Every military organization operating independently, from a division down to a quartermaster depot, possessed its own counter-espionage organization, built up within itself for its own protection but operating according to a general plan and reporting directly to the Military Intelligence Division in Washington. During the war there were over 400 intelligence officers reporting to Military Intelligence, either directly or through department intelligence officers. In addition to these, there were special intelligence officers at certain highly important points: New York, Hoboken, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, St. Louis, New Orleans, Seattle, and San Juan, Porto Rico—and twenty-one district intelligence officers stationed in centres of somewhat less importance. The privilege of direct communication, granted by the Secretary of War, enabled the counter-espionage organization throughout the United States to be controlled and co-ordinated without interference by the normal military command, thereby insuring additional secrecy for its operations and eliminating the enormous amount of time and red tape involved in sending communications through the usual military channels. Each intelligence officer corresponded directly and freely with every other intelligence officer, copies of such lateral communications being sent to Military Intelligence, the files of M. I. thus becoming a great central reservoir for intelligence information of every sort. As a result of this organization, the Director of Military Intelligence, sitting at his desk in Washington, was the centre of a vast network of intelligence officers and other agents which covered not only the whole of the United States but, indeed, the greater part of the world. The ever-present problem presented by counter-espionage work within the army was the determination of the loyalty of officers and men. Experience proved that the pro-German was almost certain to reveal himself sooner or later, or to be reported by some one who had known him, the loyal rank and file themselves constituting the most effective counter-espionage service of all. Investigations of men thus reported frequently showed, however, that, though the suspect might have been pro-German before our entrance into the war, he had been apparently loyal since. If he was an enlisted man it was usually deemed safe to put him with line troops and send him to the front, for, even were he to prove disloyal, his opportunities for acquiring important information were comparatively few, and his opportunities for transmitting such information to the enemy almost infinitesimal. In the case of an officer, however, the question took on a far graver aspect, and only after the most searching investigation was such a man permitted to go overseas.