Intelligence Department could possibly know. In Austria in 1866 and in France in 1870, events proved that it knew far more. In whatever other way a high-class German secret-service man may fail to please the critics, there can be no question as to the degree of sheer intellectual ability required to enable him to reach his position—and retain it. In regard to Naval espionage, the course of study and the mental discipline exacted are, if anything, more severe. Fundamentally, of course, the system differs but little from that just dealt with, just as the winning of a battle involves the employment of strategy and tactics which are not fundamentally different from those employed in the taking of a fortress, as Napoleon said. The majority of accepted secret-service agents on entering upon their studies in Berlin, Kiel or Wilhelmshafen, rarely know enough about naval matters to be able to distinguish a torpedo from a torpedo-boat destroyer. After a course with the instructors the agent not only distinguishes easily between the large variety of types of torpedoes, submarines, mines, he can also tell by the peculiar whistle it makes whether a torpedo when being discharged is a Whitehead or a Brennan, as the case may be. Then his work in naval dockyards and on coastal defences has practically no limit. Naval construction he must be as fully versed in as the best informed of naval commanders. All sorts of naval war-craft are set before him for the purposes of study, and the candidate for advancement is required, before he passes out with a certificate, to be able to tell at a glance, and from their silhouettes, all known war-craft in existence, big and little. After months of study, a quick learner will be able to say at once the type of any given war-vessel shown him and what its nationality. Add to this a perfectly accurate acquaintance with flag-signals and codes, the different ranking officers of _all_ the navies of the world, the personnel of warships of the heavier classes, the various uniforms, the ability to talk about any or all parts of a gun, a torpedo, a tube, a mine, whether assembled or unassembled, and it will be freely admitted that the German naval spy must be a ready man in the fullest sense of Bacon's term. And yet on another page we have said that German espionage is a doomed failure. We still maintain it, and for the reason that the foregoing studies only result, after all is said, in naval theory. As a maker of theories, your German of all kinds and conditions, is the first man in the world; it is when he comes to their practical application that he fails so badly and disappoints his admirers so painfully. The end of German naval espionage is of course the invasion and conquest of Britain, and until German armies defeat us and our Allies on land and her Navy has beaten us at sea, we may feel justified in holding that both her military and naval systems of espionage are respectively not worth the