had transformed itself to a great extent
out of an effective shield for defence into a potent weapon of attack.
The measure of its services to the country will never be known, as
some of its procedure cannot perhaps advantageously be disclosed. Its
labours were unadvertised, and its praises remained unsung. But those
who were behind the scenes are well aware of what it accomplished,
creeping along unseen tracks, to bring about the downfall of the Hun.

The postal censorship started as a branch of comparatively modest
dimensions; but it gradually developed into a huge department,
employing a personnel which necessarily included large numbers of
efficient linguists. The remarkable success achieved by the
contre-espionage service in preventing the re-establishment of the
enemy spy system after it had been smashed at the start was in no
small degree due to the work of the censorship. That the requisite
number of individuals well acquainted with some of the outlandish
lingoes which had to be grappled with proved to be forthcoming, is a
matter of surprise and a subject for congratulation. This was not a
case merely of French, German, Italian, and languages more or less
familiar to our educated and travelled classes. Much of the work was
in Scandinavian and in occult Slav tongues, a good deal of it not even
written in the Roman character. The staff was largely composed, it
should be mentioned, of ladies, some of them quite young; but young or
old--no, that won't do, for ladies are never old--quite young or only
moderately young, they took to the work like ducks to the water and
did yeoman service. As in the case of the cable censorship, employment
in the postal censorship was a thankless job; but the labourers of
both sexes in the branch had at least the satisfaction of knowing that
they had done their bit--some of them a good deal more than their
bit--for their country in its hour of trial.

Reference was made in the last chapter to certain discussions which
took place in the winter of 1914-15 on the subject of suggested
conjunct naval and military operations on the Flanders coast. The
possibility of such undertakings was never entirely lost sight of
during 1915, although the diversion of considerable British forces to
far-off theatres of war necessarily enhanced the difficulties that
stood in the way of a form of project which had much to recommend it
from the strategical point of view. Our hosts on the Western Front
were