There are the men who are quietly going on with their work, doing their best with straitened means to keep their business going; giving employment; getting ready to meet the income tax collector, who next year one is inclined to expect will be demanding anything from half a crown to five shillings in the pound.  There are others.  But there is a certain noisy and, to me, particularly offensive man (and with him, I am sorry to say, one or two women) very much to the fore just now with whose services the country could very well dispense.  He is the man who does his fighting with his mouth.  Unable for reasons of his own to get at the foe in the field, he thirsts for the blood of the unfortunate unarmed and helpless Germans that the fortunes of war have left stranded in England.  He writes to the paper thoughtfully suggesting plans that have occurred to him for making their existence more miserable than it must be.  He generally concludes his letter with a short homily directed against the Prussian Military Staff for their lack of the higher Christian principles.

He has spies on the brain.  Two quite harmless English citizens have already been shot in consequence of the funk this spy mania has created among us.  The vast majority of Germans in England have come to live in England because they dislike Germany.  That a certain number of spies are among us I take to be highly probable.  I take it that if the Allies know their business a certain number of English spies are doing what they can for us at great personal risk to themselves in Germany.  Until the German Army has landed on our shores German spies can do little or no harm to us.  The police can be trusted to know something about them, and if any are caught red-handed the rules of war are not likely to be strained for their benefit.

A Story from the South.

From a small town in the South of England comes a story I can vouch for.  A couple of Boy Scouts had been set to guard the local reservoir.  About noon one sunny day they remarked the approach, somewhat ostentatious, of a desperate-looking character.  Undoubtedly a German spy!  What can he be up to!  The boys approached him and he fled, leaving behind him the damning evidence—­a tin suggestive of sardines and labeled “Poison!” That the gentleman should have chosen broad daylight for his nefarious design, should have been careful to label his tin, seemed to the good townsfolk under present scare conditions proof that they had at last discovered the real German spy, full of his devilish cunning.  The tin was taken possession of by the police.  And then the Sergeant’s little daughter, who happened to have had a few lessons in French, suggested that the word on the tin was “Poisson,” and the town now breathes again.