Now, it is impossible, in spite of the utmost vigilance, to keep an important document from the knowledge of all but one or two people. No matter how secret, it is almost certain to pass through the hands of a number of officials and possibly several clerks. And with every additional person who knows of it, the risk of discovery or betrayal is correspondingly increased. If in code, it may be copied or memorized by a spy who is in a position to get hold of it, or by a person who is in the power of that spy! Once in Berlin, it can be deciphered. For the General Staff and the Admiralty have their experts in these matters who are very rarely defeated. You may be sure that Germany has made her utmost efforts to put her spies into high places in this country, just as she has tried to do elsewhere. You may be sure, also, that she has neglected no opportunity to gain control over any official or any naval or army officer—however important or unimportant—whom the agents could influence. That has always been her method; nor is it difficult to see why it frequently succeeds. Imagine the situation of a man who in time of peace had supplied, either innocently or otherwise, a foreign agent with information which possessed a considerable value. It is probable that he would revolt at a suggestion that he do it in time of war—but with his neck once in the German noose, with the alternative of additional compliance or exposure facing him, it is not hard to see how some men would become conscious traitors and others would be driven to suicide. By a system of blackmail and intimidation the Germans have attempted to force into their ranks many people from whom they extort information that would now be regarded as traitorous, although formerly it might have been given out in all innocence. Undoubtedly it was for purposes of intimidation that von Papen carried with him to England papers incriminating Germans and German-Americans who had been associated with him in one way or another. And why did von Rintelen return to this country and aid this government in exposing the German affiliations of people who had no German blood in them? The obvious answer is that those people had balked at aiding him in some scheme he had proposed. Therefore he made examples of them, with the double purpose of demonstrating to the United States the extent of German intrigue and of filling other implicated people with fear of the exposure that would come to them if they were not more compliant.