German nation by putting a premium on treachery and immorality in the pursuit of special information and so has made that trade a career open to the talents of all who care to adopt it. Responsible ministers have declared more than once in the imperial parliament at Berlin their concurrence in the view that "all is justifiable" in the interests of the future of the Fatherland, and in this regard we remember that not so long ago Herr Richter, the leader of the Opposition, raised a protest reflecting on the doubtful character of the secret-service agents of the Government only to receive from Puttkamer the now-stereotyped retort: "It is the right and duty of the German Imperial Government to employ all possible and necessary methods in order to secure for the State the benefits of useful intelligence, and if the Minister of Police has had success by employing doubtful persons for his purposes, I personally express to him my satisfaction and thanks." The particular methods to which Richter had taken exception included the bribing of magistrates, politicians and wealthy industrialists to give up information in their possession. Some of the most disreputable night-houses in Berlin were protected by the police for the reason that they had become the fashionable rendezvous of officers and diplomatists who, in their cups, were easily induced to give up information regarding their superiors, which the secret-service sleuths were anxious to obtain with the object of creating situations that left important public men at their own mercy or else at the mercy of men immeasurably higher up. Much has been written about the "high sense of virtue" which prompted the famous revelations which were made by Harden in his publication _Die Zukunft_ in 1907. We do not personally question the sense of virtue possessed by the German editor, but it is certain that the opinion was current in Berlin in the succeeding year that reasons of State had required the removal from official life of many of the high social and political personages implicated in the scandals, and that the apparently "private" information possessed by an editor was selected as the easiest means of forcing them irrevocably from public life. Knowing what we do of the exiguous liberties of the Prussian Press, it is quite obvious that the life of an editor who should venture, of his own initiative and authority, to divulge a tenth part of the story which was printed in the _Zukunft_, would not have been worth an hour's purchase in militaristic Berlin. And here we recur to the statement once made by an old servant of Frederick the Great to the famous Count d'Antraigues: "That day on which you begin to imagine your services are indispensable to him will be your last day. He has no heart, and the very thought that you possess a claim on his friendship will suffice to destroy you."