SECRET POLICE.

Evening Post, Volume LVI, Issue 155, 29 December 1898, Page 4

SECRET POLICE.

« If the secret dossier in the Dreyfus case be such a document as to-day's cablegrams describe it upon the authority of M. de Blowitz it is easy to understand why the French bureaucracy has been so anxious to prevent its publication in any shape or form. It would appear to be a complete exposure of the French system of political espionage, and of the base means adopted by the Intelligence Department to secure the unfortunate Captain's conviction. France is nominally a free Republic, but its administration is modelled upon the principles of a military despotism rather than upon those of a community of free men. There is no better test pf the reality of the freedom enjoyed by a nation than the relations subsisting between its individual members and the national police. Where the individual has, as in English-speaking countries, common law rights against police officers and officialdom generally as fully as against other private citizens, liberty is a substantial fact whatever the form of the Central Government, whether Republican as in the United States, or Monarchical as in the United Kingdom But where the police are removed from the -operations of the ordinary law, and a bureaucracy possesses, as in France or Russia, powers that can, when exerted to their legitimate extent, override the personal rights of citizens liberty in the strict sense of the word is non-existent, and whatever form the political machine may assume the actual administration is necessarily tyrannical. The most cherished heritage of our race is personal freedom from irksome restraint — a freedom that prevents us in a large measure from properly understanding the political police system of Continental countries. The indignation felt, for instance, by an Anglo-Saxon at a miscarriage of justice like that referred to in another article shows how differently suca interferences with the person of mere private citizens is regarded in France and in the Old Country or her colonies. The Continental system is most forcibly illustrated by its highly-trained, all-power-ful, and übiquitous secret police. In the United Kingdom, in the colonies, and in the United States, the police forces are purely executive, arid merely concerned with the prevention and detection of actual breaches of specific laws. In Continental countries, and to a certain extent in India, the police is judicial and political, as well as executive. In such circumstances a peculiar influence necessarily belongs to the Secret Police and the Intelligence Department. The works of Russian writers and of such Frenchmen as M. Hector Malot have familiarised English readers with some of the most striking features of the Continental methods of espionage. Russian and French secret agents are to be found in the most unlikely places and amongst the least suspected of people. Germany also has its secret police, and none of these countries confine their secret operations to their own borders. Political detectives swarm all over the Continent, "and London' is now a great centre for their activity. In France the army chiefs seem to have formed a powerful and close oligarchy,

and the secret police would appear to be their ready tools. The Dreyfus secret dossier apparently makes clear machinations that would render French agents in foreign lands useless for the future. It would also seem to show that the Intelligence Department was not to be trusted with the terrible powers it possesses. The publication of such disclosures in the present state of excitement would imperil the military oligarchy, and not improbably destroy the police system that is one of the strongest weapons of self-defence in the hands of both the civil and military administration.