I was not only anxious to return to London to continue my work with Lord Northcliffe on The Times and the Daily Mail, but I was encouraged by two American officials in Germany and Austria-Hungary to write the truth about Germany—­a feat quite impossible, as one of them said to me, for a correspondent remaining in the zone of the Central Powers.  The official in Austria-Hungary had become righteously indignant at the sneering German remarks about how they could “play with Washington in the U-boat question.”  He asked me to learn all possible news of submarines.  The official in Germany had been impressed by my investigations among the men behind Tirpitz, men who never for a moment ceased in their efforts to turn on frightfulness in full force.  When I mentioned the new American passport regulations which would delay me getting to England, he said:  “In Holland fix it with the British.  I hope you will do some good with all this information, for you have the big scoop of the day.  Now is the time.”

I tried to “fix it” with the British authorities in Rotterdam, but as they did not know me my progress was slow for a few days.  Then I went to Amsterdam to my old newspaper friend, Charles Tower, correspondent for the Daily Mail, a man of broad experience, and in close touch with affairs in Holland, a country which war journalists have grown to look upon as an important link in the news chain between Germany and England.  I realised that this move might confirm the suspicions of von Kuhlmann’s spies who were on my trail.  However, the free air of Holland was making me a little incautious, a little over-confident.

“There is the man who is following you,” said Tower, as we stepped in the evening from his home on to the brightly lighted street and made our way along the edge of the canals.  The tall, round-shouldered German shadowed us through the crowded streets to the Amstel Hotel.  Then we shadowed him, while he telephoned for help which came in the form of a persistent Hollander, who insisted in sitting at the table next to us, although it had just been vacated by diners and needed re-arranging, whereas many other tables were entirely free.

That is a sample of the manner in which we were systematically spied upon.  In order to make arrangements it was necessary for us to travel together so that we could talk, as our time was limited.  It was absolutely impossible for us to go into a restaurant or get into a railway compartment without having a satellite at our elbow.  They were very persistent and very thorough; but the system in Holland has the same glaring flaw that is common to the German system everywhere—­too much system and not sufficient cleverness in the individual.

Von Kuhlmann, the German Minister, certainly does not lack men.  We encountered them everywhere.  Travelling first class gives one more or less privacy in Holland, so that it was decidedly irritating to have a listener make for our compartment, while adjoining first-class compartments were entirely empty.  If the intrusion resulted in our going to another compartment, an ever-ready Kamerad would quickly join us.