CHAPTER

      I getting in
     II when skies were blue
    III the crime against the children
     IV pulpits of hate
      V puppet professors
     VI the lie on the film
    VII the idea factory
   VIII correspondents in shackles
     IX Anton Lang of Oberammergau
      X submarine motives
     XI the Eagle and the Vulture
    XII in the Grip of the fleet
   XIII A land of substitutes
    XIV the gagging of liebknecht
     XV preventive arrest
    XVI police rule in Bohemia
   XVII spies and semi-spies
  XVIII the iron hand in Alsace-Lorraine
    XIX the woman in the shadow
     XX the war slaves of Essen
    XXI Tommy in Germany
   XXII how the Prussian guard came home from the Somme
  XXIII how Germany denies
   XXIV Germany’s human resources
    XXV Berlin’s east-end
   XXVI in the deepening shadow
  XXVII across the north sea
 XXVIII the little ships

THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW

CHAPTER I

GETTING IN

Early in November, 1915, I sailed from New York to Rotterdam.

I spent nearly a month in Holland completing my preparations, and at length one grey winter morning I took the step that I dreaded.  I had left Germany six months before with a feeling that to enter it again and get safely out was hopeless, foolish, dangerous, impossible.  But at any rate I was going to try.

At Zevenaar, while the Dutch customs officials were examining my baggage, I patronised the youth selling apple cakes and coffee, for after several months’ absence from Germany my imagination had been kindled to contemplate living uncomfortably on short rations for some time as the least of my troubles.  Furthermore, the editorial opinion vouchsafed in the Dutch newspaper which I had bought at Arnhem was that Austria’s reply to the “Ancona” Note made a break with America almost a certainty.  Consequently as the train rolled over the few remaining miles to the frontier I crammed down my apple cakes, resolved to face the unknown on a full stomach.

The wheels ground under the brakes, I pulled down the window with a bang and looked out no longer upon the soft rolled military cap of Holland but upon the business-like spiked helmet of Germany.  I steeled myself.  There was no backing out now.  I had crossed the German frontier.

The few passengers filed into the customs room, where a corps of skilled mechanics prised open the contents of bags and trunks.  Each man was an expert in his profession.  A hand plunged into one of my bags and emerged with several bars of chocolate, the wrappers of which were shorn off before the chocolate was well out of the bag.  A bottle of liniment, the brand that made us forget our sprains and bruises