In active service the woman plays a very small part, for the endurance of a man is required to undergo such rigours as usually fall to combatants and spies alike once the armies have taken the field. Here, however, women are of use in carrying messages and in similar minor capacities. Such of them as manage to keep their places in civilian establishments may be of great use in learning projected plans--though plans are usually kept too secret, since the organisation and extent of the German system of espionage is fairly well-known in official circles of other countries. During the siege of Liege men masqueraded as women in order to obtain information for the German commander. In one particular case four ladies were observed in the town, and certain small points of make-up and attire caused the police to entertain suspicions. The ladies were seized and examined, and very few inquiries were sufficient to settle the question of their sex, while further inquiries certified them as German spies--and they paid the penalty of their daring. Before execution, spies captured in the present war have stated that they have been forced to take on their tasks; certain persons are selected by lot out of the army, and are given choice of the disguise with which they must go out to the front. In many cases the disguises are hopelessly inadequate, and all the men who go out know that they are going to almost certain death. But the man who, without some rehearsal, goes out disguised as a woman, is not only facing death, but looking for it--as do these German soldiers in like case. Cases have come to light in Belgium in which wearers of the Red Cross have proved to be spies; women have been caught acting as nurses, keeping to their posts simply for the purpose of obtaining such information as shall be useful to the German forces. Such cases are rare, for the Red Cross nurse is usually well authenticated and deservedly above suspicion, but the rarity of the cases and the very small likelihood of detection renders them correspondingly dangerous. From their positions and duties they are in the very heart of things, and are able to get more information than those in other positions, though the transmission of news, after it has been obtained, is by no, means an easy business.