Almost in time for the 4th: George Washington, Spy

George Washington's Secret Spy War: The Making of America's First Spymaster 

by John A. Nagy

 New York: St. Martin's Press, 2016

Review By Walt Giersbach

George Washington is many things as an iconic leader in the formation of our country, but rarely is he remembered as our first spy extraordinaire and most imaginative of tacticians.  “George Washington’s Secret Spy War” increased my education in our country’s Revolutionary history soon after I met Ida Nagy, a neighbor and member of an editorial team on which I serve.  She and I both share an interest in history, and she gifted me this copy of her late husband’s book.

Ida told me her husband John spent 20 years of research and nine months writing the book.  It was somewhat intimidating to note a 13-page index, a 10-page bibliography, and a 61-page section of notes.  This is a book that’s both an educational experience and an authoritative reference,  Tragically, Nagy died the day that his manuscript was delivered to his publisher, St. Martin’s Press. 

I was surprised to learn that our founding father had been a major tactician when the British were fighting against the French and Indians in 1753 near what is now Pittsburgh.  As a 22-year-old adjutant, he was able to use an innate ability to organize intelligence to learn what the enemy was doing.  And he was successful in battle again and again.

Washington made his first trek into the Northern District in1753 as a major in the Virginia militia.  He knew this area from his earlier work as a surveyor.  The area west of the Allegany Ridge was disputed, as the French had “invaded” the Ohio Country and were building forts there. Successive forays into the area in the following years brought Washington the tactical intelligence he needed and to cement relations with Indians.  

“George Washington’s Secret Spy War: The Making of America's First Spymaster” is not only a masterful work of research, but a detailed tactical story on the creation of our nation.

The publisher calls the author John A. Nagy “the nation’s leading expert on the subject, discovering hundreds of spies who went behind enemy lines to gather intelligence during the American Revolution, many of whom are completely unknown to most historians.”

Nagy, who passed away in 2016, was a Scholar-in-Residence at Saint Francis University in Loretto, Penn, and a consultant on espionage to The Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington and the William L. Clement Library.  He was also the program director for the American Revolution Round Table of Philadelphia.  He received a Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies fellowship to study Thomas Jefferson and cryptology.

Yes, the Colonials paid their spies.  In one example. the rebels were chased out of New York in 1776.  Washington moved his small army from Trenton across the Delaware River to the safety of Pennsylvania.  Then, Washington intercepted a letter written in invisible ink indicating that Gen. Howe intended to take Philadelphia.  (Curiously, Washington’s inquiring mind had earlier read a 1763 encyclopedia entry on invisible ink.  Perhaps as a result of this information, Washington wrote Col. Cadwalader of the Pennsylvania militia authorizing him to hire and pay spies.)  On Dec. 14, 1776, Cadwalader sent someone to Mount Holly, N.J., who discovered the Hessian mercenaries had five brass field pieces.

Washington pulled his boats to the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware, foiling a British crossing.  He knew the British would cross as soon as the river had frozen, and so devised a plan to cross back over the Delaware in three places the night of Dec. 25. 

Cadwalader got his men across, but without artillery he had to abandon the attack.  Washington crossed and headed south  to Trenton,  Then he split his army, with Gen. John Sullivan’s division attacking Trenton from the north and Gen. Greene going inland to attack from the northern high ground.  Three Hessian regiments quickly formed to a drumbeat as the force led by Washington attacked.  The gamble worked, giving him in one hour a crucial victory and strategic advantage.  Nine hundred Hessians and their arms were captured.

The book continues with an emphasis on how both sides used spies.  Throughout, Nagy’s entries are footnoted, making for a thorough and academic work, but one that is often intimidating in its detail and lack of storytelling.

Short Stories by Walter Giersbach at Bewildering Stories 

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Not “But for the Grace of God,” But Because of It: In the Shadow of the White Pagoda

In the Shadow of the White Pagoda. By Clara J. Hausske.
 Published by Caves Books, Ltd., Taipei, Taiwan, 1989. 

Review by Walt Giersbach

Historical memoirs are fraught with problems as reminiscences dim or are subjected to revisionism.  More problematic is that the farther back in time the commentator goes, the more the facts are distorted by the writer’s interpretation.  Because Clara Hausske recalled and kept notes on her work in China almost a century ago, the reader of In the Shadow of the White Pagoda is struck with unvarnished truth about the shattering poverty, malnutrition, sickness, chaos of war and banditry taking place far from the cities.  Yes, the writing is often simplistic and reportorial, but reading Hausske’s description of the challenges she and her husband faced in China in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s is as clear as looking at an unedited film.  There is a level of authenticity as she describes a life that’s hard to imagine — except that other parts of the world are undergoing these same difficulties and opportunities.

The Hausskes went to China sponsored by what is now United Board for World Ministries.  Their religious denomination was Congregational, now the United Church of Christ.  Their mission was located literally in the shadow of the pagoda where 20 years earlier Boxer rebels massacred Christians.  

Albert Hausske left the U.S., with his wife Clara and two toddler children, in 1920 to administer the accounting for a hospital in Taiku, Shansi Province.  This mission was two days’ inland from Tientsin by boat, railway and rickshaw.  The book, extremely well edited by her son, Albert Carol Hausske, was published in 1989 from Clara’s notes, photos and letters.

This was the back country that appeared on no one’s tour guide.  The Hausskes were missionaries not to convert some indifferent Buddhists, but to cure those on the verge of death, feed those protein-starved people who saw meat in their diet only on holidays, who were illiterate to the point of having to unlearn “folk wisdom” and embrace proven scientific diet, and to care for people so desperate they abandoned their children to the school as the only hope their progeny would live.  In that, the Hausskes were lucky also to have served with  Dr. Wiloughby Hemingway, uncle of author Ernest Hemingway, who had arrived there in 1903.

Clara offers a positive, forbearing look at daily life with all the quotidian duties, communication obstacles (the Hausskes learned to speak Chinese), and hardship of moving from house to house under trying circumstances.  It is also an insider’s look at life as the Communists approached Nanjing in 1927, themselves emigrating to Korea as refugees, their return when Chiang Kai-shek recaptured Nanjing, and fears as the Japanese took over city after city in the years leading up to 1941.  That declaration of war forced the Hausske family back to the States (there had been occasional furloughs home since 1920) until they could return in the 1950s. 

She writes, “In 1940, only seven foreign missionaries supervised the care of about fourteen hundred inpatients, ten thousand outpatients, three hundred and fifteen boarding students in the schools, thirty student nurses, several Chinese doctors, and innumerable people in the countryside.”  Her commentary on this is enlightening: “Their lives were simple but very rich.  They were fortunate that there was always plenty of work to keep them in good spirits.  And it was also as well that they could adjust themselves to difficulties when it was necessary to do so.”  Was this a rosy-eyed view?  More likely it was the interpretation of a spiritually rich person who had seen much progress.

Surprisingly, Clara displays a total lack of irony or disbelief in her descriptions of children being carried to the hospital on a relative’s back, or a tearful father giving his child to the orphanage so the boy might live.

If there is one lapse for this reader, it is that Clara did not apply more subjective reporting and personal response to the political changes raging around them.  Their work was threatened, as were the lives of the local population.  The relief work was halted only when the Japanese sent them out of the country and when the Communists refused to let them resume their mission. 

Today, there often is a knee-jerk reaction to missionaries, seeing them as evangelicals out to corrupt the purity of native populations.  Witness what missionaries did to Native Americans and Hawaiians in the name of “civilization.”  Clara makes almost no reference to religious teaching in her memoir; there is, however, continual detail of the Chinese lives they saved, the children and adults they taught to read and write, and the Western lessons in diet, nutrition and childcare they taught to extend and enrich their lives.

The book provides another interesting insight into the independence of this woman.  Clara was often alone when Albert was traveling to other missions.  She regularly traveled by herself or with her children.  She was emancipated years before women gained the respect they deserved.  In many ways, Clara mirrors the life of my grandmother traveling the U.S. on the Chautauqua lecture circuit during the same period.  Yes, there were women who became empowered in that period.

I need to disclose that Albert and Clara Hausske were friends of my father, Walter C. Giersbach when he was president of Pacific University, and of my mother.  I remember their son, Trevor Hausske who edited his mother’s book, graduating Pacific in the mid 1940s when I was six years old..  And the Hausskes were generous in their gifts of Chinese art to my parents, including their sale of two antique Chinese chests that are still with my family.

Awhile back, I was inventorying the antiques my parents collected and decided to unravel the  mystery of who the Hausskes were, these shadowy people from my childhood.  Out of the that detective work came the discovery of In the Shadow of the White Pagoda, now available only through used booksellers. 

Short Stories by Walter Giersbach at Bewildering Stories 

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