ing in the end with a feeling of utter amazement. In
every one of these publications, in peace-time so widely dissimilar in
conviction and trend, I found the same mentality, the same outlook, the
same parrot-like cries. What the _Cologne Gazette_ shrieked from its
editorial columns, the comic (God save the mark) press echoed in foul
and hideous caricature. Here was organization with a vengeance, the
mobilization of national thought, a series of gramophone records fed
into a thousand different machines so that each might play the selfsame
tune.

"You needn't worry about your German mentality," I told myself, "you've
got it all here! You've only got to be a parrot like the rest and you'll
be as good a Hun as Hindenburg!"

A Continental waiter, they say, can get one anything one chooses to ask
for at any hour of the day or night. I was about to put this theory to
the test.

"Waiter," I said (of course, in German), "I want a bag, a handbag. Do
you think you could get me one?"

"Does the gentleman want it now?" the man replied.

"This very minute," I answered.

"About that size?"--indicating Semlin's. "Yes, or smaller if you like: I
am not particular."

"I will see what can be done."

In ten minutes the man was back with a brown leather bag about a size
smaller than Semlin's. It was not new and he charged me thirty gulden
(which is about fifty shillings) for it. I paid with a willing heart and
tipped him generously to boot, for I wanted a bag and could not wait
till the shops opened without missing the train for Germany.

I paid my bill and drove off to the Central Station through the dark
streets with my two bags. The clocks were striking six as I entered
under the great glass dome of the station hall.

I went straight to the booking-office, and bought a first-class ticket,
single, to Berlin. One never knows what may happen and I had several
things to do before the train went.

The bookstall was just opening. I purchased a sovereign's worth of books
and magazines, English, French and German, and crammed them into the bag
I had procured at the cafe. Thus laden I adjourned to the station
buffet.

There I set about executing a scheme I had evolved for leaving the
document which Semlin had brought from England in a place of safety,
whence it could be recovered without difficulty, should anything happen
to me. I knew no one in Holland save Dicky, and I could not send him the
document, for I did not trust the post