It is sometimes puzzling to understand what is the real motive which prompts our military and naval officers to seek so persistently to become enrolled in the Secret Service Department. Is it solely the desire to further their chances of advancement, or is it the bold adventuresome activity of the service, the innate longing to take all risks and to bring back personally the information so essential to the successful conduct of war; or is it the feeling and knowledge that only a brave man is ready to go out alone, unobserved and unapplauded, to risk his life for his country's sake? For let it not be forgotten that to accept an appointment under the Foreign Secret Service in war time is no feather-bed occupation. The smallest slip, the slightest indiscretion, and one's doom is sealed. Only a man to whom life was as nothing if risking it would help his country, would dare to undertake such perilous work. It is indeed the finest and most thrilling recuperative tonic in the world for anyone weary of life's monotonies. It commands the highest courage, the clearest understanding, the greatest ability and cleverness, never-flagging persistence, and an ever-prevailing optimism. Yet such men and women as these who have striven, laboured, fought alone, and won through against inconceivable difficulties and immense odds, possibly to the permanent ruin of their health or financial status, are, although it seems inconceivable to believe, more often than not overlooked and passed aside by the nation; unobservantly pushed into the cold burial vaults of ungrateful forgetfulness!--the fate, alas! of many an active Secret Service agent, no matter how patriotically loyal, how brave, or how successful he may have been. Such men neither seek nor expect to be bedecked with baubles, or awarded shekels, so coveted by those who stay at home. They know the hollowness which quickly fades or is lost in the vortex of political upheaval or changing dynasty. They rest content in the knowledge that they have well and truly served their country, that they have lived in the full realism of existence; whilst they are happy in their memories. One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name. NICHOLAS EVERITT. British Secret Service during the Great War CHAPTER I WAR AND THE INTRODUCING OF JIM THE PROSPERITY OF 1914--AN OMINOUS CALM--MULTITUDE OF GERMAN SPIES--HOW ENGLAND WAS UNDERMINED--SHORTSIGHTEDNESS OF OUR LIBERAL GOVERNMENT--SECRET KNOWLEDGE OF PROMINENT MEN--SIR EDWARD GOSCHEN'S HISTORICAL DESPATCH--RUSH TO THE COLOURS--OUR UNPREPAREDNESS--INTRODUCING JIM--PATRIOTS FROM AFAR--F. C. SELOUS' ROUGHRIDERS--INITIATION INTO THE FOREIGN SECRET SERVICE--ADVISORY TESTAMENTARY DISPOSITIONS.