The methods to which Herr Richter took exception included the suborning of high officials in magisterial, political, and industrial circles, more especially by the temptations afforded by the keeping of such disorderly houses as the woman Krausz made infamously notorious; the engaging, as secret agents, court officials, Reichstag deputies and their wives, and all who could in any way help on the business of information without regard to the moral or social degeneracy that might be brought about by these "honest and estimable" methods. Since the responsible Ministers of the country countenance rank immorality and vice in the search for information, it follows inevitably that the life of the nation as a whole is lowered in tone by the existence of the spy system; things that, to people of normal view-point appear detestable, become things that all may do without shame. Here in England a spy is given his real value--he is looked on as no true man: in Germany, on the other hand, the business of a spy is as honourable as any other; the outlook of the nation has become perverted by the system that Stieber set in working--Stieber himself was Germany's greatest enemy, but the country has not yet realised this. And, with this perverted morality, this condoning of evil for the sake of the good that may accrue, there is no lack of material from which to fashion spies. The German Empire has become not only commercialised, but debased; the German view of solemn treaties, and the German justification of broken oaths on the ground of expediency, are typical of the German view-point in all things. Nothing is dishonourable, except to be found out, is a fairly accurate way of expressing the German view-point as regards rules for the conduct of life. With this much understood, it is easy to understand that, in dealing with a German--with any German--one is dealing with a potential spy, for the whole nation is subject to espionage and attuned to it, regarding it as a part of daily life. From money-lender and social hanger-on down to workman and loafer, spies may be made out of all grades of the social scale, and are made. Through the medium of a workman spy, the plans of the Lebel rifle were in German hands before ever one of the rifles in question was handed out for the use of French troops. At the other end of the scale is Von Puttkamer, Minister of the Interior, sanctioning anything and all things, irrespective of the harm they may do to the moral nature of the German race, so long as "information" is obtained. The taint is in the race, so permeating all classes that neither man nor woman can be regarded as free of it. The actual word "spy" is capable of various interpretations, and the real and acknowledged spies of the German system, numerous though they are, do not form nearly as large a total as the people who help the espionage system to maintain its efficiency.