TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE ENEMY ALIEN.
THE way in which the question of the enemy alien in our midst, and the spy problem generally, is being handled by a large part of the Press and of the public can only be described as thoroughly unsatisfactory. In a matter of this kind and during war there is only one essential consideration, and that is the safety of the realm. Whatever the safety of the realm demands must be done without fear of the consequences, even though they may unfortunately involve great pain and suffering to many innocent individuals. We cannot jeopardize the whole nation for fear that unmerited suffering may be inflicted upon a certain portion of the population— provided, of course, that that portion of the population is not victimized, as the Germans have victimized the Belgians, on some barbarous system of vicarious punishment. To injure a group of innocent Germans here because another group of guilty Germans has done wicked things in Belgium would be an abominable outrage. Again, nothing would be more worthy of denunciation than any notion of holding the Germans here as hostages for the good behaviour of the Germans in France. Better any risks than such crimes as these. Apart from that, if making sure of the safety of the realm involves precautions that may or will lead to suffering by German aliens, so must it be. You cannot stop bombarding the enemy's trenches for fear some of your shrapnel may hit innocent people straying behind their lines.
If the safety of the realm is to be our guiding principle, how ought we to deal with the alien in our midst ? In the first place, the matter is one which must primarily be left to the Government. Not only are they responsible, but they are the only people who have got full information at their disposal. This, of course, does not mean that the public are not to assist the Government by reporting the movements of suspicious persons, or detecting and exposing sinister actions by aliens. It does mean, however, that the public must abstain absolutely from attacks on German individuals and German places of business. Nothing but evil and injustice can come from persecution of that kind. We are quite prepared to say that the Government may have to do things which, in a sense, are cruel and harsh • and if they think it necessary so to act it would be criminal folly for the public to protest on merely humanitarian grounds. If, however, harsh and cruel things have to be done, they must be done by the properly constituted authority and not by mobs. For example, we could quite well understand it, and should support the Government if they thought it necessary to say " Here is a group of ten thousand German families. It is impossible for us to tell which individuals among them are likely to do harm and to imperil the safety of the realm. All we can say is that we are confident that among them there are dangerous characters, men and women inspired either by patriotic feel- ing or else by payments from hostile Secret Service sources to seize every opportunity to injure this country. Such persons, even if they are only five per cent. of the whole mass, and if ninety-five per cent. are harmless, might prove very dangerous. Therefore we must take measures against the whole ten thousand families and place them all under restraint." If the Government were to argue thus, it would be a perfectly sound position, and no wise and good patriot ought to contest the point and say : " We would rather that the nation ran great risks of destruction than adopt harsh measures towards a group of people, the vast majority of whom are admittedly innocent of any designs against this country." The great majority of the German private soldiers are quite inno- cent of any design against this country, yet we must kill them with our rifle fire, with shrapnel, and with the bayonet quite remorselessly, nay, with complete satisfac- tion, till the war is over. To adopt any other line would mean national suicide. There is yet another ground why the Government should consider very seriously the question of interning a somewhat larger portion of the German population. Undoubtedly it is much easier to protect people when they are in custody than when they are at large, and very likely making a most foolish use of their liberty by talking big about German achievements or abusing the nation under whose protection they live.
But though we want the authorities to use the maximum of vigilance, and to listen to and sift most carefully every scrap of evidence that is brought to them, and though we hold that most diligent search should be made for signs of preparation, for hostile acts, such as the preparations made outside Maubeuge and in other parts of France and Belgium, we strongly object to public protests against the employment of particular individuals. For example, we can very well understand the Home Office deciding that the trade of a waiter, since it lends itself with such peculiar ease to the work of espionage, should not in war time be practised by enemy aliens, but should be confined to British subjects, to Frenchmen, Belgians, or Russians, or to friendly neutrals. A rule against the employment of German waiters, though it might have very cruel effects on. innocent people, would be one to which no sensible person could object. To enforce such a rule, however, owing to newspaper clamour, before the responsible authori- ties deem it necessary seems to us most unfortunate. It is stated, for example, that in some cases where German waiters have been dismissed because they were enemy aliens the result has been to strike at the homes of men who cannot be said to deserve punishment. It is said—we have not verified the matter—that in one or two cases waiters who have been in the employment of English firms for twenty, twenty-five, or thirty years, and have married Englishwomen and settled down as English citizens, though they have never taken out naturalization papers, have actually sons serving this country in arms at the front. It may, of course, be necessary that such men should suffer for the sins or potential sins of others, but if that is so let them suffer by the order of responsible people and not through irresponsible violence.
Before we leave the general question of the enemy alien, and deal with the more particular question of spying, we should like to ask our readers to remember how very difficult the problem is. It is alleged that in London there are something like a. hundred thousand people, and as many more in the rest of the country—probably the figures are twice too high—of German and Austrian nationality.
These aliens are for the most part at present earning their living in various trades. It certainly would be laying rather a heavy burden upon our shoulders to intern the whole of them, and to feed, clothe, and generally provide for their wants. No doubt if it must be done it must, but it would surely be unwise to hound the Government on to such action unless it is clear that it ought to be taken. At the same time, it must not be supposed that we do not thoroughly recognize the need of stringent surveillance. If a raid were to come, as very possibly it may, undoubtedly the large number of Germans in London and its neighbourhood might be tempted to take action which would be very dangerous to the State. Unquestionably, then, the Home Office ought to make, and wo fully expect have made, plans for dealing much more drastically than they deal at present with the enemy alien in our midst. Such precautions, indeed, ought to be taken in the interests of the alien quite as much as in those of the safety of the realm, for panic is cruel and blind ; and though we are less susceptible to panic than almost any .other nation, panic there would undoubtedly be in the event of invasion, even though the raid were as quickly and successfully dealt with as we believe it would be.
The spy problem is a special one, and really not very closely connected with the problem of the enemy alien. That spies are a great danger at the present time, and that espionage is being carried on on a, gigantic scale, we do not doubt. It has been shown again and again that reports of the movements of our ships and of our troops, and every form of information useful to the enemy, are rapidly and secretly despatched from this country day by day and hour by hour. It must not be supposed, however, that the men who betray our secrets to the enemy are necessarily Germans. Unfortunately there is every reason to believe that they are not only British subjects, but men of British birth. There is a percentage of bad men, of desperate men, and of bribable men in all countries. In a country of nearly fifty millions like ours, this percentage, though low, means a formidable number. But naturally the men who are selected by the German Secret Service organizers for spy work here are these traitorous English- men, and not men of German extraction. The Chief Director of spying at Potsdam is not a fool. Therefore he does not select Herr Schmidt, with a strong German accent and German written all over his face and his clothes, to serve him as a spy. Such a person would be rejected at sight for espionage work. The men who are selected are people who would pass everywhere as patriotic Englishmen. They are often men and women in very good positions who have come to grief, or who have had pecuniary losses, and so can be more easily tempted by money offers. These are the people we want to find. But these are the people whom rough-and-ready and ill-con- sidered methods of attacking aliens will not help us to unearth. The fact that the most dangerous spies are men of British birth and race does not, of course, exonerate the police from the careful watching of the true alien, for no doubt such true aliens, partly from patriotism and partly for pay, do try when they can, and whenever the sense of fear upon them is not too great, to scrape together useful information and convey it down many secret channels till it reaches the German Government.
They must be watched very carefully, even though they are not the chief sources of serious espionage. Again, it is not necessary for us to warn the very competent officials at the Criminal Investigation Department of the Home Office that perhaps the most dangerous people of all are the Germans who profess to have become thoroughly English, to hate their own country, and who offer a good deal of what is often quite valuable information from Germany for our use here. These persons are very often what might be called free traders in spying. Their object is to get a footing in both countries. They want to do well while the war is going on and after it is over, and they therefore do a bit of dishonest spying on both sides. Then, whichever side wins, they can say : " You remember how in the dark days of 1914 we helped you with that valuable piece of news. We now ask for a little protection as our reward. It is true that in order to get that valuable information we had to appear to stand in with the enemy, so you must not be surprised to find our names on their books, but in reality we were telling them nothing valuable. We only informed them of worthless things." These are the sort of gentlemen whom Sir Redvers Buller in an expansive mood once called " international detectives," and they are the people to beware of. To sum up, we bold that the alien question and the spy question are matters which cannot be wisely dealt with under a system of mob rule or newspaper clamour. They must be left to the responsible Government. But though we say this, we do not mean to suggest that there can ever be anything wrong in making the Government feel, if they do not feel it already, the tremendous responsibility which rests upon them of not allowing the nation to run any unnecessary peril. The safety of the realm is very largely in the hands of the Home Office. On the heads of the Home Secretary and of his colleagues in the Cabinet that responsibility will be visited. The nation will stand by them in whatever demands they make—even if they ask for measures for securing our safety which might act cruelly or harshly upon innocent people. What the nation must not do is to hound the Executive into action which they at heart believe to be unnecessary, or even dangerous.
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