My adventures as a German secret agent

Gross Lichterfelde! As I write, it all comes back to me clearly, in spite of the full years that have passed—this, my first home in Berlin. A huge pile of buildings set in a suburb of the city, grim and military in appearance; and in fact, as I soon discovered.

I was to become a cadet, it seems; and where in Germany could one receive better training than in this same Gross Lichterfelde?

At home I had had some small experience with the exactions of the gymnasium; but now I found that this was but so much child’s play in comparison to the life at Gross Lichterfelde. We were drilled and dragooned from morning till night: mathematics, history, the languages—they were not taught us, they were literally pounded into us. And the military training! I am not unfamiliar with the curricula of Sandhurst, of St. Cyr, even of West Point, but I honestly believe that the training we had to undergo was fully as arduous and as technical as at any of those schools. And we were only boys.

Military strategy and tactics; sanitation; engineering; chemistry; in fact, any and every study that could conceivably be of use to these future officers of the German Army; to all of these must we apply ourselves with the utmost diligence. And woe to the student who shirked!

Then there was the endless drilling, that left us with sore muscles and minds so worn with the monotony of it that we turned even to our studies with relief. And the supervision! Our very play was regulated.

Can you wonder that we hated it and likened the cadet school to a prison? And can you imagine how galling it was to me, who had come to Berlin seeking romance and found drudgery?

But we learned. Oh, yes. The war has shown how well we learned.

There was one relief from the constant study which was highly prized by all the cadets at Gross Lichterfelde. It was the custom to select from our school a number of youths to act as pages at the Imperial court; and lucky were the ones who were detailed to this service. It meant a vacation, at the very least, to say nothing of a change from the Spartan fare of the cadet school.

I must have been a student for a full three months before my turn came; long enough, at any rate, for me to receive the news of my selection with the utmost delight. But I had not been on service at the Imperial Palace for more than a few days when a state dinner was given in honor of a guest at court. He was a young prince of a certain grand-ducal house, which by blood was half Russian and half German. I recall the appearance of myself and the other pages, as we were dressed for the function. Ordinarily we wore a simple undress cadet uniform, but that evening a striking costume was provided: nothing less than a replica of the garb of a mediaeval herald—tabard and all—for Wilhelm II has a flair for the feudal. From my belt hung a capacious pouch, which, pages of longer standing than I assured me, was the most important part of my equipment; since by custom the ladies were expected to keep these pouches comfortably filled with sweetmeats. Candy for a cadet! No wonder every boy welcomed his turn at page duty, and went back reluctantly to the asceticism of Gross Lichterfelde.

That was my first sight of an Imperial dinner. The great banquet hall that overlooks the square on the Ufer, was ablaze with lights. The guests—the men in their uniforms even more than the women—made a brilliant spectacle to the eyes of a youngster from the provinces; but most brilliant of all was Wilhelm II, resplendent in the full dress uniform of a field marshal. I can recall him as he sat there, lordly, arrogant, yet friendly, but never seeming to forget the monarch in the host. It seemed to me that he loved to disconcert a guest with his remarks; it delighted him to set the table laughing at some one’s else expense.

By chance, during the banquet, it fell to me to render service to the young prince. Once, as I moved behind his chair, a German Princess exclaimed, “Oh, doesn’t the page resemble his Highness?”

The Kaiser looked at me sharply.

“Yes,” he agreed, “they might well be twins.” Then, impulsively lifting up his glass, he flourished it toward the Russo-German prince and drank to him.

That was all there was to the incident—then. I returned to Gross Lichterfelde the next morning, and proceeded to think no more of the matter. Nor did it come to my mind when a few weeks later, I was suddenly summoned to Berlin, and driven, with one of my instructors, to a private house in a street I did not know. (It was the Wilhelmstrasse, and the residence stood next to Number 75, the Foreign Office. It was the house Berlin speaks of as Samuel Meyer’s Bude—in other words, the private offices of the Chancellor and His Imperial Majesty.)

We entered a room, bare save for a desk or two and a portrait of Wilhelm I, where my escort surrendered me to an official, who silently surveyed me, comparing his observations with a paper he held, which apparently contained my personal measurements. Later a photograph was taken of me, and then I was bidden to wait. I waited for several hours, it seemed to me, before a second official appeared—a large, round-faced man, soldierly despite his stoutness—who greeted my escort politely and, taking a photograph from his pocket, proceeded to scrutinize me carefully. After a moment he turned to my escort.

“Has he any identifying marks on his body?” he asked.

My escort assured him that there were none.

“Good!” he exclaimed; and a moment later we were driving back toward Gross Lichterfelde—I quite at sea about the whole affair, but not daring to ask questions about it. Idle curiosity was not encouraged among cadets.

I was not to remain in ignorance for long, however. A few days later I was ordered to pack my clothing, and with it was transferred to a quiet hotel on the Dorotheen Strasse. The hotel was not far from the War Academy, and there I was placed under the charge of an exasperatingly puttering tutor, who strove to perfect me on but three points. He insisted that my French be impeccable; he made me study the private and detailed history of a certain Russian house; and he was most particular about the way I walked and ate, about my knowledge of Russian ceremonies and customs—in a word, about my deportment in general.

The weeks passed. At last, by dint of much hard work, I became sufficiently expert in my studies to satisfy my tutor. I was taken back to the house on the Wilhelmstrasse, where the round-faced man again inspected me. He talked with me at length in French, made me walk before him and asked me innumerable questions about the family history of the house I had been studying. Finally he drew a photograph from his pocket—the same, I fancy, which had figured in our previous interview.

“Do you recognize this face?” he inquired, offering me the picture.

I started. It might have been my own likeness. But no! That uniform was never mine. Then in a moment I realized the truth and with the realization the whole mystery of the last few weeks began to be clear to me. The photograph was a portrait of the young Prince Z——; my double, whom I had served at the banquet.

“It is a very remarkable likeness,” said the round-faced man. “And it will be of good service to the Fatherland.”

He eyed me for a moment impressively before continuing.

“You are to go to Russia,” he told me. “Prince Z—— has been invited to visit his family in St. Petersburg, and he has accepted the invitation. But unfortunately Prince Z—— has discovered that he cannot go. You will, therefore become the Prince—for the time being. You will visit your family, note everything that is said to you and report to your tutor, Herr ——, who will accompany you and give you further instructions.

“This is an important mission,” he added solemnly, “but I have no doubt that you will comport yourself satisfactorily. You have been taught everything that is necessary; and you have already shown yourself a young man of spirit and some discretion. We rely upon both of these qualities.” He bowed in dismissal of us, but as we turned to go he spoke again.

“Remember,” he was saying. “From this day you are no longer a cadet. You are a prince. Act accordingly.”

That was all. We were out of the door and halfway to our hotel before I realized to the full the great adventure I had embarked upon. Embarked? Shanghaied would be the better term. I had had no choice in the matter, whatsoever. I had not even uttered a word during the interview.

At any rate, that night I left for Petrograd—still St. Petersburg at that time—accompanied by my tutor and two newly engaged valets, who did not know the real Prince. Of what was ahead I had no idea, but as my tutor had no doubts of the success of our mission, I wasted little time in speculating upon the future.

What the real prince’s motive was in agreeing to the masquerade, and where he spent his time while I was in Russia, I have never been able to discover. From what followed, I surmise that he was strongly pro-German in his sympathies but distrusted his ability to carry through the task in hand.

In St. Petersburg I discovered that my “relatives”—whom I had known to be very exalted personages—were inclined to be more than hospitable to this young kinsman whom they had not seen in a long time. I found myself petted and spoiled to a delightful degree; indeed I had a truly princely time. The only drawback was that, as the constant admonitions of my tutor reminded me, I could spend my princely wealth only in such ways as my—shall I say, predecessor?—would have done. He, alas, was apparently a graver youth than I.

So two weeks passed, while I was beginning to wish that the masquerade would continue indefinitely, when one day my tutor sent for me.

“So,” he said, “We have had play enough, not so? Now we shall have work.”

In a few words he explained the situation to me. Russia, it seemed, was about to enter into an agreement with England, regarding what appeared to be practically a partitioning of Persia. Already a certain Baron B—— (let me call him) was preparing to leave St. Petersburg with instructions to find out under what circumstances the British Government would enter into pourparlers on the subject. Berlin, whose interests in the Near East would be menaced by such an agreement, needed information—and delay. I was to secure both. It was the old trick of using a little instrument to clog the mechanism of a great machine.

Let me explain here a feature of the drawing up of international treaties and agreements which, I think, is not generally understood. Most of us who read in the newspapers that such and such a treaty is being arranged between the representatives of two countries, believe that the terms are even then being decided upon. As a matter of fact these terms have long since been determined by other representatives of the two countries concerned, and the present meeting is merely for the formal and public ratification of a treaty that has already been secretly made. The usual stages in the making of a treaty are three: First, an unofficial inquiry by one government into the willingness or unwillingness of the other government to enter into a discussion of the question at issue. This is usually done by a man who has no official standing as a diplomat at the moment, but whose affiliations with officials in the second country have given him an influence there which will stand his government in good stead. After a willingness has been expressed by both sides to enter into discussions, official pourparlers are held in which the terms of the agreement are discussed and decided upon. Finally the treaty is formally ratified by the Foreign Ministers or special envoys of the countries involved. This secrecy in the first two stages is necessitated by the fear of meddling on the part of other governments, and also by a desire on the part of any country making overtures to avoid a possible rebuff from the other; and it explains why negotiations which are publicly entered into never fail.

But to return to my adventures. My Government had learned of the impending pourparlers between Britain and Russia; it knew that Baron B——’s instructions would contain the conditions which Russia considered desirable. What was necessary was to secure these instructions.

Now, my tutor had, long before this, seen to it that I should be on friendly terms with various members of the baron’s household; and he had been especially insistent that I pay a good deal of attention to the young daughter of the house, whom I shall call Nevshka. I had wondered at the time why he should do this; but I obeyed his instructions with alacrity. Nevshka was charming.

Now I saw the purpose of this carefully fostered friendship.

“The baron will spend this evening at the club,” I was informed. “He will return, according to his habit, promptly at twelve. You will visit his house this evening, paying a call upon Nevshka. You will contrive to set back the clock so that his home coming will be in the nature of a surprise to her. The hour will be so late that she, knowing her father’s strictness, will contrive to get you out of the house without his seeing you. That is your opportunity! You must slip from the salon into the rear hall—but do not leave the house. And if, young man, with such an opportunity, you cannot discover where these papers are hidden and secure them, you are unworthy of the trust that your government has placed in you.”

I nodded my comprehension. In other words I was to take advantage of Nevshka’s friendship in order to steal from her father—I was to perform an act from which no gentleman could help shrinking. And I was going to do it with no more qualms of conscience than, in time of war, I should have felt about stealing from an enemy general the plan of an attack.

For countries are always at war—diplomatically. There is always a conflict between the foreign ambitions of governments; always an attempt on the part of each country to gain its own ends by fair means or foul. Every man engaged in diplomatic work knows this to be true. And he will serve his government without scruple, for well he knows that some seemingly dishonorable act of his may be the means of averting that actual warfare which is only the forlorn hope that governments resort to when diplomatic means of mastery have failed.

So I undertook my mission with no hesitation, rather with a thrill of eagerness. I pretended to be violently interested in Nevshka (no difficult task, that) and time sped by so merrily that even had I not turned back the hands of the clock, I doubt if the lateness of the hour would have seriously concerned either of us. Oh, yes, my tutor—who, as you of course have guessed by now, was no mere tutor—had analyzed the situation correctly.

As the baron was heard at the door, I drew out my watch.

“Nevshka, your clock is slow. It is already midnight.”

Nevshka started.

“Come!” she exclaimed. “Father must not see you. He would be furious at your being here at this hour.” In a panic she glanced about the salon. “Go out that way.” And she pointed to a door at the rear, one that opened on a dimly lit hallway.

I went. I heard the baron express his surprise that Nevshka was still awake. I heard her lie—beautifully, I assure you. And I remained hidden while the baron worked in his library for a while; hardly daring to breathe until I heard him go up the stairs to his bedroom.

He was a careless man, the baron. Or perhaps he had been reading Poe, and believed that the most obvious place of concealment was the safest. At any rate, there in a drawer of his desk, protected only by the most defenseless of locks, were the papers—a neat statement of the terms upon which Russia would discuss this Persian matter with England.

I returned home with my prize, to find my tutor awaiting me. He said no word of commendation when I gave him the papers, but I knew by his expression that he was well pleased with my work. And I went to bed, delighted with myself, and dreaming of the great things that were to come.

The next day we left Petersburg. A German resident of the city had telephoned my relatives, warning them that a few cases of cholera had appeared. Would it not, he suggested (Oh, it was mere kind thoughtfulness on his part) be best to let the young prince return to Germany until the danger was over? His parents would be worried. Indeed, it would be best, my “relatives” agreed. So with regret they bade leave of me; and in the most natural manner in the world I returned to Berlin.

Wilhelmstrasse 76 again! The round-faced man again, but this time less military, less unbending, in his manner. I had done well, he told me. My exploit had attracted the favorable attention of a very exalted personage. If I could hold my tongue—who knows what might be in store for me?

That was the end of the matter, so far as I was concerned. But in the history of European politics it was only the beginning of the chapter.

It might be well, at this point, to recall the political situation in Europe, as it affected England, Russia and Germany at this time. Even two years before—in 1905—it had become evident to all students of international affairs that the next great conflict, whenever it should come, would be between England and Germany; and England realizing this, had already begun to seek alliances which would stand between her and German ambitions of world dominance. The Entente with France had been the first step in the formation of protective friendships; and although this friendship had suffered a strain during the Russo-Japanese War, because of the opposing sympathies of the two countries, the end of the war healed all differences. The defeat of Russia removed all immediate danger of a Slavic menace against India. To England, then, the weakened condition of Russia offered an excellent opportunity for an alliance that would draw still more closely the “iron ring around Germany.” Immediately she took the first steps leading toward this alliance.

Now, Russia stood badly in need of two things. War-torn and threatened by revolution, the government could rehabilitate itself only by a liberal amount of money. But where to get it? France, her ally, and normally her banker, was slow, in this instance to lend—and it was only through England’s intervention that the Czar secured from a group of Paris and London bankers the money with which to finance his government and defeat the revolution.

But more than money, Russia needed an ice-free seaport to take the place of Port Arthur, which she had lost; and for this there were only two possible choices: Constantinople or a port on the Persian Gulf. In either of these aims she was opposed by Britain, the traditional enemy of a Russian Constantinople, on the one hand, and the possessor of a considerable “sphere of interest” in the Persian Gulf on the other.

So matters stood, when in August, 1907, but a few weeks after my masquerade, Sir Arthur Nicholson, acting for England, and Alexander Iswolsky, acting for Russia, signed the famous Anglo-Russian Agreement, providing for the distribution of Persia into three strips, the northern and southern of which would be respectively Russian and British zones of influence; providing also, in a secret clause, that Russia would give England military aid in the event of a war between Germany and England!

Meantime what was Germany doing?

She had, you may be sure, no intention of allowing England to best her in the game of intrigue. Her interests in the Near East were commercial rather than military; but she could not see them threatened by an Anglo-Russian occupation of Persia, such as the Agreement portended. Then, too, she was bound to consider the possible effect on Turkey, in whom she was taking an ever-increasing (and none too altruistic) interest.

The details of what followed I can only surmise. I know that in the time between my trip to Russia and the signing of that Agreement, on August 31, the Kaiser held two conferences: one on August 3, with the Czar at Swinemunde; the other on August 14, with Edward VII, at the Castle of Wilhelmshohe. And when, on September 24th, the terms were published, they were bitterly attacked by a portion of the English press, not so much because of the danger to Persia, as because of the fact that Russia got the best of the bargain![1]

Had the Kaiser succeeded in having these terms changed? Who knows? Certainly one can trace the hand of German diplomacy in the events of the next seven years, most of which are a matter of common knowledge. The steady aggressions of Russia in Persia during the troubled years of 1910-1912; the almost open flouting of the terms of the treaty, which expressly guaranteed Persian integrity; the constant growth of German influence, culminating in the Persian extension of the German-owned Bagdad Railway; the founding of a German school and a hospital in Teheran, jointly supported by Germany and Persia; and finally, the celebrated Potsdam Agreement of 1910, between Russia and Germany, in which Germany agreed to recognize Russia’s claim to Northern Persia as its sphere of influence, which provided for a further rapprochement between the two countries in the matter of railroad construction and commercial development generally, and which has been generally supposed to contain a guarantee that neither country would join “any combination of Powers that has any aggressive tendency against the other.”

And England did not protest, in spite of the fact that the Potsdam Agreement absolutely negatived her own treaty with Russia and made it, in the language of one writer, “a farce and a deception!” Why? Was it because she believed that when war came, as it inevitably must, Russia would forget this new alliance in allegiance to the old?

England was mistaken, if she believed so. Russia—Imperial Russia—was never so much the friend of Germany as when, neglecting the war on her own Western front, she sent her armies into the Caucasus, persuaded the British to undertake the Dardanelles expedition, and, following her own plans of Asiatic expansion, betrayed England!

As I write this the Kut el Amara muddle is creating a great stir in the allied countries. Lord Hardinge, Viceroy of India, and the government of India have been severely blamed for sending General Townsend into Mesopotamia with insufficient material, medical supplies and troops. At the time that the move was made the explanation given for it was that it was done in order to protect the oil pipes supplying the British navy in those waters from being destroyed by the enemy. There was no doubt in my mind at that time, in spite of the fact that I was in prison and communication with the outside was very meagre, that this was not the real reason. Subsequent developments have shown—and the abandonment of the inquiry instituted by the British Government about this affair only further supports my contention—that Russia intended to use England’s helpless position to secure for herself an access to the Persian Gulf. Grand Duke Nicholas himself abandoned the campaign on the Eastern front to go to the Caucasus. The Gallipoli enterprise which turned out to be such a monumental failure was undertaken upon his instigation. Do you think for one second that if Imperial Russia had thought England was able to capture Constantinople, a city which she herself has been wanting for centuries, she would have invited England to do so? The fact is that the Gallipoli enterprise tied up all of England’s available reserves so that the English could practically do nothing to forestall the Russian movements to the Persian Gulf. The Government of India, realizing the danger, sent General Townsend upon the famous Bagdad campaign rather as a demonstration, than as a military enterprise. I will quote from my diary which I kept while in prison.

“Just read in The Times: ‘British moving north into Mesopotamia to protect oil pipes and capture Bagdad.’ I don’t need to read Punch any more, The Times being just as funny. My dear friends, you didn’t move up there for that reason. You went up there so as to be able to tell your Russian friends that there was no need to come further south as you were there already.”

As part of the Russian Army had already advanced as far as Kermansha, General Townsend disregarded all military rules and tactics in his desperate attempt to keep the Russians from going further South, paying very little attention to securing his line of communication, and he was subsequently cut off from his base and forced to surrender to the Turks.

In the early part of the war Russia did not try to gain anything at the expense of Germany but consistently applied herself to the task of enriching herself at the expense of England. Imperial Russia as an ally has constantly been fighting England and done the Allied cause more damage than the German army.

But Imperial Russia wrote her own death sentence by her treachery. There was a revolution in Russia ...

But I anticipate.

That is the story of my little expedition into Russia—and of what it brought about.

As for me, I was sent back to Gross Lichterfelde, where I abruptly ceased to be a young prince, and became once more a humble cadet. But only to outside eyes. Dazzled by the success of my first mission, I regarded myself as a superman among the cadets. Life loomed romantically before me. I told myself that I was to consort with princes and beautiful noblewomen and to spend money lavishly. The future seemed to promise a career that was the merriest, maddest, for which a man could hope.

I laugh sometimes now when I think of the dreams I had in those days. I was soon to learn that the life which fate had thrust upon me was set with traps and pitfalls which might not easily be escaped. I was to learn many lessons and to know much suffering; and I was to discover that the finding of my “document” was only the beginning of a chain of events that were to control my whole life—and that its influence over my career had not ended.

But at that time I was all hopes and rosy dreams—of my future, of myself, occasionally of Nevshka.

Nevshka. Is she still as charming as ever?