of Karl Lody and Bolo Pasha operated in this country during the war, they do contain the dossiers of enemy agents whose personalities and exploits meet all the requirements for characters in spy fiction. Probably the nearest approach to the high-class spy, as made familiar by the articles in the Sunday supplements and the magazines, was Captain Franz von Rintelen, naval attaché of the German Embassy in Washington, who is now enjoying an enforced sojourn in a large stone château as the guest of the government. Though the equally notorious Madame Victorica, a titled adventuress in the pay of the Wilhelmstrasse, filled several of the specifications of the secret agent of fiction, truth compels me to destroy certain illusions which the public has held concerning this lady by stating that she was by no means young, that she was only passably good-looking, and that she was so far from clever that her own boastfulness led to her apprehension. The other enemy agents who operated in this country were, for the most part, former privates in the German Army or petty officers and stewards on German liners, the most picturesque of the lot, a man named Bode, being so inefficient that he was dismissed by his own government, whereupon, being without funds, he surrendered himself to the American authorities. He will receive board and lodging at government expense for some years to come. Though the beautiful young Madame Storch, who died under mysterious circumstances at Ellis Island a few days after her arrest, possessed a certain romantic interest, she and her three companions were so weak in character and of such small-caliber intelligence, that it is exceedingly doubtful if the Wilhelmstrasse ever intrusted them with any important work or confided to them any important secrets. Let it be perfectly clear, however, that nothing is further from my intention than to minimize the deadly gravity of the German-spy menace in this country during the war, or to suggest that, had no steps been taken to check it, it would not have caused the loss of millions of American dollars and thousands of American lives. That the national safety was not more gravely imperilled by these enemy agents was not due to their inefficiency, or to the weakness of the German espionage system, but to the efficiency, resourcefulness, and unremitting vigilance of the Division of Military Intelligence, which, I might add, frequently carried on its work under the most disheartening condition.
Military intelligence is the term applied to all such information as may be of value to the successful prosecution of a war. The Military Intelligence Division is that branch of the General Staff which is organized to secure this information. Its field of inquiry includes the investigation of active and potential enemies, allies, and neutrals; their military, political, and economic condition; their state of mind, their secret activities at home and abroad, and their strategic and tactical plans for present or future campaigns. A well-organized intelligence service provides, moreover, for estimating and safeguarding the resources of its own country; for protecting war industries and means of transportation; for stimulating the morale of its troops and of the civil population; for frustrating enemy agents and preventing the dissemination of enemy propaganda. Thus arises the distinction between the positive and the negative aspects of the service. The former, known as Positive Intelligence, concerns itself with the collection and distribution of information. It publishes estimates of the military, economic, political, and psychological status of various countries; prints maps of enemy districts, with particular reference to fortifications, harbors, and routes of travel; deciphers intercepted messages, and translates foreign documents. The Negative Branch of the service concerns itself with the frustration of all agents, military or civil, who are consciously or unconsciously of value to the enemy. This is known as Counter-Espionage, or Negative Intelligence. It establishes a system of propaganda designed to neutralize the propaganda of the enemy; it detects and causes the arrest of spies among the troops as well as in the civil population; it censors news and information given to the public; it prevents enemy agents from entering or leaving the country, and it investigates the causes of economic disturbances and unrest.
Though military intelligence work was undertaken by the army in 1885, in response to a demand for information from the Secretary of War, it was not until the United States found itself an actual belligerent in the Great War that the immense importance of the work was fully realized. Incredible as it may seem, when General Pershing set sail for France in the spring of 1917, the entire personnel of the Military Intelligence Section, as it was then called, consisted of four officers (of which one was myself) and three clerks. Due, however, to the forcible arguments and the breadth of vision of its first chief, Colonel Ralph H. Van Deman, the foundation was laid for the present vast organization, whose activities expanded, at the demands of war, until, when the Armistice was signed, they virtually covered the globe. In addition to the huge military intelligence personnel in Washington, a carefully organized intelligence service is maintained in each camp, post, and station, as well as in the field. Though these officers are appointed by their respective division or department commanders, the responsibility for their instruction and the control of their counter-espionage activities rest upon the Director of Military Intelligence, at present (June, 1919) Brigadier-General Marlborough Churchill. During the war the Military Intelligence Division maintained the closest liaison with the Director of Naval Intelligence, the Department of Justice, the agents of the departments of State, Labor, and the Treasury, the War Trade Board, the War Industries Board, the Censorship Board, the National Research Council, the American Protective League, and the Council of National Defense, all of these organizations being able, through the medium of their countless branches, agents, and correspondents, to provide Military Intelligence with enormous amounts of valuable information which it could not otherwise easily have secured.
The Administrative Branch of the Military Intelligence Division, referred to, for the sake of convenience, as M I 1, co-ordinates the activities of the other eleven sections, six of which, M I 2, M I 5, M I 6, M I 7, M I 8, and M I 9, form the Positive Branch of the service, the Negative Branch consisting of M I 3, M I 4, M I 10, M I 11, and M I 13. The Second Section (M I 2) is divided in turn into five subsections, four of which—Combat, Political, Economic, and Psychologic—devote themselves to the collation of information, the maintenance of the “Current Estimate,” of which more hereafter, and the furnishing of special reports. Another subsection deals with the preparation of military monographs. M I 5 collects information for the use of the Positive Branch and supervises the military attachés. M I 6 concerns itself with the translation of documents for all branches of the War Department. M I 7 has charge of all maps and photographs, one of its subsections devoting itself to map construction and another having the custody of the War Department map collection. To M I 8 is intrusted the solution of codes and ciphers, the study of shorthand systems, encoding and decoding, the compilation of codes, and the maintenance of a laboratory for the detection of invisible inks. M I 9 has supervision of the training of intelligence officers and men for work in the field. Turning to the Negative Branch of the division, M I 3 is charged with counter-espionage within the military establishment, together with collateral activities directly affecting the army. The eleven subsections of M I 3 deal with such diverse subjects as the preparation of bulletins, summaries, and surveys; and of instructions for intelligence officers, counter-espionage in prison camps, disciplinary barracks, the District of Columbia, the various branches of the Staff and Line, and among conscientious objectors, and the investigation of applicants for commissions. M I 4 conducts counter-espionage outside the military service in the United States and abroad, with particular reference to sabotage and the protection of plants and means of communication, its activities covering nearly the entire world. M I 10 is charged with the censorship of letters, books, newspapers, and periodicals, telegraphs and telephones, and radiophotographs and motion-pictures, and with a general supervision of the foreign-language press. M I 11 passes on passport applications and, in co-operation with certain other bureaus, has charge of port control. M I 13 is the Graft and Fraud Section, its work being principally concerned with criminal activities which may affect the army. The present Morale Branch of the General Staff consists, as its name indicates, in maintaining the morale of the army, which includes the encouragement and supervision of soldier publications, military advertising, camp-posters, and the treatment of the foreign-speaking and negro soldier problems originated as the Military Morale Section of Military Intelligence.
M I 2, as I have already explained, is that section of the Military Intelligence Division whose duty is to collect, collate, and distribute foreign intelligence, its Combat Subsection being charged with the preparation, maintenance, and dissemination of combat and military information on all countries. The work of the subsection is classified as “active,” “static,” and “encyclopedic.” The “active” work consisted, during the war, of the preparation of material for the Daily Summary and the Weekly Summary, and of material for transmission to other governmental departments; the preparation of Front Summaries and Strength Summaries; the transmission of a special weekly report to the American Expeditionary Forces in Siberia; the establishment and maintenance of line-maps of the various active fronts in the offices of the Chief of Staff, the Secretary of State, the War Council, the War College, and in the House of Representatives. In addition this subsection was charged with the preparation of a weekly résumé of the situation on all fronts to be presented to the heads of the several army bureaus, of the industrial bureaus, and the military committees of the Senate and the House. The “static” work consisted in keeping up to date the combat portion of the Current Estimate of the Strategic Situation, where was presented in concise form a wealth of combat, economic, ethnic, political, and psychologic information for ready reference by the Chief of Staff and other general officers who were compelled to keep their fingers constantly on the pulse of the enemy and Allied nations. The “encyclopedic” work consisted of the compilation of military and combat information of a permanent character.
During the war there were few more interesting places in Washington—and none, perhaps, more difficult to obtain access to—than the map-room of the Military Intelligence Division. On its walls were displayed every conceivable sort of map and diagrams depicting the movements of the armies on the various fronts. Not only were there large-scale maps of the European fronts on which our troops were fighting, but there were likewise maps on which rows of tiny colored flags indicated the positions of the opposing forces in Russia, Siberia, Macedonia, Mesopotamia, Palestine, China, German East Africa, German Southwest Africa, and the Cameroons. These maps recorded, not only from day to day, but frequently from hour to hour, the advance or retreat of the lines on the various fronts, besides representing in graphic form the location of the enemy forces and indicating any economic conditions which were of particular interest at the moment. Thanks to the completeness of our information and the speed with which it was transmitted from the battle-fronts to Washington, the Director of Military Intelligence could sit in his map-room and follow the progress of a great battle on the Western Front as readily as the crowd in front of a newspaper office can follow a battle on a baseball diamond by means of the automatic score-board.
In addition to the unceasing care and study necessary for keeping the maps of the various fronts up to the minute, and for anticipating events so that maps which might be needed in the near future would be ready, as, for example, when we first contemplated sending an expedition to Italy or when we learned that the British were preparing to invade Palestine, the staff of the map-room had many other duties. It verified every name which occurred in the cables which were constantly being received from every corner of the globe (and if you have ever seen what a cable operator can do to geographical names you will appreciate how far from a sinecure this task was); it answered periodic letters from the Custodian of Alien Property requesting information as to the situation and possession of various enemy-owned estates, and it dealt with demands for every conceivable sort of information from every conceivable quarter. For example, the National Geographic Society asked for the boundaries of the Ukraine, which the society’s geographic experts had been unable to determine themselves; the Naval Intelligence Division inquired about maps of northern France and where it could obtain them; the Shipping Board wanted information regarding French coastwise services. When the Siberian Expeditionary Force was being organized it became imperative that its commander should have an English map of the Trans-Siberian Railway. No such map had ever been made, but by a stupendous effort the officers of the subsection succeeded in translating three sections of the available Russian map. The other sections were translated by the War College, and the whole was reproduced by the Military Intelligence Printing-Office. The work was, of course, hastily done, and later had to be revised, but for the moment it served its purpose well, and the Expeditionary Force was able to take with it the only complete map of that system in English in existence.
In addition to the great number of combat, strategic, and physical maps covering the belligerent countries and the various theatres of war, complete sets of military maps of the neutral nations were also kept available, for there was never any certainty as to how far the conflagration might extend. While hostilities were in progress the subsection responded to a constant stream of demands for estimates of the military situation, of the enemy’s strength and resources, and for forecasts of his plans. An enormous amount of information relative to German and Austrian munitions, tanks, gas, aircraft, artillery, and infantry equipment was also codified and distributed in pamphlet form to those branches of the War Department particularly concerned. Statistical reports, showing, for example, the percentage of French and British officers wounded and killed during stated periods, were of great assistance to the War Department in determining the number of officers to be assigned to the various draft contingents and for figuring the replacements which would be required. A report showing the housing facilities for planes possessed by the French Air Service materially aided our own Department of Aeronautics. The rate of pay for prisoners of war was fixed by the Adjutant-General’s Department with the aid of tables furnished by this subsection. Nor did the work of the subsection end with the signing of the Armistice. If anything, it increased, for it was called upon to furnish all sorts of highly technical information for the use of the peace delegates. The most interesting and important data thus supplied was a translation, with copious notes, of a Russian document describing in great detail the growth of the movement for the political independence of Siberia, a complete plan for the organization of voting districts, the composition of scores of territorial councils and commissions, and the effect on political life in Siberia of the revolutions in European Russia.
Long before the entry of the United States into the war it was recognized that the struggle for the control of raw materials was fully as important a factor in the great conflict as the struggle of the armies themselves, and that the food supply exercised a greater effect on the morale of a nation than its casualties on the battle-field. Other factors which, it was realized, had to be taken into consideration in estimating the fighting ability and staying powers of a nation were labor conditions, finance, shipping and ship-building, all of which bear an intimate relation to the production of munitions and essential supplies. There existed government agencies, such as the Department of Commerce and Labor and the Department of Agriculture, as well as many others born of the emergency, that were organized for the purpose of collecting data on all these subjects, but the results of their activities were not readily available for the purpose of the General Staff. As a consequence the need arose for a section of the Military Intelligence Division to gather, collate, and co-ordinate such economic information, and, in particular, to interpret it from the military standpoint. The Economic Subsection of the Positive Branch was created, therefore, to supply this need.
The chief, and indeed the most important, function of the subsection was the compilation and the constant revision—based on the latest and most accurate data obtainable—of the economic portion of the Current Estimate of the Strategic Situation. Dealing as it did with vital economic conditions in all the countries of the world; it enabled the high command of the A. E. F. and the other organizations, both military and civil, to whom it was distributed, to keep in constant and intimate touch with the economic situation throughout the world. This work constituted, in fact, an up-to-the-minute encyclopedia of the most vital economic factors as they related to the strategic situation. The I. W. W. troubles in the spruce forests of the Northwest, the spread of boll-weevil in the cotton-growing districts of the South and of hoof-and-mouth disease on the Texas cattle-ranges, riots in Korea, revolutions in Russia, the assassination of a dictator in a Central American republic, a shortage of the Brazilian coffee crop, a change of government in Chile, a textile strike in Lowell, Mass., the price of bread in Bavaria, the increased use of paper clothing and leather substitutes in Prussia, the speech of a Socialist deputy in Paris, all were carefully weighed and given due consideration, the conclusions thus arrived at, when condensed and put into graphic form, enabling the military chiefs in Washington to gauge with amazing accuracy the economic conditions throughout the world and to forecast the effect which they might be expected to have on the fighting armies.
Commencing early in 1918, the subsection contributed to the confidential Weekly Intelligence Summary specially written articles dealing with particular phases of the economic situation in various countries, such as “Germany’s Raw Materials,” “The Food Supplies of Germany,” “Turkish Finances,” and the like. These articles, which were frequently accompanied by specially prepared maps, tables, and diagrams, were all of a confidential nature, and were of great importance to a complete understanding of the strategic situation and its constantly shifting phases. The signing of the Armistice naturally brought about a sudden change in the nature of the subsection’s work, its articles becoming more monographic in character and dealing with conditions from all points of view but with particular reference to the future. Such articles included “The Coal Situation in Germany,” which was a detailed account of Germany’s use of the coal-fields which she occupied during the war; “The Left Bank of the Rhine,” being a comprehensive study of this territory from the view-point of the effect which its neutralization would have on the future of Europe; “Economic Resources of Czecho-Slovakia,” with a valuable map of railroads and mineral deposits in that newly born nation; “Palestine,” with an account of the resources, railroads, and prospects of the “State of Zion”; “Baltic Ports,” a monograph which showed the necessity of developing these ports and their hinterlands for the development of Russia. Upon the despatch of the American expedition to Siberia, the Economic Subsection produced a weekly economic report on Russia, with particular reference to the Asiatic territories, which was regularly forwarded to the commander of the expedition at Vladivostok. There were also prepared for the use of our forces in Siberia monographs on the food and raw-material resources, the communications, the industries, and the finances of Russia, these proving of enormous value to the staff of the expedition, which was operating in a region of which next to nothing was known save by a handful of scientists and explorers. Among the countless other reports prepared by the subsection perhaps the most important was the one on the fortifications and the territory surrounding the great German stronghold of Metz, which, had the war continued, would have been attacked by our forces. The completeness and exactitude of the information contained in this report, which was verified by persons familiar with the fortress and its environs, would, I imagine, have given the chiefs of the German Intelligence Bureau some very uncomfortable nights, had they known of its existence.
Now, though the non-military person may not have realized it, an exceedingly important factor in the successful conduct of operations is an adequate supply of up-to-date geographical monographs and handbooks, describing in completest detail the regions where the operations are taking place. Imagine, for example, how much difficulty you would experience and how little information you would obtain if you were to visit the galleries of the Vatican, the museums of Florence, or the churches of Venice without a guide-book. As few of the statues and pictures are labelled, you could only hazard a guess as to what you were seeing; you would not know where to go next or how to get there. The same thing holds almost equally true of armies. Land an expeditionary force in Patagonia, let us say, and imagine how helpless it would be if it had no accurate and detailed information as to the topography of the country, the size and locations of the towns and villages, the nature of the crops, and the customs of the natives. To fill this urgent need there was created the Military Monograph Subsection. The gradual evolution in the methods of this subsection may be summed up by saying that stiff official letters, the very tone of which was about as reassuring to the recipient as a court summons, have given place to informal, friendly communications which immediately create a bond of personal sympathy between the Intelligence Division and the person from whom information is desired; the questionnaires sent out by the subsection to those believed to have special knowledge of certain regions have dwindled from ponderous and forbidding volumes, the mere labor involved in answering which was appalling, to single pages of easily comprehended questions; and sets of stereotyped queries have, wherever possible, been replaced by intimate personal interviews. In other words, letters which addressed the recipient as “Sir” were so humanized that, when the war ended, they frequently began “Dear Bill.”
The most important work of the Military Monograph Subsection was the preparation of military handbooks which described, with almost incredible wealth of detail, the regions in which our forces were operating or in which they might operate at some future time, the volumes being by no means confined to Europe and Asiatic Russia. The method followed in the preparation of these small, pocket-sized, linen-covered volumes was as follows: From standard sources, such as Baedeker’s and Murray’s guides, the best possible description of a given region or route is compiled, or, should guide-books on the region in question be unobtainable, an account is obtained from some experienced and reliable traveller. This skeleton is then enlarged, improved, and brought up to date by the careful perusal of consular and other reports and of all sorts of confidential documents issued by our own and other governments, and by reference to reliable books of travel. An even more fruitful method of obtaining new and valuable information is through interviews with travellers, explorers, mining engineers, consuls, commercial travellers, sea-captains, and others who have had opportunities to familiarize themselves with the regions about which information is desired. If these men were asked to sit down and dictate accounts of their observations, the results would probably, in nine cases out of ten, prove highly unsatisfactory, but if a written account of the region under discussion is given them, it invariably acts as a great stimulus to their memories. Though a man may not be able to write as good an account from first-hand knowledge as the intelligence officer has prepared from material obtained in a library, he is easily able to point out errors, to suggest additions, and in other ways to improve the version placed before him. The last and potentially the most valuable of the methods used in gathering information for these handbooks is the employment of the Military Intelligence Division’s own agents, such as military attachés, diplomatic and consular officers, and other civilian agents who are sent to foreign countries with specific instructions as to the information which it is desired to obtain. I might add that this has shown itself to be the most satisfactory source of information for monographs and handbooks. It is no exaggeration to say that each of these handbooks—and already a score or more of them have been completed—represents the combined knowledge of from forty to a hundred people.
The Siberian handbooks published by M. I. undoubtedly present the fullest and most accurate date on routes of transportation in that country to be found anywhere save only in the archives of the Russian, Japanese, and German armies. The handbook entitled Southwestern Russia contains minute descriptions of all the ports on the Black Sea from Varna, in Bulgaria, around to Batoum, in the Caucasus. It also contains such information as would be required by an expedition in regard to the selection of ports for the disembarkation of troops and supplies, the garrisoning of these ports, and their maintenance as bases for operations in the interior. In August, 1918, when the American Expeditionary Force was about to set sail for Vladivostok, the Military Monograph Subsection was suddenly called upon to furnish the staff of the expedition with a handbook on eastern Siberia. Though much of the necessary material was contained in documents which had not yet been translated, and though there were available only a few persons who were intimately acquainted with the region in question, the subsection, by placing its entire personnel at the task and by working eighteen hours a day, succeeded in producing a preliminary but really admirable little handbook which was mimeographed in time to go with the expedition. It is scarcely necessary to add that the preparation of these monographs demanded men of exceptional ability who possessed wide and intimate knowledge of the regions whereof they wrote. In order to provide such a corps of writers, commissions in the Military Intelligence Division were given to travellers, explorers, authors, scientists, archæologists, and others whose work or pleasure had acquainted them with the world’s far places.
The Propaganda Subsection of Military Intelligence was formed for the purpose of studying enemy propaganda, to combat it by means of suitable counter-propaganda, and to take steps for the dissemination in the enemy armies and enemy countries of positive propaganda of our own. Though propaganda, as used by the United States, was nothing but the truth, it had been so abused by the Central Powers as to have become almost a term of reproach, the American Government steadily opposing its use—at least under that name—during the earlier months of the war. German propaganda had, indeed, achieved such an unenviable name that it was found advisable, in the spring of 1918, to change the name of this branch to “Psychologic Subsection.” Misleading and frequently flagrantly untruthful though their propaganda was, the Central Powers had made use of it with such marked success, particularly in Italy—for the disaster at Caporetto was primarily due to Austrian propaganda introduced into the Italian lines—that our government was reluctantly compelled to recognize its efficacy and to initiate propaganda of its own, this delicate and highly psychological work being intrusted to a civilian organization—the Committee on Public Information. Despite the vast amount of publicity which has been given to the work of Mr. Creel’s organization, truth compels me to assert that it was very far from being the success which the public has been led to believe. Memorandums concerning the foreign situation, together with comments and suggestions, were sent almost daily by Military Intelligence to the committee, thus giving the civilian organization the military point of view and bringing to its attention urgent calls for American propaganda made by its representatives in many parts of the world. This should have been of great value to the committee, since through its attachés, agents, and other sources, Military Intelligence was able to obtain a vast amount of information about enemy propaganda and morale which would not otherwise have been accessible to Mr. Creel’s organization. Although the committee agreed in general with the Intelligence Division as to the scope of our propaganda, lack of funds and of experienced personnel made it unable to act, in the majority of cases, on the information thus given. Incredible as it may seem, in view of the immense importance attached to the use of propaganda by other nations, it was not until after the Armistice had been signed that the army was formally authorized to make use of this potent weapon. I mention this because it illustrates how difficult it is to obtain a satisfactory liaison between two such bodies as the Military Intelligence Division and the Committee on Public Information, whose respective activities were based on entirely dissimilar foundations, and who carried on their work along entirely different lines. This is not saying, however, that the officers of the Psychologic Subsection attached to the expeditionary forces in France were idle all this time; on the contrary, they succeeded in getting three million leaflets over the lines.
Early in the spring of 1918 Military Intelligence recommended the immediate purchase of 6,500 balloons to be used for distributing great quantities of propaganda leaflets behind the German front. As, however, a sufficiently large appropriation could not be obtained, and as it was feared that there would not be an adequate supply of gas for the purpose in the A. E. F., it was finally decided to order only 500 balloons. Though delivery was promised by November 1, they did not arrive then, nor were they received before the Armistice was signed, such few balloons as were used by the Propaganda Section of the A. E. F. being British ones. These were paper affairs, about nine feet long and carrying four pounds of leaflets strung on a slow-burning 12-inch fuse in such a manner that they were dropped in small bunches, thus securing a wide area of distribution. But bad weather, the shortage of hydrogen-gas, the difficulties in transporting the gas-cylinders, and the rapid changes in the battle-line combined to make the number of balloons actually despatched very small. Great expectations were based, however, on the balloon campaign which was planned for the winter of 1918-1919 against interior Germany, particularly the Rhine towns. A large number of leaflets were also distributed by American aviators, who, taking their lives in their hands, frequently flew so low that they could see the Germans picking up the literature which came fluttering down on them from the skies.
In order to intelligently distribute propaganda by balloon, it was first of all necessary to ascertain the actual state of the enemy’s morale, which was principally done by questioning prisoners. The officers in charge of the work—all of whom possessed, of course, a fluent knowledge of German—after carefully studying the daily intelligence reports at General Headquarters, would visit the war-cages near Toul and Souilly and hold long interviews with prisoners of all ranks and from all parts of the empire. By this means it was possible to gauge with a considerable degree of accuracy the existing conditions beyond the Rhine and the degree of importance which various sections of the German people attached to America’s entry into the war. Arguments which had been suggested as suitable for propaganda use were tried out on the prisoners and their effect noted. Specimens of Allied propaganda were discussed with them and they were asked to give their opinions of it. A sufficient knowledge was thus gained of the Teutons’ mental processes to give the officers of the Propaganda Section a fairly accurate idea of the sort of arguments which would make the strongest appeal. The text of the proposed literature was then prepared and, after being approved by General Headquarters, was printed in Paris, the leaflets being sent to the field-stations which the Propaganda Section had established at Bar-le-Duc and Toul. As a result of the close liaison maintained with the Air Service, leaflets were sent to the various flying-fields for distribution by airplane, careful records being kept of the areas thus covered.
Almost from the start the liveliest interest was shown and the heartiest co-operation afforded by all branches of the army concerned. The Meteorological Section of the Signal Corps carried on an elaborate series of experiments to determine the rate of ascension of the various types of balloons. The G-2’s of many corps and divisions constantly sent in requests for propaganda and offered many suggestions. And the aviators, who were, after all, the ones most directly concerned, showed not the slightest hesitation in undertaking the exceedingly dangerous work of distribution, for more than one German commander announced that he would execute any flyer captured in the act of distributing propagandist literature. In only one quarter was opposition encountered. That was where the out-of-date conviction was still held that “propaganda has no place during operations.”
Nearly a score of types of leaflets were distributed by airplane or balloon. Among the most successful was one known as the “Prisoner Leaflet,” containing a translation of an extract from the orders prescribing the treatment to be accorded by the A. E. F. to prisoners of war. Appended to it was a list of rations issued to the American soldier and prescribed for enemy prisoners. More than a million copies of this leaflet were sent over the enemy lines. The “Prisoner Post-Card” leaflet was a variation of the one just described, being printed in close imitation of the German Feldpostkarte. This was predicated on the idea that the first interest of the German soldier was solicitude for his family and that the Feldpostkarte form was one to which he was accustomed. A number of these were found on the persons of prisoners. Another leaflet had a picture of a file of soldiers rapidly increasing in size, thereby impressing even the most illiterate of the enemy with the amazing expansion of the American Army. Still another contained the German request for an armistice and President Wilson’s reply. The principal reason for dropping these over the German troops was the belief, which proved to be well founded, that their full import, and indeed even their complete texts, had been kept from reaching the German soldier. In addition to the above, the Propaganda Section distributed some 20,000 copies of a leaflet designed to appeal to those natives of Alsace-Lorraine serving in the German armies.
The leaflets intended for the Alsace-Lorrainers were the work of Captain Osamm of the 4th Corps, and were part of a plan which was to culminate in a venturesome attempt at fraternization. Captain Osamm was perfectly familiar with German Army organization and knew the names of hundreds of German officers and men in the 224th Division, which was largely recruited from the natives of Alsace-Lorraine. After the 224th had been all but snowed under by the leaflets, and after a sufficient time had elapsed for the arguments which they contained to penetrate the German mind, Captain Osamm planned to crawl out into No Man’s Land, and when within speaking distance of the German patrols to call out the names of individuals in that division. He admitted that he expected to be met by a few bursts of machine-gun fire, but he was convinced that the patrols would eventually themselves come forward to meet him, whereupon, by a verbal reinforcement of the arguments contained in the leaflets, he expected to bring about wholesale desertions. He based his assumption that the enemy would respond to his summons, I imagine, on the British contention that all Germans had originally been waiters, and that, if one were to shout, “Hi, Fritz, bring me a beer!” they would respond from force of habit. The beginning of active operations abruptly halted this amazing performance, however, thereby deeply disappointing the adventurous captain.
The speed with which events moved during the last few weeks of the war prevented the trial of a distinctively American idea, known as The International Bulletin. This was to be issued in the form of a newspaper, printed in parallel columns of English and German, and distributed on both sides of the line. The intention was for the American forces to honestly share a newspaper with the Germans! It was believed that the very frankness of such a proceeding would serve to diminish the suspicions of the enemy that all leaflets which fell into their hands were “doctored.” The bulletin, as planned, was to contain news items, chiefly concerning the A. E. F., maps, pictures, and cartoons, the intention being to distribute it in large numbers among our own troops as well as behind the enemy lines; then to collect the old copies from the Americans, together with any comments which the fun-loving Yanks may have written on the margins, and send them over to the Boche by balloon.
What were the results of this propaganda offensive? Making an estimate of how it affected the enemy is like reporting on the effects of artillery-fire or bombing raids, for they happened on the other side of the line, “where visibility was poor.” Any one who has listened to the interrogation of German prisoners can hardly fail to have been struck by the wide variance in the replies given by soldiers from the same unit. Questioned about the effect of a barrage, for example, one man would state that it destroyed the German wire, demolished their trenches, and cut their communications, and that he and his companions were demoralized and panic-stricken; while another prisoner, from the same company, perhaps, would defiantly insist that the Yankee shell did no great damage, that casualties were light, and that he never missed a meal or a night’s sleep. Or, when interrogated in regard to the damage caused by our bombing squadrons, one prisoner would insist that, beyond killing a cow and breaking a few windows, absolutely no harm was done, while another, visibly shaken by his experiences, would assert that all that remained of the town in which he was billeted was a hydrant and two paving-stones. German officers, when questioned about the effect of our propaganda, invariably made the stock reply, “The men laughed at the leaflets,” but the enemy privates generally admitted that they read and believed the flug blätter. On the other hand, captured officers frequently complained about the depressing effect which the leaflets had on the morale of their men, while many privates stoutly denied having been influenced by propaganda, even when the much-thumbed leaflets were found on their persons. It must be remembered, however, that no soldier likes to attribute his defeat to pieces of paper; he prefers to blame it on lack of food, the enemy’s overwhelming superiority of numbers, and to his preponderance of artillery and machine-guns. If a historian ever has an opportunity to delve into the files of the German Intelligence Bureau, however, I imagine that he will find ample evidence that the showers of leaflets falling from the blue played no inconsiderable part in the collapse of the German war-machine. But, whatever the results of our efforts in this direction, as revealed by the light of history, the American people can be assured that never was a campaign of propaganda waged with such scrupulous regard for the truth. Though certain of our allies sent out material for distribution over the enemy lines which took considerable liberties with the truth, to put it mildly, and though the French quite frankly made use of Bolshevistic arguments, appeals, and promises, the distribution of our own propaganda leaflets was delayed time after time in order that the General Staff might sift and weigh the statements which it contained until they contained nothing save sincerity and truth.
In the weeks that followed Foch’s great offensive in the summer of 1918, it became increasingly apparent to those who were in a position to judge, that German morale, both in the heart of the empire as well as at the front, was imperceptibly but none the less steadily deteriorating. No one realized the significance of this to the Allied cause better than the chief of the Psychologic Subsection, who determined to watch the progress of the movement, just as a physician watches the progress of a disease, and to indicate its trend by means of a chart, like those on which nurses record the variations in the pulse and temperature of their patients. In pursuance of this plan, which was put into execution about the 1st of September, 1918, a daily report was prepared which contained in brief form all news in any way relating to German morale which had come in from all sources during the preceding twenty-four hours. At the end of each week an interpretation of the drift of these news items was attempted in a weekly report. Using as a basis for its estimates material contained in these reports, supplemented by information obtained from every source open to Military Intelligence, the subsection worked out its famous “Chart of German Civilian Morale,” which, during the closing months of the war, occupied a conspicuous place on a wall of Secretary Baker’s office. The chart was drawn on a sheet divided into cross-sections, each of which represented a day, while the heavy black line, writhing across the paper like a dying serpent, showed the wavering morale of Germany’s civil population. Secondary lines depicted in graphic form the German military situation, the degree of political unity in Germany, the situation in Austria-Hungary, the state of the food supply in the Central Empires, and the U-boat sinkings. But it was, of course, the line indicating the state of civilian morale which most accurately gauged the situation. Starting in August, 1914 (nearly three years before our entry into the war), at the top of the chart, the line runs almost straight until the battle of the Marne, when there is a sudden drop. It recovers, however, with the continuance of the German advance, declines during the winters of 1914-1915 and 1915-1916, only to ascend again with the coming of spring; falls sharply after the final reverse at Verdun, drops to a still lower level than before during the anxious winter of 1917-1918, rises almost to its highest peak during Hindenburg’s tremendous onset in the following spring; begins a gradual decline in ratio to the steady increase in the strength of the American armies, and finally, beginning with the defeat of the all-conquering Germans at Château-Thierry, goes plunging downward until, on November 11, 1918, the line ends at the bottom of the chart in the abyss of national despair.
Shortly after the Armistice, when the morale of Germany’s civil population was no longer of any interest save to the Germans themselves, the symptoms of a new and even more alarming disorder became apparent to the specialists of the Psychologic Subsection, whereupon, in order to keep this new menace to the health of the world under observation, a new chart was started and a fresh series of reports were begun, the personnel of the section being instructed to immediately note all movements and manifestations likely to prove destructive of good order and stable government. On huge wall-maps of Europe and Asiatic Russia various kinds of disturbances or threatened disturbances—revolutions, mutinies, riots, racial and religious troubles, strikes, labor and political demonstrations—were indicated by pins of different colors:
Red: Bolshevism, Syndicalist, or Socialist.
Brown: Political revolution, counter-revolution, anti-Bolshevist or social disturbances.
Blue: Industrial strikes.
Green: Food riots, plundering, or difficult food situation.
White: Racial troubles.
Black: Military mutiny.
Yellow: Disease epidemic.
Each day a report was made out, compiled from various sources, covering the subject of European disturbances, these reports being arranged geographically. Every Friday a weekly summary was prepared in numbered paragraphs, condensing the daily reports and giving, if possible, an interpretation of the trend of unrest during the preceding week. As the most threatening disturbances during the winter of 1918-1919 were of a Bolshevist nature, it was deemed advisable to issue a weekly report on the activities of Trotzky, Lenine & Co. and their followers.
The Fifth Section of the Military Intelligence Division, known as M I 5, is charged with the duty of obtaining positive intelligence, that is, of locating direct and indirect sources of information; of supervising military attachés, who, within the limits of their activities, obtain essential information, and of forwarding this information to such sections of the Intelligence Division as may find it of value. Now I am perfectly aware that the army officers who are attached to the American embassies and legations in various foreign countries do not stand particularly high in the estimation of the American people. They are generally regarded as men who have been selected for their wealth and social distinction rather than for their abilities as soldiers; who have had more experience in ballrooms than in bombarded cities, and are more successful in leading cotillions than at leading troops in battle. As a matter of fact, this estimate of our military attachés is bitterly unjust. As showing the type of men who represented the army abroad, I might mention that our military attaché in England during the early years of the Great War was Major-General George S. Squier (then a colonel), chief signal officer of the army and one of the foremost scientists in America, if not, indeed, in the world; our attaché at Paris was Colonel Spencer S. Crosby, one of the most able engineer officers in the army; while at Berlin our military representative was Major-General (then Colonel) Joseph A. Kuhn, who, after organizing, training, and commanding in action the 79th Division, eventually rose to the command of an army corps.
Everything considered, the American military attachés have done more valuable work and received less recognition for it than almost any class of officers that I know. They have been placed in the unenviable position of taking orders from two departments—War and State; they have been forced, by the very nature of their duties, to play the rôle of onlookers while their fellow officers were fighting, and they have repeatedly been accused of being spies. Though the duties of our attachés in the capitals of our allies have been largely ornamental during the war, owing to the fact that they were virtually superseded in their military functions by the various American military missions, their work in the neutral countries of Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Spain, and Switzerland was of enormous importance, for they provided Military Intelligence with its most reliable and important source of information. Those officers stationed at The Hague, Copenhagen, and Berne could look across the barbed wire, figuratively speaking, and see for themselves what the enemy was doing. Through all sorts of agents—spies, smugglers, deserters, refugees, business men whose affairs took them into the territory of the Central Powers, and returning travellers—they were able to keep their fingers constantly on the military and economic pulse of the enemy, and to report the information thus obtained to the A. E. F. and to Washington. It goes without saying that this work called for the exercise of the highest degree of patience, resourcefulness, and tact, for they were always surrounded by German agents, and particularly in those countries where German sympathizers predominated, the slightest indiscretion would have resulted in a demand for their recall. No news that came out of Germany was too trivial to escape their attention. Every one who crossed the frontier, from Dutch and Danish bankers to German deserters, was adroitly questioned and cross-questioned by the attachés, certain of the information thus obtained exercising a profound effect on America’s military policy. For example, our attaché at The Hague was dining one evening with a Dutch banker who had just returned from a business trip to Germany. While chatting over the coffee and cigars the Hollander remarked that, though he had been the guest of a German nobleman of great wealth, he had not been quite as comfortable as on previous visits, owing to the absence of his host’s butler.
“What has become of old Franz?” the Hollander had asked his host. “The place isn’t the same without him.”
“He was called to the colors last week,” was the answer.
“But surely he is too old for active service,” the banker protested. “He must be nearer sixty than fifty; he is blind in one eye and he is crippled with rheumatism.”
“Ach, yes,” admitted the German. “But what would you? The Fatherland has need of every man.”
This incident, related quite casually over a dinner-table, though trivial in itself, gave our military attaché—and through him our Military Intelligence—an intimation of the enormous depletion of Germany’s man-power. Taken in conjunction with similar reports from other sources, it convinced him that Germany was fast becoming desperately hard up for men.
The attaché in Switzerland, perusing, as was his custom, the current issues of the German newspapers, had his attention attracted by an advertisement, inserted by a citizen of a south German city, offering to rent a pair of stout leather boots, in good condition, for six weeks for forty marks. When the equivalent of ten dollars is demanded for the use of a pair of boots for six weeks, there is only one conclusion to be drawn. “Germany must be at the last gasp for leather,” argued the attaché, and he so informed Washington. His surmise proved perfectly correct.
Our military representative at The Hague was materially aided in his quest for information by a former sergeant in the American Army, who, upon his discharge, had bought a small truck-farm in southern Holland, within a few rods of the frontier. His dwelling was a recognized rendezvous for smugglers and deserters, the old soldier sending reports of the immensely important information which he obtained from them to the attaché at the capital as regularly as, when stationed at an army post in the Indian country, he turned in his company reports.
All cable messages sent by the military attachés to the Military Intelligence Division habitually ended with the sentence “Pershing informed,” which signified that the information had also been communicated to the Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces. Shortly after the arrival of the former Kaiser at Amerongen, the newspapers carried circumstantial accounts of serious political unrest in Holland. In order to correct the impression thus created, the attaché at The Hague, who was evidently blessed with a sense of humor, sent the following message to Washington:
“Everything quiet in Holland. The Kaiser is still with us. Pershing informed. God also.”
Outside of Tiflis, in the Caucasus, in whose bazaars eighty languages are commonly spoken, I suppose that the Sixth Section of Military Intelligence, familiarly referred to as M I 6, is the nearest modern equivalent to the Tower of Babel. This section is charged with translating into English books, periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets, posters, proclamations, army orders, war diaries, confidential reports, Heaven only knows what besides, which appear in pretty much every language under the sun. The translators at present employed in the section make translations from the French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Dano-Norwegian, Russian, Swedish, Greek, and Icelandic. This comprises only a portion of the section’s work, however, for it also makes translations from Roumanian, Ukrainian, Czecho-Slovak, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Polish, Lithuanian, Lettish, Finnish, Ladino (there’s a strange one!), Hebrew, Yiddish, Turkish, Armenian, Assyrian, Syriac, Arabic, Hindustani, Bengali, Chinese, Japanese, Choctaw, and other North American Indian dialects, Samoan, a dialect of the Philippine Islands, and Esperanto. By an ingenious system of filing and indexing the information thus obtained, the section has become a sort of clearing-house for data gleaned from the foreign press.
M I 8 is the Cable and Telegraph Section of Military Intelligence. A portion of its work consists in sending and receiving telegrams and cables between the division and its intelligence officers on duty outside of Washington, including the military attachés in foreign countries. By means of special wire connections, remarkably fast service has been provided, particularly with the most important centre, Paris, whence messages in plain text have been delivered in Washington four hours earlier by the clock than they were despatched, while code messages have been delivered at approximately the same time by the clock that they were sent. As an illustration of the peculiar tricks played by the change in time, I might mention—though it has nothing on earth to do with the subject of Military Intelligence—that the news of the death of Queen Victoria was received in New York three and a half hours before the time at which she breathed her last!
By far the greater portion of the enormous amount of cable correspondence handled by this office has been in the form of code messages. Since the necessity for security has required that the code words of each message be enciphered to prevent the possibility of the message being intercepted and read by the enemy, it has been necessary to subject each code message to two complete translations. It has also been the duty of this section, in order to insure secrecy and to secure economy in the transmission of messages, to prepare five code-books for publication. Few persons realize, I imagine, that the use of code by the Military Intelligence Division, the Adjutant-General’s Office, and other branches of the War Department, as well as by the American Expeditionary Forces, has resulted in a saving to the government of at least 50 per cent in the cost of telegraphic and cable communications. The use of the Geographical Code has brought about an even greater economy by eliminating the necessity of spelling out foreign place names. Though hundreds of plays, novels, and magazine stories have been based on the work of code and cipher experts in this and other countries, the writers have usually painted in too vivid colors the romantic side of the calling. Though code and cipher work is frequently productive of exciting and dramatic moments, it is usually the intellectual excitement of a chemist who, after weeks of laborious experiments, discovers a new reaction, rather than the physical thrill which a detective experiences when he discovers a clew to a crime.
Because of the enormous number of foreign-born citizens who were brought into the army by the draft, or who entered it through the National Guard or as volunteers, the work of counter-espionage within the military establishment itself was of vital importance, for a single traitor in the expeditionary forces might well have turned victory into disaster. Had it not been for the vigilance and efficiency of the Third Section of Military Intelligence, which was charged with counter-espionage within the military establishment itself, our hastily recruited and somewhat loosely organized armies would have afforded countless opportunities for the operations of enemy agents. I can give no higher praise to the work of this section than to say that, though numerous enemy agents succeeded in gaining admission to the military service in the United States, they did not succeed in getting overseas, where they might have done irreparable harm. So active were our intelligence officers, so carefully did they investigate the record of every man destined for service in France, that, of the two and a half million men in the A. E. F., not a single one, so far as I am aware, was convicted of espionage.
Every military organization operating independently, from a division down to a quartermaster depot, possessed its own counter-espionage organization, built up within itself for its own protection but operating according to a general plan and reporting directly to the Military Intelligence Division in Washington. During the war there were over 400 intelligence officers reporting to Military Intelligence, either directly or through department intelligence officers. In addition to these, there were special intelligence officers at certain highly important points: New York, Hoboken, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, St. Louis, New Orleans, Seattle, and San Juan, Porto Rico—and twenty-one district intelligence officers stationed in centres of somewhat less importance. The privilege of direct communication, granted by the Secretary of War, enabled the counter-espionage organization throughout the United States to be controlled and co-ordinated without interference by the normal military command, thereby insuring additional secrecy for its operations and eliminating the enormous amount of time and red tape involved in sending communications through the usual military channels. Each intelligence officer corresponded directly and freely with every other intelligence officer, copies of such lateral communications being sent to Military Intelligence, the files of M. I. thus becoming a great central reservoir for intelligence information of every sort. As a result of this organization, the Director of Military Intelligence, sitting at his desk in Washington, was the centre of a vast network of intelligence officers and other agents which covered not only the whole of the United States but, indeed, the greater part of the world.
The ever-present problem presented by counter-espionage work within the army was the determination of the loyalty of officers and men. Experience proved that the pro-German was almost certain to reveal himself sooner or later, or to be reported by some one who had known him, the loyal rank and file themselves constituting the most effective counter-espionage service of all. Investigations of men thus reported frequently showed, however, that, though the suspect might have been pro-German before our entrance into the war, he had been apparently loyal since. If he was an enlisted man it was usually deemed safe to put him with line troops and send him to the front, for, even were he to prove disloyal, his opportunities for acquiring important information were comparatively few, and his opportunities for transmitting such information to the enemy almost infinitesimal. In the case of an officer, however, the question took on a far graver aspect, and only after the most searching investigation was such a man permitted to go overseas.
The activities of the men under investigation assumed many forms. First in importance, of course, though not in numbers, were those enemy agents who had entered the army for the express purpose of acquiring information for transmission to the enemy. These were, in plain language, spies, and had they been caught “with the goods,” they would have been subject to court martial and execution. In order to silence the countless stories and rumors which have been circulated, I will avail myself of this opportunity to state that not a single American soldier or civilian was executed for espionage during the entire course of the war. The bulk of the cases which were investigated concerned men who, because of their foreign birth, or antecedents, or sympathies, might have been willing to impart information of military value to enemy agents. The most difficult class to deal with, however, was the man who was spreading stories, with or without thought as to their effect, which would tend to lower the morale of the army. The reports upon which investigations were initiated varied greatly in definiteness, ranging all the way from specific statements as to a man’s utterances or acts to a vague rumor that in such and such a place there was a man, name not given, who should be investigated. It was the policy of the section, however, to pursue any clew, no matter how vague, until the guilt or innocence of the suspect was definitely established. Where the original information was anonymous, that point was always sharply emphasized, so that the suspect’s reputation might not be injured should the allegations prove to be unfounded, for it was found that anonymous charges were very frequently made from motives of spite or revenge or because of some real or fancied injury. In such cases it was the policy of the section to push the investigation only far enough to show their character and then drop them promptly, without burdening the field intelligence officers or other investigating agencies with useless work.
The converse of this policy was followed in cases where the charges appeared to be well grounded, the man then being kept under surveillance until something, no matter what, was picked up which would place him where he could do no harm.
One of the commonest problems was the one presented by the officer of German extraction who had been born and bred amid Teutonic influences, and who was naturally pro-German in sympathy and utterances before the United States entered the war, but who had been guilty of no act or utterance since that date which could be construed as in any degree disloyal, and who, from a military point of view, was extremely efficient. Such cases, in the last analysis, always resolved themselves into the question: “Is he fit to go across?” Each case was, of course, considered on its own merits. While it was obviously impossible to lay down a rule-of-thumb applicable to all, two considerations in the main governed the decision. In the first place, an effort was made to obtain the opinions of the officers serving with the man in question and to learn whether they would be satisfied to go into action against German troops with him. If his fellow officers felt that they could trust him under such circumstances, it was a fair judgment in his favor. The second consideration was to ascertain whether his name, lineage, or appearance would make him unacceptable to our French allies. If such were likely to be the case, international courtesy, if nothing else, made it inadvisable to send him overseas. Surveillance of these men naturally was continued in France, but the Intelligence Division of the A. E. F., in reporting that such a case could be considered closed, frequently said in effect that any taint of disloyalty which might once have existed had been burned away by the fire of battle.
The process of having an officer discharged from the army by authority of Paragraph 9, War Department Bulletin No. 32 (“The President is hereby authorized to discharge any officer from the office held by him under such appointment for any cause which, in the judgment of the President, would promote the public service”), was the easiest and most satisfactory manner of dealing with cases of individuals against whom it was impossible to obtain sufficient evidence for conviction by court martial but whose presence in the army was regarded as constituting a menace to the national safety. This will explain in some measure, perhaps, the curt announcements which appeared from time to time during the course of the war in Army Orders: “Lieutenant (or Captain, or Colonel) So-and-So has been discharged for the good of the Service.” The great drawback, however, to this method of ridding the army of undesirables was that it could not be applied to officers of the regular establishment, as the terms of the Act restricted its application to Reserve officers and those holding commissions for the term of the emergency. The policy pursued by Military Intelligence in the cases of regular officers suspected of disloyalty—for all suspected officers were not confined to the National Army or the Reserve Corps—was to have them assigned to posts where their opportunities for mischief would be reduced to a minimum. An officer ordered to duty in the heart of Alaska, say, was considered about as safe, from the point of view of Military Intelligence, as though he were in a cell at Leavenworth.
Among the nearly 700,000 men swept by the first draft into the cantonments to be fused into a national army were thousands upon thousands of men of alien birth, many of them but recently arrived in this country and all but ignorant of its tongue. It speedily became apparent that the fusing process was failing to produce in many of these men, perhaps in the majority of them, the change necessary to make them into soldiers. Instead of melting and flowing like the rest of the metal from which was forged the weapon which halted the Huns at Château-Thierry and beat them back in the Argonne, these men of alien birth remained a hard, unyielding mass, not only obdurate in itself, but threatening to leave in the finished weapon flaws that would be fatal when it was subjected to the test of battle. By the fall of 1917, therefore, the military authorities had awakened to a realization of the fact that they were confronted by a serious and difficult problem—what to do with the foreign-speaking element of our new armies.
These immigrants, particularly the more recent, tend to congregate in the industrial centres of the country, in New York’s teeming “East Side,” in the mining regions of Pennsylvania, in the manufacturing cities of New England, and in the Pacific Northwest. Here they live in swarming communities, speaking their own languages, reading (if they can) their own newspapers, attending their own churches, their wants ministered to by their own doctors, lawyers, bankers, and tradesmen. From such colonies the drag-net of the draft drew into the army tens of thousands of foreign-speaking men. Here, then, was the first and greatest source of difficulty in transforming these aliens from many lands into American soldiers—ignorance of the English language. Unable to understand the orders which were given them, they were set down as stupid and surly, and through a lack of judgment in the selection of the commissioned and non-commissioned officers put in charge of them, they were frequently the victims of misunderstanding and ill-treatment. Four illustrations are typical of a hundred or more similar incidents in the Depot Brigade at Camp Gordon:
Private Sobolowski, failing to spell his name, was struck in the jaw by his sergeant, so successfully that the jaw was broken and a few teeth were knocked out. The private went to the hospital and the sergeant to the guard-house, pending court-martial proceedings.
Private Pagarzelski replied to his corporal in Polish, which the corporal considered highly abusive. The private was court-martialled and sixty dollars of his pay was forfeited. As a consequence the man was not only unable to help his aged mother but was left without a penny for himself.
Private Sznyder, being on guard duty, misunderstood the orders repeated to him by the corporal of the guard, and naturally did not comply with them. As a result he was arrested and put in the guard-house, fifty-seven dollars being taken from him by a corporal, of which only thirty-five dollars was returned. The corporal took advantage of his ignorance of English to appropriate a part of the money.
A Russian was arrested for evasion of military service. After he had spent six weeks in the guard-house it was discovered (through an interpreter) that the man was arrested before he had received notification of being drafted.
From a counter-espionage point of view such conditions were distinctly dangerous. The foreign-speaking soldiers, if not actually affiliated with the enemy, were, because of their ignorance and credulity, especially susceptible to the advances of enemy agents and propagandists. When herded together in a depot brigade, made surly by the inconsiderate treatment they received and chafing under the compulsion of being set at manual labor in this country when their ambition was to go overseas, they were potentially, if not actually, ripe for mischief.
Early in 1918 Mr. D. Chauncey Brewer, of Boston, president of the North American Civic League for Immigrants, was appointed by the Secretary of War to take the situation in hand. Under his direction a corps of field agents commenced operations both in the camps and cantonments and in the large cities and industrial centres, collecting information about the non-English-speaking men taken by the draft. These agents, who were carefully picked men of foreign extraction and generally linguists of ability, observed the general and special influences affecting the foreign-born groups and investigated propaganda, suspects, complaints regarding draft evasion, draft boards, soldiers’ allotments, insurance, and the like. They reported on conditions existing in the camps from information contained in soldiers’ letters, for many men who were prevented by their lack of knowledge of English or other reasons from complaining to their military superiors, would recite their troubles in their letters to the folks at home. These agents accounted in various ways for their presence in the camps, most of them announcing that they were working for the Associated Charities or for the North American Civic League for Immigrants. They established connections with leaders of the foreign colonies in the larger cities as well as with the poor. The foreign-language press, its editors and its influence, good or bad, also demanded their attention. They reported loyal citizens of integrity and ability who were later induced by means of correspondence to volunteer for this kind of service and who could keep Military Intelligence informed on conditions in their respective cities when the agent had finished his work or found it advisable to withdraw. Thus was built up a large volunteer organization composed of loyal citizens of foreign birth or extraction, who kept the Intelligence Division advised of conditions among their respective groups or races, and to whom the division could apply for assistance or information in individual cases or localities. These volunteer assistants included men in all lines of business and in all professions. The Boards of Health of cities having large foreign-speaking populations vouched for loyal foreign-speaking doctors who, because of the peculiarly confidential relations they enjoyed with their patients, were able to obtain information of great value to the section. The same was true of clergymen of many denominations. The editors of foreign-language newspapers frequently rendered highly effective co-operation, and correspondence was started with a dozen or more school superintendents in the larger cities with a view to enlisting the aid of the high-school boys in promoting the morale of the foreign-speaking colonies.
Reports received from Camp Gordon in April, 1918, indicated serious trouble with the unnaturalized Russians and Poles, and, in some instances, with the Italians, all of whom were perfectly willing to fight for the lands from which they came but not for this one. Camp Gordon was a replacement camp, and as such had become a dumping-ground for divisions having men that they wished to get rid of, a large proportion of whom were foreigners. Of the 1,500 men of all nationalities who were transferred to this camp by the 82d Division on the ground of suspected disloyalty, nearly 1,000 did not speak English. In order to remedy this dangerous condition, a memorandum was drawn up by M I 3 and was adopted by the War Department. This memorandum recommended that foreign-speaking draftees not having sufficient knowledge of English to understand the commands be segregated by nationalities in companies, both the commissioned and non-commissioned officers of which should be of the same nationality as their men, or should at least be familiar with their language, habits, and psychology. In support of the plan the words of Napoleon were quoted:
“If I had enough humpbacks in the Army to make a regiment, enough Negroes to make a battalion, enough dumb men to make a company, I would so organize them. No stimulus is more potent than the pride of men who have a common bond either of race, nationality, color, or even affliction. Men thus put together want to show the rest of the Army their extreme capability.”
The work at Camp Gordon was put in charge of an officer of Military Intelligence, who had had considerable experience in social-service work among the foreign-speaking soldiers at Camps Grant and Custer. Upon his arrival at Camp Gordon he found that those soldiers (most of them foreigners) who had been left behind when troops were sent overseas had been placed in the 5th and 10th Training Battalions of the Depot Brigade. Forty-one nationalities were represented in this group of foreigners, classified as Allied Aliens, Neutral Aliens, and Enemy Aliens, 80 per cent of them being Italians, Slavs, and Russian Jews. The officer immediately initiated a study of each nationality and of each individual, the process of personally interviewing each man, 976 in all, occupying two weeks. Thousands of questions and complaints were answered and explanations made to the men in their native tongue, every man being recorded and classified according to his nationality, loyalty, intellect, citizenship, and military fitness. This done, two companies were formed, one composed of Slavs—the majority of them Poles—and the other of Italians. Three officers of Polish extraction and one of Russian were procured for the Slav company and two of Italian extraction for the Italian company. The first week of training and lectures on discipline resulted in an amazing impetus of spirit and enthusiasm. Between the Slavs and the Italians arose the keenest competition for proficiency in drill. So startling was the change that the battalion commander and the American officers in charge of the two companies passed rapidly from discouragement and pessimism to extreme enthusiasm. An elaborate plan was worked out for giving the men a working knowledge of English and a series of lectures were given in their own tongues, thus acquainting them with the requirements necessary for service overseas. Special religious services were arranged for the Italians and the Slavs, their spiritual needs being ministered to by priests of their own faiths. The camp diet was modified in order to give them food which was racially acceptable. Social entertainments were planned, so that prominent citizens of Atlanta could meet the foreign-speaking soldiers and make them feel that they were as dear to the country whose uniform they were wearing as though they were American-born. The immediate result of this interesting experiment was the conversion of potentially dangerous malcontents into loyal, enthusiastic, and efficient soldiers. Furthermore, the reaction upon the families of the soldiers and upon the colonies from which they came was highly gratifying, for their letters from the men, filled with their suddenly awakened enthusiasm for army life and with glowing accounts of the kindness and consideration which were being shown them, did much to counteract any latent disloyalty among the foreign-speaking population. To each new group of foreigners who entered the battalion the question was put: “How many of you men are willing to go abroad and fight?” In most cases the affirmative responses were pitifully few. In fact, the Slavs practically all refused to put on identification tags, asserting that should they be sent abroad they would be as willing to help the Germans as the Allies. But when, after a few weeks’ stay in the battalion, the question, “How many of you men are willing to go abroad and fight?” was again put to them, the response was as remarkable as it was thrilling, for practically the whole battalion stepped forward as one man. Properly treated, the metal had fused at last. They were all Americans now.
So successful did the experiment prove at Camp Gordon that a few months later the same officer was ordered to introduce his plan at Camp Devens, where there were approximately 6,000 men who did not have sufficient knowledge of English to be effectively trained. In three days he, with proper assistance, personally examined upward of 2,000 men, and on the fourth day divided them into four companies, Company No. 1 consisting of 250 Slavs (three-fourths of them Poles), Company No. 2 of 230 Italians, Company No. 3 of 200 Greeks and Albanians, and Company No. 4 of the same number of Armenians and Syrians. A number of non-commissioned officers who could speak the necessary languages were transferred from the depot brigade and assigned to assist in the training of the new companies. The results obtained were beyond all expectations. The spirit and enthusiasm of the men advanced by leaps and bounds. They entered into competitive drills as enthusiastically as though they were schoolboys playing a game. The guard-house, which, until the introduction of the plan, had always been full of foreign-speaking soldiers, suddenly became deserted. From being the worst organization at the camp, the “Foreign Legion,” as it was called, became the model battalion.
The plan, followed both at Camp Devens and Camp Gordon, of providing the foreign-speaking organization with foreign-speaking non-commissioned officers of unquestioned loyalty served an additional purpose in that it provided the Intelligence Division with new and valuable sources of information, for the non-commissioned officers, being familiar with the language, customs, and modes of thought of their men, could easily detect any undercurrent of disaffection or disloyalty. Their common speech would at once establish a bond of sympathy that would be likely to disarm the suspicions of an enemy agent or sympathizer. Moreover, the speech and characteristics of peoples living in close proximity to each other, though divided by an international frontier, are usually so nearly identical that no one can distinguish between them save a person who himself comes from that region. Only a man who had himself lived on the Russo-German frontier, for example, would be able to say with certainty whether a certain soldier came from Russian, Austrian, or German Poland; from Galicia or Lithuania; from Transylvania, Besserabia, or the Ukraine. An incident which occurred at one of the camps illustrates this principle as applied to the Oriental races. A civilian agent of the Military Intelligence Division, who was an Armenian, noticed that a soldier who claimed to be a Syrian refused to eat pork. Being perfectly familiar with both Turkish and Syrian customs, and knowing that the Turks, who are Mohammedans, are forbidden to eat pork, while the Syrians, who are Christians, are not, the operative sharply questioned the pretended Syrian, who at length confessed that he was a Turk, and, consequently, an enemy alien. Such a slight indication would have passed unnoticed save by one familiar with Oriental customs, and a dangerous enemy agent might thus have escaped detection.
To M I 4 was intrusted the extremely important work of counter-espionage among the civilian population. It investigated the activities of the enemy in propaganda, in sabotage, and in the establishment of communications with the home country; it investigated such of his trade activities and financial transactions as might impede our successful prosecution of the war; it discovered enemy influences among political, racial, and religious groups and in labor organizations, and it watched persons throughout the nation who, though not associated with the enemy, were nevertheless engaged in pacifist, revolutionary, and similar activities which were likely to interfere with our military operations. The section operated through many agencies. As a branch of the War Department, it employed intelligence officers serving with troops in the various camps and cantonments, who furnished the section with much valuable information relative to civilian activities which reacted upon the army. Similar information was furnished by the departmental intelligence officers, stationed at the headquarters of the several geographical departments of the army, and by the military attachés in foreign countries. The Department of Justice, the State Department, and the Office of Naval Intelligence also actively co-operated with the section. By the establishment of a system of counter-espionage in foreign countries the section succeeded in frustrating many of the German plans at their source and in counteracting enemy propaganda which, had it gone unchecked, might have had the gravest results. The German method of organized propaganda was well illustrated by the operations of the Chilean-German League, which was founded in October, 1916, by Chileans of German descent, its membership including commercial agents, priests, professors, physicians, merchants, and school-teachers. In a circular dated Valparaiso, October 24, 1917, and marked “Confidential,” the management of the local branch of the league at Valparaiso announced a meeting to be held jointly with the representatives of all German societies of the city for the purpose of founding a propaganda committee. The necessity for starting a propaganda on a large scale was pointed out, and the main object of the league, that of urging the maintenance of neutrality by the Chilean Government, was described in detail. The importance to the Allies of the German ships in Chilean waters was also emphasized, the circular saying, in part: “... if we succeed in postponing the rupture of relations by this propaganda only for weeks, we have aided Germany and her allies to the extent of millions, harming the Allies at the same time by millions.” Though the league succeeded in preventing Chile from joining the Allies, the vigilance and energy displayed by the agents of our counter-espionage service in that country practically nullified the effects of the league’s propaganda in South America.
From the beginning of the war until its end the American public was constantly thrilled by the sensational and usually highly circumstantial accounts which appeared in the press, particularly the Sunday supplements, of the operations of German secret agents in the United States. Every one, I suppose, has heard, in some one of its many versions, the story of the German spy who was shot in the telephone-booth of a New York hotel by a Secret Service operative while giving a confederate information relative to the sailing of American transports. Though I have heard that story related, with minutest detail, in clubs, over dinner-tables, and in the smoking-compartments of Pullmans, I never heard any one ask the quite obvious questions as to why it was necessary for the operative to shoot the spy instead of taking him alive, or how the confederate proposed to transmit the information to Germany. One picturesque version of the story laid the scene in a crowded New York Subway train, the Secret Service man having his automatic in his pocket and firing through the cloth of his coat. Then there was the equally sensational story of the Hoboken family in whose employ was a German spy disguised as a maid of all work. One day she mysteriously disappeared, and a few hours after her disappearance Secret Service agents called at the house and searched the belongings she had left behind her. Their search was rewarded by discovering, under a false bottom in her trunk, a complete set of the plans of the defenses of New York harbor. Variations of that tale placed its locale in Stamford, Conn., in Chittenango, N. Y., in Newton Centre, Mass., in Key West, and in Los Angeles, while the papers discovered in the mysterious trunk ranged all the way from drawings of coast-defense guns to a copy of the German Naval Code. The same hysteria which led the public to accept these ridiculous concoctions at their face value, and to beg for more, caused them to suspect all sorts of well-known persons of being engaged in espionage activities—the general commanding a certain American division, a famous woman aviator, a still more famous prima donna, a Jewish banker noted for his philanthropies, the chancellor of a great university, and even the secretary to the President having been discovered—so the rumors had it—to be German spies. At one period of the war, indeed, it was popularly reported that spies were executed every morning at daybreak on Governor’s Island. Now I dislike to destroy illusions and to spoil perfectly good stories, but the dictates of truth compel me to assert that not a single spy was executed on Governor’s Island or anywhere else in the United States, though it is my personal opinion that a few such executions would have brought to an abrupt end the series of fires, explosions, strikes, and other cases of sabotage for which the agents of the Wilhelmstrasse were responsible. For stating this opinion, quite early in the war, at a dinner in Boston at which I was a speaker, I received a mild reprimand from the Adjutant-General of the Army. On the occasion in question I remarked, if I remember rightly, that I was convinced that the most effective method of dealing with spies was not to intern them but to inter them. And I am still of the same opinion.
Though Germany had a number of secret agents operating in the United States—though not nearly as many as was generally supposed—the only one of them who measured up to the popular conception of a spy was a woman known as Madame de Victorica. In certain respects she came very near to meeting the specifications for an international adventuress as laid down in the mystery stories of Messrs. Chambers and Oppenheim. The results she obtained were, however, distinctly disappointing—at least from the Wilhelmstrasse point of view. Her father was the Prussian general to whom Marshal Bazaine handed his sword at the surrender of Metz; her mother was a Prussian countess; her sister was married to a Prussian nobleman, and her brother was a Jesuit priest serving as a chaplain in the Austrian Army. Madame de Victorica has had three husbands—all South Americans. Two died within a few months after marrying the handsome adventuress; the third was divorced. According to her confession, Madame de Victorica was trained in espionage work at the Naval Intelligence Bureau in Berlin and was sent to the United States by the authorities of the Wilhelmstrasse for the purposes of obtaining military and naval information, to foment labor troubles, to tamper with the Roman Catholic clergy, and to lay the plans for a rebellion in Ireland more successful than the abortive one of 1916. She memorized a code before leaving Berlin. The secret ink in which her letters were written was given her at the Chemical Institute and was carried in two silk mufflers, the ink being obtained by saturating them in cold water and wringing them. Writing in this ink could be developed with iodine tablets, manufactured by a well-known firm of London chemists, dissolved in vinegar. Other messages were transmitted by means of pin-pricking certain letters in newspapers. Madame de Victorica was unquestionably a woman of considerable intelligence and social position; she had had some experience as a journalist, and was apparently credited by the Germans with quickness of wit and resourcefulness as an organizer. This reputation she only partly justified, however, for she talked indiscreetly on the steamer while coming over, wasted time and money after her arrival in New York in buying elaborate gowns, and was an inveterate user of drugs. As the result of converging lines of inquiry pursued by Military Intelligence and the Department of Justice, she was arrested, together with several of her confederates, in August, 1918. There you have a thumb-nail sketch, as it were, of the most dangerous German agent in America. She can thank her lucky stars that the Wilhelmstrasse sent her to the United States instead of to France or England, for had she been caught in either of those countries her career would have ended not between stone walls but between a stone wall and a firing-party.
It is easy enough to understand, if not to sympathize, with the reasons which led Madame de Victorica to come to the United States in the capacity of a German spy, for she was, after all, German to the core, her relatives for generations before her having held high positions under the Prussian crown. But it is not easy, indeed it is almost impossible, for a loyal American to understand how men who were born and educated in the United States and who had a long line of American ancestors behind them, could sell their honor and their loyalty for German gold. It is, however, a curious and regrettable fact that certain persons whose disloyalty was proved beyond the shadow of a doubt were purely American, so far as their birth and parentage were concerned, their only connections with Germany being financial ones. Of these I have particularly in mind three men, all, if I am not mistaken, possessing university educations, who were journalists and correspondents of considerable standing until the discovery of their pro-German activities blasted their reputations and plunged them into oblivion. One of them—a correspondent who had seen service in several wars—was caught in the act of carrying messages from the Austrian Ambassador in Washington to Berlin. He was arrested by British intelligence officers and returned to the United States. His passport was taken from him, and those who were once his friends now pass him by without speaking. Another of these gentry succeeded, in spite of his German sympathies and affiliations, in obtaining admission to a training-camp, being given a commission and sent to France. But, as the result of representations made by the Intelligence Division, which was thoroughly familiar with his career, he was brought back to the United States, subjected to an official interrogation, confessed, and, though he made desperate efforts to have the President accept his resignation, was dismissed from the army “for the good of the service.” The third of this precious trio went to Germany as a correspondent, at once constituted himself a champion of everything German, savagely attacked the land of his birth, and, upon the fall of the Kaiser, fled to Sweden, where, so far as I am aware, he is still living in exile, a real “Man Without a Country.”
The great organization built up by Von Papen and his fellows for purposes of sabotage made it imperative, upon the entry of the United States into the war, that a system should immediately be devised for the protection of those plants and workers engaged in the manufacture of munitions. With the declaration of war the United States became, almost overnight, the greatest manufacturer of war materials in the world. In every city in the land factories producing the tools of the fighter’s trade were running night and day, and other factories, hundreds of them, began to spring up as though at the wave of a magician’s wand. The nation was a-hum with feverish industry from ocean to ocean. But of what avail was this tremendous wave of manufacturing activity, of what use the expenditure of billions in the erection and operation of plants and factories, unless those plants and factories were afforded protection against fire and the acts of enemy agents? To fill this need there was organized, in July, 1917, the Plant Protection Section of the Military Intelligence Division.
The system of plant protection provided, first of all, for a physical examination of the munition factories of the country with a view to minimizing the danger of their destruction by fire. Basing their plans on the estimates of the insurance companies that 85 per cent of all fires are the result of carelessness, the inspectors sent out by the section insisted, as a measure essential to the success of their work, on a systematic and wholesale house-cleaning, the wave of cleanliness which struck those American plants engaged in the manufacture of munitions during the first year of the war being directly traceable to the orders of the Plant Protection Section. The officers of the section next turned their attention to measures for the prevention of sabotage and the fomentation of labor troubles by enemy agents, which was accomplished by the introduction of what was known as the “interior organization system.” This consisted in the establishment within the plant of a complete espionage system, composed of old and trusted employees, who worked as Secret Service agents, and were unknown to one another. In cases where it was deemed necessary, this body was re-enforced by trained and experienced operatives from the Plant Protection Section, who usually obtained positions as workmen in the plant without the knowledge of the management. By this means the perpetrators of many cases of sabotage were discovered, incipient strikes were prevented, agitators and professional trouble-makers were kept under surveillance, and, if their actions warranted, were placed under arrest, and an unceasing watch kept on the movements of enemy agents. The campaign of sabotage and destruction which German sympathizers had been conducting almost unchecked was abruptly halted, for so wide-spread and efficient was the section’s organization that the enemy agent was constantly haunted by the fear that his most trusted confederate might be a secret operative who was watching his every action. Though it never had more than 400 active agents (this does not include, of course, the enormous number of volunteer operatives recruited from the workers themselves), the section extended its protection to more than 37,000 manufacturing plants, and, during the period of its war-time operations, made upward of 270,000 recommendations for arrests, investigations, and prosecutions, or for further plant protection.
Agents of the Plant Protection Section succeeded in gaining admission to the innermost councils of the I. W. W. and kindred organizations, and, by thus obtaining advance notice of any contemplated action, were successful in averting strikes and labor troubles which would have caused the loss of millions of dollars, and, through halting the flow of munitions to the front, the loss of thousands of American lives. The success of the section in this phase of its work was due, first, as I have already explained, to its ability to obtain advance information of impending trouble, and, secondly, to the fact that the agents of the section were in a position to handle a delicate labor situation in an absolutely impartial manner, taking no sides and inspiring the confidence of both employers and employees. Thus it came about that the section was frequently able to compose differences between capital and labor when other arbitrators, who did not so completely hold the confidence of both parties to the dispute, failed.
After the Armistice the activities of the section consisted, in the main, in protecting the government against fraudulent claims presented by manufacturers and in guarding the great plants and warehouses which were abandoned upon the cancellation of war contracts. In one case the section obtained and prepared evidence for a grand jury which so conclusively showed fraud on the part of certain manufacturers holding government contracts, that another concern, which had already presented claims amounting to $600,000, upon learning that they were being investigated by agents of the section, hurriedly withdrew them. Another example of the efficiency which characterized the work of the section is illustrated by the case of a concern engaged in the manufacture of shells, the evidence presented by the section resulting in the indictment of the president and ten other officials of the company for submitting shells to the government for inspection under fraudulent circumstances.
The difficult, perplexing, and highly delicate work connected with the various phases of the censorship was intrusted to the Tenth Section of Military Intelligence, a number of subsections being established for the censorship of mail matter, telegraphs and telephones, radio, books and permanent literature, foreign-language newspapers, religious and pacifist publications, photographs, motion-pictures, and mail to or from prisoners of war.
To assume censorship of the mails was a new experience to our government, for it was in direct opposition to American customs and traditions and was extremely repugnant to a large and influential section of the American people. It was undertaken, indeed, only after its necessity had been urgently and repeatedly emphasized by our allies. Early in the war France had taken over the censorship of the Swiss mails, leaving to England the supervision of the mails to and from Holland and the Scandinavian countries. Little attention had been paid, however, to the Spanish, Mexican, and Central and South American mails, save when they passed through the postal barrier erected by the Allied censorship around the neutral states of Europe. The first problem that faced the American censors, therefore, was to close the channels of information leading into Germany through Spain, or out of Germany, via Spain, to the Americas, Spain being in constant communication with Berlin by a powerful system of wireless. Upon our entrance into the war it became imperative to close this gap in the news blockade which was in force against the enemy. This done, the only possible way for a German sympathizer in the western hemisphere to communicate with Germany was indirectly, through an intermediary in a neutral country, it becoming necessary for a German agent in South America, for example, to direct his communications to some confederate in Holland or Scandinavia. Such communications, which were usually disguised as innocent social or business letters, but in reality contained concealed messages in code, cipher, or invisible ink, would then be transcribed by the confederate in the neutral country and forwarded to the particular bureau of the German Government for which they were intended, either by special courier or through ordinary postal channels.
Owing to the peculiar position of the United States and its distance from the actual battle-front, about 95 per cent of its postal-censorship work was negative in character and only 5 per cent positive, these terms, “negative” and “positive,” being used in the same sense as they applied to other activities of Military Intelligence. By far the greater part of the mail that required censorship was of a nature which might have caused social unrest, labor troubles, or even rebellion in this country. Only a comparatively small number of letters were intercepted which brought positive information concerning the plans of the enemy or of neutrals. In studying this positive information it was necessary for the censors to keep constantly in mind the fact that the enemy intentionally permitted false information to be sent out, which, were it taken at its face value, might lead us to alter our plans or to relax our efforts. For periods of two or three months, perhaps longer, immediately preceding each of the great German offensives, there trickled into the offices of the censor scores of letters depicting in heartrending terms the social unrest and the appalling food conditions in the Fatherland.
Early in 1918 the United States, following the example of France and England, established large chemical laboratories in New York and Washington, where thousands of letters were subjected to tests for invisible ink. The usual letter-paper which is used for communications in invisible ink can be given minor tests without altering its appearance. These preliminary tests are for the purpose of ascertaining whether the paper has been moistened or subjected to other treatment preparatory to the use of invisible ink. In case the minor tests show the paper has received some unusual treatment, a major test is given which results in developing any invisible writing, though it at the same time affects the texture and color of the stationery so that it is impossible to restore it to its original appearance. Practically all mail to or from persons on the suspect lists kept by England, France, and the United States was subjected to such examination.
By assuming the censorship of the Spanish, West Indian, and Latin American mails, the American authorities were able to break up the trade relations which up to that time had existed between German sympathizers in the United States and German forwarding agents in South America. In the latter months of the war Germany found herself in desperate need of rubber in any form for use in electrical devices, particularly for the construction of electrical apparatus to be used in torpedoes and submarines. Hence we find the censorship intercepting suspicious orders for such goods as dental rubber, tobacco-pouches, rubber soles and heels. The censorship also intercepted and confiscated hundreds of tons of German propaganda literature prepared by German agents in Spain and intended for distribution in Latin America. Had this propaganda reached the German agents in South and Central America to whom it was addressed and had it been distributed in accordance with their plans, it would unquestionably have resulted in great social unrest, political demonstrations, and revolutions, if not, indeed, in actual war between certain Latin American countries, thus interrupting our supply of certain products essential to the manufacture of munitions. Had the Germans, for example, succeeded in starting a war between Chile and Bolivia over the Tacna-Arica question, our supply of Chilean nitrates, which we imported in enormous quantities, in all probability would have been cut off. In fact, it was the likelihood of just such an occurrence which led us to spend millions of dollars in the erection of nitrate plants in the United States, thus making us independent of the Chilean nitrate beds. The censorship was likewise largely responsible for preventing revolutions which were planned to take place simultaneously in Cuba and Mexico. German agents had planned to launch a revolution in the Oriente province of Cuba with a view to burning the cane-fields, while at the same time an insurrection was to break out in the Tampico district of Mexico, thus providing an excuse for the destruction of the oil-wells. Had this plan been successful—and it came much nearer being successful than most persons realize—our main sources of supply for oil and sugar would have disappeared. But the plotters in Cuba were indiscreet enough to discuss their plans in letters sent to their representatives in the United States; these letters were intercepted by the postal censors, and a few days later a transport, loaded to the gunwales with American Marines, set sail for Guantanamo. The commander of the Marines had orders to prevent the peace of the island republic from being disturbed. And he did. For which we—and the Cubans—have to thank the postal censors.
It did not take the government long to realize that, if the cable and postal censorships were to be made sufficiently water-tight to prevent our military secrets leaking through to the enemy, it would be necessary to reinforce them with a censorship of photographs and motion-picture films. Accordingly, the Censorship Section of Military Intelligence was charged, in addition to its numerous other duties, with the censorship of all pictures taken by military photographers for the use of the Committee on Public Information and for other publicity purposes, as well as of those taken for commercial purposes by private concerns. In order to keep our own people, as well as those of the Allied and neutral countries, acquainted with the progress which the United States was making in the business of war, scores of cameramen belonging to the Photographic Section of the Signal Corps were sent out, at the request of the Committee on Public Information, to take pictures at the cantonments, training-camps, and munition factories in this country and in the theatres of operations overseas. As, however, there were countless details of our equipment, munitions, training methods, and the like of which the enemy must be kept in ignorance, it was imperative that all such pictures be carefully examined and passed upon before being released for publication or exhibition. And, moreover, they must be passed upon by men who were authorities on the various phases of the army with which the pictures dealt. That it was a matter which could not be left with safety to amateurs was emphasized by an incident which occurred in October, 1918, when the great Allied offensive was at its height. One Sunday morning the officers of the General Staff were astounded to see, in the illustrated supplement of a New York newspaper, detailed photographs of the new French howitzers, the very existence of which up to that time had been one of the most carefully guarded secrets of the Allies. The young officer who passed the pictures for publication explained that, not being an artilleryman, the howitzers looked like any other guns to him. A few weeks later the Staff was again surprised and angered to see another secret—the small tanks which were being manufactured in this country—revealed in the same paper. Here was another case of an officer having passed a photograph dealing with a subject of which he was ignorant. In order to prevent a repetition of such blunders, the Censorship Section arranged to work in close co-operation with the Chief Naval Censor and with experts in the offices of the Chief of Coast Artillery, the Chief of Field Artillery, the Chief of Ordnance, the Director of Military Aeronautics, the Bureau of Aircraft Production, the quartermaster-general and the surgeon-general, these experts being consulted in regard to all pictures relating to their respective arms of the service. With their assistance a series of precedents was established and a set of regulations for the censorship of photographs was evolved. Among the pictures withheld from the public were those dealing with new inventions of military significance, such as radio telephony; with all examples of military and naval camouflage, and with the various new types of artillery, especially those on tractor mounts. Such photographs as were not released were placed in the archives of the War College to become a permanent part of the pictorial history of the war, while those which were passed were turned over to the Committee on Public Information for distribution to the various agencies which were in a position to give them the greatest publicity. There was also an informal, intimate, and extremely valuable service which the section was able to perform. As pictures were received from the A. E. F., a systematic effort was made to furnish to the relatives and friends of soldiers serving overseas copies of the photographs or sections of the films in which their loved ones appeared, of the hospitals in which they were being treated, or of the spots where they were buried. As a result of this official thoughtfulness, comfort was given to many a lonely wife, many an anxious parent.
A no less important phase of the section’s activities was the censorship of still and motion pictures taken for commercial use at home and abroad and the supervision of the firms and individuals taking them. When one remembers that “The Birth of a Nation” is estimated to have been seen by 60,000,000 people, a realization can be had of the enormous possibilities of the motion-picture for purposes of propaganda and the necessity of subjecting it to rigid censorship. Whenever a picture contained a suggestion of enemy propaganda, or when the policy of a producing company appeared to be antagonistic to the interests of the United States, a systematic investigation was started to determine the loyalty of the officers of the organization and the source of its financial backing. If the enemy propaganda was evidently intentional, steps were immediately taken to prosecute the producers under the Espionage Act. If, however, as was usually the case, the fault was due to mere ignorance or thoughtlessness, a conference with the persons concerned generally resulted in the alteration or withdrawal of the offending picture.
Exceptional precautions were observed in the censoring of films destined for export. This work was in charge of the Customs Division of the Treasury Department, the films being viewed by a board composed of representatives of the Customs, Military and Naval Intelligence, and the Committee on Public Information. If a member of this board made any objection to a film it was sent to the custom-house for review by another board of censors. If the matter to be deleted was unimportant, the objectionable parts were cut out in the projection room. If the film was approved, a letter of clearance was issued by the Committee on Public Information and an export license was then granted by the War Trade Board; should the film be rejected, the license was, of course, refused.
In censoring commercial films and photographs, every effort was made to prevent the export of pictures which might reveal the war secrets of the United States, which might be distorted and used as enemy propaganda, or which might give a wrong impression of the conditions prevailing in this country. For example, no pictures dealing with the influenza epidemic were permitted to leave the country, for the German Government would almost certainly have used them as proof that the man-power of America was seriously impaired, thus encouraging the German people to prolong their resistance. An export license was refused to a picture showing the effects of a cyclone in Tyler, Texas, because, had it reached Germany, it would, in all probability, have been given a caption something like this: “American city after bombardment by German aircraft.” The fact that there were no German aircraft on this side of the Atlantic would have made no difference; the credulous German public would have greeted such a picture with wild applause. As a matter of fact, thousands of pictures of crumbling castles in England and of French ruins dating from the Crusades were used in such manner by the Germans. For a similar reason, the beautiful poster drawn by Joseph Pennell for the Fourth Liberty Loan, depicting New York City in ruins as the result of a raid by German aircraft, was not permitted to go abroad, for it would have been only too easy for the German Government to publish it as an official picture of the devastation wrought by German airmen in the American metropolis. I have wondered, indeed, why the German propaganda bureau did not publish a picture of Pompeii with a caption to the effect that it was an Italian city destroyed by the Austrian fleet.
Some curious schemes were perfected by German agents in the United States to convey messages to Germany in spite of the censorship. A set of films depicting cannibal life in the South Seas aroused the suspicions of the censors because of the irregularity of the perforations and because of certain mysterious numbers appearing along the edges. The films were finally passed for export, but not until the perforations and numbers had been trimmed off. On another occasion the censor seized an advertising folder, issued by a famous New York department store, which contained a photograph of an exceedingly good-looking young woman wearing an embroidered blouse and a plaid skirt, such as the store was offering for sale. The picture showed the young woman standing beside a table, holding in one hand a volume which, upon close inspection, was found to bear the peculiar title The Laborer’s Catechism. Some bright mind in the Censorship Section deduced that this title was really the key to a code message, and that the message itself was contained in the embroidery on the blouse. The story, which appeared to have all the elements of a first-class spy tale, was spoiled, however, by the unromantic code experts of M I 8, who professed themselves unable to find any message concealed in the embroidery. Both the department store and the photographers who took the picture were entirely absolved of any attempt to communicate with the enemy, and the young woman herself was found in a hospital, desperately ill with influenza. When the agents of the Department of Justice visited the hospital some time later for the purpose of interrogating her, it was found that she had left for parts unknown. Whether the message was embroidery or imaginary I do not pretend to say. I merely repeat the story because it illustrates the extreme caution exercised by the Censorship Section. Knowing the cunning of the Teuton, it was taking no chances.
Speaking of false scents in the tracking of spies, I remember being told in England of an old lady, apparently a woman of some means, living in a suburb of London, who was accustomed to write several times a week to her daughter in Austria. The letters, being addressed to an enemy country, were, of course, opened by the censor. Though there was nothing in the communications themselves which could, by any stretch of the imagination, be interpreted as treason, the suspicions of the officials were instantly aroused by the discovery that each letter contained three new playing-cards. One letter might contain, for example, the ace of hearts, the ten of clubs, and the king of diamonds; in the next letter, posted a few days later, would be the seven and the nine of spades and the king of hearts. Here was a code which baffled every expert in the United Kingdom. British Intelligence, the Censor’s Bureau, and the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard all tried to ferret out the mystery of the cards, but without success. Every conceivable test was applied to both the letters and the cards for codes, ciphers, and invisible writing, but without an atom of success. At length the old lady, whose every movement had been shadowed for weeks, was summoned to Scotland Yard and questioned. When the chief inquisitor suddenly demanded of her why she enclosed playing-cards in her letters to her daughter, she replied: “My daughter is a great bridge-player, and when I read in the newspapers that it was impossible to get cards in Austria, I thought I would slip three or four cards into every letter. In that way, you see, I would be able to send her a pack every five or six weeks.”
To another subsection of M I 10 was delegated the censorship of mail to and from the prisoners of war in the various internment camps in the United States. As there were nearly 6,000 of these interned enemies, and as they were permitted, by the regulations, to send nearly 40,000 letters and post-cards a month, no limit being placed on the amount of mail they could receive, the task of censoring this mass of correspondence, most of it in languages other than English, was very far from being a sinecure. The primary object of this censorship was to prevent the passing of objectionable communications, such as attacks on the government or information which might be of value to the enemy. The censors were also constantly on the watch to prevent the prisoners from acting as correspondence intermediaries; that is, from transmitting messages from Germany to German sympathizers in the United States, or vice versa. The kind of paper to be used by the prisoners for their correspondence was selected by the subsection with a view to making difficult, if not impossible, the use of secret inks. Thousands of letters, both to and from the prisoners, were submitted to chemical tests for invisible writing, and hundreds of others, which aroused suspicion because of their peculiar wording or unusual marking, were examined for possible messages in code. One prisoner endeavored to communicate with his wife by writing in lemon-juice under the flap of the envelope, and at Fort Douglas a scheme was discovered whereby German sympathizers communicated with the prisoners by means of dots placed under the letters of words in newspapers sent into the internment camp.
In the days before the Great War revolutionized our customs and restricted the amazing liberty of action which we had enjoyed, it was as easy for any one who had the price of a ticket in his pocket to leave the United States as it was for him to leave his own dwelling. To-day—by which I mean the summer of 1919—it is about as easy for an American to leave the United States as it is for a convict to leave Sing Sing. This condition of affairs, so unfamiliar to Americans, is due to the barrier which has been thrown around these shores by rigid enforcement of the passport regulations of the Department of State in co-operation with the Passport Section of Military Intelligence. Prior to the passport regulations of September, 1918, no law of this country required an American travelling abroad to have a passport. In fact, the only countries where passports were needed were Russia and Turkey. But upon the breaking of the war-cloud in the summer of 1914, passports were required everywhere, and the person who could not produce one upon demand, immediately became an object of suspicion and investigation. Under the regulations now in force, the Department of State, by its authority to exercise discretion in the issuance of passports, is in a position to control travel. And, thanks to the facilities of M I 11 for investigating the loyalty and character of applicants, the department is able to form a remarkably accurate opinion as to whether the applications it receives should be refused or granted.
It must be perfectly obvious that, had the old system of non-interference with travel been permitted to continue, German agents could easily have come to the United States through neutral countries, gathered such information as they required, and departed as they came. When war was declared on April 6, 1917, it was not necessary for Congress to pass a law restricting travel by alien enemies, for the law was already in existence, having been framed in 1798, at a time when France was our enemy instead of our ally, and handed down to us by the Fathers. As a result of the authority conferred by this forgotten statute, the German agent who counted on the law’s delay, habeas corpus proceedings, and a long-drawn-out trial by jury, received the surprise of his life, for he found himself seized by a long, swift arm which, waiting for neither indictment nor trial, placed him where he could do no further mischief.
The seaman presented perhaps the most perplexing problem in the control of travel. He rarely remains on the same vessel for more than a few voyages and he seldom has a real home where his antecedents can be looked up. Moreover, under the Seaman’s Act, he is permitted, if not, indeed, encouraged, to desert in an American port in order to be re-engaged at the higher American rates of pay. So long as seamen from neutral countries, particularly those adjacent to Germany, could come ashore at will in American ports, no really effective control was possible. So, following the example of England and the advice of our military attachés in the countries of northern Europe, an order was issued by the Secretary of State—though not until seventeen days before the signing of the Armistice—forbidding seamen from neutral countries to leave their ships while in American ports. The presence of naval guards on the vessels insured the enforcement of the order, which was withdrawn, however, shortly after the signing of the Armistice.
By an arrangement with the State Department, all passport applications, both from citizens and aliens, are referred to M I 11 for investigation. The files of the Military Intelligence Division now contain a vast amount of information, much of it of a very detailed character, concerning persons and business firms in the United States and foreign countries. By referring to these files, therefore, or by directing its agents to make special investigations, it is an easy matter for the Passport Section to decide whether the applicant is the sort of a person to whom a passport should be granted. The passenger-list of every vessel bound for an American port is cabled to the Passport Section by the American consul upon the departure of the vessel from the last port of call. These lists are checked in the suspect files of the Military Intelligence Division, and if there is found anything which makes a passenger objectionable or suspicious, the intelligence officer at the port where the ship will arrive is promptly notified, whereupon the passenger in question is either denied entry to the United States or placed under arrest, according to his nationality and other circumstances. A somewhat similar system of control is in operation along the Mexican and Canadian borders, the immigration and intelligence officers who are stationed in the towns along the international boundaries making it difficult, though by no means impossible, for undesirables to enter or leave the country. It will thus be seen that the Passport Section, aided by a small army of military attachés, consuls, customs officials, immigration officers, secret agents, and intelligence police, has succeeded in establishing a highly effective control of travel, thus preventing the entry or departure of persons whose expressions or actions might prove detrimental to the interests of the United States.
Military control of travel is, of course, a war-time measure, and with the passing of the emergency which gave it birth it will almost certainly disappear, along with most of the other activities of Military Intelligence. Though I am heartily in favor of completely restoring the country to a peace-time basis, and of abolishing the many highly arbitrary measures made necessary by the war, it seems to me that it might be a good idea to continue some form of travel control which would prevent the entry into the United States of undesirable aliens. We have quite enough of them as it is.