It is certainly as well that the authorities have already taken precautions to guard our reservoirs. As far back as five years ago, a large number of the principal water supplies in England were reconnoitred by a band of itinerant musicians, who, though they played mournful airs in the streets, were really a group of very wide-awake German officers. They devoted three months to the metropolis--where they succeeded in making a complete plan of the water-mains supplying East London--and then afterwards visited Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, and Newcastle. At the latter place they were detected, and being warned by the authorities, fled. They were "warned" because at that time there was no Act to deal with them. Just at this juncture a most fortunate incident occurred, though probably it will be met with an official denial. A young German who had been making observations around Rosyth and beneath the Forth Bridge, was detected, and fled. The police sought him out and he was compelled to again fly without paying his rent, leaving his suit-case behind. After a month the landlady took this bag to the police, who, on opening it, found a quantity of documents, which were sealed up and sent to London. They were soon found to be most instructive, for not only was there a list of names of persons hitherto unsuspected of espionage, but also a little book containing the secret code used by the spies! Needless to say, this has been of the greatest use to those engaged in the work of contra-espionage. Of the good work done by the latter, the public, of course, know nothing, but it may be stated that many a confidential report destined for Berlin was intercepted before it reached the spy's post-office, the shop of the barber Ernst, in London--to which I will later on refer--and many a judicious hint has been given which has caused the suspect to pack his, or her, belongings and return by the Hook of Holland route. East Anglia has, of course, been the happy hunting ground of spies, and the counties of Lincoln, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex have, long ago, been very thoroughly surveyed, and every preparation made for a raid. It was found--as far back as four years ago--that next door, or in the vicinity of most village post-offices near the coast-line of those counties, a foreigner had taken up his residence, that German hairdressers and jewellers were everywhere setting up shops where custom did not warrant it; that Germans took sea-side furnished houses or went as paying guests in the country, even in winter; while, of course, the number of German waiters--usually passing as Austrians--had increased greatly. When the Kaiser rented Highcliffe Castle, in Hampshire, under the pretext that he was ill, he brought with him no fewer than thirty secretaries. Why? A foreigner who comes here to recuperate does not want thirty secretaries--even though he may be an Emperor! Napoleon never wanted such a crowd of scribblers about him.