The machinery and materials, directors and workmen of all these undertakings were German, so that, although some of the capital of the company was furnished by French shareholders, practically the whole of this part of Normandy was already, when war broke out, in the hands of the Huns. Normandy in their power, they set about getting Brittany. Private individuals bought up large tracts of land and islands, and there is no doubt that the splendid port of Brest would before long have been theirs. Was not one of the Kaiser's sons familiarly known in Berlin as the "Duke of Brittany?" I have mentioned two of the chief spies connected with the Normandy plots, Raders and Thyssen. The former left the mine at Diélette on August 1st, but was arrested. Hefter, one of his subordinates, received a telegram that his brother had been run over by a train, and so got away on July 26th, whilst a third, a so-called Swiss, named Strobel, stayed in France for a month, and even returned to Diélette in January to destroy a trunk full of papers in a house which he had occupied. Rheims, the cathedral city of saddened memories, was another of the great spy centres of France. More than seventy inhabitants, in every imaginable disguise, had to be shot, we are told by M. Léon Daudet, who before and since the war has thrown much light on German espionage. Every woollen mill in Rheims was known to the enemy, and at the time of the invasion they sent off to Germany more than a hundred wagon-loads of models and drawings of machines, and so on, together with multitudinous bales of merchandise. All account-books were soaked with paraffin and burnt, and all workmen's dwellings were systematically destroyed. There is no doubt that as regards works, factories, and mills of all kinds, a systematic plan was followed wherever the German system of espionage operated. Those that could in any way be useful to the invaders during their occupation were carefully preserved, and those judged prejudicial to their future commercial prosperity were as ruthlessly destroyed. It was the same with private residences. Anything belonging to spies--many of them naturalized Frenchmen--was marked by advance guards in accordance with a carefully-prepared list, and was neither burnt nor pillaged when all around was destroyed. Henkell, of Wiesbaden, had some years ago started a wine business at Rheims, and his warehouse was built between the barracks, the aviation ground, the military fodder stores, and other official buildings. From the windows of his establishment he and his _employés_ could keep an eye on the movement of all military trains on the three lines leading from Rheims to Chalons, Charleville, and Laon. VII--STORY OF HERMANN VON MUMM, "PRINCE OF CHAMPAGNE"