The Spy Net (19 page)

E
VENTS WERE CROWDING
fast on each other. The Hindenburg line had broken, and the whole Allied Front was sweeping rapidly forward into Belgium; Prince Max of Baden had formed a coalition ministry, and had been forced to include two socialist deputies, Scheidemann and Bauer. It was evident that the war was drawing to a close, and that the people of Germany were about to kick over
the traces; rumours of revolt and discontent were becoming more insistent each day.

Such was the situation when suddenly we heard of the mutiny of the German sailors at Kiel, on some of the ships of the German High Seas Fleet which had been ordered to put out to sea. This was followed by reports that Liebknecht and other independent socialists were openly inciting revolution, and that local government had been overthrown in Kiel, Hamburg, and Bremen, with soldiers' councils taking its place.

Imagine my excitement when I walked into one of the cubicles at the office, and found myself facing a released pre-war British spy, and in his company an official delegate from the Hamburg soldiers' council.

‘I am Johnson' – a fictitious name – said the Englishman. ‘Don't you remember me? I was caught by the Germans six years ago, just as I was boarding a vessel at Hamburg, and thought I had got clear with the plans which C commissioned me to get. I have been in prison in Hamburg all these years, and was freed by the Hamburg Soldatenrat a week ago. This is Schultze, a delegate from them,' he continued as he presented his companion to me. ‘He has been sent out with me on a mission to the British government.' I listened in amazement to their story, as each took it up in turn.

The prisoners of yesterday were the masters of Hamburg today. The governor of the prison was at present locked up in one of his own cells, and while Johnson and his friends were being entertained at a banquet in the Hamburg Senate House, their former keeper was being given prison fare, his own special recipe for ‘socialist swine'.

How Johnson came by his new-found friend, he explained briefly. During his early days in prison, Johnson's only companions were criminals, but as the war progressed, and the Kaiser's government viewed with alarm the steady growth of socialism, members of the Minority Socialist Party began to swell the ranks of the inmates of the prison at Altona, near Hamburg. With these leaders Johnson rapidly made friends; they ate the same vile prison food; they, too, were victims of the Kaiser; they were intelligent men, a relief from the dregs he had been forced to associate with.

When they were freed by their friends, these leaders immediately rushed back to their home centres, but those from Hamburg gladly took Johnson along with them as one of their companions. He was admitted to all their councils, and found himself enrolled as a member of the Hamburg Soldatenrat.

Plans of government were suggested, and it was difficult to keep the sailors in check, but on one point everyone from Hamburg was agreed: they had had enough of Prussian domination, and wanted to be freed entirely from it. Why not revive the old Hanseatic League, a federation of the Hanseatic towns of Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck, and Danzig? They remembered how prosperous these towns had been during the era of their independence, and how friendly they had been with England.

The leaders knew that Prussia and the rest of Germany would never willingly agree to this separation, which would cut them off from the sea, and that, as soon as the revolution had quietened down, they would be attacked, unless they obtained help from the Allies. Surely, the Allies would support them; it would be a means of removing the German fleet from the sea, never to
return, and it would help in the dismemberment of Germany, which they had heard the Allies intended to accomplish.

Ways and means were discussed. Why not set up a Hanseatic League under the protection of England, and ask the British to send some part of their fleet to Hamburg and the other ports? This would prevent interference from the rest of Germany. Quick action had to be taken, while yet they were masters of the situation. A delegate had to be sent immediately to England to open up negotiations. Their eyes fell on Johnson: he was obviously the man to send along; he had been an eyewitness of everything that had happened; he could tell the British that they meant everything they said, and that they really had complete control of the local government.

I still have a mental picture of Johnson as he shouted at me in his excitement: ‘There is no German fleet left – the sailors have all mutinied. On the arrival of the British fleet in Hamburg, the admiral in command will be given an official reception and he will be entertained at a banquet at the Senate House. The old Hanseatic League, under British protection, with Hamburg as its head, will then be publicly proclaimed!'

If Schultze had not been sitting next to him with his array of official documents, signed by the Hamburg Soldatenrat, giving him full power to negotiate, I would have thought that six years of detention in a German prison, in wartime, had deranged Johnson's mind; for although I knew all the events which I have already outlined, the Kaiser had not yet crossed the frontier, the Armistice had not yet been signed, and there was considerable rumour that the Germans were about to stage a revolution, hoping that the emissaries of the people would get better peace
terms from the Allies than the old wartime leaders would have been able to secure.

Full details were immediately telegraphed in code to London, and I was still waiting for instructions, when I suddenly had news that the Kaiser had fled from Berlin, and had arrived at German GHQ, at Spa, only a few miles from the Dutch Limburg frontier. Leaving my assistant in charge at Rotterdam, I dashed down to Maastricht so as to be able to direct our operations at closer quarters; Colonel Oppenheim wanted short interval reports on everything we could possibly find out as to what was happening at Spa.

The German sentries and surveillance on the frontier had become demoralised, and quite a number of refugees were coming freely across the frontier; we could, therefore, arrange for a quicker transmission of information from the interior to us. Train-watchers' reports were no longer important. Every road in Belgium was now filled with the retreating German Army; the trains could no longer carry them. The roads had now to be watched;
promeneurs
had to be kept continually behind the German Army reporting their movements as they fell back. My headquarters were now in Maastricht, and I had a direct courier to Colonel Oppenheim at The Hague. Sleep was forgotten; more work was in hand than I could possibly cope with.

I never returned to Rotterdam. After witnessing the crossing of the frontier by the Kaiser, I penetrated into Belgium, throwing discretion to the winds, and from personal observation sent in reports on the retreat of the German Army as it filed past my eyes.

No wonder then that I lost track of Johnson and Schultze, whom I had left in the hands of my assistant. Many weeks later
he told me that the British government had refused to negotiate with Schultze. With more political sagacity than was shown later at Versailles, it realised probably that, for a permanent peace, conditions had to be imposed on Germany which would not interfere with her economic existence. A nation of Germany's size had to have an outlet to the sea; and sooner or later, if taken away from her, she would fight to regain it. Furthermore, the British undoubtedly foresaw that the sailors of Kiel, Bremen, and Hamburg, and the Soldatenrat throughout Germany would eventually lose control of their local government, and that they were only the torch lighting the revolution which was to culminate in the formation of the German Republic.

Within a few hours of the news that the Kaiser had arrived at German GHQ in his flight from Berlin, I was on my way to take up my headquarters at Maastricht, the principal town in Dutch Limburg, and only some 30 miles from Spa, that pretty little Belgian watering-place with its fine chateaux and villas, whose comforts the Kaiser and his staff had enjoyed earlier in the war, and where those trenches and dug-outs were constructed, several hundred miles from the Front, in which the Kaiser was photographed to appear as if he were among his soldiers in the firing line. Here now the whole German GHQ had taken up its quarters.

Our agent there reported not only the presence of the Kaiser, but also of the Crown Prince, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and a host of others. On 8 November, we heard that the socialists under Kurt Eisner had deposed the King of Bavaria, and had declared a Bavarian Republic. On 9 November, we read in the newspapers the decree of Prince Max announcing that the Kaiser had decided to abdicate, and that Ebert was appointed Chancellor.

I was not surprised, therefore, when late that evening I received a report from our agent that barricades had been thrown up around Spa to prevent revolutionary troops coming there from Aachen to fetch the Kaiser, and that the Kaiser himself intended crossing into Holland that night. I dashed to the Dutch commanding officer, whom I knew very well, and with whom I had had lunch that day at the Maastricht Club, to tell him the news.

‘Yes,' said he, ‘we have just been informed from The Hague that the Kaiser is coming across the frontier at Eysden, at 7 a.m. tomorrow. I have received orders about interning him. Do you want to come along with me?' I gladly accepted his offer, and at 6 a.m. I found myself keyed up with excitement on the way to Eysden, following the automobiles of the Dutch Army officers and other officials.

In my mind's eye, I can see the picture today as clearly as I saw it then. It was a fine morning, but at that early hour there was a ground mist, which made visibility somewhat difficult. I waited on the platform of the station at Eysden chatting to my officer friends. By and by, a train was signalled coming through from Visé, the Belgian border station adjacent to Eysden; it was the Kaiser's own special train, consisting of three or four coaches.

After a few minutes had elapsed, we saw several grey Mercedes cars draw up at the frontier; from them there alighted about a dozen figures in grey military uniforms, with long capes and spiked helmets. One was the Kaiser in the uniform of a field marshal, another General von Platen; the others were officers of the Kaiser's own staff and household, who were following him into exile. The group came on to the platform at Eysden, and there, about 15 yards from where I stood, they were formally interned
by my friend. After this the whole group entered the Imperial train, prepared and waiting for them.

It was one of the most impressive events of my life; not so much because of what I saw (the whole ceremony only took a few minutes – it might have been the internment of any group of officers crossing into Holland) as because of the realisation that I was watching the writing of ‘Finis' across the life of a man who had been a demi-god in his own country, the almighty war lord, whom I had seen on many occasions riding with pomp and ceremony through the streets of Berlin, and who had so long disturbed the peace of Europe.

I wondered, as I looked at his grim white face, what was passing in his mind. He was pleasant to the Dutch officers, and outwardly appeared calm. He lit a cigarette and offered a cigar to my officer friend. Inwardly he must have been in a turmoil; it was undoubtedly a piece of clever acting. He had probably spent several sleepless nights before arriving at his momentous decision. He had been inclined to defy the politicians who demanded his abdication, but when Hindenburg and the general staff declared they could no longer protect him from an army seething with revolt, he had hastily fled. Here on the platform, however, he did not have at all the air of a fugitive. In uniform, surrounded by his officers, he was dignity personified; one would have said he had just arrived in Holland on a visit to the Dutch court.

All day, the Kaiser remained in his train at Eysden, while the Dutch Cabinet was deciding on their course of action. That night, van Karnebeek, the Dutch Foreign Minister, and Rosen, the German minister at The Hague, arrived in Maastricht. Once again I followed the Dutch officials to Eysden, but as the meeting
took place in the train behind drawn blinds, my trip was fruitless. I was informed, however, by a Dutch officer, that the train would leave Eysden early the next morning to convey the Kaiser to the chateau of Count Goddard Bentinck, at Amerongen, where he would remain temporarily until a definite place of internment had been found.

Early on the morning of 11 November, I got up to watch the train go by at a crossing near Maastricht. All the blinds were drawn, as I thought they would be, but the passing of the Kaiser fascinated me; I wanted to see the very last act of this drama which I had been witnessing.

There was some mystery attached to the Kaiser's coming to Holland. I heard several rumours to the effect that the Queen had sent a secret emissary to Spa, offering him an asylum in Holland; but whether this was so I do not know. Everybody was now wandering what had happened to the Crown Prince. The Kaiser gave no definite information about him, except that he would probably cross into Holland later on. It was rumoured that there had been a family quarrel, which was borne out by subsequent events. We were not without news of him for long.

Once again I was lunching with my Dutch officer friend, after a busy morning sending reports to Colonel Oppenheim. We had just finished off an excellent partridge, and were waiting for the next course, when my friend was called out of the room. He dashed back a couple of minutes later, grabbed his sword, excused himself, and rushed away with the remark that the Crown Prince was at the frontier, at a point farther north than where the Kaiser had crossed. In the evening, he told me that the Crown Prince was staying temporarily at the chateau
of Countess Wolf-Metternich. The first request of the Crown Prince, after crossing the frontier, was that he did not wish to see his father, or to be interned in the same place with him. Later, he was removed to the Island of Wieringen.