Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 December 1905 — LYNX EYED SPIES OF RUSSIA [ARTICLE]

LYNX EYED SPIES OF RUSSIA

Impossible to Escape from Espionage in Czar’s Domain. Russia is pre-eminently the land of spies. Democratic and socialistic France has raised the spy system to a state function, but in Russia it is the very soul of the state. In Moscow, in the streets, agents of the police are stationed every five hundred yards; in addition, secret agents watch the houses day and night—one being allotted to every four houses; and in every house is another spy, the porter. Go where you will, you are never out of the watchful eye of the police. You brush against spies in your hotel, as in the theaters; in a restaurant, as in the drawing-room of a friend. It is ridiculously easy to recognize those you meet in the fashionable resorts. They have evidently been instructed to disguise themselves as gentlemen, and for one of them the livery of a gentleman is a frock coat, a silk hat, and, always—by rain or sunlight—an umbrella. The famous third police! A stranger might fancy that, in an open cab —talking French or English to his friend—he would at least he safe from surveillance; hut Ills friend will touch him signifleantly and speak of the weather. The fat cabby on the box, somnolent, with white hair and good paternal eyes, may be a spy, more skilled in the languages than the traveling stranger; and, If the cabinnu has been found loitering near the great clubs, the hotels, or the embassies, the chances nre strong that lie is. A subtler police than that of the third section —the nkratna, which has its ramifications in every cupital in Europe and America —completes this great syßtem of espionage. Its mesh is over every man In Russia; no one goes' unwatched —suve only old Count Tolstoi. —Vance Thompson, In Success Magazine.