sonnel, only to be got
together when the emergency arose. But Colonel Macdonogh on
mobilization took up an important appointment with the Expeditionary
Force, and went off to France, carrying off his assistants with him.
As far as personnel was concerned, this cupboard was left as bare as a
fashionable lady's back when _en grande tenue_ in "Victory Year."
Charge of it was assumed by an extremely capable and energetic
substitute brought in from outside (Colonel D. L. MacEwen), who,
however, suffered under the disability of knowing practically nothing
about the peculiar class of work which he was suddenly called upon to
take up.

As an example of the extreme inconvenience which this caused, the
following somewhat comical incident may be related. Three or four days
after the declaration of war a brace of very distinguished civil
servants, one representing the Foreign Office and the other the Home
Office, came across Whitehall by appointment and with long faces, and
the four of us sat solemnly round a table--they, Colonel MacEwen, and
I. It appeared that we had been guilty of terrifying violations of
international law. We had seized numbers of German reservists and
German males of military age on board ships in British ports, and had
consigned some of them to quarters designed for the accommodation of
malefactors. This sort of thing would never do. Such steps had not
been taken by belligerents in 1870, nor at the time of the American
War of Secession, and I am not sure that Messrs. Mason and Slidell
were not trotted out. The Foreign and Home Secretaries, the very
distinguished civil servants declared, would not unlikely be agitated
when they heard of the shocking affair. Soldiers, no doubt, were by
nature abrupt and unconventional in their actions, and the Foreign and
Home Offices would make every allowance, realizing that we had acted
in good faith. But, hang it all--and they gazed at us in compassionate
displeasure.

Will it be believed? My assistant and I knew so little about our
business that we did not fall upon that pair of pantaloons and rend
them. We took them and their protestation quite seriously. We accepted
their courteous, but uncompromising, rebuke like small boys caught
stealing apples, whose better feelings have been appealed to. For the
space of two or three hours, and until we had pulled ourselves
together, we remained content, on the strength of doctrines enunciated
by a couple of officials fossilized