I say frankly that I think it absolutely impossible to eradicate spies from any country. Certainly it cannot be done in a week or a year, or even in many years. It is more than probable that the German spy systems in France and England are more complete to-day than they were at the beginning of the war. Three years ago the spies in those countries were made up of both experienced and inexperienced men. Now the bunglers have been weeded out, and only those who are expert in defying detection remain. But these are the only men who were ever of real use to Germany; and fortified as they are by three years of unsuspected work in these countries, they are enabled to secure information of infinitely more worth than they formerly were. What is the situation in America? I have shown you the structure of that system. Let me repeat again that Germany has installed in this country thousands of men, whose nationality and habits are such as to protect them from suspicion, who work silently and alone, because they know that their very lives depend upon their silence, and who are in communication with no central spy organization, for the very simple reason that no such organization exists. There is no clearing house for spy information in this country. There are no “master spies.” Do you think that the German Government would risk the success of a work so important as this, by organizing a system which the arrest of any one man or group of men would betray? The idea of centralization in this work is popular at present. In theory it is a good one. In practise it is impossible. By the very nature of the spy’s trade, he must run alone, and not only be unsuspected of any connection with Germany now, but be believed never to have had such a connection. If the secret service were a chain, the loss of one link would break it. With a system of independent units, endlessly overlapping, eternally duplicating each other’s work, they continue their practices even though half of their number are caught. Now with these men, protected as they are by the fact that not even their fellows know them, with their wits sharpened by three years of silent warfare against the agents of other governments and your own neutrality squad, the task of ferreting them out is an utterly impossible one. You cannot prevent spies from securing information. You cannot prevent the transmission of that information to Berlin, without instituting, not a censorship, but a complete suppression of all communications of any sort. But you can do much to counteract their methods by doing two things: I. Delaying all mails and cables, other than actual government messages. II. Instituting a system of counter espionage, which shall have for its object the detection _but not the arrest_ of enemy spies; and the dissemination of misleading information.