dinner in Boston at which I was a speaker, I received a mild reprimand from the Adjutant-General of the Army. On the occasion in question I remarked, if I remember rightly, that I was convinced that the most effective method of dealing with spies was not to intern them but to inter them. And I am still of the same opinion. Though Germany had a number of secret agents operating in the United States—though not nearly as many as was generally supposed—the only one of them who measured up to the popular conception of a spy was a woman known as Madame de Victorica. In certain respects she came very near to meeting the specifications for an international adventuress as laid down in the mystery stories of Messrs. Chambers and Oppenheim. The results she obtained were, however, distinctly disappointing—at least from the Wilhelmstrasse point of view. Her father was the Prussian general to whom Marshal Bazaine handed his sword at the surrender of Metz; her mother was a Prussian countess; her sister was married to a Prussian nobleman, and her brother was a Jesuit priest serving as a chaplain in the Austrian Army. Madame de Victorica has had three husbands—all South Americans. Two died within a few months after marrying the handsome adventuress; the third was divorced. According to her confession, Madame de Victorica was trained in espionage work at the Naval Intelligence Bureau in Berlin and was sent to the United States by the authorities of the Wilhelmstrasse for the purposes of obtaining military and naval information, to foment labor troubles, to tamper with the Roman Catholic clergy, and to lay the plans for a rebellion in Ireland more successful than the abortive one of 1916. She memorized a code before leaving Berlin. The secret ink in which her letters were written was given her at the Chemical Institute and was carried in two silk mufflers, the ink being obtained by saturating them in cold water and wringing them. Writing in this ink could be developed with iodine tablets, manufactured by a well-known firm of London chemists, dissolved in vinegar. Other messages were transmitted by means of pin-pricking certain letters in newspapers. Madame de Victorica was unquestionably a woman of considerable intelligence and social position; she had had some experience as a journalist, and was apparently credited by the Germans with quickness of wit and resourcefulness as an organizer. This reputation she only partly justified, however, for she talked indiscreetly on the steamer while coming over, wasted time and money after her arrival in New York in buying elaborate gowns, and was an inveterate user of drugs. As the result of converging lines of inquiry pursued by Military Intelligence and the Department of Justice, she was arrested, together with several of her confederates, in August, 1918. There you have a thumb-nail sketch, as it were, of the most dangerous German agent in America. She can thank her lucky stars that