The Secrets of the German War Office | Page 9

or a Brennan.
I was also drilled in the construction of every known kind of naval gun.
Dozens of model war-crafts were shown to me and explained. I saw the
model of every warship in the world. For days at a time I was made to
sit before charts that hung from the walls of certain rooms in the
Intelligence Department and study the silhouettes of every known
varying type of war-craft. I was schooled in this until I could tell at a
glance what type of a battleship, cruiser, or destroyer it was, whether it
was peculiar to the English, French, Russian or United States Navy. As
I shall show in relating one of my missions to England, I was brushed
up on the silhouette study of British warships, for I had to be able to
discern and classify them at long range. The different ranking officers
of the navies of the world, their uniforms, the personnel of battleships,
the systems of flag signals, and codes, were explained to me in detail. I
was given large books in which were colored plates of the uniforms and

signal flags of every navy in the world. I had to study these until at a
glance I could tell the rank and station of the officers and men of the
principal navies. The same with the signal flags. I pored over those
books night after night into the early hours of the morning. My regular
hours for tuition were from ten to twelve in the forenoon and from two
until six in the afternoon. But it was impossible to compress all the
work into that time. I was anxious to get my first mission, and I
presume I did a great deal of cramming.
My study was not all in Berlin. I spent most of my time there at
Koenigergratzerstrasse 70 and at the Zeughaus, the great museum of
the German General Staff. But there were side trips to the big
government works at Kiel and Wilhelmshafen. There I was taught
every detail of the mechanics of naval construction and I was not
pronounced equipped until I could talk intelligently about every
unassembled part of a gun, torpedo tube, or mine.
In the course of my five months' instruction under the various experts
of the Prussian Service I had many opportunities to observe the
exhaustive thoroughness and the minuteness of detail which the
German General Staff possesses. I did not lose the chance of this
opportunity. I really did observe and see more than was intended for me
to see. Of the amazing amount of labor, time and money that has been
spent to gather the information contained in the secret archives of the
German General Staff, the marvelous system of war that has been
perfected in the German Empire, I shall tell when I consider the secrets
of the War Machine.
Naturally, I soon came to know still other things than what they taught
me. I began to consider the whole proposition of Secret Service, and
before relating my first important mission for Germany I shall tell you
some of the general secrets of the System.
There are four systems of Secret Service in Europe, the four leading
powers each possessing one. First in systematic efficiency is the
German, next comes the Russian, then the French, and English.
England has a very efficient service in India and her Asiatic
possessions, but has only lately entered the European field. Last but not
least comes the International Secret Service Bureau with headquarters
in Belgium, a semi-private concern which procures reliable information
for anyone who will pay for it. This service is generally entrusted with

the procuring of technical details, such as the plans of a new kind of
gun or data on a new and minor fortification. Mr. Vance Thompson has
also cited special missions like this one that follows.
Not often does the chance come to leave the regular channels of
espionage and go forth upon a mission out of the ordinary. That chance
came a few years ago to the Russian agents in Brussels. In St.
Petersburg the chiefs were desirous of knowing the identity and names
of a group of revolutionists who had formed a sort of colony in
Montreux, Switzerland. A French woman, known sometimes as
Theresa Prevost (the last I heard of her she was in prison) was detailed
to the mission. Young and clever was Theresa; likewise the man who
was ordered to accompany her, posing as a "brother," Charles Prevost.
The chief of these Russian fugitives, who were down around the lake of
Geneva, brewing their dark plans, was known. He was Goluckoffsky,
and he had a son twenty-two years of age--an impressionable Russian
son. Hence the young and pretty Theresa.
It was decided by her Brussels chiefs