II
It is the common habit of nations at war to ascribe to the other side all the cunning, as if the possession of a Ulysses were some sort of discredit. Happily for us our chosen Ulysses in France, at the most critical time, was of the first order. But no soldier can go far ahead of his time; he has to work in it and with it. And so the rich new mine of Intelligence work through the Press was not worked by either side, in the Great War, for all it was worth. Only a few trial borings were made; experimental shafts were sunk into the seam, and good, promising stuff was brought to the top.
Here are a couple of samples. Some readers of popular science, as it is called, may have been shocked to see in a technical journal, rather late in the war, a recklessly full description of our “listening sets”—the apparatus by which an enemy telephone message is overheard in the field. “Why,” they must have thought, “this is giving away one of our subtlest devices for finding out what the enemy is about. The journal ought to be prosecuted.” The article had really come from G.H.Q. It was the last thrust in a long duel.
When the war opened the Germans had good apparatus for telephonic eavesdropping. We had, as usual, nothing to speak of. The most distinctly traceable result was the annihilation of our first attack at Ovillers, near Albert, early in July 1916. At the instant fixed for the attack our front at the spot was smothered under a bombardment which left us with no men to make it. A few days after when we took Ovillers, we found the piece of paper on which the man with the German “listening set” had put down, word for word, our orders for the first assault. Then we got to work. We drew our own telephones back, and we perfected our own “listening sets” till the enemy drew back his, further and further, giving up more and more of ease and rapidity of communication in order to be safe. At last a point was reached at which he had backed right out of hearing. All hope of pushing him back further still, by proving in practice that we could still overhear, was now gone. All that was left to do was to add the effects of a final bluff to the previous effects of the real strength of our hand. And so there slipped into a rather out-of-the-way English journal the indiscretion by which the reach of our electric ears was, to say the least of it, not understated. Few people in England might notice the article. The enemy could be trusted to do so.
When the Flanders battle of July 31, 1917, was about to be fought, we employed the old ruse of the Chinese attack. We modernised the trick of medieval garrisons which would make a show of getting ready to break out at one gate when a real sally was to be made from another. The enemy was invited to think that a big attack was at hand. But against Lens, and not east of Ypres. Due circumstantial evidence was provided. There were audible signs that a great concentration of British guns were cautiously registering, west of Lens. A little scuffle on that part of the front elicited from our side an amazing bombardment—apparently loosed in a moment of panic. I fancy a British Staff Officer’s body—to judge by his brassard and tabs—may have floated down the Scarpe into the German lines. Interpreted with German thoroughness, the maps and papers upon it might easily betray the fact that Lens was the objective. And then a really inexcusable indiscretion appeared—just for a moment, and then was hushed up—in the London Press. To an acute German eye it must have been obvious that this composition was just the inconsequent gassing of some typically stupid English General at home on leave; he was clearly throwing his weight about, as they say, without any real understanding of anything. The stuff was of no serious value, except for one parenthetic, accidental allusion to Lens as the mark. As far as I know, this ebullition of babble was printed in only one small edition of one London paper. Authority was then seen to be nervously trying, as Uncle Toby advised, “to wipe it up and say no more about it.” Lest it should not be observed to have taken this wise precaution some fussy member of Parliament may have asked in the House of Commons how so outrageous a breach of soldierly reticence had occurred. And was there no control over the Press? It all answered. The Germans kept their guns in force at Lens, and their counter barrage east of Ypres was so much the lighter, and our losses so much the less.