20 SEPTEMBER 1935, Page 32

THE QUEEN OF SPIES

By Major Thomas Coulson

In The Queen of Spies (Constable, 7s. ad.) Major Coulson, once a member of the British Secret Service, tells the amazing story of Louise de Bettignies, who worked as. a spy for the allies behind the German lines during the most critical years of the War, under the name of Alice Dubois. He ranks her higher than such celebrated women spies as Mata Hari and Irma Staub, and, when one has read this record of her achieve- Ments, there can be no doubt as to her right to the title he has given her. Once a student at Girton College, this quiet cultured Belgian girl became the guiding genius of a band of spies and messengers, almost all of whom were civilians living in occupied territory. Many of them were shot or imprisoned, including Louise de Bettignies herself, who eventually was caught and died in a Cologne prison in 1918, but the German secret police never managed to break up the " Alice Service." To her house in Lille were smuggled hundreds of messages from every part of the occupied territory. She co-ordinated theni into a composite report, which was then written out in minute script on a slip of paper a few inches square, or reduced by micro-photography. Sometimes this was despatehed to Holland by carrier pigeon, more often it was carried by a messenger through the lines. On one occasion, a reduced map of the German lines with two thousand gun positions marked was cemented into the fittings of the courier's spectacles. This book is full of such exploits, as amazing as any that ever came out of the imagination of a novelist.