MacParlan's career was well known to many of the old stagers of the New York and Philadelphia newspapers, and from one who knew him, the writer has taken the version he gives of the admirable detective's final disappearance from the coal regions of Pennsylvania, according it preference over the somewhat prosaic departure as told by MacParlan's excellent biographer, Mr Dewees. While volumes have been written to the glorification of Major André, it is unfortunate that very little is known regarding Nathan Hale, and it is certain that no portrait remains extant of that youthful hero. The Duchess of Portsmouth has been fully dealt with by many writers; the Chevalier d'Eon has had the advantage of being portrayed by the late Mr Andrew Lang, while Pingaud has treated the Count d'Antraigues. The French Divisional Police Chief Saint-Just has given to the world an account of the French Internal Spy System as it exists in our own day, and Doctor Fitzpatrick is the chief among many who have written of the British Secret Service, to the chapter concerning which we append a Home Office paper, issued in September 1914, which clearly shows that the British authorities were by no means uninformed or unmindful of the contemplated operations of the swarms of German spies who filled London hotels and lodging-houses at the opening of the War. Official alertness, it may also be said, was shown during the course of the campaign, as (to cite but one instance) when the Special Police Constables were mobilised on the night of the air raid on Sandringham and therearound, a fact which spoke eloquently for our system of counter-espionage.

With regard to the German System of Espionage, it must be said that while we do not accept everything that the arrogant Stieber claims for his organisation and himself, we are inclined to look upon Lanoir as being too much a hater of all things Prussian either to do justice to himself or to be fair to Stieber. In any case, we have supplemented the French writer's views by others emanating from Klembowsky, A. Froment, Tissot and various publicists well known in France. The work of Mr Graves we have read, and while admitting that he wins our sympathy as regards his perennial good humour and cleverness, we confess our total inability to "negotiate" (as he himself would probably say) his version of the instructions to the Panther at Agadir, the same having really been conveyed by the very ordinary process of telegraphing from Berlin to the gunboat's commander by code to the Fabra news agency at Madrid, whence the message travelled to Tangier and Agadir. In the pages of The New York American Mr Graves's diplomatic work would certainly prove to be "just the goods," if we may judge by the printed European dispatches of that paper's ineffable correspondents. All his English countesses and peers have respectively the airs and manners of Chicago "store-ladies" and Buffalo drummers—exactly as the American yellow-paper requires them for home consumption.

Following is a short list of the principal publications to which the writer referred in the course of his work:—

FOOTNOTES

[[1]] Frederick was childless.

[[2]] It has even been stated that the funds which enabled the so-called Suffragettes to carry on their recent militant propaganda were, for the greater part, supplied by Berlin, through private persons acting on behalf of its secret service. The identity of the real donors of very large sums given for the furtherance of the movement was said not to have been known even to the Suffragette leaders.

INDEX