After a time, however, the Austrian Government practically abdicated in favour of the Prussians and now undertake to carry out the measures of Germanisation dictated by Berlin. The rights in connection with the use of the Czech language in administration, in the Law Courts and on the railways, rights which were won by the desperate efforts of two generations of Czech politicians, have been abrogated. The management of the railways has been placed in the hands of Prussian military officials; the use of the Czech language has been suppressed in the administration, where it had formerly been lawful. The Czechs have been denied access to the Magistrature and to public offices where they had occasionally succeeded in directing the affairs in their own country. CHAPTER XVII SPIES AND SEMI-SPIES A comprehensive account of the German system of espionage would need something resembling the dimensions of a general encyclopaedia, but for the present I must endeavour to summarise the subject in the course of a chapter. Spying is just as essential an ingredient of Prussian character as conceit, indifference to the feelings of others, jealousy, envy, self-satisfaction, conceit, industry, inquisitiveness, veneration for officialdom, imitativeness, materialism, and the other national attributes that will occur to those who know Prussia, as distinct from the other German States. Prussian men and women hardly know the meaning of the word "private," and, as they have Prussianised to a great or less degree all the other States of the Empire, they have inured the German to publicity from childhood upwards. In the enforcement of food regulations the hands of the Government in Germany are strengthened by certain elements in the German character, one of which is the tendency of people to spy upon each other. Here is a case. Last Easter the customary baking of cakes--a time-honoured ceremony in Germany---was forbidden all over Prussia from April 1 to 26. A certain good woman of Stettin, whose husband was coming home from the trenches, thought that she would welcome her soldier with one of the cakes of which German men and women are so fond. She foolishly displayed her treasure to a neighbour, who had dropped in for gossip. The neighbour cut short the interview, went home to her telephone, called up the police and, as she put it, did her duty. I suppose from the German point of view it is the duty of people to spy in each other's houses. From an Anglo-Saxon point of view it is something rather like sneaking at school.