Nurse and Spy in the Union Army: Comprising the Adventures and Experiences of a Woman in Hospitals, Camps, and Battle-Fields , livre ebook

NURSE AND SPY IN THE UNION ARMY:
COMPRISING THE ADVENTURES AND EXPERIENCES OF A WOMAN IN HOSPITALS, CAMPS, AND BATTLE-FIELDS
By
EMMA E. EDMONDS
WITH THE INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER The Ethos of the Spy

First published in 1865



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To the Sick and Wounded Soldiers of the Army of the Potomac, This Volume is Respectfully Inscribed by the Author.






Contents
THE ETHO S OF THE SPY
By Hamil Grant
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
C HAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
C HAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
C HAPTER XXVII
CH APTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX


Illustrations
Hospital Tree at Fair Oaks
Catering f or Hospitals
Disguised as a Contraband
Making Hoe-Cake for a Sick Rebel
Ac ting Orderly
Rid ing for Life
Food for t he Famishing
At Rebel Headquarters
An Interes ting Patient
Pl aying Possum
Paying a Debt of Gratitude
Explosio n of a Shell




THE ETHOS OF THE SPY
By Hamil Grant
The worldly philosophy of the current age bears the name of Pragmatism, the principles of which, so far as they are susceptible of being weighed, constitute a more or less modified view of the doctrine that the end justifies the means, a teaching which has become familiar to us through the pages of Nietzsche and Stendhal, and which is based mainly on the idea that might is the proper measure of right. Taking it, then, that pragmatical notions of this sort have become almost an implicit condition of individual progress, it would seem to serve little purpose seriously to go into the question of the wrongfulness or the rightfulness of spying as a factor in the struggle for complete self-expression—itself the real aim of all ordered and prearranged lives. It is sufficient for us to reflect that the successful spy flourishes to-day, as he has flourished since the beginnings of recorded time, and as in all probability he will continue to flourish till the day of doom. Indeed, it is not an unreasonable presumption that in the very earliest ages of the world, espionage must have been an entirely necessary condition of the struggle for existence among the infra-men who then peopled the caves of the earth and who succeeded in successfully surviving only by virtue of predatory acts and excursions in which the spoils and the plunder went to the strongest, who had also made themselves the best-informed as to sources of supply. Bible history, too, has told us about the Spy. The story of Joshua, the leader of Israel's hosts and the excellent organisation of informers which he controlled, remain like other tales of common human interest in the Scriptures among those that linger always in the minds of the least Biblical of students. Babylon, we are told, was overrun with informers of all kinds, Memphis and Thebes in their turn became what Alexandria proved to be in the time of Tiberius, and what the great capitals of our own day have become—namely, recruiting centres for criminal adventurers of all types, nationalities and classes, and consequently happy hunting-grounds for all in rapid quest of the agents of intrigue, iniquity and maleficence. Those, too, who have read the classical writers will remember that great leaders like Alexander, Mithridates, Scipio, Hannibal, Pompey and Cæsar, laid the foundations of successful campaigns and political achievement upon information previously supplied them by commiss ioned spies.
According to the Roman idea, spying was accounted a fair stratagem in both war and politics and was, in theory at least, distinguishable from treachery. Between the two acts there is, of course, a real difference, although in works dealing with international law the terms are often confused, some writers treating them as interchangeable, whilst others but loosely differentiate between the act of spying and that of betrayal, the presumption always remaining that the man who is capable of being a successful and voluntary spy also possesses talents which are common to the elemental traitor. The penalty of death, says Bluntschli, should be such as to terrify all spies, and it is the custom accordingly to execute them ignominiously by hanging. Technically the spy has been defined as one who clandestinely goes in quest of information, whilst a traitor is one who spies within his own community and to its undoing. Although most authorities agree in considering espionage as lawful among the ruses of warfare, all, with one exception, concur in determining that death remains the only logical desert of the man who has possessed himself of secrets upon which the common safety depends. Certain international jurists have objected to the employment, in any cause, of spies, as being immoral, or as condoning acts which are of themselves immoral, and the French writer Morin looks upon espionage with particular horror on the ground that it is "usually malice aforethought and is never voluntary," a peculiar enough view. It is especially blameable, he holds, because a premium is placed upon essentially dishonest dealing, although he admits, with some inconsistency, that it may sometimes become lawful—when it is unsoiled by perfidy, as he puts it. Only the last emergency can at all justify it, says Morin, who is singular in declaring that a spy should not be put to death unless caught in the act. Napoleon himself displayed an unexpected leniency wherever possible towards captured spies, and this on the ground, as he said, that the spy is, by his nature, a base character. In the opinion of the great soldier the best spy is the half-breed who is a natural cosmopolitan and is consequently unaffected by ideas of patriotism. His greatest spy, Schulmeister, was a man of decidedly mongrel antecedents and began life as a smuggler. Pedlars he also declared to be invaluable in espionage, and for the reason that they are naturally disposed to vagabondage, itself a trait of degeneracy. It is well known that he would only employ in such work men whose past had been soiled by some act of a disgraceful or criminal kind, and like the great Frederick, it was his custom to propose to actually convicted criminals their enlargement as the reward of a successful piec e of spying.
Modern spies of the professional type, more especially those employed by Germany, fully meet the specifications of Napoleon's idea of the race. The accomplished spy of to-day is invariably a man of at least quasi-criminal proclivities, a being entirely lacking in a moral sense, a degenerate briefly; and indeed experts in the secret history of the German special-information departments all agree in declaring that a "white man," to use an Americanism, is worse than useless to the experts at the chief bureau of the Berlin Secret Service. As a consequence, their corps d'élite is mostly made up of men who, if they have not known the inside of prisons, have at least earned an unequivocal right to such knowledge. One of the profoundest technicians in the business of organising spy campaigns, the late Karl Stieber, has stated that the most valuable spy is your born aristocrat with a bad record and a worse reputation. Proof of the soundness of this view would seem to have been fully advanced by the noble interveners in the Dreyfus case, and, in any event, it is known that among the names of the organising staff of Berlin's school for spies, a large number are those who bear the names of famous families, while the remainder, if not all gentlemen by birth, are at least gentlemen by act of parliament, as the saying is. Courage, aplomb , the possession of what Americans so aptly term "a good front," easy manners and a genial temperament—of any or all of these qualifications, a man of good birth is only in rare cases devoid. Heredity alone has given him many of the psychic requirements that go to make up the most valuable of actors in a desperate situation, including, perhaps, that philosophy of absolute insouciance which makes of him the most sinister and cold-blooded of all crim inal agents.
It would be unfair, however, to accuse the Germans of monopolising all those vicious characteristics which go to form the complete spy. Indeed, it would probably be nearer the mark to declare that it is only because of the elaborate excellence of the German organisation that the Teuton has signalised himself so prominently these later times in espionage. For, in truth, the Teutonic mind is fundamentally lacking, it is well known, in those qualities of craft and imagination which produce the best kind of secret service agent. Perseverance and the philosophy which knows how to wait on circumstances, these conventional enough qualities he undoubtedly possesses in a marked degree above his fellows. Nevertheless, they are not the most important requirements of the master-