ESTABLISHED 1875. Manawatu Daily Times. The Oldest Manawatu Journal, Conducted by E. D. HOBEN. Published Every Morning. FRIDAY, MARCH 5, 1909. JAPANESE "SPIES."

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 657, 5 March 1909, Page 4

ESTABLISHED 1875. Manawatu Daily Times. The Oldest Manawatu Journal, Conducted by E. D. HOBEN. Published Every Morning. FRIDAY, MARCH 5, 1909. JAPANESE "SPIES."

A ridiculous fuss is being made in Australia just now as to the supposed discovery by Mr E. Levien that a firm of exporters of meat, wool, and wheat from Sydney is subsidised by the Japanese Government in order to maintain it as an Intelligence Department in Australia, and that one of its members is an intelligence officer, or, as Mr Levien bluntly puts it, "in other words lie is a spy." We quoted the other day the, revelations of Mr Levien, who is a Victorian commercial agent to the East—"in other words n spy"—regarding the way the Chinese population of Australia is recruited from abroad. In that ho was probably right, but in the report which has come over by the Australian mail on this "spy" question, he is quite hysterical. Every country has its " intelligence officers," whose business it is to fully inform them of the military and naval resources of other countries, information which is carefully tabulated by their Intelligence Departments, Germany is supposed to have the most complete service of that kind in Europe, and England follows the German model. Japan has, with characteristic thoroughness, probably the most complete service as far as it goes. The men who conduct snch enquiries [are sup-

posed to be the smartest oflicers in the army and navy, and the position is a quite honourable one, In these colonies such men have merely to call round at the variouß Government departments and collect the blue books and parliamentary reports on defence, which, supplemented by the work of the energetic reporters ' of the local press, will tell, them all there is to know regarding the defences, or absence of them, the guns, and (the dispositions generally.

FREE AND EASY CUSTOMS. Germany would not permit that sort of tiling, nor would any European continental power, but in Australia for instance it was for a long time customary to conduct "distinguished visitoi'3" over the forts, and although there is supposed to be a rule against photographing, there is very little difficulty in getting anywhere and photographing anything. So that the marvellous discoveries of Victoria's commercial agent appear very much like " much ado about nothing." Theie Is no need for the Mikado's Government to masquerade as it is alleged to have done to secure what it already has-as gootl\ a set of plans of the harbours and fortifications of Australia and New Zealand as the British Admiralty possesses. There was one significant incident when the last Japanese squadron was leaving Sydney —it was noted that one of the ships had swung in in the very early morning to a certain portion of the coast oil' the city, and was taking soundings, and when the officers of the fort were awakened to note the curious manoeuvre they suddenly remembered that where she was so confidently busy was the "dead water," just the one place where their guns could not reach her, yet whore her guns could reach the city. Which set thW thinking. We have no doubt that everything, from the location of the Palmerston water supply to t;.e boat channels in the Manawatu, from the number of efficients in the Palmerston Rifles and Guards to the, efficiency of the M.M.R. in musical drill, ip carefully filed in Tokio. But we .doubt the melodrama in Mr Levien's "discovery."