"On August 5 the Aliens Restriction Act was passed, and within an hour of its passing an Order-in-Coundl was made which gave the Home Office and the Police stringent powers to deal with aliens, and especially enemy aliens, who under this act could be stopped from entering or leaving the United Kingdom, and were prohibited while residing in this country from having in their possession any wireless or signalling apparatus of any kind, or any carrier or homing pigeons. Under this Order all those districts where the Admiralty or War Office considered it undesirable that enemy aliens should reside have been cleared by the Police of Germans and Austrians, with the exception of a few persons, chiefly women and children, whose character and antecedents are such that the local Chief Constable, in whose discretion the matter is vested by the Order, considered that all ground for suspicion was precluded. At the same time the Post Office, acting under the powers given them by the Wireless Telegraphy Acts, dismantled all private wireless stations; and they established a special system of wireless detection by which any station actually used for the transmission of messages from this country could be discovered. The Police have co-operated successfully in this matter with the Post Office. "New and still more stringent powers for dealing with espionage were given by the Defence of the Realm Act, which was passed by the Home Secretary through the House of Commons and received the Royal Assent on August 8. Orders-in-Council have been made under this Act which prohibit, in the widest terms, any attempt on the part either of aliens or of British subjects to communicate any information which is calculated `to be or might be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy'; and any person offending against this prohibition is liable to be tried by court-martial and sentenced to penal servitude for life. The effect of these Orders is to make espionage a military offence. Power is given both to the police and to the military authorities to arrest without a warrant any person whose behaviour is such as to give rise to suspicion, and any person so arrested by the police would be handed over to the military authorities for trial by court-martial. Only in the event of the military authorities holding that there is no prima-facie case of espionage or any other offence tryable by military law is a prisoner handed back to the civil authorities to consider whether he should be charged with failing to register or with any other offence under the Aliens Restriction Act. "The present position is, therefore, that espionage has been made by statute a military offence tryable by court-martial. If tried under the Defence of the Realm Act, the maximum punishment is penal servitude for life; but if dealt with outside that Act as a war crime the punishment of death can be inflicted.