So far as the statistics given regarding the blockade leakages are concerned, he feels they are important enough to carry historical interest, and should therefore be collated and put on permanent record. Secret Service agents devoted much time and attention to these details, and our then Government was or should have been fully alive to the fact that the so-called blockade was only a ridiculous sham, long before the _Daily Mail_ campaign opened. Why our Government made no effort to checkmate, stop, or divert these extraordinary supplies going direct into the enemy country, is left to the judgment of my readers.
Twice, between Christmas 1914, and Midsummer 1915, I entered German territory from Denmark and from the sea. After my second visit I was warned that a head-hunter was looking diligently for me in the hope of securing a reward which the Germans had secretly offered. This enterprising individual I sought out, and for a day and a half helped him with another in the hunt for myself, arguing in my own mind that it was my safest occupation at that particular time and in that particular locality. During this short partnership a quarrel ensued regarding the division of the spoils before they were secured, when I learned that the sum at first offered had been 10,000 marks but it had then recently been increased to 25,000. Some compensation remains to me in being able to look back at this attention on the part of the Hun as a compliment of some value to my personal activities.
In the spring of 1916, during our military operations in Belgium, a deep and crafty Alsatian of violent disposition, and of German descent, was captured by our Tommies, and to save his own skin admitted he had been employed in the German Foreign Secret Service since the outbreak of war. Much valuable information was thus obtained; by way of test evidence he stated that _inter alia_ he had been ordered to endeavour to hold my trail (I was known to him) during my Baltic wanderings in the late autumn of 1914; and that although he had persisted in various disguises he had been led a terrible dance and had been compelled to abandon the task as hopeless. I was able to corroborate this.
Anyone who has lived a strenuous life of many ups and downs must at times have rubbed shoulders with celebrities. In later years these personal reminiscences invariably provide reflections of more than passing interest.