Here is evidence, if evidence were necessary, of Germany's deliberate intent to make war in its own good time; not merely to defend German frontiers, but to attack and reduce a neighbouring State by the use of methods which any nation save this one would regard as too dishonourable for use. Since the system of espionage has reached to such lengths as this, it will be seen that the stories of spies and their work, in which the public delights, are built up out of the doings of comparatively innocent agents, who are credited with dangerous tendencies and many melodramatic and impossible actions. That minor plans and persons do exist is certain, but for the most part the spying of which the public hears is merely incidental to the great whole--a whole composed for the most part of far different elements from the clerks, hotel-waiters, and other minor incidentals on which the imagination is fed, in order that the reality may more easily escape detection. There are in existence many books purporting to tell the actual work of spies and to expose the system under which these spies work, but it may be said at the outset that no full exposure of the spy system of Germany has ever been made. Stieber, in his Memoirs, told exactly what it suited him to tell, but he did not give away any essential secrets of organisation, nor has any other writer done this, up to the present. All that we have in the way of real evidence consists in things as well attested by fact and result as the incident of Maubeuge and the gun-platforms, related above; in selections from the Memoirs of spies of those portions which bear in themselves evidence of truth, and in reports of police-court proceedings in England and France. From these sources we can piece together a fairly accurate conception of the whole business of the spy; but, as regards books purporting to detail the experience of spies, or the character of the organisation under which they work, we must accept these experiences and the rest with all possible reserve, remembering that, the more melodramatic and the more plausible they may be, the more they should be questioned as regards accuracy. Moreover, there is sufficient evidence to show that the system is so extensive, and that its ramifications are so far-reaching, that no one book could contain all details of the various kinds of work entailed on the German spy system. It is possible only, in a book dealing with the system, to indicate the main lines on which spies in connection with military and naval matters work, and to give some concrete examples of their failures and successes. Naturally, there is far more material available as regards failures, for the work of the successful spy is of such a nature that it rarely comes to light; it is more often unheard of until, as in the case of the gun-platforms constructed in time of peace about Maubeuge, the work itself is put to use. CHAPTER TWO. STIEBER.