With this end in view the French system of the registration and taxation of every alien coming to reside in this country ought to be insisted upon. Many worthy people seem to think that there is something highly objectionable in a precaution which is taken by every European country except Britain. As a matter of fact, there is nothing of the kind. Every Briton, in ordinary times, who goes to Germany is registered by the police; there is no hardship and no inconvenience about it, and no reason whatever why the person whose motives are above suspicion should object to it. The same is true of Russia, where the passport system is strict; yet, once you have registered, you are free to do pretty much as you please, so long as you do not attempt to interfere in political matters, which are surely no concern of the foreigner. Germans should be the last people in the world to object to a policy of registration and supervision in this country, and to do them justice the reputable Germans would never think of protesting. Another essential precaution would be that every alien coming to reside in this country must produce his papers. There is no hardship in this; the honest foreigner never makes any trouble about showing his papers at any time. In every country save Great Britain everyone has to possess such papers, and there is no reason why he should not produce them when he goes from his own to another country. By a system of papers and registration, the police would be enabled at any moment to lay their hands on doubtful characters, quite apart from spies. It is also to be sincerely hoped that the Lord Chamberlain's Department will request, as the _Globe_ has justly demanded, that City financiers who have been accustomed to make use in this country, without the Royal licence or the King's permission, of German titles of nobility, will discontinue this practice when they become "naturalised." We should then have fewer pinchbeck "Barons" among us than at present. Evidence has been accumulating during the past few years, and came to a head with the case of the German consul at Sunderland, that naturalisation in the great majority of cases is a perfect farce. The "naturalised" are still "Germans at heart." Naturalisation is usually adopted either for spying or for business purposes, and to suppose that the mere fact makes a German into anything else is to argue a pitiful ignorance of human nature, and particularly of the German nature. There is in this, of course, no reproach; we should think as little of a German who forsook the cause of his country as of an Englishman who turned renegade. The Germans are an intensely patriotic people, and we may honour them for it, but we do not want to help them to further exercise their patriotism at our expense.