"New and still more stringent powers for dealing with espionage were given by the Defence of the Realm Act, which was passed by the Home Secretary through the House of Commons and received the Royal Assent on August 8. Orders-in-Council have been made under this Act which prohibit, in the widest 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 against this prohibition is liable to be tried by court martial and sentenced to penal servitude for life. The effect of these Orders is to make espionage a military offence. Power is given both to the police and to the military authorities to arrest without a warrant any person whose behaviour is such as to give rise to suspicion, and any person so arrested by the police would be handed over to the military authorities for trial by court martial. Only in the event of the military authorities holding that there is no prima facie case of espionage or any other offence triable by military law is a prisoner handed back to the civil authorities to consider whether he should be charged with failing to register or with any other offence under the Aliens Restriction Act.
"The present position is, therefore, that espionage has been made by statute a military offence triable by court martial. If tried under the Defence of the Realm Act, the maximum punishment is penal servitude for life; but if dealt with outside that Act as a war crime the punishment of death can be inflicted.
"At the present moment one case is pending in which a person charged with attempting to convey information to the enemy is now awaiting his trial by court martial, but in no other case has any clear trace been discovered of any attempt to convey information to the enemy, and there is good reason to believe that the spy organisation crushed at the outbreak of the war has not been re-established.
"How completely that system had been suppressed in the early days of the war is clear from the fact—disclosed in a German Army Order—that on August 21 the German Military Commanders were still ignorant of the despatch and movements of the British Expeditionary Force, although these had been known for many days to a large number of people in this country.