Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 136, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1916 — HOLLAND FULL OF FOREIGN SPIES [ARTICLE]

HOLLAND FULL OF FOREIGN SPIES

International Secret Agents Follow in Footsteps of All Travelers. HAUNT HOTELS AND CAFES Attempt to Place Bpy In American Minister's House Foiled Marked Fondness for Things American Among the People.

The Hague.—Holland is full of spies of all nations, but an overwhelming majority of them are In the service of the central empires. In Rotterdam the German spy is everywhere—in the hotels, cohcert halls, theaters and cases. He, in turn, is spied upon by the paid agents of the opposing powers, and all of these spies unite in looking into the affairs and, when circumstances permit, the private papers and correspondence of new arrivals. Not even the American minister at The Hague is immune, as only a few weeks ago he foiled a scheme which had for its object the placing of a spy of one of the belligerent powers on his pay roll as a domestic servant. When I reached Rotterdam I went to the ever crowded case attached to the Grand Hotel Couymans, and while I sat there, bewildered by the sound of tongues that outbabeled Babel, a dapper, clean-shaven man, who might have passed for twenty-five, but really was about forty years of age, took a chair next to mine and opened the ball by asking, "Are you an American?” Also German Agent. During the next ten minutes he mentioned the names of a score of New York business men who were —I let him tell it —intimate friends, and then he sought to discover why I was in Holland. As a reward for frankness which rivaled his own, and therefore revealed nothing, he warned me to guard my papers carefully and never to leave them in my hotel, as there were hundreds of German spies about who would not stop at anything to gain information for the fatherland. As he left the case a London acquaintance dropped into his vacant chair and whispered, "Do you know the man with whom you were talking?” “No,” I replied, "but I like his brand of cigar.” “Well,” said my Englishman, “beware of him; he is a German secret agent who poses as an American.” I thanked him for his warning, accepted a cigar from him, too, and was told next morning that he also is a German agent. “This is no place for another ‘lnnocent Abroad,’ ” was my thought, and I quickly left for The Hague, only to find that I had stepped from the frying pan into the fire. Here I have obtained first-hand knowledge of the wonderful German intelligence service which has succeeded after nearly two years’ persistent, unremitting labor, in converting a section of the population—whose pockets have been hit by the blockade —to anti-British, though not pro-German, views. “Gott Strafe England.” It must be said, however, that as a general rule these propagandists are shrewder than the agents who were directed by Doctor Dernburg, in the United States, and they have concentrated their energies in the promotion of a "Gott strafe England” sentiment among the Dutch. If they have not succeeded to the extent hoped for by Berlin, it is due, not to lack of zeal or effort, but to the common sense of the Dutch government and people, who, when the German agents charge that the English blockade is forcing the workers of the country into idleness and compelling the inhabitants to eat “war, bread,” reply that, while England is undoubtedly partly to blame for the deplorable state of affairs, Germany, which has torpedoed and mined many Dutch vessds, is from this same Dutch point of view quite as culpable. There is only one attractive thing about - these spies in Holland —their money, which they spend freely.

A marked fondness here for things American is shown among all classes. American shoes are driving out the wooden shoes of **Wynken, Blynken and Nod American clottoes are rapidly replacing the baggy monstrosities that once reached here from London; the girls look like American girls—and therefore they look good to me—and your Dutchman is very happy when you tell him that he speaks English like an American. The only foreign touch in public gatherings is supplied by the spies—and not by all of these either. In fact, the hotel section of The Hague looks at night like a slice of the Broadway white light district, and the modern Dutchman looks like and is the American of Europe.