I spy
WILLIAM BUCIIAN
The Book of Spies Man Innes (Bancroft 15s) It is a little difficult, at first sight, to determine why such a book as this should have beep turned out in this particular way. In appear- ance it is large, gaudy and eye-catching enough to suggest The Boy's Book of Spies' as a likelier title. Nevertheless, on investigation— and despite some highly coloured and not very helpful art work—it proves to be an acceptable rapid survey of its subject, well researched and edited, especially in the matter of histori- cal illustrations. It makes a very good begin- ning for a study of the strange profession which has had so strong an appeal to an enormous public since (at least) 1914.
Spying has not always been a dishonourable profession, nor (in this country at any rate) one continuously profitable or even dynamiC. For years at a time, in the last four centuries, it has suffered long lapses from activitk, dwindling at times almost to the point of dis- appearance. It was Sir Francis Walsingham, in the first Elizabeth's day, who designed and developed the Secret Service in a form which has not, perhaps, changed radically up to the present day. Much of the now familiar para- phernalia of codes and ciphers, secret inks, covers and cut-outs and cells—not to mention double agents—has been in being for a very long time. Microphotography and the transistor have merely refined processes which have been in use since the days of Alexander the Great.
Most of the famous spies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are given fair treat- ment in this book, from Carl Schulmeister, Napoleon's master-spy who made additional miseries for `le malheureux Mack,' and Wilhelm Stieber, who worked so well for Bismarck, to Steinhauer, who lost the game completely to the British creator of MI5 in the First World War. Mata Hari comes into it as well, and the egregious 'Cicero', and there is a good chapter on spies of the Ameri- can wars.
No one would quarrel with Mr Innes's answer to the question of why some men (and women) becomes spies: 'Some say that it is love of money, or idealism for a political or religious cause, that leads them into espionage, but these motives can be exercised in other and more obvious ways: in the last analysis, a man is a spy because this is what suits his nature better than anything else.' For boys eleven up.
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