' Time and again France has demanded the
extradition of an anarchist, always to be met with the question,--
'Where is your proof?'
I know many instances where our certainty was absolute, and also cases
where we possessed legal proof as well, but legal proof which, for one
reason or another, we dared not use in public; yet all this had no
effect on the British authorities. They would never give up even the
vilest criminal except on publicly attested legal evidence, and not
even then, if the crime were political.
During my term of office under the French Government, no part of my
duties caused me more anxiety than that which pertained to the
political secret societies. Of course, with a large portion of the
Secret Service fund at my disposal, I was able to buy expert
assistance, and even to get information from anarchists themselves.
This latter device, however, was always more or less unreliable. I
have never yet met an anarchist I could believe on oath, and when one
of them offered to sell exclusive information to the police, we rarely
knew whether he was merely trying to get a few francs to keep himself
from starving, or whether he was giving us false particulars which
would lead us into a trap.
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