THE PERIL OF THE ENEMY ALIEN
"Every enemy alien is known, and is now under constant police surveillance."—Mr. Tennant, Under-Secretary for War, in the House of Commons, March 3rd.
One of the gravest perils with which the country is still faced is that of the enemy alien.
Notwithstanding all that has been written and said upon this most serious question, Ministers are still content to pursue a shuttlecock policy, in which there is very little satisfaction for any intelligent patriot.
Each time the subject is brought up in the House of Commons there is an apparent intention of the Government to wilfully throw dust into the eyes of the public, and prevent the whole mystery of the official protection afforded to our enemies being sifted to the bottom. A disgraceful illustration of this was given on March 3rd, when Mr. Joynson-Hicks moved:
"That in the opinion of this House it is desirable that the whole administration of the Acts and Regulations concerning aliens and suspected persons should be centred in the hands of one Minister, who should be responsible to the House."
The debate which followed was illuminating. Sir Henry Dalziel, who is strongly in favour of a Central Board to deal with spies among us—a suggestion I made in my recent book "German Spies in England," as a satisfactory solution of the problem—said, in the course of a splendid speech, that the Government knew that, at the present moment, there was a settled spy-system, and there was no use denying it. As the Daily Telegraph on the following day pointed out, that there is such a system is almost as natural an assumption as that the enemy possesses an army service organisation or a Press censorship. I have already pointed out, in various books I have written, that systematic espionage is, and has been for many years, a most cherished part of German war administration, developed with characteristic thoroughness. The question is whether that department of the enemy's activity has, or has not, been stamped out as regards this country; and it would be idle to pretend that there is any public confidence that it has been stamped out.
There is an absence of vigour and an absence of system about the dealing with this source of danger, and I maintain that the national safety requires the taking of this matter more seriously, and the placing of it upon a satisfactory footing. The Government admitted that, on March 3rd, seven hundred male enemy aliens were living in the East Coast prohibited area, and we know that arrangements for their control are so futile as to leave, quite unmolested, some individuals whose known connections expose them to the highest degree of suspicion. Of one such notorious case, Mr. Bonar Law—who cannot, surely, be accused of spy-mania—declared that he would as soon have allowed a German army to land as allow the person in question to be at large in this country. How the arrangement has worked in another particular case was exposed in some detail by Mr. Butcher. The lady concerned is closely related to more than one of those in power in Germany. Her case was reported to the War Office. The War Office called upon the General Officer commanding in the Northern District to take action. He requested the police to make inquiries, and the Chief Constable of the East Riding subsequently reported, "strongly recommending" the removal of the lady from the prohibited area. The General accepted this advice, and an order was made for her removal on January 25th. It was never executed; and on February 7th it was withdrawn.