GERMAN SPIES IN ENGLAND.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 3 December 1914, Page 2

GERMAN SPIES IN ENGLAND.

Writing on October 9, the special London correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald says: "The Home Office has issued to-day a statement detailing die steps taken by the Government during six years' past to conl'ouud the activities of German .spies. It is a reassuring statement enough. It show:? that authority has long had in operation a .systematic grasp of spy methods, and has shadowed the veil very effectively. It is clear to everyone now that the German spies in this country have worked for years under an elaborately organised system, and it is good to know that the organisation is now broken up, and that its chief agents are in custody. All the same, and despite the further fact that Germans domiciled in this country are now subject to stringent regulation in various regards, we cannot be expected to believe that we are free of the spy peril. We know, on the contrary, that we are not free- of it. For one thing this* is a matter which England cannot be expected to handle, as vigorously as is de;iuuilfd. It is foreign to the British spirit to meet such a thing half way. Our method is too delicately balanced for a matter of spies. We are

too fair-minded. Even when we suspect a person we give him the benefit of the doubt, where other countries would give him a supporting wall and a firing party. Even now. sections cf the Radical press open their columns to protests against the harsh treatment cf the dear Germans domiciled among us. It is an echo of our party politics. The Liberal-Radical Government was always ferociously urged by the "Radical newspapers to be not merely a peace-loving Government, but an anti-war-expenditure Government. They demonstrated their case by arguing that everybody was our friend, especially Germany, and that war was the great illusion. Thoy still argue that things are not nearly as bad as they are mads out to be. Among •other things, they sceff at the idea of spies, especially German spies. . Sometimes, indeed, they provoke the reasonable man to the point of madness. It is satisfactory, however, to find the Government deaf to its pro-German advisers. Spiss, as a matter of fact, are all over England at the present moment. The .number of them in custody is in all probability the merest fraction or their total. Almost every day some other evidence of them comes to hand, and the inexhaustible ingenuity of their methods is freshly revealed. It is true they have done little actual harm to this country yet. It is also true that though they have nude innumerable sketches and taken unnumbered photographs, the British expeditionary force landed in France, and still lands there, quite free of the enemy. But the Germans are not in this country yet. . If they should ever get so far we should begin to appreciate the spy at his full value. Because of that thought most of us go warily in the presence cf Germans. No doubt many of them are quite free of offence. But n.any ethers of them, also without doubt, are merely pretending to be free of offence. Near my own residence is something very like a colony of Germans. They congregate in certain shops. If you approach them you v-ill hear their German speech change into English. They, are clever, these spies, men and wgwji both. Some you would never suspect of guile of any sort. Their English is perfect. They Icok like London citizens. Most of them would be quite companionable people if you forgot to think cf the tragedies and treacheries of the battlefields of France and Belgium, where just such clever and amiable seeming persons as these have drawn hundreds of our countrymen to ghastly death. For all the Government's statement of to-day, we cannot but telieve that this sentimental, fair-minded, softhearted England, the asylum of the most shameless .derelicts of the world, treats the German spy far too well."