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"ALICE," O.B.E.

BY B. S. TOWNROE.

UNTIL I stayed recently at Roubaix with a man who had lived there under the German occupation from 1914 to 1918, I had only heard vague rumours of the work that a little group of French women carried out on behalf of the British General Staff at the risk of their lives. Even in France I find the names of Louise de Bettignies of Lille and of her companion, Léonie Vanhoutte of Roubaix, are hardly known. An account of their war service has, however, been written recently by M. Antoine Redier, and is quite as exciting as any romance of fiction. To him and to others I owe many of the following details about two heroines of Northern France.

The story begins in October 1914. When the Germans arrived at Lille, Madame Louise was staying in her mother's house, but her mother had already departed to St Omer. After a few weeks of the German occupation, Madame Louise obtained permission to leave the town, and in time, together with hundreds of other French and Belgian refugees who were leaving the occupied territories, she crossed from Flushing and arrived at Folkestone. There she was subjected to the customary examination by British officers, one of whom asked her

"Have you just come from France ? pening there? Can you tell us anything about the German Army of Occupation?"

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She replied with perfect selfpossession, speaking rather quickly in French, but as soon as she saw that her examiners did not quite understand her, she spoke in English. One of the officers, surprised that she knew certain details of military matters that would only be known to German soldiers, asked how she had learnt of such matters.

"You see, I speak their language, sir."

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Then you know German as well as English?"

"Yes," she replied. A senior officer then asked her whether she was returning to France, and she answered that she was hoping to go to her mother at St Omer, which at that time was the British G.H.Q.

"Would you do us the honour,' our," asked the officer, "to put off for a day your return to France, and allow us to-morrow to have another conversation with you?"

Madame Louise agreed to this, and was taken to stay for the night in a Folkestone hotel as the guest of the Government. The next day the Intelligence officers obtained full particulars of her family,

and asked how she had learnt to speak three languages so fluently. At that date in the autumn of 1914 she was thirtyfour years of age. Both her mother and father came from good families. She was given a sound education, which was fortunate, as her father was not successful in his business, and in time she had to earn her own living. She studied at Oxford, and also at the University of Lille. Later she travelled in Italy, where she taught French and English as a governess, and during her leisure she learnt Italian. As she wished also to learn German, after a time she left Italy and became governess to the children of a Count Mikiesky, who had a house near Lemberg in Poland, where she lived for a year and learnt to understand the language, and also German manners and their psychology. In appearance she was very attractive. She was extremely athletic, good at golf, a strong swimmer, and an untiring walker. Her life, so full of promise, was spoilt for a time by an unfortunate marriage, although I know nothing more of this than the fact that she was very miserable.

Such was the woman who was asked by the British Intelligence to undertake a mission, fraught with infinite peril, but also of great importance to the Allies. The senior officer at Folkestone placed before her this proposal :

"One of us will go with you to St Omer. He will present

you, if you are willing, to Sir John French, who will himself explain to you what a service you could render to France, if you will agree to become our agent at Lille. Will you act for us there, and send us regularly, by certain means that we will explain, more information about the German armies such as you have told us to-day?"

To accept the request meant to return to what was practically a prison, and to undertake the life of a spy, exposed to insults, dangers, and possibly to death. Although she was a very brave woman, she hesitated, and then asked whether she might have two or three days in which to consult her mother and her Father Confessor.

Eventually some days later she was back in France, having promised that if her mother would consent, she would undertake the perilous work. She discussed the whole question with her mother, who was, of course, overjoyed at seeing her daughter again, and only with very great reluctance she agreed that if it was her duty, she ought to undertake the task. Her spiritual director also advised her to accept. Accordingly a few days later she presented herself at British G.H.Q., and told the Intelligence officers that she was ready to serve them. They then arranged for her to be provided with adequate sums of money, for they knew how necessary this

would be if she was to succeed. They also explained to her the kind of information that was wanted, and suggested how an organisation might be formed. Her knowledge of three languages, her quick wit, and her courage made her specially well equipped to carry out their wishes.

She returned to Folkestone, and from there crossed to Flushing. She journeyed back across Holland, and one day arrived in February 1915 at Philippine, a tiny Dutch village close to the frontier. She there found a guide who showed her a place to crawl underneath the barbed wire during the night. Eventually she arrived back again at her home in the Rue d'Islay at Lille, to the joy of her old nurse, who was still there. After that she set to work to establish the necessary organisation, and took the name of "Alice Dubois."

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military positions, and any further developments of interest. In order to collect accurate facts with regard to the movements of trains and road transport, she chose with the greatest care men or women who dwelt near to railway bridges, to level crossings, and to cross-roads. These agents had the sole duty of noting down the number of the trains, or motor lorries, passing along the roads, and eliciting any information as to their contents. Thus during the night, while the trains rolled by, French eyes looked out from many a little cottage and marked each railway coach that passed.

One interesting example is given by M. Redier in order to show the importance of the information information so gained. He states how, in April and May 1918, the Allies knew exactly the number of ambulance trains containing wounded coming back from Mount Kemmel. As we knew already how many divisions were engaged in that district, we were able to estimate how many survived, and therefore the state of the enemy's defences.

"Alice"-I will now give Mme. de Bettignies her nom de guerre-selected these humble spies with so much discretion

It is possible from M. Redier's book, in which he gives in great detail accounts of conversations that he has had with various people who knew "Alice" at work, to gather some idea of the magnitude and daring of her war service. She was clearly a woman of great intelligence, and from the beginning selected her that it is said not one of helpers with much skill. She these subordinate agents was had been asked to supply the British Intelligence Department with two kinds of information -firstly, details of train movements; secondly, and even more important, particulars of

ever discovered, or betrayed their trust. She preferred married men, and in almost every case her agents were themselves railway employees. Some refused to be rewarded in any

way, while others received a small monthly wage for their work, which was hard and dangerous.

She had a good deal of difficulty in selecting a superior class of agent, who could give her accurate information with regard to enemy movements and positions behind the lines. Usually men and women were chosen who were of good social standing, and had the leisure to move about. Those who came to market, or who attended business gatherings, were able to gather most easily information with regard to the positions of artillery batteries, or of munition dumps, or of tunnelling, or details of relieving troops, from gossip heard in restaurants. Data of this kind which came to her was sometimes written, but more often was given her verbally as she moved from place to place.

She wrote her reports on very thin Japanese paper with a fine pen. She preferred to She preferred to do this arduous writing work at daybreak, when it was possible for her to see without using any artificial light, and when there was less chance of being interrupted by a sudden search party.

Such informa

tion as was too dangerous to put on paper she memorised and wrote down after she had made her perilous journey safely into Holland, for she passed to and fro like a shuttle-cock between Flushing and Lille.

In time she secured a number of highly placed persons to help her. There was, for ex

ample, M. Lenfant, Commissioner of the Police at Tourcoing; M. Louis Sion, a business man; and one of whom we shall hear later, M. de Geyter at Mouscron, who possessed a chemical laboratory that was most useful, as notes or documents sometimes had to be photographed. She also used other women, who acted as couriers and messengers across Belgium. The most useful of these was Mlle. MarieLéonie Vanhoutte, known by the conspirators as "Charlotte," who worked for a time in the Red Cross at Roubaix, and in October 1914 accompanied her brother, aged twenty-eight, and three others in their escape to Holland to avoid being captured by the Germans. Thus very early in the war she learnt one of the secret routes, which she was to pass over often in the future. On the way she met

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he wondered whether this was not a personage of the girl's own imagination. Accordingly one day he wrote at the foot of one of his reports to her

"If truly this report reaches an officer of the British Army at Folkestone, I beg him to give me unimpeachable evidence that I do not work in vain. Will he give orders that the new munition dump that the Germans have just installed close to the railway station at Tourcoing, at the place marked on the annexed plan, shall be bombarded between midnight and one o'clock in the morning?"

A few days later, at the suggested time, shells fell upon the dump, and it exploded, and in consequence the " doubting Thomas" believed.

Such incidents made the German High Command very uneasy, and all the more determined to find out in what way information was given to the French or British. Many of the present French inhabitants of Lille and Roubaix have described to me the incessant visits made by German soldiers during 1915 as they searched for hidden wireless apparatus or carrier pigeons. One reason for this anxiety on the part of the German General Staff to discover how military information was leaking out, was the fact that during the four months from May to August 1915 the German batteries in the Lille district had been totally destroyed three times.

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The truth was that Alice had been assisted by a doctor in Lille, who had prepared a plan on which the location of all the German guns was marked. This plan she carried across Belgium and Holland, and placed it herself in the hands of the Intelligence officers in Great Britain. Subsequent changes in the plan were notified by other means.

In the first few months she usually hid the reports or plans on her person. Once, for example, a report was hidden away in a packet of chocolate, which was left carelessly on the table while she was being searched at one of the frontiers. On that occasion she had assumed the rôle of being a buyer of cheeses, and, provided with an authority from a shop in Lille, told all who questioned her that she was proceeding to Holland in order to buy Dutch cheese. On another occasion the message was hidden in the leather of one of her shoes. She put these outside the door of the room in her hotel to be cleaned before going to bed on one night when she expected that a surprise visit might be paid by a German search party. Just before daybreak she and her girl companion were aroused from their sleep by the entry of German soldiers, who examined the room, their luggage, and their clothes, but naturally found nothing, for the shoes at the time were in the hands of the hotel boots"! Thus they escaped. Other hiding-places

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