From the sentiments of Frederick the Great regarding spies, let us pass to those of our own time. From Lord Wolseley’s ‘Soldier’s Pocket-Book’ may be gained some insight as to the manner in which a spy in an enemy’s camp may correspond with the hostile general. The best way, he suggests, is to send a peasant with a letter written on very thin paper, which may be rolled up so tightly as to be portable in a quill an inch and a half long, and this precious quill may be hidden in the hair or beard, or in a hollow made at the end of a walking-stick. It is also a good plan to write secret correspondence in lemon-juice across a newspaper or the leaves of a New Testament; it is then safe against discovery, and will become legible when held before a fire or near a red iron. ‘As a nation,’ says Lord Wolseley, ‘we are bred up to feel it a disgrace even to succeed by falsehood; the word spy conveys something as repulsive as slave; we will keep hammering along with the conviction that honesty is the best policy, and that truth always wins in the long run. These pretty little sentiments do well for a child’s copy-book, but a man who acts upon them had better sheathe his sword for ever.’[194] Was there ever such a confession of the incompatibility of the soldier’s calling with the precepts of ordinary honour? For how not so, if he must so far stoop from the ordinary level of moral rectitude as to be ready to scorn honesty and to trifle with truth? And then the question is, Had not a man better sheathe his sword for ever, or rather not enter at all upon a trade where he will have to regard the eternal principles of right and wrong as so much pretty sentiment only fit for the copy-book?