Our counter-espionage service in the last war was ad- mittedly
efficient. The methods then adopted, and some even of the officials who applied these methods, still remain. They are trained experts in protecting us against the activities of spies and sabotage, and they know from long experience what sort of people are likely to be employed as enemy agents, and what sort of people are not. It is most im- probable, for instance, that the Germans would employ in key positions people of German origin who have taken refuge in this country. r should regard it as unlikely that they would be so clumsy as to use those British subjects who it the past have been known either for their pro- German sympathies or for their devoted allegiance to Russia. Espionage is not conducted in that sort of way, since such individuals are already under suspicion, their correspondence and their visitors are subject to supervision, and their even- tual loyalty to the National Socialist system is much in doubt. In almost every case during the last war the agents and middlemen used by Germany in this country were either neutral citizens or else British traitors enjoying (whether in Wimbledon or in Bradford) the local reputation of fanatical anti-Germans.
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