the Mexican Revolution) and the World War, among other factors, would postpone action on the proposal for a decade. Excavation work at Chichen Itza did not begin until the 1923–24 field season. While the Chichen Itza project was on hold, Morley conducted several expeditions in Mexico and Central America on behalf of the Carnegie Institution. He also published his first major work, An Introduction to the Study of Maya Hieroglyphs (1915). Espionage work During the First World War (1914–1918), Morley gathered intelligence about and reported on the movements of German operatives in the region, information in which the U.S. Government had a keen interest. According to subsequent investigations, Morley was one of a number of ONI operatives working in the region under the guise of conducting scholarly research. Their mission was to seek out evidence of pro-German and anti-American agitation in the Mexico-Central America region and to look for secret German submarine bases (which proved non-existent). Morley's archaeological work provided a ready excuse to travel the countryside armed with photographic equipment, and he himself traveled more than 2,000 miles (over 3,200 km) along the coastlines of Central America in search of evidence for German bases. Several times Morley needed to convince suspicious soldiers of his bona fides, and was almost unmasked on occasion. In one incident in 1917, Morley was prevented from photographing an old Spanish fort by a party of Honduran soldiers who had been distrustfully monitoring his presence. He protested strongly to the local authorities, proclaiming his credentials as an archaeologist ought to be above suspicion. The local authorities remained unmoved, and only when Morley had arranged for a letter of introduction signed by the Honduran president Francisco Bertrand did they allow him to continue. Morley produced extensive analyses (he filed over 10,000 pages of reports) on many issues and observations of the region, including detailed coastline charting and identification of political and social attitudes which could be viewed as "threatening" to U.S. interests. Some of these reports bordered on economic spying, detailing the activities of local competitors and opponents of large U.S. companies present in the region, such as the United Fruit Company and International Harvester. As his later work proved, Morley was also a genuine scholar and archaeologist with an abiding interest in the region. However, his research activities in this period seem to have played a largely secondary role to his espionage duties. The authors