the Home Office and
War Office have now the assistance of the cable censorship, and also of
the postal censorship, which, established originally to deal with
correspondence with Germany and Austria, has been gradually extended (as
the necessary staff could be obtained) so as to cover communications
with those neutral countries through which correspondence might readily
pass to Germany or Austria. The censorship has been extremely effective
in stopping secret communications by cable or letter with the enemy, but
as its existence was necessarily known to them it has not, except in a
few instances, produced materials for the detection of espionage.

On Aug. 5 the Aliens Restriction act was passed, and within an hour of
its passing an order in council was made which gave the Home Office and
the police stringent powers to deal with aliens, and especially enemy
aliens, who under this act could be stopped from entering or leaving the
United Kingdom, and were prohibited while residing in this country from
having in their possession any wireless or signaling apparatus of any
kind, or any carrier or homing pigeons. Under this order all those
districts where the Admiralty or War Office considered it undesirable
that enemy aliens should reside have been cleared by the police of
Germans and Austrians, with the exception of a few persons, chiefly
women and children, whose character and antecedents are such that the
local Chief Constable, in whose discretion the matter is vested by the
order, considered that all ground for suspicion was precluded. At the
same time the Post Office, acting under the powers given them by the
Wireless Telegraphy acts, dismantled all private wireless stations; and
they established a special system of wireless detection by which any
station actually used for the transmission of messages from this country
could be discovered. The police have co-operated successfully in this
matter with the Post Office.

New and still more stringent powers for dealing with espionage were
given by the Defense of the Realm act, which was passed by the Home
Secretary through the House of Commons and received the Royal Assent on
Aug. 8. Orders in council have been made under this act which prohibit,
in the widest possible terms, any attempt on the part either of aliens
or of British subjects to communicate any information which "is
calculated to be or might be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy";
and any person offending