ESPIONAGE DESTROYS MUTUAL CONFIDENCE

"Limit espionage to war--limit police duty to the police!" said Dr. Richard C. Cabot '89 yesterday afternoon in an address in Sanders Theatre on "The Ethics of Spying on One's Neighbors in Time of Peace". This was the second of a series of eight Monday afternoon lectures being given under the auspices of the Cambridge Committee of the Radcliffe Endowment Fund.

Dr. Cabot pointed out that, while in time of war spies are necessary, in peace they are a menace to society, and so should be limited strictly to war. He gave examples of the many ways in which espionage was employed in peace--in industry, in social service, in education, and in the home.

It is a widespread practice among industrial organizations today to employ spies to "cultivate" the officers of labor unions, to try to obtain important offices in unions, and, when a strike threatens, to split the unions into factions and otherwise incapacitate them for action. Aside from the ethics of the matter Dr. Cabot showed that people were coming to realize that such espionage is poor business policy, since it is almost certain to be found out, and to cause bitterness and hatred.

There are often valuable pieces of information which can only be obtained by deceiving and spying on our friends; such information it is better to go without unless we can obtain it openly and above-board. "We live and move and have our being through confidence", declared Dr. Cabot; "confidence in each other and in inanimate things. "Therefore nothing can strike more fundamentally at the root of things than anything that attempts to break fore nothing can strike more fundamentally at the root of things than any thing that attempts to break down confidence."