The information which these ambulatory amateur spies collected was undoubtedly precious. It assisted in the spread of German commerce and German ideas. Our enemies worked on the principle that every little helped, and that the observations of a spectacled professor tramping through France could be turned to almost as much use as those of a professional spy, working under cover of a bank or an insurance company like the Viktoria zu Berlin in Paris, which our friends and Allies the French very soon closed down. The sum-total of the efforts of all these amateur and professional spies was enormous, and would indeed have led to the domination of Europe by the Teuton but for his inborn crass stupidity. I wonder when we shall really learn to know the true character of the German? French people, who long ago put a stop to Teuton tricks, are amazed to hear that we still allow the enemy to remain in our midst, and that we actually help them to carry on their businesses, just as though the war never existed. "Are you aware of the fact," I have often been asked by Parisian friends, "that these large German concerns were nothing more or less than gigantic spying organizations?" V--REVELATIONS OF THE SPY SYSTEM Those who have any doubt about this should read the remarkable revelations of M. Georges Prade anent the Viktoria zu Berlin Insurance Company, the premiums of which represented over eighty million pounds. In the Paris offices of this company, in the Avenue de l'Opéra, M. Prade discovered a peculiar organization called the Special Büro. The _employés_ of this office were all Germans, between twenty-five and thirty years of age, and officers in the German reserve. They spent from five to six months in France, received forty pounds a month each, with an allowance for travelling expenses, and spent their time motoring all over France. Eastern France and the Alps was their favourite region. Naturally they all disappeared a few days before the German mobilization in July, 1914. Whilst these men were spying out the land, their colleagues in Paris were performing equally useful work for the German Government, "establishing an exact estimate of the public fortune, a useful element in assessing war taxation and indemnities," and otherwise obtaining valuable information. The Viktoria, for example, offered special terms to French officers. It insured them, without extra charge, against war risks, and, through the medium of visiting agents, advanced money at very reasonable terms on their policies. The Berlin offices of the Viktoria thus secured the names of all the French officers who owed it money, an excellent arrangement indeed on which to base an organization for spying.