When the psychology of the Spy comes to be expounded by some master thinker, one wonders if he will emphasise the fact that, more often than not, there is that in the pedigree and antecedents of the agent of stealth which clearly suggests a mongrel breed. Was it not Tacitus who wrote of the half-caste races who swarmed the Roman Suburra, describing them in the memorable words: "Despectissima pars servientium"—the most despicable of the slave tribe? It was among this class that Marcus Crassus was wont to go in quest of recruits for that grand army of touts, quidnuncs and informers who, by bringing him first-hand intelligence of fires, burglaries, murders and kindred daily occurrences in Rome, most of which were pregnant with the possibilities of profit of some sort, helped to build up the monster fortune that made him one of the most important men of antiquity. Your Stiebers and Schulmeisters, too, all in some vague way convey an impression that they are beings who are not quite human, although not wholly brute; living things which seem to come from an unracial stock without stamp or tradition. To a man who has been accorded the honour of a monument in Westminster Abbey these reflections do not, of course, apply. Nevertheless they suggest themselves, and when one reads in the life of John André that "it was not known whether the place of his birth was London or elsewhere in England," one feels disposed not to care particularly whether or not he ever had a father, or if his mother ever changed her name. André, too, was by origin a Swiss, and there is invariably lacking in the inhabitants of Switzerland a specific national cachet or clear racial type. His sire had been born in Geneva, while his mother was a Frenchwoman called Girardot, who in 1751 gave birth to the unfortunate British spy.