against this prohibition is liable to be tried
by court-martial and sentenced to penal servitude for life. The effect
of these orders is to make espionage a military offense. Power is given
both to the police and to the military authorities to arrest without a
warrant any person whose behavior is such as to give rise to suspicion,
and any person so arrested by the police would be handed over to the
military authorities for trial by court-martial. Only in the event of
the military authorities holding that there is no prima facie case of
espionage or any other offense triable by military law is a prisoner
handed back to the civil authorities to consider whether he should be
charged with failing to register or with any other offense under the
Aliens Restriction act.

The present position is therefore that espionage has been made by
statute a military offense triable by court-martial. If tried under the
Defense of the Realm act the maximum punishment is penal servitude for
life; but if dealt with outside that act as a war crime the punishment
of death can be inflicted.

At the present moment one case is pending in which a person charged
with attempting to convey information to the enemy is now awaiting his
trial by court-martial; but in no other case has any clear trace been
discovered of any attempt to convey information to the enemy, and there
is good reason to believe that the spy organization crushed at the
outbreak of the war has not been re-established.

How completely that system had been suppressed in the early days of the
war is clear from the fact disclosed in a German Army order--that on the
21st of August the German military commanders were still ignorant of the
dispatch and movements of the British expeditionary force, although
these had been known for many days to a large number of people in this
country.

The fact, however, of this initial success does not prevent the
possibility of fresh attempts at espionage being made, and there is no
relaxation in the efforts of the Intelligence Department and of the
police to watch and detect any attempts in this direction. In carrying
out their duties the military and police authorities would expect that
persons having information of cases of suspected espionage would
communicate the grounds of the suspicion to local military authority or
to the local police, who are in direct communication with the Special
Intelligence Department, instead of causing unnecessary pu