re presently retired to an inner room with the man in shirt-sleeves,
whom I judged to be the landlord, and in a little the flaxen-haired lady
at the bar beckoned me over and bade me join them.

"This is Julius Zimmermann, the young man I have spoken of," said the
Jew; then turning to me:

"Herr Haase is willing to take you on as waiter here on my
recommendation, Julius, See that you do not make me repent of my
kindness!"

Here the man in shirt-sleeves, a great, fat fellow with a bullet head
and a huge double chin, chuckled loudly.

"Kolossal!" he cried. "Herr Kore loves his joke! Ausgezeichnet!" And he
wagged his head roguishly at me.

On that Kore took his leave, promising to look in and see how I was
faring in a few days' time. The landlord opened a low door in the corner
and revealed a kind of large cupboard, windowless and horribly stale and
stuffy, where there were two unsavoury-looking beds.

"You will sleep here with Otto," said the landlord. Pointing to a dirty
white apron lying on one of the beds, he bade me take off my overcoat
and jacket and put it on.

"It was Johann's," he said, "but Johann won't want it any more. A good
lad, Johann, but rash. I always said he would come to a bad end." And he
laughed noisily.

"You can go and help with the waiting now," he went on. "Otto will show
you what to do!"

And so I found myself, within twenty-four hours, spy, male nurse and
waiter in turn.

I am loth to dwell on the degradation of the days that followed. That
cellar tavern was a foul sink of iniquity, and in serving the dregs of
humanity that gathered nightly there I felt I had indeed sunk to the
lowest depths. The place was a regular thieves' kitchen ... what is
called in the hideous Yiddish jargon that is the criminal slang of
modern Germany a "Kaschemme." Never in my life have I seen such brutish
faces as those that leered at me nightly through the smoke haze as I
shuffled from table to table in my mean German clothes. Gallows' birds,
sneak thieves, receivers, bullies, prostitutes and harpies of every
description came together every evening in Herr Haase's beer-cellar.
Many of the men wore the soiled and faded field-grey of the soldier back
from the front, and in looking at their sordid, vulpine faces, inflamed
with drink, I felt I could fathom the very soul of Belgium's misery.

The conversation was all of crime and deeds of violence. The men back
from the front told gloatingly of rapine and feast