  The bibliography connected with the business of espionage is not, as may be supposed, a very extensive one. Great spies have all written their memoirs, but in no case can these works be regarded as trustworthy records of the actual parts played by their writers in important historic events or episodes, and it is always necessary to go to independent chroniclers in order to arrive at the truth. As regards themselves, they are peculiarly fortunate in that highly placed patrons and collaborators have rarely, if ever, condescended to criticise or question their claims or statements, the result being that their most preposterous pretensions find acceptance at face value. It is well, too, that not one of them, as far as the writer has discovered, evinces anything like literary tact in his attempts to conceal the essentially underhand nature of his professional art. Your Schulmeisters and Stiebers, on the bare evidence of their own life stories, disclose their real motives and characters so clearly and intimately as to leave us with the impression that it is only very poor judges of human nature who can fail to categorise them accurately. Our own study of the master spy has left us unimpressed regarding the qualities of either head or heart which are called for in the business of espionage, and whatever courage may appear to attach to the characters of men like Schulmeister, Stieber and even AndrÉ, we remain convinced that there was in none of them anything like nobility of purpose and that a very cheap material ambition underlay all their respective rÔles, dramatic though those rÔles may have been. The characters of the two spies of the War of Independence seem to us to have been lamentably lacking in that fine spirituality which one looks for in men who are willing to die for any strong faith that is in them; the American appears to have been an idealist of a type which is not easily differentiable from the oriental fanatic who is said to possess no very settled convictions about his cause; while the Englishman's motives were based purely upon rapid self-advancement. As to Le Caron, we admit having approached his case with every predisposition to admire him, only to find our earlier illusions entirely shattered after a careful study of his reminiscences; and the printed word must be allowed to go a long way towards self-revelation. As for Schulmeister, he threw his lot in with the side which paid him the highest price, and patriotism or nobility of sentiment in no way coloured his otherwise important abilities and services, while Stieber—the odious Stieber was at once a cringing self-seeker, a bragging bully and, shorn of his protections, In regard to the sources which we have drawn upon, those which deal with Schulmeister call for some comment. Napoleon's agent is mentioned by many of the high functionaries of the Empire who published memoirs dealing with its glittering legend. Savary, FouchÉ, Rapp and Marbot all give him a word, while Thiers, much later, mentions him as having contributed a share to the glories of the Corsican. With the exception of the short Life by Diffenbach, and his own very unreliable Fragments, we are aware of no exhaustive biography of the spy, while magazine and newspaper articles, such as those published in the Allgemeine Zeitung, the Courrier du Bas-Rhin and other periodicals, differ altogether as to details and chronology in descriptions of him. The author remembers to have read, when a student in Germany, many years back, an account of Schulmeister obviously written by an Alsatian and signed with the name, F. Ott, which gave particulars as to the spy's first meeting with Le Caron has, of course, been his own biographer and the popular Press of the time of the Parnell Commission teems with accounts, correct or imaginary, of the Anglo-American major. Sir Robert Anderson, in his reminiscences, speaks of his agent in terms of consideration and respect. In a letter which Sir Robert was so good as to write to the author, in this connection, appear the following remarks:— "My best agents, when I had charge of secret-service work, were as much entitled to respect as were my officers in the Criminal Investigation Department when I had charge of that branch of Police work, or as our military who 'spy' the German trenches from aeroplanes. Others again take up that sort of work for 'filthy lucre sake,' and yet others from all sorts of motives, some praiseworthy and some contemptible. Spies differ as much as parsons or doctors, and no general rule can be applied to them. Le Caron was in every way a worthier and more respectable 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 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 Following is a short list of the principal publications to which the writer referred in the course of his work:—
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