Queer people

Early in 1915 the Germans began to organise spy-receiving offices in Holland. Usually they pretended to be legitimate commercial agencies. Sometimes one member of a not too prosperous firm of commission agents would lend his offices for the purpose; sometimes a ‘business’ was opened in some upper room, where a few samples of cheap cigars and other goods were on view. Quite early in the year it was discovered that some foreigner who could write fluent English was sending regular communications to one of these addresses in a simple secret ink, and it was evident that he was the sort of person who would find out something which might at any time be of great use to the enemy. The letters were posted at various places in London, and there was no clue at all to the sender’s address. Like all spies, he was continually demanding money, and it was hoped for some time that a remittance from Holland would disclose his identity, but in the end the dénouement came about in quite another way. A letter was intercepted in the Censorship which disclosed secret writing. It was not in the usual hand, and the incriminatory words said that ‘C’ had gone to Newcastle, and that the writer was sending the communication ‘from 201’ instead. I remember very well the morning when this sentence was shown to me. The postmark was Deptford. ‘201’ might or might not be the number of a house. We rang up Deptford Police Station and asked for a list of the streets in their area which ran to 201 houses. There was only one—Deptford High Street—and the occupant of that house had a German name, ‘Peter Hahn, Baker and Confectioner.’

No one was more surprised than the stout little baker when a taxi deposited a number of police officers at his door. He proved to be a British subject, and to have been resident in Deptford for some years. While he was being put into the cab a search was made of his premises, and in a back room the police found a complete outfit for secret writing neatly stowed away in a cardboard box.

When seated in my armchair Hahn was not at all communicative. He professed to know nothing of ‘C,’ and when further pressed he refused to answer any questions, but patient inquiry among his neighbours produced a witness who remembered that a tall Russian gentleman had been visiting Hahn at frequent intervals. His name was believed to be Müller, and his address a boarding-house in Bloomsbury. This limited the field of search. The register of every boarding-house was scrutinised, and within a few hours the police found the name of Müller; the landlady of the boarding-house confirmed the suggestion that he was a Russian, and said that he had lately gone to Newcastle to see some friends. The search was then transferred to Newcastle, and within a few hours Müller was found, arrested, and brought to London. He was a tall, spare, worried-looking person, anxious only to have an opportunity of clearing himself. He had never seen Hahn; had never been in Germany, and could not even speak the language. For some time he adhered to the story that he was a Russian. An inquiry into his past showed that he was one of those cosmopolitan, roving Germans who are hotel-keepers in one place, commercial travellers in another. At some time they have all been motor-car agents and touts. He spoke English with scarcely any trace of a foreign accent. With his glib tongue he had gone through the usual spy routine of making love to impressionable young women, and winning acquaintance by the promise of partnership in profitable speculations. He had some claim for registering himself as a Russian, for he had been born in Libau and spoke Russian as well as Flemish, Dutch, French, German, and English. Hahn, on the other hand, was merely a tool. He had been born in Battersea, and was therefore a British subject. In 1913 he was a bankrupt with assets of £3 to meet liabilities of £1800. His object, no doubt, was purely mercenary. As a British subject he had the right to be tried by civil court, and therefore, as it was not desirable to have two trials, both he and Müller were indicted at the Old Bailey in May 1915. Both were found guilty of espionage. Müller was sentenced to death, and Hahn to seven years’ penal servitude on the ground that he had been acting under Müller’s influence. Müller appealed unsuccessfully against his sentence.

On 22nd June 1915 Müller was removed from Brixton Prison to the Tower in a taxi-cab, and by a curious fatality the cab broke down in Upper Thames Street. It was the luncheon hour, and a crowd formed immediately. A foreigner seated between two military policemen and going up the street towards the Tower was not lost on the crowd, which raised a cry of ‘German spy!’ Another taxi was quickly found, and the journey was resumed without further accident. The condemned man was highly strung, and he broke down on the night before his execution. On the following morning he pulled himself together, and insisted on passing gravely down the firing-party and shaking hands with each man. The Germans did not hear of his death for some time, for letters containing remittances continued to be received.

About the middle of 1915 we learned that on a steamer bound from Rotterdam to Buenos Aires was an Argentine citizen named Conrad Leyter, who was believed to be carrying dispatches from Berlin to the German Embassy in Madrid. Leyter was removed from the steamer and brought to London. He said he was a shipping clerk, that he had come to Europe for a holiday, and was now on his way back to Buenos Aires. He gave a long and rather wearisome account of his holiday adventures in Germany and Holland, and nothing could be done until the clockwork had run down. Then we said, ‘But why were you going to Spain?’ There was another burst of eloquence, but no reply to that particular question. Whenever he paused for breath he was asked, ‘Why were you going to Spain?’ At last he could bear it no more. He jumped from his chair and said, ‘Well, if you will know, I am going to Spain, and if you want to know why, I am carrying a dispatch to Prince Ratibor, the German Ambassador in Madrid.’

‘Thank you. And where is the dispatch?’

‘I have not got it. It is sewn up in the life-belt in my cabin.’

That was all we wanted to know. Leyter went to an internment camp, the wireless was got to work, and in due course the dispatch was found in the life-belt, as he said. It was quite useful.

Every now and then doubtful persons captured at sea came to us from far afield. In October 1915 a boarding officer in the Mediterranean, who was examining passengers on board the blue-funnel liner Anchises, found a man who was carrying a false passport believed to be forged. He was detained and sent to Egypt. In Cairo the luck was against him. While he was being interrogated and his imagination was soaring in full flight, a British officer who had known him in former years chanced to pass through the room and recognised him. ‘Hullo, von Gumpenberg!’ he cried, slapping him on the back. After that it was useless to dissemble, and he gave his name as Baron Otto von Gumpenberg, and said that he had been squadron commander in the Death’s Head Hussars, and had been involved in a scandal for which he was arrested and imprisoned for seven months. On his release he became a vagabond adventurer. In Constantinople he was aide-de-camp to Enver Pasha; later he attached himself to Prince Wilhelm of Wied in his futile attempt to govern Albania. When war broke out he was called back to Germany to serve as a trooper, and, according to his own account, he served for eighteen months on the Russian Front with such distinction that when he returned wounded to Germany his commission was restored to him and he was posted to the command of a troop at the Front; but at this moment there happened to be a scheme for stirring up the tribes in North Africa, and he was dispatched to see what he could do with the Senussi. About that time the Senussi had captured a number of Italian prisoners, and von Gumpenberg accounted for being on the Anchises by saying that he was being sent to the Senussi to obtain the release of these prisoners. We were impolite enough to express entire disbelief in this story. Unfortunately, in return for his confession made in Egypt he had been promised that he would be treated as an officer prisoner of war, and he had to be interned at Donnington Hall. His real object, no doubt, was to direct the hostile movements of the Senussi and other tribes against the Allies.

The Germans now adopted commerce as the best cover for their agents. England was to be flooded with commercial travellers, especially travellers in cigars. The Censor began to pick up messages containing orders for enormous quantities of cigars for naval ports such as Portsmouth, Chatham, Devonport, and Dover. The senders turned out to be furnished with Dutch passports, though their nationality was doubtful. Now something happened to be known about their supposed employers in Holland, who kept one little back office in which a few mouldy samples were exposed, and yet here they were with a traveller in the Southern Counties and another sending orders from Newcastle. Naval ratings are not abstainers from tobacco, but they are not known to be in the habit of consuming large quantities of Havana cigars. One of the travellers named Haicke Petrus Marinus Janssen and the other named Wilhelm Johannes Roos were found doing the sights of London. Janssen was questioned first. He was a self-possessed person of about thirty years of age, and he claimed to be a sailor. He knew no German, in fact he had never been in Germany, and, being a Dutchman, he had a dislike for Germans. Why, he was asked, did his employers, Dierks & Co., engage a sailor to travel in cigars? To that he had no answer except that he had been unsuccessful in obtaining a berth as officer on a steamer. A friend had introduced him to Mr. Dierks because he could speak English and was looking for work. He said that he was the only traveller that Dierks had in England. We asked him whether he knew a man named Roos. ‘No,’ he said, he had never heard of him. He was then sent to another room while Roos was brought in. He, too, was a seaman, a big, powerful man with the cut of a German seaman. He, too, said that he was a traveller for Dierks & Co.; that Dierks had two travellers, himself and Janssen. Would he know Janssen if he saw him? Certainly he would. Janssen was brought again into the room. He made a faint sign with his eyes and lips to Roos, but of course it was too late. ‘Is this the man you say you know?’ he was asked. He nodded, and Janssen was silent. On the way over to Cannon Row Roos suddenly dashed at a glass door which opened into the yard, smashed the panes, and jabbed his naked wrists on the jagged fragments of glass in the hope of cutting an artery. He was taken to Westminster Hospital to be bandaged, and later was removed to Brixton Prison, where he was put under observation as a potential suicide.

The code used by these men was simple enough. They would send telegrams for 10,000 Cabañas, 4000 Rothschilds, 3000 Coronas, and so on. A message telegraphed from Portsmouth of this kind would mean that there were three battleships, four cruisers, and ten destroyers in the harbour, and these messages, so interpreted, corresponded with the actual facts on the dates of the telegrams. Neither man could produce any evidence that he had transacted bona fide business with his cigars. They could not produce one genuine order. They were brought to trial for espionage and were convicted. A few days later both made confessions. Janssen actually gave some useful information about the German spy organisation in Holland. He said that his sympathies were really with us, and he could not understand how he had been tempted to serve the other side. It appeared that in 1913 he had actually been granted a silver medal by the Board of Trade for life-saving on the immigrant steamer, Volturno, which was burnt at sea with the loss of 400 lives. Her wireless call for help was responded to by the vessel in which Janssen was serving, and he, among others, was instrumental in saving 500 lives. Roos feigned insanity in prison, and it was one of the pleas put forward by his counsel. There was, however, no medical support for this plea, and it was arranged that on 30th July both men should be executed in the Tower. They met their end stoically. Janssen was shot first. Roos asked as a last favour to be allowed to finish his cigarette. That done, he threw it away with a gesture as though that represented all the vanities of this world, and then he sat down in the chair with quiet unconcern. The news of the execution soon reached Holland, and the Germans began to find it very difficult to obtain recruits from neutral countries.

During May and June 1915, in about a fortnight, no less than seven enemy spies were arrested. The most spectacular were Reginald Roland, whose real name was Georg T. Breeckow, and Mrs. Lizzie Wertheim.

Breeckow was the son of a pianoforte manufacturer in Stettin, and he was himself a pianist. It is curious to reflect that professional musicians should have formed a respectable proportion of the detected spies. One would have thought that it was the last class that would be able to report intelligently on naval and military matters. Breeckow spoke English fluently, and knew enough Americanisms to pose plausibly as a rich American travelling in England for his health. Before he left Holland he was furnished with the address of Lizzie Wertheim, a German woman who had married a naturalised German and had thus acquired British nationality. She was a stout and rather flashy-looking person of the boarding-house type, and she had been in England for some years. She was separated from her husband, but on terms that made her independent. She was equally at home in Berlin, the Hague, and London.

Breeckow, who appeared to be possessed of a considerable sum of money, was at once accorded a warm welcome. The pair hired horses from a riding-school, and rode in the Park during the mornings. They took their luncheon at expensive restaurants, and Lizzie Wertheim became intoxicated with this kind of life and waxed so extravagant that Breeckow had to expostulate and report the matter to his employers. She would no longer travel without a maid.

It was decided between the two that the best working arrangement would be for the woman to do the field work, and for Breeckow to work up her reports in London and dispatch them to Holland. Mrs. Wertheim went to Scotland, hired a motor-car, and drove about the country picking up gossip about the Grand Fleet. Her questions to naval officers were, however, so imprudent that special measures were taken; Breeckow’s address was discovered, and in due course the two were brought to New Scotland Yard for interrogation. The artistic temperament of Breeckow was not equal to the ordeal. His pretence of being a rich American broke down immediately, and he was aghast to find out how much the police knew about his secret movements. Though he made no confession, he returned to Cannon Row in a state of great nervous tension. Lizzie Wertheim, on the other hand, was tough, brazen, and impudent, claiming that as a British subject she had a right to travel where she would. She declined to sit still in her chair, but walked up and down the room, flirting a large silk handkerchief as if she was practising a new dancing step. Further inquiries showed that, unlike the previous American passports carried by spies, which were genuine documents stolen by the German Foreign Office, this passport was a forgery right through. The American Eagle on the official seal had his claws turned round the wrong way, and his tail lacked a feather or two. The very red paper on which the seal was impressed did not behave like the paper on genuine documents when touched with acid, nor was the texture of the passport paper itself quite the same. It also transpired that Breeckow had been in America continuously from 1908, that he had got into touch with von Papen’s organisation, which had sent him back to Germany for service in this country. For this purpose he became an inmate of the Espionage School in Antwerp, where he was taught the tricks of the trade, which were quite familiar to us. He had also a commercial code for use when telegrams had to be sent.

Breeckow had maintained throughout that he knew no German, but his assurance began to break down in the loneliness of a prison cell. He had a strong imagination, and no doubt the thought that his female accomplice might be betraying him worked strongly on his feelings. One morning I went over with a naval officer to see how he was. There was a question about signing for his property, and he was sent into the room for the purpose. When he found himself alone with us he said suddenly, ‘Am I to be tried for my life?’

‘I understand that you are to be tried.’

‘What is the penalty for what I have done?’ (Up to this point he had made no confession.) ‘Is it death?’

‘I do not know,’ I said. ‘You have not yet been tried.’

‘I can tell from your face that it is death. I must know. I have to think of my old mother in Stettin. I want to write a full confession.’ I told him that of course he was free to write what he pleased, but that anything he did write would almost certainly be used against him at his trial. ‘Never mind,’ he said, ‘I have carried the secret long enough. Now I want to tell the whole truth.’

So paper and ink were supplied to him, and he wrote his confession.

As Mrs. Wertheim was a British subject and could claim trial by civil court the two were tried together at the Old Bailey on 20th September before three Judges of the High Court, and were found guilty. Breeckow was sentenced to death and Mrs. Wertheim to ten years’ penal servitude, as it was considered that she had acted under the man’s influence. Breeckow appealed unsuccessfully, and his execution was fixed for 26th October at the Tower. The five weeks that elapsed between the sentence and the execution were extremely trying to the persons responsible for his safety. He had broken down completely, and was demented by fear. On the morning of his execution he was almost in a state of collapse. At the last moment he produced a lady’s handkerchief, probably the relic of some past love-affair, and asked that it might be tied over his eyes instead of the usual bandage, but it was too small. It had to be knotted to the bandage and then tied. He was shivering with agitation, and just before the shots were fired there was a sudden spasm. It was believed afterwards that he had actually died of heart failure before the bullets reached him.

Lizzie Wertheim was removed to Aylesbury Convict Prison to undergo her sentence, and there she died some two years after the Armistice.

Of all the spies that were convicted and executed the man for whom I felt most sorry was Fernando Buschman. He was a gentleman by birth, he had no need of money, for he was married to the daughter of a rich soap manufacturer in Dresden, who had kept him liberally supplied with funds for his studies in aviation. He was quite a good violinist, and he had all the instincts of a cultivated musician. He was of German origin, but his father had become a naturalised Brazilian, and he himself had Latin blood in his veins. He was born in Paris, but his boyhood was spent in Brazil, where he attended a German school. He had invented an aeroplane, and in 1911 the French Government allowed him to use the aerodrome at Issy for experimental purposes. For the three years before the War he had been travelling all over Europe, and when hostilities broke out the German Secret Service got hold of him. He had been to Spain, to Genoa, and to Hamburg, and in 1915 he was in Barcelona and Madrid, and then in Flushing, Antwerp, and Rotterdam. It speaks volumes for the stupidity of the directors of the German Espionage School in Antwerp that they should have selected as a disguise for such a man as Buschman the role of commercial traveller. The imposture was bound to be discovered at once. He was far too well dressed and well spoken, and he knew nothing whatever about trade. He arrived in London with a forged passport, and put up at a good hotel with his violin, not usually part of the luggage of a commercial traveller. After a few days he moved to lodgings in Loughborough Road, Brixton, and thence to lodgings in South Kensington. This he thought was enough to fit him for moving about in England. He visited Portsmouth and Southampton, and from certain minute notes found among his papers it became evident that his one qualification—his knowledge of aeronautics—was not to be turned to account: he was to be employed as a naval spy. Unfortunately for him he ran short of money, and was compelled to write to Holland for fresh supplies. He was arrested at his lodgings in South Kensington, and was found to be quite penniless. When the detective arrived he said, ‘What have you against me? I will show you everything.’ Then he reeled off his lesson. He was in England for the purpose of selling cheese, bananas, potatoes, safety razors, and odds and ends, and in France he had sold picric acid, cloth, and rifles. He implied that his employers did a miscellaneous business almost unrivalled in commercial annals, but when he said that they were Dierks & Co., of the Hague, we pointed out that they occupied one room and were cigar merchants. Moreover, it was found that his passport was written in the well-known handwriting of Flores, who used to instruct German spies in Rotterdam. This man had been a schoolmaster, and his characteristic handwriting was well known. There was also a letter from Gneist, the German Consul General in Rotterdam, from Colonel Ostertag, the German Military Attaché in Holland, and from two persons who were known to be active in recruiting for the German Secret Service. He was tried at the Westminster Guildhall on 20th September 1915, the day of the trial of Breeckow and Mrs. Wertheim at the Old Bailey, and was sentenced to death. I know that persons who were present at the trial were impressed by his manly bearing and his frankness. After his sentence he was not separated from his violin. It was his great solace through the long hours of waiting. He asked for it again on his removal to the Tower on the night before his execution, and played till a late hour. When they came for him in the morning he picked it up and kissed it, saying, ‘Good-bye, I shall not want you any more.’ He refused to have his eyes bandaged, and faced the rifles with a courageous smile. How differently the artistic temperament works in men and women!