With these 27,000 alien enemies free to move five miles in each direction from any area in which they may be living, and power to make longer journeys if they can get a permit--not a very difficult thing to do--the Home Office is adding to the danger by encouraging a movement for the release of some of the 15,000 alien enemies interned originally because they were held to be dangerous. The Chief Constables who are being asked to certify such as might be released, may, I quite think with the _Evening News_, be pardoned for giving a liberal interpretation of the request. Surely every sane man must agree with the opinion expressed by the same outspoken journal, namely, that with some 35,000 Germans and Austrians, registered and naturalised, moving freely in our midst, a Government which permits that freedom is taking risks which it ought not to take. The German Government, in their wisdom, are not guilty of such folly. Every British subject, even those who have lived there for forty years, and can hardly speak their mother-tongue, is interned. Why, if a naturalised German is known to be an enemy of the country of his adoption--be he waiter or financier--should any tenderness be displayed towards him? He is an enemy, and whatever Lord Haldane or Mr. McKenna may say, he must be treated as such. I write only as an Englishman fighting for his own land. I repeat that I have no party politics, but only the stern resolve that _we must win this war_, and that all who lean to the enemy in any manner whatever must go, and be swept with their fine houses, their wives and their social surroundings into oblivion. To-day we, as Britons, are fighting for our existence. To give our alien enemies a chance of espionage is a criminal act. Sir Henry Dalziel advocates the constitution of an Aliens Board to deal with the whole subject. He evidently has no faith in the present indecision, for he has expressed himself in favour of moving all alien enemies fifty miles from the coast. The flabby policy of indecision is, one must agree, a mistake. No one wants to embarrass the Government, who in so many ways have done admirably, but, in the face of the serious dangers which must arise from the presence of 27,000 alien enemies within our gates at this moment, even implicit confidence must not stand in the way of a stern and effective national defence. And the removal of the spy danger is, I maintain, eminently a matter of national defence. It is for the public to make a stern and unmistakable demand. * * * * * The following lines, from an anonymous pen, appeared on December 10th in the _Evening News_, which has performed a patriotic work in pointing out the peril of spies, and demanding that they should be interned. Though amusing, the words really contain a good deal of truth:--