But even out of the theft of the passports--no doubt regarded by them as an excellent stroke of "kultur"--the Germans are not unlikely to reap trouble. The United States is not a country to be played with, and in this passport trick there lie the elements of serious trouble. Americans will not be likely to lie down quietly while their passports are used for espionage, and it is more than likely that the Germans have stirred up a hornets' nest about their ears. In the meantime, it is reported from Washington that the Government has instructed the Embassy in Berlin to sift the Lody-Inglis incident to the very bottom. That incident, too, has brought about much more stringent rules with regard to passports. Henceforth no American or British passport will be recognised as valid which does not bear the certified photograph of its rightful owner, and extra photographs for registration purposes will have to be lodged with the Embassy or Consulate by which the passport is issued. In the meantime we may be quite sure that American passports in London will be the subject of very special attention. What diplomatic action the United States may take in the matter it is impossible to say, but we can be fairly sure that such a proceeding as the stealing of neutral passports and using them for the purposes of spying in Great Britain will hardly be allowed to pass without very serious protest. The Lody case has had one good effect in bringing home to a public, which is, alas! too liable to be careless in such matters, the reality of the German spy-peril in the country. The public had been so consistently deluded in this matter by those who were perfectly aware of the real facts of German espionage that it was far too much inclined to look upon everyone who insisted that there was a very real and very urgent spy danger as a mere alarmist. It knows better now! Anyone who glances at the columns of the daily Press must be aware that public opinion is slowly awakening to the real urgency of the question, and, though I and others have been bitterly disappointed that our warnings have, to a great extent, gone unheeded, I am even now not without hope that we shall yet see the public insist that adequate steps shall be taken for our national safety in this respect. It is true we may offend Germany by the drastic action the position demands. We may even, it is true, make the lot of Englishmen still, unhappily, in Germany, harder and more disagreeable. We shall regret either necessity. But the safety of the country has to come first. Germany has never shown the slightest regard for our feelings, and I am sure that those of our countrymen who are prisoners in Germany, military or civil, would cheerfully suffer any conceivable hardship rather than that the safety of our beloved Empire should be jeopardised in the hope of making better terms for them. To think otherwise would be to assume that patriotism had entirely departed from us. CHAPTER X SOME RECENT CASES