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Show OFFICER BARES I Mil ! Gold. Mot Patriotism, Led Military Agents Into Dangerous Work Bj PRANK l M KS n international News Service Staff or. BERLIN. Jan. 22. German spies making up thai vague, mysterious ermv credited with -pr. ..d;t..,-flu ..d;t..,-flu poison and propaganda m .Mimii lands. kpt the home sector on the alert until the armistice, r.vcn now the newspaper occasionally report German Iples or their ghosts stalking through the land perpetrating fi 1 A hlh ;crman officer, for man) years an Influential lead r in the Great General Btaff, In an exclusive inter-view inter-view with International News Serylct pulls aside the curtain revealing Qer-many's Qer-many's peace time army of military spies In France. WORK IN l'l v ETIM1 "How many thousands of agents d.d Germany have n France In i umer"' the correspondent avked hlni. -Thousands" Her von v..n pave a sharp look as though he were afraid uf falling Into the trap of anoth r American joke. Thousands"' Hon on earth could you expect lis to m-. thousand agents In France'' How COuld vou keep them employed "One of America's mot popular weekly magazines published an artl- le three years ago which showed 'low Germain hail planted .'.O.Oua s.i s In northern I'ram-f before 1114, and lold how these agents were ..rganlzed 1o co-operate with the German arms when war should occur. "Why even the Russian esar couldn't have supported espionage swstem of, those dimensions. Wr had sufficient difficulty fretting enough money f rom J the rckhstag to kep up the work ot all "The article stated that the German agents were badly paid," the eorrc- spondrnt replied. ONE HUN DRED SPIES, The truth is we had about one bun- dred military agents In France When the war commenced." stated the offi- : Olr, "Our maximum was quality, not quantity. The popular theory of using waiters, dancer, porters and the like ) the. creation of tho brains of nov el - UIk We hired trained military nilnd. . " Even an ordinary lieutenant or cap-tain cap-tain in the foreign army was of no value. It was our practice, and, as we proved by exposures, the practice of the, French, tu seek only the highest officers as agents. A chief of staff or J a general who could gtve us moblllza- tion plans was At some value. Hut a captain In the other arm who could only report that "regiment so and so ltd rlnu. ,,pii. t drill fr.r throe hr.lirRi this morning" was worthless. TV PKI VL i IlSI 1 "The continental espionage system used by both the French and Russians is typified by the case of an Austrian B colonel In Prague. This colonel was fl chief of staff of the Austrian army ; division w hich had headquarters In j B Prague. He was one of about three or four officers who know the secret mo- ' blllzationwdans of his corps which in- 1 eluded some of the Gorman divisions in southern Sfxxony. These secret or- I ders stated exactly where each unit , B troops was to go in case of war ; against Russia. Obviously the Rua-sians Rua-sians were very anxious to secure this' information. "The colonel had some very unfor- ' tunalc personal habits, a total lack of B morals, rather abnormal of such a. na- i ture as to ruin him among his officer-' comrades were the facts to become 1 B known. In some manner or other, 1 never brought to light, the Russians B learned of the colonel's secret and by i threats of exposure blackmailed him ! Into delivering up copies of the moblll-' station orders We first secured wind of it by agents in I'etrograd reporting the removal of large sums of motiOJ from a I'etrograd bank to the Dread-ner Dread-ner bank in Berlin. They could find no business transactions behind the money payments Investigation dls- 1 closed that at stated Intervals the col- 1 onel came to Rerlln under an assumed name and drew from this account. 'A few days later a committee of I three German and Austrian officers visited the colonel In his apartment in Prague! He broke down and confer -sed and explained how the Russian-had Russian-had blackmailed him into treason, af-ter af-ter which he had accepted the money, and continued In tfa i & The senior Officer informed the colonel that he would give him fifteen minutes to, arrange his affair.. Whether oi f the officers handed the old colons! a pistol as he walked alone Into the next; room I can't say, hut in a moment ! there was a sound of a shot The col - 1 onel had with h4s own hand carried out the penalty for traitors. IU SSI A PAID KLL. "The reason I nm telling you this and what was especially Interestlhj tho German general staff, !. the lib-eralitj lib-eralitj with which the Russian esplon-j esplon-j age system paid their agents. An ex- ! amlnation of the bank transactions I of the dead colonel established that the Russian government had paid this one agent alone in the series of years he had been In their service the sum1 f 600.000 marks. That was the amount the German relehsBug gave German army to conduct their military i lDtclilgence for an entire year, not fori one country, but the entire world ser- 1 The Germans changed their sjxleni' during the war. Money for the work was more plentiful and there was no time to carry out tho patient planning ! necessary to the opening of sources! of i K Information of the quality type. The 1 result was that agents became more' H numerous, and their value fell accord ingly. isH on |