Yet one other point must be borne in mind in connection with the general work of the spy. Happenings in 1870, combined with Stieber's Memoirs, make clear that the hanging of peasants in the later stages of the war excited even the criticism of stone-hearted Bismarck, who saw in these occurrences a policy which might some day bring retribution. But to this Stieber answered: "In war one must take the measures of war. It is the duty of our soldiers to kill the soldiers of the enemy who from motives of duty oppose our march. We spies claim the right to hang those who spy on us." The declaration is illuminating. Here were the members of the German secret service facilitating a conquest by dastardly measures, by abuse of the hospitality of the country which the Prussian troops subsequently invaded. Yet, if the inhabitants of that country dared to attempt to give information to their own countrymen, they were to be hanged. Espionage is responsible for many evils: Stieber shows here that it is responsible for the blunting of the moral sense of his fellow-countrymen, and that the espionage system of 1870 laid the foundations of the Prussian disregard of human life, and the utter brutality and savagery displayed by Prussians in this present war of 1914. "A peasant was caught in the act of watching a Prussian convoy," Stieber writes in his Memoirs, "and was falsely accused of having fired upon it; he was hung up by ropes under his arms in front of his own house, and was slowly done to death with thirty-four bullets fired in succession. In order to make an example, I decided that the body should remain hanging for two days, under the guard of two sentries." A thing like this is worth memory to-day, in view of what has happened at Louvain and Aerschot and other scenes of Belgian outrage. The germ of Prussian barbarism must have been in the race, but Stieber and his kind have fostered it and caused its growth to the extent that has made of Germany a name of shame among the nations of the earth. CHAPTER TEN. AGENTS PROVOCATEURS. This subject of political work, apart from espionage proper on the part of German agents, is a delicate one, for proof is not only hard to come by, but direct proof is practically non-existent, owing to the nature of the work. The most that can be done is to take cases of political work which, on the face of them, are such that no honest citizen would attempt: by a process of mental elimination one may arrive at the source of such work, though the result of the process is little more than conjecture. Still, half a dozen or so of results, all pointing the same conclusion, are of value, and, in spite of the absence of definite proof, police-court and criminal-court trials and the like, there can be no reasonable doubt that the work of the _agent provocateur_ goes on, and that the central office at Berlin pays in order to keep it going.