as we have said, German authorities will not employ men on important missions in espionage who have not at least had the education of gentlemen. The boastful claim of pedigree—obviously untenable in the majority of cases—provides for the writer, at any rate, something of a key to the psychology of the spy. Pride of mythical ancestry is undoubtedly a capital symptom of megalomania, among the conditions of which is the obsession of self-importance, and this would seem to be a widely prevalent disease among the sons of men. The desire to be near important people, to be engaged in no matter how lowly a capacity with men who direct important affairs, to associate in more or less familiar fashion with celebrities, or people highly placed, to count for even an infinitesimal part in the conduct of big events, to have the tips of one's fingers in the particular pie of the moment, to have been "not altogether out of it," as the cant phrase goes, in any given episode, but above all to be known to integral outsiders as having played the rôle of a fractional insider in any cause—this is an acute mania with a larger part of the human race than is commonly suspected. Megalomania of this kind goes a far way to explain the reason why men fitted for success in the unspectacular and prosaic careers of life will deliberately devote themselves to what must ever be considered as among the most disreputable of trades. It may be objected that at least it is a business which requires courage and that all successful exponents of the metier of spying have been men of undoubted courage. While admitting the boldness of men like Le Caron and Schulmeister, it may be said that they displayed audacity rather than courage, and the two qualities spring from entirely distinct motives. Often the audacity which passes for courage arises either from a lack of imagination, or else from a blind fatalism, and in neither case is there any display of real courage. Duty, presumably, is the fundamental motive of courage, and until your spy can be shown to have engaged in the perilous business of espionage out of purely conscientious devotion to task and principle—Le Caron, it is only right to say, claims all of this—he must be classed with that type of individual who enters into the business of unrighteousness "for all there is in it," to use an American phrase, and well knowing the tolls and penalties which failure will inevitably exact. It is impossible, in perusing the private correspondence of the loud and boastful Stieber, not to divine the presence of a spirit of active maleficence, the measure of whose humanity is to be found in the number of cold-blooded executions for which he was responsible in his capacity as an agent of Bismarck's lust for conquest. And Stieber's congeners were as a rule no worse and no better than himself, the only difference being that the German held a larger stage on which to enact his rôle and had correspondingly greater opportunities.