While the beer was being poured out I glanced round the room, bare and very simply furnished.  Terrible chromo-lithographs of the Kaiser and the Crown Prince hung on the walls above a glass filled with war trophies.  With a horrible sickness at heart I recognized amongst other emblems a glengarry with a silver badge and a British steel helmet with a gaping hole through the crown.  Then I remembered I was in the region of the VIIth Corps, which supplies some of our toughest opponents on the Western front.

Conversation was polite and perfunctory.

“It is on occasions such as these,” said the lame officer, “that one recognizes how our brothers overseas are helping the German cause.”

“Your work must be extraordinarily interesting,” observed one of the dug-outs.

“All your difficulties are now over,” said the Major, much in the manner of the chorus of a Greek play.  “You will be in Berlin to-night, where your labours will be doubtless rewarded.  American friends of Germany are not popular in London, I should imagine!”

I murmured:  “Hardly.”

“You must possess infinite tact to have aroused no suspicion,” said the Major.

“That depends,” I said.

“Pardon me,” replied the Major, in whom I began to recognize all the signs of an unmitigated gossip, “I know something of the importance of your mission.  I speak amongst ourselves, is it not so, gentlemen?  There were special orders about you from the Corps Command at Muenster.  Your special has been waiting for you here for four days.  The gentleman who came to meet you has been in a fever of expectation.  He had already left the station this morning when ... when I met you, I sent word for him to pick you up here.”

The plot was thickening.  I most certainly was a personage of note.

“What part of America do you come from, Mr. Semlin?” said a voice in perfect English from the corner.  The one-armed officer was speaking.

“From Brooklyn,” I said stoutly, though my heart seemed turned to ice with the shock of hearing my own tongue.

“You have no accent,” the other replied suavely.

“Some Americans,” I retorted sententiously, “would regard that as a compliment.  Not all Americans talk through their noses any more than we all chew or spit in public.”

“I know,” said the young man.  “I was brought up there!”

We were surrounded by smiling faces.  This officer who could speak English was evidently regarded as a bit of a wag by his comrades.  I seized the opportunity to give them in German a humorous description of my simplicity in explaining to a man brought up in the United States that all Americans were not the caricatures depicted in the European comic press.

There was a roar of laughter from the room.

“Ach, dieser Schmalz!” guffawed the Major, beating his thigh in ecstasy.  “Kolossal!” echoed one of the dug-outs.  The lame man smiled wanly and said it was “incredible how humorous Schmalz could be.”