father was shot in his garden by the Prussians
in 1870, my father died of grief, in 1916, because my two sisters
in Lille fell into Prussian hands and were taken as their slaves
with all that that means. I have decided that we must end this
horror once and for all, so that my children can cultivate their
little fields without this constant haunting fear of the invading
Prussian."

We left Paris on the evening train for the Spanish border.
Newspaper men taking flashlights and "poilus" in uniform crowded
the station platform as the train with our still numerous party
pulled out.

How France has disappointed German expectations! France to-day is
not the France that calls out, "We are betrayed," and runs away
after the failure of its first assault. France to-day is a calm
France that seeks out its traitors, and deliberately punishes
them, that organises with an efficiency we once thought a
Prussian monopoly, a France that bleeds but fights on, a France
that, standing with its back to its beloved, sunny fields, with
many of her dearest sons dead, facing the Kaiser across No Man's
Land, cries boldly, bravely to the world, the war cry of Verdun,
"They shall not pass!"

But even while war goes on, even while the French poilus hold
fast the long battle line, the French people are beset within by
agents of the Kaiser. Face to face they are with the secret
agents, the spies, the informers, the buyers of newspapers and of
public men, the traffickers in honour who, behind French
citizenship or neutral passports, seek to divide France, to make
the soldier at the front feel that he is betrayed by traitors at
home, to render the French distrustful and suspicious of each
other and thus to strike as mortal a blow at the French defence
as was attempted at Verdun.

Bolo Pasha and all his tribe slip past trench and barbed wire and
do more damage than a German army corps to the cause of Liberty.

CHAPTER XIX

MY INTERVIEW WITH THE KING OF SPAIN

Neutrals--how obsolete the word seems!

Yet there are some nations in Europe which will remain neutral no
matter how great the hardship. How much this is due to inherent
weaknesses of government, fears that the people may acquire too
much of the infectious spirit of liberalism that war brings and
thereby overthrow royalty, is hard to judge. But I must say that
Kaiserism has omitted no word or act to impress upon the royalty
of those countries, which might otherwise be inclined to