But I was too anxious to reach Berlin to pay much attention to the details of my journey.

Even when I at last reached the capital, I arrived as I had feared, too late.

“Your Excellency,” said a courteous official at the railway station, to whom my naval uniform acted as a sufficient passport.  “The Revolution of which you speak is over.  Its leaders were arrested yesterday.  But you shall not be disappointed.  There is a better one.  It is called the Comrades’ Revolution of the Bolsheviks.  The chief Executive was installed yesterday.”

“Would it be possible for me to see him?” I asked.

“Nothing simpler, Excellency,” he continued as a tear rose in his eye.  “My four sons,—­”

“I know,” I said; “your four sons are in the German Navy.  It is enough.  Can you take me to the Leader?”

“I can and will,” said the official.  “He is sitting now in the Free Palace of all the German People, once usurped by the Hohenzollern Tyrant.  The doors are guarded by machine guns.  But I can take you direct from here through a back way.  Come.”

We passed out from the station, across a street and through a maze of little stairways, and passages into the heart of the great building that had been the offices of the Imperial Government.

“Enter this room.  Do not knock,” said my guide.  “Good bye.”

In another moment I found myself face to face with the chief comrade of the Bolsheviks.

He gave a sudden start as he looked at me, but instantly collected himself.

He was sitting with his big boots up on the mahogany desk, a cigar at an edgeways angle in his mouth.  His hair under his sheepskin cap was shaggy, and his beard stubbly and unshaven.  His dress was slovenly and there was a big knife in his belt.  A revolver lay on the desk beside him.  I had never seen a Bolshevik before but I knew at sight that he must be one.

“You say you were here in Berlin once before?” he questioned, and he added before I had time to answer:  “When you speak don’t call me ‘Excellency’ or ‘Sereneness’ or anything of that sort; just call me ‘brother’ or ‘comrade.’  This is the era of freedom.  You’re as good as I am, or nearly.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Don’t be so damn polite,” he snarled.  “No good comrade ever says ‘thank you.’  So you were here in Berlin before?”

“Yes,” I answered, “I was here writing up Germany from Within in the middle of the war.”

“The war, the war!” he murmured, in a sort of wail or whine.  “Take notice, comrade, that I weep when I speak of it.  If you write anything about me be sure to say that I cried when the war was mentioned.  We Germans have been so misjudged.  When I think of the devastation of France and Belgium I weep.”

He drew a greasy, red handkerchief from his pocket and began to sob.  “To think of the loss of all those English merchant ships!”

“Oh, you needn’t worry,” I said, “it’s all going to be paid for.”