The elaborate calculations of your Schulmeisters and Stiebers may be said, in nearly all cases, to have worked out with the smoothness of algebraic equations, and it is extremely rare that women display either the self-restraint or the reasoning power which carry to successful solution dragging intrigues with anything like the patient routine and regularity which a series of really unromantic situations calls for. Obviously, the work of the spy, no matter how dramatic it may appear in its co-ordinated whole, must, in respect of its various separate acts and phases, be bared of all dramatic or arresting incident. Were the opposite the case, woman, a natural actor, would find herself in the most congenial of elements. Anything more sordid, however, or more commonplace than the general phase-work of the spy, it would be difficult to imagine, and it is precisely for this reason that woman as a rule fails as a secret service agent. In matters of love or revenge, where her deepest feelings are concerned, she is capable of a sustained effort calling for the application of whatever analytical powers she may possess, but seldom in other cases; for an appeal to, say, her patriotism leaves her almost invariably cold and unenthusiastic, since love of country is a quality which depends too largely on an essentially platonic and impersonal principle to attract and hold for long her undivided interest and attention. On the whole, a study of the spy, however interesting it may prove in respect of the undoubted variety of its actors and dramatic aspects, must be held to be a criminological study. Even in the cases of Hale and André, whose careers owe much of the halo which invests them to their tragic fate, one is suspicious of fanaticism in the former and pronounced megalomania in the latter, both symptoms of unsoundness of mind. However much the spy may plead disinterestedness in the pecuniary sense, or point to present poverty as a token of his claim to have worked for an implicit moral principle, one is conscious in studying the life of any one of the species in more modern times, that he contained within him all the necessary elements which go to make up the character and personality of that class of degenerate who is prepared to travel any path provided he be given the means to play a more or less spectacular rôle. He is invariably to be found among that type of men who advance the peculiar claim that "the world owes every wight a living," strangely forgetful of the historic retort in point. The application of this principle to all the length to which it is capable of being extended would, of course, justify the struggle for existence of the summer burglar, the swell mobsman, the sand-bag artist and the lead-pipe assassin, to mention but a few members of the big brotherhood which lives by crime. It is undoubtedly true that many successful spies lay claim to be scions of splendid families, and,