THE PERIL FROM ALIENS.
TORD CRAWFORD, as is proved by his appointment to public positions requiring a high degree of good sense and an accurate judgment, is a man who is trained to weigh his words. He does not " talk through his hat." We confess, therefore, that when we read the speech which he made in the House of Lords on Wednesday we found it by far the most disturbing statement we have yet come across as to the danger we are running from the presence of enemy aliens. What he said was a very sharp challenge to the Government which cannot possibly be ignored. Lord Haldane's answer, which emphasized the enormous difficulties of the subject—difficulties we all most readily admit—was not an answer at all. In what we have written on other occasions about the alien peril we have done our best to discourage a policy of pro- miscuous alien-hunts merely because such a policy was demanded by uninstructed outbursts of popular passion or by newspaper clamour. Terrible injustice may be done by such means, and for our own part we experience rather a sense of shame than an access of con- fidence in our methods of public security when we are told, for example, by an hotel keeper that he has " sacked every man of German birth in the place "—even those who had been naturalized British subjects for many years and had sons serving in the British Army. Any one who acts like that has probably surrendered his soul to some callous and panic-stricken customer. On the other band, we distinctly do not deprecate any measures, how- ever drastic, that may be thought necessary by the Government after a consideration of facts which are much better known to them than to the public. The safety of the realm is their high trust, and if they con- clude that in ensuring the safety of the realm measures are necessary which incidentally will inflict great hardship on innocent persons, we must not shrink from those measures for a moment. We do not stay our artillery fire because some innocent persons may be straying about in the enemy's lines. It is not rigour we object to in the treatment of aliens, but futile passion, supported, as it often is, by the most monstrous and unprofitable of all demands—the demand that like should be met by like, and that the acts of the enemy should be met by reprisals.
With such principles as these in mind, let us examine what Lord Crawford said. Is it really a fact that, while some persons are lashing themselves into a fury with the thought that a small shopkeeper with a German name in an inland town may be a, spy, aliens on the Scottish coast have easy opportunities for carrying on signalling by flashlight, and that their residence within a prohibited area has hitherto been treated only by interventions and punishments that must be described as derisory ? Lord Crawford spoke only of a small district which he knows well near his own home. If he is not mistaken in his facts, it is certain that what he has noticed must be multiplied a hundredfold in order to reach an estimate of the services that are being rendered to the German Navy all along the coast. The county of Fife, in which Lord Crawford lives, has a submarine base in the north at Dundee, and on the south the great naval base of Rosyth. Early in the war the county of Fife was declared to be a, prohibited area for aliens, but Lord Crawford said that nevertheless up to a few days ago, when apparently his observations ceased, aliens continued to live there. As late as last week there was an enemy alien, to whom the Government, for good reasons, had refused naturalization before the war, living in a house overlooking the North Sea. Next door but one to him there was another enemy alien who talked freely of his relations in the German Army and of his profound contempt for this country. We dare say that the man who boasted openly was a less dangerous person than his presumably more secretive and outwardly more Anglophil neighbour ; but what was either of these men doing there after Fife had been proclaimed a prohibited area ? Surely the Home Office, which is the Department responsible for the public safety in these respects, does not intend that an Order shall be issued merely to be openly disregarded Can Lord Crawford be mistaken ? We have heard state- ments as positive as Lord Crawford's which turned out to be mere moonshine. Lord Crawford, however, is not at all the sort of witness to make assertions of that kind, not at all the type of man to let the war rattle his nerves and fill his brain with spectres. But Lord Crawford had still more astonishing statements to make. A German, he said, was detected tampering with official messages sent to the Coastguard by telephone. He was removed, but he persuaded the authorities that he was innocent, and he was allowed to return, though his telephone was cut off. If he was an alien, why was he allowed to return to the prohibited area, innocent or not ? And if it was right for him to return, and he was innocent of the charge of tampering with messages why was his telephone cut off? This seems rather like giving three weeks' imprisonment to a man who has successfully appealed against a conviction for murder. But on October 29th the authorities again removed this telephone- less alien. "I am not certain that he will not get back again," was Lord Crawford's comment.
Lord Crawford then went on to speak of the lamp- signalling. Signalling from the shore to ships in the Firth of Forth was, he said, continuous, but he did not know whether the signals were intended for submarines or for commercial vessels. Much of this signalling is prob- ably official or authorized. But it is obvious that if signalling to commercial ships is allowed there is plenty of room for messages to be conveyed to ships which are serving the German cause. No doubt some of the "neutral" ships which use our East Coast ports are simply tenders for German submarines. Other highly suspicious occurrences were mentioned by Lord Crawford, and we will quote his words as they were reported in the Times :— "I third form of communication with the enemy is a very carefully prepared system of communications by post. In order to escape the Censor, a private postal system is arranged by com- mercial boats that come into our ports. Then Germany and Austria have Consular agents in Fife. They are still resident in the county, or at least were a week ago ; and though belonging to neutral nations, they are officials of the enemy. The Firth of Forth also is full of German sailors. Our policy has been to try in commercial life to ignore the responsibilities of war, and to keep open trade between Denmark, Sweden, and Scotland. It is, therefore, perfectly easy for Germany to send her sailors into the Forth in commercial boats. Then there are cases of illegal export and import of cargoes, and there have been two cases of the illegal importation of dynamite without the formalities of entry. Wretched little twopenny-halfpenny boats carrying immense quantities of dynamite—there have been two cases of that in the last few weeks. Again at this particular port there have been in the last few weeks two cases of illegal export of petrol, not greal quantities which would be useful to a belligerent Power as a cargo delivered on land, but small consignments which would be invaluable to an enemy ship lying off the coast. These are only two ports out of the whole row on the north and south sides of the Forth. In one of these cases the man who committed the crime was fined .0. The fine was paid. Fine him £500 and the fine would be paid next day. A fine is no good. My last point is the danger of mines. A ship was brought into one of these ports the other day and searched. It was discovered that one of her coal bunkers was three parts filled with sawdust. No sailor in his senses would carry sawdust close to the engines. Of course the assumption was that this harmless boat had been dropping mines, which we know to our cost have been strewn up and down our North Sea shores."
Towards the end of his speech Lord Crawford said that some naturalized British subjects had been removed, but others had been allowed to remain " against whom there is not the suspicion but the knowledge of offences against the law." That is a very definite statement, which we assume Lord Crawford is able to prove. He suggests that the real weakness of our methods is that the will of the Home Office has not been clearly expressed, and that local authorities do not know what they may legally do or not do, or, indeed, what the Home Office in general would wish them to do. "They live in fear of a snub from the Home Office or the Scottish Office." Surely, if an offence, or an attempt to commit an offence, is proved against an enemy alien or a naturalized British subject shooting is a penalty which no one could call unjustifiable. Men guilty of helping the enemy are simply spies within our lines, or traitors to their adopted country. There cannot be any dispute about that. If the penalty visited on them is one of laughable leniency, the spy or traitor, so far from being deterred, has an actual incentive to continue his business. He sees himself in an heroic light—and he will get rich rewards when peace is restored and the time comes to acknowledge his " dangerous " ser- vices. Imprisonment, even for a considerable period, is certainly not a practical way of dealing with guilty aliens. They know that with the war will end all imprisonments for war offences. The only deterrent which is effective against patriotism, liberal bribes, and the love of adventure is the dread of a firing party. The patriotic German alien, on fire to do something for his country, has always been told that the English are too " soft " to shoot, and that his own Government will guarantee that he shall not suffer imprisonment beyond the war, whatever happens. Hence the risks of spying seem very small. This is a view we shall be very foolish to encourage. Lord Crawford's state- ments require a speedy and precise answer.
Previous page
