such as the struggle in France has become during the past four months, the value of all such accessories diminishes week by week. It is all very well once in a while for the Germans to dress up some of their men in khaki and send them toward the British lines shouting, 'Don't shoot; we are British prisoners,' while the German attack develops behind their shelter. But even with an antagonist as unwary and as unsuspicious as the average British officer, you cannot repeat a trick like that very often. The French, moreover, have succeeded by now in elaborating a system of counter-espionage through which it becomes every day more difficult to break.

In general I should judge that both the spy and the scout are relics from the days of pre-aerial warfare, have been largely superseded by aviation, and now have little more influence on the issue of large operations than the cognate fetish of campaign literature' has on the result of political elections; while it is doubtful if the colonies of planted secret-service agents bring in any military profit that at all makes up for the violent execration, the almost vulpine animosity, that is heaped upon their authors.

IV

In a mild form the reflex action of German espionage on the Continent has made itself felt in England. It was known five or six years ago that Germany was building up an extensive secret-service organization throughout Great Britain. The British government said nothing, but made a point of seeing everything. A Special Intelligence Department was established, to shadow the spies, and whenever any plans or documents were on the point of being sent abroad, the agent was arrested and convicted. So well had the

department done its work that within a few hours of the outbreak of war all the known spies were thrown into prison and over two hundred who were suspected of being their accomplices were interned. Germans and Austrians were cleared out of certain districts along the east coast, their letters and telegrams were opened and read, they were forbidden to have any arms, or wireless or signaling apparatus, or any carrier or homing pigeons in their possession; they were obliged to register with the police; and some nine thousand alien enemies of military age were quickly held as prisoners of war in detention

camps.

The mobilization of the British Expeditionary Force proceeded without a hitch of any kind; not a solitary act of violence has yet been brought home to any German agent in Great Britain; the many vulnerable places that exist in London - vital railway bridges, for instance, and exposed or easily damaged viaducts - have been left not merely uninjured but unattacked; and it seemed that the Home Secretary had reason on his side when early in October he declared that the German spy system had been broken up.

The public mind, however, has continued to be very far from satisfied. When the big influx of Belgian and French refugees set in, its apprehensions redoubled. The press began excitedly clamoring for the internment of all alien enemies without exception, and the authorities to some extent yielded against their better judgment to the agitation. The one party to the argument could point with telling effect to the experience of Antwerp, Brussels, and northeastern France as justifying the severest precautionary measures; the other party could reply that not a single disclosure or a single crime against the State had yet been

brought home to a German spy, and that in any case it was most unlikely that a German agent four months after the war would be of German nationality. On the one side were fears, on the other, facts; and as usual the fears had rather the better of it. Perhaps only a German raid on the British coasts or a descent of Zeppelins upon London will settle which was right. Meanwhile the government has greatly increased the rigors of inspection at the chief ports, and quietly and in silence is doing far more to dam the possible sources of leakage than the public is aware. It is an extremely difficult business, and I do not think there is much doubt that signals are passing between the eastern coasts of England and Scotland and German vessels, or neutral vessels in German pay, out at sea. Nothing has yet been proved, but suspicions that seem far from baseless abound, and the anxiety and the sense of insecurity which spring from them are no greater than the situation warrants. It is there, if anywhere, that the danger lies. The mares' nests of Zeppelin bases in the Chilterns, of German factories with concrete floors for the mounting of heavy guns, of mysterious quarries and borings, have all been satisfactorily exposed. But when one reflects on the surpassing value of secrecy and surprises in naval warfare, the flash-light communications which are believed on good authority to be going on between the German fleet and German agents in Great Britain have undoubtedly a sinister and disturbing importance.

It was Wellington's opinion that 'there is a great deal of charlatanism about what is called military intelligence.' The present war has shown that to be true. With all the agents that she employs, Germany entered upon this struggle apparently in utter ignorance of the things it was most

vital for her to know. The vastness of the German spy system has been not a bit more evident than its stupidity. It is extremely effective in collecting and classifying information. It knows to a nicety how many guns are mounted on this and that fort and everything else about them. It has all the facts and details of all the armaments, defense works, equipment, and personnel of Belgium, France, Great Britain, and Russia at its finger-ends. But just as the defect of German 'culture' is that it so often mistakes facts for knowledge, so the German spy system never seems to see the wood for the trees. It has a narrow military value, but no political value at all. It misses nothing and at the same time understands nothing. It ferrets out all the little things and remains totally unconscious of the big ones. If war threatened to break out between Germany and the United States, it could supply the General Staff in Berlin with a full and accurate account of all the American naval and military preparations; but it would be quite incapable of deciding whether the United States would or would not take up arms to prevent, let us say, an infraction of the Monroe Doctrine.

In the present struggle all the multitudinous resources of German spydom were unable to inform the German rulers that Belgium would fight if her territory were invaded, that Great Britain would resist to the last any violation of Belgian neutrality, that Italy would break away from the Triple Alliance, and that both France and Russia would close up all internal divisions and face the crisis as united nations. That is why one may say of the German espionage system that it is as fundamentally stupid as it is superficially clever, and that no advantages accrue from it which are at all comparable with its vicious legacy of rankling ill-will.

I

ONE of the most important questions presented to the United States by the opening phase of the war has been that of contraband and everything it implies. For some months it has been the subject of constant negotiations between London and Washington. The situation is not precisely new. The sparks of the last great European war ended by leaping across the Atlantic. The tinder of popular feeling which they touched off had been dried to burning point by years of bickering with Great Britain about the effects of her commercial blockade of Napoleonic Europe, and about the ruthlessness with which British naval officers impressed American sailors and searched American ships for British

seamen. The days of the press gang are happily over. There is no likelihood that seamen will again be filched from American ships. But in essentials the position of the United States toward Europe is much as it was from the beginning of the French Revolutionary war to Waterloo. Once more Great Britain is determined to use her sea power to bring to his knees a Continental foe; once more her policy of maintaining the rule of contraband at that high level which best enables her to starve her foe of military supplies bears heavily upon neutral nations; and of neutral nations the United States is once more, if not the worst, by all odds the most important sufferer.

It did not need many weeks of warfare to make that clear. By the end of August the export trade of this coun

try was dislocated. In September, 1913, exports to Germany were valued at over $34,000,000; for September, 1914, their value was scarcely over $2,000. For the whole of Europe the corresponding figures for the same two months were respectively $142,000,000 and $89,000,000. Simultaneously it became clear that the rules of maritime law were still so inchoate and anarchical as to leave Great Britain legally free to adopt the most extreme contraband lists that the world has seen.

The only comprehensive international instrument governing contraband and defining the status of neutral trade in time of war is the Declaration of Paris, signed in 1856 by the United States among other powers, but never, it may be noted, ratified by the Senate. The Declaration was the outcome of the differences between British and Continental marine policy during the French war and earlier. The first clear definition of contraband was given in the Treaty of Southampton, concluded in 1625 between Charles I and the States-General of Holland. The treaty declared that all food-supplies and provisions of war carried to Spanish ports would, together with the carrier ships and their crews, be considered 'good prize.' From that and similar arrangements grew the habit of proclaiming lists of contraband at the outbreak of hostilities, a habit which has gradually acquired the force of law. The Treaty of Southampton was not, however, followed in all respects. Foodsupplies were generally excluded from the lists.1

It was not till the beginning of the French Revolutionary war that Great Britain, and incidentally France, began to take up the advanced posi

1 Treaty of the Pyrenees between France and Spain, 1659; Treaty of Breda between England and Holland, 1667; Treaty of St. Germain-enLaye between England and France, 1667.

tion which, by penalizing all neutral trade with their enemies, helped eventually to bring on the War of 1812. In 1793 both England and France made large seizures of provisions. Great Britain soon disposed of the French carrying trade, and as the French conquest of Europe proceeded, of the carrying trade of Spain, Holland, and other countries, as well. As Europe's need of imports was enhanced by war, the result was that the neutral American carrying trade began to grow by leaps and bounds. But it did not prosper for long. The naval power of England was equal to the occasion. Severe restraints were imposed upon neutrals as well as enemies. Importations into France of provisions and naval stores were prevented, and the policy was gradually adopted of seizing enemy cargoes other than contraband, even when carried in neutral vessels. Against this policy Sweden, Denmark, and the United States, the latter by an eleventh hour war, protested in vain.

Down to the Crimean War England had thus succeeded in upholding the formidable doctrine that an enemy's goods at sea are lawful prize under whatever flag they may be seized. During the Crimean War, owing to the alliance of Great Britain with France, a naval power which, save during the abnormal era of the Revolutionary War and Napoleonic decrees, had been the chief protagonist in Europe of the doctrine of 'Free ships, free goods,' the British doctrine remained in abeyance; and in the Declaration of Paris, immediately after the war, it was entirely abandoned, together with the right to declare 'paper blockades,' in return for the abandonment of privateering by the Euro

pean powers.

The effect of the Declaration of Paris was mainly negative. Its prohibitions did not do much to clarify maritime