Horst Goltz - My Adventures as a German Secret Service Agent

Now with these men, protected as they are by the fact that not even their fellows know them, with their wits sharpened by three years of silent warfare against the agents of other Governments and the American neutrality squad, the task of ferreting them out is an utterly impossible one. You cannot prevent spies from securing information.

You cannot prevent the transmission of that information to Berlin without instituting, not a censorship, but a complete suppression of all communications of any sort.

But you can do much to counteract their methods by doing two things:

I. Delaying all mails and cables, other than actual Government messages.

II. Instituting a system of counter-espionage, which shall have for its object the detection but not the arrest of enemy spies; and the dissemination of misleading information.

The war work of the spy depends for success upon the speed with which he can communicate new facts to Berlin. If all his messages are delayed his effectiveness is severely crippled.

If, in addition to that, all persons sending suspicious messages anywhere are carefully shadowed; if their associations are looked up, it may be possible to determine from whom they are getting information, and by seeing that incorrect reports are given them, render them of negligible value to their employers.

Public arrests of suspected men are worthless. Such disclosures only serve to put the real spies on their guard. But if the spies are allowed to work in fancied security, it will be possible to find out just what they know, and the Government can change its plans at the last moment and so stultify their efforts.

Eternal vigilance, here as elsewhere, is the price of security. Germany has regarded the work of her spies as of almost as much importance as the force in the field. She has spent millions of dollars in building up a system in America whose ramifications extend to all points of its national life. And since upon this system rest all her hopes of rendering worthless American participation in the war, she will not lightly let it fail.

I toss aside my clippings and sit looking out into the New York street which shows such little sign of war as yet. Defeat! That is the end of this silent warfare, this secret underground attack that has in it nothing of humanity or honour. I think of Germany, a country of quiet, peaceful folk as I once knew it, bearing no malice, going cheerfully about their work, seeking their destiny with a will that has nothing in it of conquest. And I think of Germany embattled, ruled by a group of iron men who seek only their own ambitions as a goal who have brought upon the country and the world this three-years' tyranny of hate.

What will be the end? Will the war go on, eating up the lives and honour of men with its monstrous appetite? Or will there be peace a peace that will bring nothing of revenge or oppression; that will carry with it only a desire for justice to all the peoples of the earth that will kill for ever this desire for conquest which now and in the past has borne only sorrow and bloodshed as its fruit? Will the peace bring forgetfulness of the past, in so far as men can forget?

That would be worth fighting for.

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