Fortunately the rules of the State Department have been of late years strengthened to meet this evil, and it has finally become our practice to inform such people that if they return to America they can receive a passport for that purpose; but that unless they show a clear intention of returning, they cannot. Very many of them persist in their applications in spite of this, and one case became famous both at the State Department and at the embassy. Three Russians of the class referred to had emigrated with their families to America, and, after the usual manner, stayed just long enough to acquire citizenship, and had then returned to Germany. One of them committed a crime and disappeared; the other two went to the extreme eastern frontier of Prussia and settled there. Again and again the Prussian Government notified us that under the right exercised by every nation, and especially by our own, these "undesirable intruders" must leave Prussian territory or be expelled. Finally we discovered at the embassy that a secret arrangement had been made between Germany and Russia which obliged each to return the undesirable emigrants of the other. This seemed to put the two families in great danger of being returned to Russia; and, sooner than risk a new international trouble, a proposal was made to them, through the embassy, to pay their expenses back to America; but they utterly refused to leave, and continued to burrow in the wretched suburbs of one of the German cities nearest the Russian border. Reams of correspondence ensued--all to no purpose; a special messenger was sent to influence them--all in vain: they persisted in living just as near Russia as possible, and in calling themselves American, though not one of them spoke English.