The Spy Who Painted the Queen E-Book

Phil Tomaselli

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 387

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Was Philip de László a secret agent and was MI5's source really as they claimed? Did an enemy spy really paint the portrait of the young Princess Elizabeth? In 1917, noted society portrait painter Philip de László, who painted such luminaries as the Pope, the Austrian emperor, King Edward VII and Prince Louis Battenberg, was subjected to a secret tribunal which interned him for trading with the enemy. At the outbreak of the First World War, de László had pulled strings to be naturalised as British, but in 1919 he was referred to a public committee to revoke his naturalisation. With the aid of skilled counsel, de László had the application overturned – however, newly discovered records show MI5 had evidence obtained from a top-secret source that alleged that he was supplying the enemy with important information on politics and industrial production. Crucially, the source's anonymity prevented MI5 from presenting evidence to the tribunal, which has particular resonance in the contemporary War on Terror. In the only book to examine MI5's secret evidence, Phil Tomaselli explores these allegations and reaches a shocking conclusion.

Leseprobe

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

IORIGINALLY DISCOVERED that MI5 had been investigating De László when I stumbled upon a cartoon in one of the MI5 cartoon books (produced for internal consumption only, but which occasionally come on the market) that my good friend Dr Nick Hiley showed me. I owe Nick a considerable debt of gratitude for his assistance, advice and support for this book as for several of my others. Many thanks are also due to Julian Putkowski, who gave me his copy of the other MI5 cartoon book gratis, carried out some splendid research on various members of MI5 staff which he shared with me and found much information on the mysterious Frederic Decseny. Thomas Boghardt, on hearing I intended to mention the Baron von Horst case, kindly sent me a copy of an article he’d written on it, which backed up my own researches and conclusions. Edwin Ruis provided background information on the German intelligence service in Holland. Professor Rick Spence, with whom I’ve worked on a number of projects, kindly helped me to unpick the relationships between the various banks in the USA and checked the Bureau of Investigation files for me. The Metropolitan Police kindly searched their archives and confirmed they no longer hold any files on de László. Staff at the Foreign Office and the US National Archives and Research Administration (NARA) searched their records for information on Frederic Decseny for me. Staff at the Home Office also searched their records for anything on Desceny and for the missing sub-file 113 in De László’s naturalisation file, but were unable to locate anything. Peter Day scoured online newspaper archives for me in search of Desceny. Kim Thomason offered advice on the tying (and possible means of opening) of diplomatic bags. As usual the staff at The National Archives provided their excellent service and assistance, and the staff at North Swindon Library have tracked down various obscure reference books for me. The publishers of Who’s Who provided me with information on De László’s early entries in their book.

I’ve referred to the Security Service as MI5 throughout the book, though purists will realise that before April 1916 they were known, within the War Office and to the police and other authorities, as MO5g, the counter-espionage section of the larger MO5 which, in its turn, formed part of the Directorate of Special Intelligence at the War Office. The Directorate also dealt with Press Censorship (MO7), Cable Censorship (MO8) and Postal Censorship (MO9) as well as liaison with the foreign secret service (the Secret Intelligence Service, sometimes now called MI6), examination of enemy ciphers, arms traffic and collation of intelligence. Since the name MI5 was assumed in 1916 (when the other MO sections became MI7, MI8 and MI9) the existence of this secret service department has become generally acknowledged and referred to as MI5 by the general public. I’ve stuck with the common parlance for the ease of the reader. It’s also worth noting that, when referring back to themselves after 1916, they used MI5 rather than trying to explain the changes.

CONTENTS

Title

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1  Spies and Rumours of Spies

2  Censors, Counter-spies and a Suspect

3  Alarm Bells

4  The First Interrogation

5  Arrest and Humiliation

6  Names, Addresses and the Elusive Madame G

7  Internment and Controversy

8  The Denaturalisation Hearing

Epilogue: The Spy Who Painted the Queen

Appendix 1: The One-Armed Man

Appendix 2: More Links to Royalty

Appendix 3: Did the French Reports Even Exist?

Appendix 4 : What Became of the Others

Sources

Plates

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

THE CENTENARY PUBLICATION of MI5’s official history The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5 by Christopher Andrew may have given some people the idea that everything there is to say about the organisation’s history has already been said. In fact, it devotes only fifty-six pages to the First World War and, though there are a few other splendid books on their work in that period (and some terrible ones), much remains to be discovered and written.

Though the spies uncovered, arrested, charged and sentenced as a result of MI5’s work are pretty well covered in the literature (though I doubt many could name all sixty-five), one little-explored area is the progressive restrictions imposed upon, and eventual internment of, the 226 men of hostile origin or association (other than alien enemies) interned specifically because of MI5’s direct action. These were in addition to the thousands of German, Austro-Hungarian and Turkish men of military age or considered a security threat, some of whom had lived in Britain for years, who were interned and, in the case of most of the older men, eventually deported. Considering much of MI5’s work before August 1914 centred on identifying the potential threat posed by German and Austrian immigrants (including identifying them through illegal use of the 1911 census and the running of agents into their communities), this is a surprising omission, though a lot of hard work is required to find material, much of which appears to have been destroyed after the war. Philip De László, having been born in Hungary and naturalised as British (albeit after the start of the war), comes into the first category, though I doubt he could be considered typical of it. In his case there seems to have been concrete intelligence of hostile acts and hostile intent. His MI5 file, if it survived the organisation’s steady weeding of old material, has not been released, but sufficient information remains in files of related government agencies to reconstruct the bones of it.

This is not a nice story. De László comes across as, at least initially, an extremely likeable chap. Raised from poverty on the back of his own talents, a romantic who pursued his wife in the face of all kinds of objections from her posh relatives, a family man, a patriot (though for quite which side may be debated), he seems to have done his best for both sides of his family in the course of an international conflict that slaughtered millions and brought down empires. The standard biographies (one of which he helped write) show him as a confused and decent enough man, his patriotic instincts naturally divided, who made honest mistakes and was condemned for his decent endeavours by vindictive British authorities who were determined to get him to pay for errors it was easy enough to make. This is how he presented himself to the world for twenty years following his success before the Denaturalisation Committee in 1919 (the nearest he came to a trial), and he seems to have been successful. Unfortunately for him, and for his biographers, there was an unexamined and ticking time-bomb lurking in the Home Office and Treasury solicitors’ papers at The National Archives (TNA) in Kew. They present the other case – that seen by MI5, Special Branch and the Secret Intelligence Service – that he was a deliberate and cynical agent of an enemy power acting as both a source of important high-level intelligence and a peace propaganda source, spreading ill-will towards Britain’s allies and undermining the morale of his important clients among Britain’s elite. This is the evidence that will be presented here. Though I have made up my mind on the subject, others may come to a different conclusion, but it is a story that requires telling nonetheless.

There’s a contemporary resonance in this case, which illustrates the difficulty the intelligence agencies had, and still have, in pursuing people they suspect of being a danger to security. The evidence presented to the public at the Denaturalisation Committee in 1919 appeared – and indeed was – slight. If anything, it made the authorities look petty and spiteful, though that could be said of other cases, as we shall see. But there was more serious evidence, provided by the French secret service from a secret agent allegedly working at the heart of a German and Austrian intelligence-gathering network based in Switzerland, that never appeared in public. Even if it was examined secretly by the Denaturalisation Committee, it was dismissed without any serious consideration (they took fifteen minutes to clear De László on almost all counts, though the committee that reviewed his internment did treat it more seriously). Without the permission of the French, who would not want such a valuable and sensitive source compromised by exposure in court, MI5, the Police and the Home Office could not use this evidence to prosecute De László and there was no mechanism for secret courts in which he could be tried.

The decision by British judges, a couple of years ago, to release secret American documents relating to Binyam Mohamed’s treatment at Guantanamo Bay – and the resulting American threat to downgrade intelligence sharing with the UK – highlighted the delicate relationship between secret services and the information they exchange. The necessity to conceal the origin of secret intelligence has, on occasion, caused similar problems in other terrorist trials. The De László files at The National Archives show this has long been a problem – and that in the case of the prominent society artist, the reluctance of MI5 to reveal its sources worked to his advantage.

1

SPIESAND RUMOURSOF SPIES

FEBRUARY 1915 WAS the seventh month of a war that had been supposed by many to have been over by the previous Christmas. In London it was cold, but not unseasonably so. In Flanders the original British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had fought the Retreat from Mons, the Battle of the Marne and the First Battle of Ypres, and was horribly exhausted. Only the influx of fresh troops from the garrisons in the empire, Indian troops and battalions of the part-time Territorial Force had allowed them to hold their portion of the trench line that now snaked between the Belgian coast and the Swiss border. At sea the Royal Navy had had successes at the Battle of the Heligoland Bight in August 1914 when British cruisers and destroyers ambushed a German destroyer patrol, sinking three light cruisers and a destroyer, and at Dogger Bank in January 1915 where they sank the armoured cruiser Blucher. They’d also skirmished with German Zeppelins and seaplanes after the Royal Naval Air Service’s attempt to bomb the Zeppelin shed at Cuxhaven on Christmas Day. But the Navy too had taken some terrible casualties: three old cruisers, Aboukir, Crecy and Hogue had been sunk, within a couple of hours by one submarine, with the loss of 1,459 lives, and Rear Admiral Christopher Craddock’s South Atlantic Squadron had been effectively destroyed at the Battle of Coronel off the coast of Chile on 1 November 1914 (subsequently avenged at the Battle of the Falklands on 8 December).

At home, even the casual observer would notice the new recruits for the army training daily in the local parks and would know of their male relatives who had volunteered or were being pressured daily by the White Feather League who gave white feathers, denoting cowardice, to young men not in uniform. The human cost of the war was known; casualty lists in the newspapers named officers and men who were known to be killed, wounded or missing and covered several columns of newsprint every day. The public was perfectly aware of the price being paid by its soldiers and seamen but there was no rationing and, as yet, no blackout.

There had been other casualties that brought the fact that this was a modern, total war, home to civilians. German cruisers had shelled Great Yarmouth in November, fortunately without causing casualties in the town. They then, much more seriously, bombarded Hartlepool, Scarborough and Whitby on 16 December 1914, killing 137 and wounding 592, most of them civilians. Though there had long been a fear of air raids by the much-vaunted Zeppelin fleet, the first raids had been by German aircraft, dropping bombs into Dover Harbour on 21 December and making an abortive attack on London on Christmas Day. On 19 and 20 January, however, a Zeppelin had crossed the coast near Great Yarmouth and dropped six high explosive and seven incendiary bombs on the town. A sister ship dropped a scattering of small bombs on Norfolk villages and the bulk of its load onto King’s Lynn. Four civilians had been killed and sixteen injured. Newspaper correspondents regaled their readers with stories of houses with their doors and windows shattered, of children killed or horribly injured, of miraculous escapes and the composure of the populace under the threat of the airborne menace. If the Germans could carry out these raids with apparent impunity, could they not carry out the threat that had lingered in British minds since Erskine Childers published The Riddle of the Sands in 1903, a full-scale invasion of the country backed by a secret army of spies and saboteurs?

Stories of a secret army had been circulating for years. A popular subject for fiction, it made a good living for authors like William Le Queux whose novel The Invasion of 1910 (published in 1906) told the story of a German invasion supported by 100 spies, concealed among the German expatriate population, who had blown up key railway bridges and telegraph lines. He expanded on the theme in his Spies of the Kaiser: Plotting the Downfall of England in 1909, in which a German head agent in London led a group of 5,000 agents throughout the country.

The press took up the fascination with enemy spies and began reporting a series of fantastic stories alleging espionage activity. Some newspapers, with a bit more sense, rubbished the stories, not that it made much difference. The Western Times of 22 August 1908 summed up some of the alleged cases:

If an affable foreigner wanders amid the glades of Epping Forest, or takes a photograph of its leafy splendours, he is made the subject of excited letters to the press. The waiters who flock to … the East Coast resorts during our brief summer cannot beguile their scanty leisure by a little sea fishing without raising, in the fevered imagination of some onlooker, that they are taking soundings. Apprehensive publicists invite us to believe that, at a given signal, the foreign servants who throng some of our hotels will suddenly be revealed as a far more formidable phalanx of warriors than the wooden horse disclosed to the disconcerted vision of the people of Troy.

In the main, however, the press continued to run with the fancies of their readership, and in the Daily Mail, when it serialised The Invasion of 1910, the route taken by the German invaders was altered to have them march through and terrorise major towns where it was felt the Mail wasn’t selling well enough. Special maps were printed showing the route so that new readers could be encouraged to buy the paper to read how their town had fared. The paper added 80,000 to its circulation while the story was running. Le Queux’s mediocre plots and appalling literary style didn’t stop his books selling, or coming to the attention of the War Office where MO5, the small special intelligence section dealing with espionage abroad and counter-intelligence at home, were beginning to pick up a few reports of their own suggesting German espionage was taking place.

MO5 was headed by Major James Edmonds. He was almost as convinced of the German threat as Le Queux, who influenced him heavily, as did a more sober War Office analysis of Germany’s success in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, which showed, in part, it was owed to a highly organised secret service operating in France, to which the French had no response. A ruckus was being made in the press and questions raised in Parliament, including, ‘I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he has received any official information or reports from chief constables in the Eastern Counties as to espionage in England by Foreign nations; and, if so, whether he attaches any importance to the information.’ For these reasons Prime Minister Herbert Asquith instructed the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) to consider the dangers from German espionage to British naval ports and, almost incidentally, to look at British information on Germany itself.

The CID eventually recommended the formation of a Secret Service Bureau to carry out espionage at home and abroad. The foreign side went to Captain Mansfield Smith Cumming RN, who had a broad range of interests in technology, being a motorcar racer, an expert on engines and soon to learn to fly. Since most of the espionage to be done abroad was on behalf of the navy and targeted the German fleet, this is not surprising. Counter-intelligence at home went to 35-year-old Captain Vernon George Waldegrave Kell of the South Staffordshire Regiment, who was a fluent speaker of French, German, Russian and Italian. He had served in China in 1900 as aide de camp, and served on the staff (as special service officer) between 1900 and 1903. During the Boxer Rebellion he took part in the relief of Pekin and also learned Chinese. He had spent two years (1907–09) compiling the history of the Russo-Japanese War for the Imperial Defence Committee. He had also travelled extensively worldwide. Though not called it at the time, this was the origin of the MI5.

Kell assumed responsibility for a former Metropolitan Police Special Branch officer, William Melville, who had been used since 1904 as a kind of War Office private detective, and with his aid, and the assistance of a handful of other officers, began to try and track down enemy spies. Though there were plenty of rumours to be investigated, it was only when one of Kell’s officers accidentally overheard two Germans discussing a mysterious letter one of them had received from Germany asking him to supply information, that they got on the trail of actual espionage. From this slender lead, Kell’s small organisation was able to track down several German spies who were working for their Naval Intelligence Department, mainly by identifying the addresses they were sending their reports to and having all mail to those addresses stopped and checked by the Post Office. Kell’s team established the important principle that its secret methods were rarely revealed, and it waited until a known spy slipped up publicly or was reported as a possible spy by the police or public before it acted and had him or her arrested. Despite its successes against spies, it still had not been able to find the supposed network of saboteurs and this remained a source of worry. Were there still hundreds of German agents out there?

In addition to MI5 as a line of defence against spies, saboteurs and other political malefactors, there was the older Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police, which had been formed in 1883 as the Special Irish Branch, to deal with the spate of Irish republican bombings the country was then suffering from. The Irish problem gradually abated, but ‘The Branch’ continued in existence, taking over a number of roles relating to state security ranging from the basic checking of the bona fides of aliens within the Metropolitan Police seeking to naturalise as British, to what would now be described as royal and diplomatic protection and keeping an eye on the many foreigners who came to Britain for political reasons. A few Branch officers worked in foreign ports watching passengers to Britain, and there were some based at British ports watching arrivals and departures.

Because of the nature of their work, these officers were usually well-educated and frequently spoke several languages. Herbert Fitch – who once hid in a cupboard to eavesdrop during a Bolshevik Party meeting in London attended by Lenin – spoke French, German and Russian. Naturally, they liaised closely with the MI5 because MI5 officers did not have powers of arrest and preferred to work in secret. The Branch also had the manpower to carry out basic enquiries such as discreet chats with neighbours about individuals and watching railway stations, though the outbreak of war saw it too fully stretched, even though its numbers had been considerably augmented before the war to watch the Suffragette movement. Some men had gone to France with the army as the nucleus of the Intelligence Corps, and other officers were posted full time to the ports, but this still left a nucleus of about 100 experienced officers to carry out ‘political’ or sensitive investigations.

Once MI5 had decided on the arrest of a suspect, details were passed to Special Branch to carry out the arrest and to take over the case for prosecution, though MI5 officers would frequently appear at the trial as experts ‘from a Department of the War Office’. Close liaison between the two departments was essential, and MI5 commended 124 branch officers for their assistance at the end of the war. The Branch carried out its own investigations, but, MI5 later noted, not a single spy was caught by it working on its own; all successful prosecutions for espionage came from information provided by MI5.

Basil Thomson was head of the Metropolitan Police Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and also of Special Branch in his capacity as Assistant Commissioner (Crime) (ACC). These were the days when a well-educated man was assumed to be capable of doing just about anything, and Thomson was a case in point. Born in 1861, son of a Church of England priest who later became Archbishop of York, he’d been educated at Eton and New College, Oxford. Joining the Colonial Service, he served as a magistrate in Fiji and in New Guinea before being invalided back to Britain. He married and then returned to the Pacific where he was prime minister of Tonga for a time. Returning again to Britain, he wrote memoirs of his time in Fiji and Tonga, as well as a novel, while studying Law. He was called to the Bar in 1896 and then became deputy governor of Liverpool Prison, then governor of Dartmoor and Wormwood Scrubs and, between 1908 and 1913, secretary to the Prison Commission. In 1913 he was appointed Assistant Commissioner (Crime) for the Metropolitan Police (this was a time when senior police posts were usually held by men appointed from outside), with an office at Scotland Yard. These were the forces ranged against enemy spies in the event of war.

The outbreak of war came suddenly and unexpectedly, though, of course, the army and navy, as well as MI5, had plans in place to deal with events. The army called up its reserves and the part-time soldiers of the Territorial Force, and set in train sending the BEF to France. The navy had been at the annual Fleet Review in the Solent at the end of July 1914 so it was simply kept on standby as events unfolded and was perfectly ready when war was declared on 4 August.

Acting in part on the advice of MI5 when it came to security matters, the government, through King George V, hastily issued a proclamation commanding his subjects to:

obey and conform to all instructions and regulations which may be issued by Us or our Admiralty or Army Council, or any Officer of our Navy or Army … and not to hinder or obstruct, but to afford all assistance in their power to, any person acting in accordance with such instructions or regulations …

Within a few days this had crystallised into the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) that was rushed through Parliament. It gave the military sweeping powers to (among others) commandeer land and buildings and to prepare them for defence or destroy them; it gave them right of access to any building or property whatsoever, to remove people from an area, and to restrict the sale of alcohol. There were explicit restrictions on publication or communication of any information on the armed forces that might be of use to the enemy and bans on photographing, drawing, modelling or possessing plans of fortifications, docks or other installations. There were also bans on tampering or interfering with telephone or telegraph lines or having equipment to tap them, on damaging railways or attempting to injure soldiers guarding them, on possession of dynamite or other explosives, on spreading alarm or disaffection, showing unauthorised lights and on tampering with passes and documents. Anyone committing, attempting to commit or assisting in the commission of these offences would be tried by court martial and liable to a sentence of ‘penal servitude for life or any less punishment’. Sweeping powers were granted to ‘Competent Military Authorities’, defined by the Act as ‘any commissioned officer of His Majesty’s Naval or Military Forces, not below the rank of commander in the Navy, or Lieutenant Colonel in the Army, appointed by the Admiralty or Army Council, as the case may be, to perform in any place the duties of such an authority’.

DORA was passed simultaneously with the Aliens Restriction Act (again largely inspired by MI5), which imposed draconian restrictions on aliens (foreigners) of all nationalities. It restricted their arrival or departure to one of thirteen named ports and the landing of enemy aliens to only those who had been granted a permit. It also allowed Home Office aliens officers to restrict the landing of any alien and the legal detention of any alien landing without the correct authorisation, prevented them leaving the country without authority and obliged the master of any vessel to report aliens aboard and not allow them to land without the alien officer’s permission. Restrictions were also made on aliens resident in Britain. There were immediate restrictions placed upon where they could live – a whole series of areas adjacent to the coast, ports and military establishments becoming areas from which they were banned without permission. All aliens, whether hostile or not, were obliged to register with the Registration Officer (usually a senior police officer) of their district and to inform them of any planned move as well as advising the Registration Officer of their new district and registering their families. They were forbidden to keep firearms, petrol or other inflammable substances, a motor car, motor cycle or aircraft, any signalling apparatus of any kind, any cipher or code or to keep pigeons. A justice of the peace or policeman with the rank of superintendent or higher could sign a warrant authorising a police raid, using force if necessary, upon their premises at any time. Penalties for any breach of the act could not exceed a fine of £100 or a prison sentence of six months, with or without hard labour.

The Aliens Restriction Bill had been presented to the House of Commons by the Home Secretary, Mr Reginald McKenna, on 5 August 1914 when he told the House:

One of the main objects of the Bill is to remove or restrain the movements of undesirable aliens, especially with a view to the removal or detention of spies. Information in the possession of the Government proves that cases of espionage have been frequent in recent years, and many spies have been caught and dealt with by the police. Within the last twenty-four hours no fewer than twenty-one spies, or suspected spies, have been arrested in various places all over the country, chiefly in important military or naval centres, some of them long known to the authorities to be spies.

It’s an interesting statement. In later years, especially when budgets were being restricted or there was talk of amalgamating MI5 with one or other of the intelligence services, the great spy round-up of 4 August 1914 would be trotted out to justify MI5’s existence. The list of agents arrested has appeared in various forms over the years (usually including men arrested on their own initiative by local police on what appear to be highly suspect grounds), but even the most theoretically significant list, compiled by Professor Christopher Andrew and his researchers for the MI5 official history, can’t get round the fact that, of the twenty-two spies listed, only ten were arrested on 4 August and the last wasn’t arrested until the 16th. But the story was out; it was in Hansard and in the newspapers, so it must have been true!

The passing of the two pieces of legislation didn’t calm the spy scare; in fact the announcement that twenty-one had been rounded up on the first day of the war probably boosted it. In an early debate in the House of Lords, Lord Leith of Fyvie alleged that the law, as it stood, gave the police few powers against aliens ‘against whom we have no absolute proof’ and also that some eighty-two enemy aliens were at large in Aberdeen, some of whom were ‘known’ to have been signalling on the coast and others to have been photographing fishing boats. He went on:

A much more serious item is this. Within a mile-and-a-half of our principal naval wireless station at Aberdeen lives a noted German. He is an ex-captain in the Prussian Army and has been called out, twice. Each time it has been said, ‘Never mind; you stay there.’ Anyhow he has gone through two wars with honours given to him, and yet he is allowed to reside within a mile-and-a-half of our principal naval wireless station. The Police have no power to go into his house. They have at present two men constantly shadowing him.

The number of alleged spies was legion. Alfred Thielemann was charged with being in possession of photographic apparatus, military maps and other items without a permit. A detective officer described how he’d found a number of photographic negatives of Hull harbour and Liverpool docks as well as permits to photograph the Port of London and the Manchester Ship Canal. The defendant pleaded that he was employed by a German company, the European Lantern Slide Company, which had an office in Newgate Street, London, and that he had been sent from Berlin in April to take photographs for them and had been unable to get back to Germany on the outbreak of war. Remanding him in custody, the magistrate remarked, ‘This case may turn out to be one of importance.’ It didn’t.

A German named William Hark was arrested at the headquarters of the Royal Engineers’ Territorial Regiment whilst dressed in military uniform. He was charged with failing to register but pointed out he’d lived in England for twenty-five years and served as a volunteer soldier for twenty, so he had assumed the law did not apply to him. An officer vouched for his service and character, but he was remanded in custody.

Sergeant Bottcher of the 6th (Territorial Force) Battalion of the Essex Regiment was investigated because:

while stationed on the East Coast, [he] endeavoured to get his late employer to ask for him to come to London for three days, the said Serjeant associating with the cook at a house the owner of which is a Sin Feiner and the cook of which was in the habit of visiting Germany.

Whatever the result of the investigation, Bottcher went on to serve honourably in the Middle East, ending the war as a company quartermaster sergeant major with the 1914/15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal and Territorial Force Efficiency Medal.

A member of a Southsea concert party who was on a ferry from Ventnor was arrested for looking at a naval vessel through a pair of opera glasses, but released after a short detention.

Mrs Lockwood, wife of a former army officer, reported a suspicious German on Primrose Hill whom she had seen walking his dog. When she turned to look at him, she saw ‘a pigeon on a level with his head about three yards in front flying away … though she did not actually see the pigeon leave his hand, she considered it must have come from him (and) she noticed a little white paper under the pigeon’s wing’. Peter Duhn, aged 28, described as a well-dressed German living in Charlotte Crescent, Regent’s Park, had quite correctly registered himself with the police as required, but was charged with not notifying them that he owned a pigeon (though no evidence apart from that of Mrs Lockwood seems to have been presented that he did). He was convicted and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment.

It wasn’t just the police and MI5 that were deluged with reports. A naval investigator in Devon submitted a report in January 1915 on a house known as ‘Snail’s Castle’ near Totnes, where the owner, a London-based lawyer, Mr Blackwell, had been reported for his suspicious behaviour. He visited the property in the company of a mysterious lady and was reported on one occasion to have taken a car, late at night, to Torcross Sands and to have been left there with no obvious means of going on. An interview with the driver proved that, in fact, he’d been taken to a local hotel. His visits were irregular and, it was said, he always arrived late at night, which had occasioned much gossip. As the investigator noted, ‘Mr Blackwell is a married man and the lady who accompanies him to Snail’s Castle is not his wife, which may account for something.’ It almost certainly accounted for everything.

The military were inevitably caught up in the scare as well. MT1(b), the War Office section that collated and circulated home defence intelligence reports, issued regular updates. These included those of an army officer who had visited the works of the Danish Butter Company at Erith and reported:

I climbed to the roof which is made of concrete 2 ft thick. This roof is flat and dominates the two Railways North and South of the river, the Arsenal, the Purfleet magazines and the whole of the river up to Tilbury on the one side and the Becton Gas Works on the other. There are a considerable number of people employed here, and the majority are Germans, the Manager of the business we learned is a retired German Naval Lieutenant, and we particularly noticed that any of the workpeople who passed us during our Inspection of the Buildings invariably saluted him.

Scores of other buildings, both industrial and domestic, were examined by the police and soldiers who commented on their positions commanding important roads and railways. Other reports detail strange lights seen on the coast, apparently signalling to submarines, though the reports are usually inconclusive. There are reports of strange motor cars in the vicinity of vital points, of strangers buying Scottish islands that might be used as submarine or Zeppelin bases, and mysterious persons asking too many questions.

As far as I can see there is only one genuine case of spying that MT1(b) picked up – that of ‘a yacht, the Sayonara (which) has been cruising round certain ports on the West Coast of Ireland’. Unfortunately, and unbeknown to the military authorities, this was actually part of a Naval Intelligence and Secret Intelligence Service operation to examine the coast for German submarine bases. Needless to say, it found none.

There were voices that were all too keen to keep the ‘spy menace’ in the public eye for their own interests. William Le Queux wrote a long article in The People on 28 February 1915, headlined ‘Hotbeds of Alien Enemies and Spies in the Heart of the Metropolis’,alleging the Home Office was turning a blind eye to ‘treason mongers and traitors’. It told vivid tales of the authorities allowing ‘the scum of Europe’ to sit in obscure Soho cafés and restaurants gloating over their ‘piratical successes’ (the U-Boats) and discussing the coming of the Zeppelins as a signal for thousands of secret agents to combine, presumably in the previously much-vaunted attacks on military and political targets. He described ‘a man singing an obscene German song, in which the vilest abuse was levelled against England – our one enemy’, with the English being described as ‘big heads’, ‘swine’ and ‘vermin’. A confidential Special Branch report described Le Queux as a man ‘who writes sensational novels on the secret service activities of Germany’ and noted that ‘Mr Le Queux, in this way advertises himself and his works’. Special Branch was quite right about Le Queux – and, as events were to show, there were others quite happy to jump on the bandwagon of hostility to aliens.

There were suspicions that highly-placed Germans and other enemy aliens, ‘some naturalised, some not’, were in secret sympathy with Germany and might pose a security risk. An anonymous writer to the letters page in The Times advised that the newspaper’s correspondence, telephone calls and telegrams be closely monitored, adding in a sinister manner, ‘I do not wish to be an alarmist, but I know what I am writing about.’

The Times, commenting on the plethora of reports coming from around the country and the large number of letters it had received from the public, advised, ‘The duty of the public is a simple one. It is to report to the police wherever they think there is justification for such a step. A watchful public will form an excellent adjunct to the already hard worked police and the Special Police Force.’ With advice such as this, from such an august source, was it surprising that spy fever and fear of foreigners gripped the nation throughout the war?

2

CENSORS, COUNTER-SPIESANDA SUSPECT

THE OUTBREAK OF war saw the creation of two other, highly effective, defensive and intelligence-gathering organisations. The monitoring of telegrams and letters, as advocated by the anonymous Times correspondent, began as soon as the war started. During the Boer War there had been extensive interception of telegrams round the world, and though the organisation responsible for this had been wound up, the necessary machinery still existed to restart it. Cable censorship began immediately, as the War Office had a plan and officers in place to carry out the work. The British had realised at the start of the war that control of information was going to be vital. Their first act of the war was to signal the Post Office cable ship Alert, standing by off the German coast, to grapple, cut and reel up the German transatlantic cables, thus forcing the Germans to use neutral cables, which ran through London and could be intercepted. Among the countries that had no cable system of their own was Holland, which was obliged to use the British-controlled lines, as were the other neutral countries in northern Europe. The elimination of key radio transmitters such as the German one in Togoland also helped force the Germans to use neutral cables or their own powerful transmitters in Germany, which could, of course, be picked up by anyone who knew the frequency. Naval Intelligence soon set to work breaking German ciphers, which they managed to do with great success.

During August 1914, censorship was introduced on all post to and from Holland and Scandinavia. Communication with family and friends in enemy countries was not actually banned and censorship rules relating to harmless social communications with alien enemies were simple. Provided they were sent through the normal mail via an intermediary in a neutral country, against whom nothing was suspected, communications were allowed to pass abroad. A note on the subject on De László’s file (which has been crossed out) does make the point that, ‘This course avoided undue hardship and provided HM Government with a lot of useful information.’ The official report on postal censorship states that, gradually, from scraps picked up in individual letters, it was possible to build up a picture of which men were being called up, details of where units were posted, information on troop morale, casualties, details of how German ships in distant waters received supplies, information on new submarines and, from postal censorship sources alone, the writing of a ‘Who’s Who’ of the German Naval Zeppelin Service with biographies of most of its officers. Letters sent through suspect intermediaries were thoroughly scrutinised by the censorship staff and, unless they were clearly utterly harmless, were stopped from going forward.

Business letters and transfers of money were also allowed to pass, provided they were licensed by the Board of Trade or Treasury and sent through an unobjectionable intermediary. The chief postal censor received copies of all licences issued under the Trading with the Enemy legislation so that any correspondence could be checked against the current list of licences.

In August 1917, arrangements were made with Thomas Cook & Sons to act as a bulk intermediary to help poorer people who might otherwise struggle to find an approved neutral, though other approved intermediaries could still be used.

Any letter posted in the usual way (i.e. without going through an approved intermediary and without the relevant authority), within Britain but to an address abroad that hinted at transfers of money to an enemy, were passed to the relevant authorities for action to be taken. Similarly, any letter that mentioned or hinted at communication being sent through the agency of a neutral embassy, consulate or legation should also be passed over, firstly to the Foreign Office, so that they could, if necessary, make representations to the legation to have it stopped, and secondly to any other authority concerned with the breach of the law. As we shall see, due to the volume of mail being checked, some such correspondence was not always identified.

Though the censorship services were by no means perfect, especially early in the war, they did valuable work. They’d helped MI5 to score its first success against visiting German agents when, in August and September 1914, a telegram and letter sent to a suspicious address in Stockholm were identified. The Germans were not aware that their pre-war addresses for receiving spy communications had been compromised, and continued to use them. A Post Office clerk, Malcolm Brodie, a specialist in the clandestine opening of envelopes and in codes and invisible inks who had been seconded to MI5 since July 1913, identified the message in the telegram as a code and, on opening the letter, found a sealed envelope inside addressed to Berlin which, when opened, contained a letter in German giving details of shipping losses and locations of naval vessels. Further letters were intercepted and MI5 realised the sender was going under the name of Inglis and was based in Edinburgh. Edinburgh Police tracked down where he had been staying but in the meantime another intercepted letter revealed he had travelled to Dublin and that the amount and quality of the information he was sending were dangerously improved. The Royal Irish Constabulary traced him to Killarney and arrested him in his hotel there. He turned out to be Carl Hans Lody, a German who had spent time in America and could pose successfully as an American. Despite MI5’s objections, he was tried in public at the Old Bailey. Against overwhelming evidence against him, his behaviour in the dock, where he was revealed to be a German officer and not just a ‘common spy’, won him much admiration. He was, nevertheless, found guilty and sentenced to death. He was shot by firing squad in the Tower of London on 6 November 1914, the first of a dozen to be executed there during the war.

The censorship department continued to keep up its good work. On 16 February 1915, cable censors intercepted a suspect telegram addressed to ‘Van Riemsdyk, 8 Orange-Straat, The Hague’ which read, ‘Please forward amount to László Uteza 28 and wire Lamar postponing journey writing.’ The censor had added the note, ‘The word Uteza in annexed message is “street” in the Hungarian language, and László is a very usual Hungarian name. This message is clearly for Hungary.’ As part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with which Britain had been at war since 12 August 1914, this appeared to refer to a breach of the defence regulations on sending money to enemy countries, and the telegram was forwarded to MI5 at its HQ in Watergate House in York Buildings just off the Strand.

Thanks to rapid expansion and the calling up of former intelligence officers, some of whom had served previously in the Boer War, by the beginning of February 1915 MI5 consisted of twenty-three officers (from the army and navy) and officials (the civilian equivalent of officers), and forty-three clerical staff (mostly female, though with a few ex-soldier clerks), orderlies, chauffeurs, telephone operators, domestics and Boy Scouts and Girl Guides (who acted as internal messengers). Almost all had joined since August 1914, and many were still learning the intricacies of the index card system, the file registry and the procedures for recording and looking up information. In addition, under William Melville, there were two other detectives for making discreet enquiries and three male Post Office employees with expertise in opening envelopes and detecting invisible inks. Melville also controlled three secret agents on behalf of MI5 who infiltrated the alien communities. It wasn’t a large organisation, and what resources it had had been extremely stretched since the outbreak of hostilities, with hundreds of reports from the public, police and military coming in weekly, as well as just as many requests for information. The filing system all but collapsed. Though the appointment of a War Office clerk, Miss Steuart, prevented things getting worse, it was only with the February 1915 appointment of Edith Annie Lomax, a former senior secretary in the music publishing industry, that things began to improve once she grabbed the staff by the scruff of the neck and imposed the necessary levels of discipline and rigorous procedures. The message from the censor clearly seemed to indicate an attempt by someone to transmit money to an enemy country and needed following up.

Lacking resources of its own, MI5 relied heavily on the local police to carry out low-level investigations on its behalf, and a request was sent to Bath Police to investigate the sender of the telegram. A few days later they received a report from Inspector Marshfield dated 22 February, which read: