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