A story from the records of Northumberland Constabulary’s registration of aliens files. 

Today’s guest blog is by Liz O’Donnell, on behalf of  ‘WW1 Enemy Aliens in the North East’, a project that looks at the lives of minority ethnic communities in the North East during the First World War.

Liz is a local historian and project volunteer.

The project is supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. If you would like to get involved please contact Northern Cultural Projects,  ncp.cic@gmail.com.

At 11.30am on 22 January 1917, the first of a flurry of telephone messages between several north-east constabularies about the presence of a mysterious foreigner in their midst was received at Northumberland police headquarters. The Newcastle chief constable informed his counterpart in Morpeth of the arrival of one ‘Frans Suplio’, an Austro-Hungarian with a London address.  Described as tall – 5 foot 11 inches or 6 foot – stout, wearing an overcoat and a green trilby hat, the man had made his presence known to the Newcastle police at 9.30 am the previous day but was now heading north, announcing that he was going to see Lord Grey at Howick Hall on important diplomatic business. He carried what was believed to be a letter from Lord Grey and an identity book, but had not obtained legal permission to enter Newcastle before his arrival.

Ordinarily, Newcastle police would almost certainly have prevented him from travelling on to Howick as he was, in law, an enemy alien. That they allowed him to continue on his journey suggests that they were worried about interfering with vital matters of state. Nevertheless, so as to verify the man’s identity, they were contacting the ‘Colonel Kell’s Department’ – the Security Service Bureau (later MI5). They also communicated with Superintendent Bolton at Alnwick police station, who agreed to send a sergeant to Howick to make enquiries.

The Bureau’s reply was swift. The man was known at the Foreign Office and should not be interfered with, although the police should make sure they kept in touch with him. By the evening, a message had come through from Superintendent Bolton, that ‘the Alien left and went to Edinburgh’ But who was he and what had he been up to during his brief visit to Northumberland? And what ‘important diplomatic business’ could he have had with Albert, the Fourth Earl Grey, at Howick Hall?

Some answers to these questions can be found in a handwritten account written the same day by Sergeant Archbold Straughan, the officer sent from Alnwick police station to investigate the man’s movements. He found out that ‘Suplio’, travelling by a car which had been seen waiting at Alnmouth station when the 10.20 am train from London arrived, called first at Howick Hall.  Straughan discovered that Earl Grey had seen him but had no idea who the man was. It became clear that the man had mixed up his Greys as he hurried on to Fallodon Hall, just six miles away, sending his card in to Viscount Grey, the former Foreign Minister. Grey declined to receive him, asking the man to write down what his business was; he told Straughan that he thought his visitor was connected with Slav Societies and that he may have met him about two years previously at the Foreign Office.

The man, who had (according to the driver) claimed to be Russian, returned by car to Alnmouth station and caught the 1 pm train to Edinburgh, having missed the 12.40 pm back to London.

A HINT OR A FRIGHT

The next communication was a telephone call from Edinburgh City Police the following morning (11.35 am 23 January 1917), letting Northumberland Constabulary know that ‘Suplio’ had indeed arrived in their city and was apparently sightseeing (this word was heavily underlined). He had been ‘permissioned by the Government of Russia at Petrograd’ in both French and Russian and it seemed he intended to visit Glasgow next.

 A message from London was passed on to Edinburgh by the Northumberland police. While not suggesting mala fides (bad faith, intent to deceive), the Foreign Office would be glad if the man ‘stopped his running about the country and got a hint or a fright in that direction.’ The Edinburgh officer said he would do this quietly if the man was still in the city.

It was obvious that the mysterious visitor was well known to the Secret Service and Foreign Office, but even so, the Northumberland police force were clearly still unsure about his identity. ‘I am not quite sure’, wrote an officer, ‘whether this man is strictly speaking a friendly alien but presume he is not an enemy?’ ‘Journeys like his are apt to lead to suspicion’ he continued, waspishly, ‘and are a cause of a good deal of work for the police.’

WORKING ON BEHALF OF THE SOUTHERN SLAVS

The penultimate document in Alien file 12/17 is a letter, dated 4 April 1917, from the Home Office to Northumberland’s chief constable, intended to clear up any confusion about the identity of the stranger, albeit over three months since the police had requested more information. It stated that ‘Frans Soupilo’ was indeed well-known at the Russian Embassy and that no difficulty should be made in giving him any permits necessary or ‘any other assistance in his work on behalf of the Southern Slavs.’ Although technically an Austrian subject, he was exempt from internment.

In fact, the mysterious visitor was none other than Frano Supilo, described later in 1917 as ‘one of the ablest political brains, not merely of his own nation, but of warring Europe as a whole.’ (The New Europe, vol. IV, no. 51). Born in Cavtat, Croatia, in 1870, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he was involved in politics from his youth; after protesting against a visit by Rudolph Habsburg to Dubrovnik in 1883 he had been banned from all educational institutions throughout the Empire. Despite his lack of formal education, he became, following a stint as a journalist on anti-Habsburg publications, one of the leading Croatian politicians of the early twentieth century who had been elected to the Sabor (Croatian Assembly) in 1906. Above all, Supilo worked tirelessly for the freedom of all Slavs from Austria-Hungary and the recognition of a Serbian-Croatian-Slovenian nation, lobbying for and promoting the idea in all major European capitals.

A few months after the outbreak of the Great War, in April 1915, having fled from his homeland, he co-founded the Yugoslav Committee in Paris (it immediately relocated to London). Its main goal was to liberate Croatia and Slovenia from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and to unify with Serbia and Montenegro to form a single state. Supilo was an idealist, advocating a federation – a ‘national and political community in which there would be no conquerors and no conquered’.[1] Grey had been correct when he recalled having dealings with Supilo; just over two years before he turned up at Fallodon, Supilo had sent Grey a memorandum, arguing powerfully that a Yugoslavian nation would be an obstacle to German eastward expansionism.[2] The Yugoslav Committee had also published an Address to the British Nation and Parliament in May, 1915, which claimed that, by bringing peace and order to the volatile Balkans, the proposed new nation would be operating in the interests of the British Empire.

GROSSLY INSULTED

The final document in the file of ‘Frans Suplio’ / Frano Supilo is a typed extract, dated January 1923, from a book called Queer People written by Basil Thomson in 1922. Thomson, as Assistant Commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police was head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) at New Scotland Yard and as such had overseen several high-profile espionage cases in the Great War. He introduced the reader to

a certain Jugo-Slav lawyer-journalist who came I do not quite know why and left I do not quite know whither. He talked unceasingly about nothing in particular. He assured me that he was a frequent visitor to the Foreign Office and that he was a person to be reckoned with.

The condescending tone of Thomson’s portrayal of a distinguished politician reiterates that of the Foreign Office when they suggested that Supilo should ‘get a hint or fright’ to stop him ‘running about the country.’ Thomson continued:

I consulted a friend who knew him well, and when I remarked that he did not quite seem to know what he wanted and that his discourse was sometimes incoherent, my friend assured me that all Jugo-Slav journalists are like that and that everything reasonable should be done to encourage him. And so when he called again and again I did not attempt to interrupt him: my time was a sacrifice laid on the altar of our international relations.

The last paragraph in the typed excerpt was annotated by an indignant hand. Thomson wrote of hearing the ‘awful news’ that the ‘journalist’ was under arrest in Northumberland (‘not correct’). He had gone to Fallodon without telling the police but Lord Grey was away (‘not correct’) so the housekeeper contacted the police who escorted him back to London (‘not correct’). The next time Thomson saw him, he claimed that Supilo was furious at having been ‘grossly insulted’ by this treatment and could not be calmed down by being told that even the most distinguished foreigner must comply with the law as it applied to aliens. The last words about Supilo describe his demise: ‘I was shocked some few weeks later at learning that the poor man had died of general paralysis of the insane.

While allowing for the probable inaccuracies in Thomson’s report, Supilo might well have felt ‘grossly insulted’ by his treatment in Northumberland. It is telling that throughout the eight documents in the alien file, his name has been consistently misspelled (as SUPLIO). The north-east constabulary – perhaps unsurprisingly – had no idea they were tracking the movements of an eminent Balkan politician. Had Grey’s rebuff helped to edge him towards a nervous breakdown? Or had he simply been worn down by years of campaigning with no end in sight? Whatever the cause of his final illness, Frano Supilo was sufficiently self-possessed on 20 July 1917 to sign the Declaration of Corfu, a formal agreement between the government–in-exile of Serbia and the Yugoslav Committee that pledged to unify the Southern Slavs in a post-war Yugoslavian state.

Sadly, Frano Supilo did not live to see the fulfilment of his dream. On 1 December 1918, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was established, but on 25 September 1917, following a mental collapse, he had died in London at the age of 47. 

LIZ O’DONNELL

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