The examination was in writing, and when Peter had handed in his papers Doctor Gilman asked him if he would prefer at once to know the result.
"Then I regret to tell you, Hallowell," said the professor, "that you have not passed. I cannot possibly give you a mark higher than five." In real sympathy the sage of Stillwater raised his eyes, but to his great astonishment he found that Peter, so far from being cast down or taking offense, was smiling delightedly, much as a fond parent might smile upon the precocious act of a beloved child.
"I am afraid," said Doctor Gilman gently, "that this summer you did not work very hard for your degree!"
"To tell you the truth, Professor," he said, "you're right I got working for something worth while--and I forgot about the degree."
This is the true inside story of the invasion of England in 1911 by the Germans, and why it failed. I got my data from Baron von Gottlieb, at the time military attaché of the German Government with the Russian army in the second Russian-Japanese War, when Russia drove Japan out of Manchuria, and reduced her to a third-rate power. He told me of his part in the invasion as we sat, after the bombardment of Tokio, on the ramparts of the Emperor's palace, watching the walls of the paper houses below us glowing and smoking like the ashes of a prairie fire.
Two years before, at the time of the invasion, von Gottlieb had been Carl Schultz, the head-waiter at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer, and a spy.
The other end of the story came to me through Lester Ford, the London correspondent of the New York Republic. They gave me permission to tell it in any fashion I pleased, and it is here set down for the first time.
In telling the story, my conscience is not in the least disturbed, for I have yet to find any one who will believe it.
What led directly to the invasion was that some week-end guest of the East Cliff Hotel left a copy of "The Riddle of the Sands" in the coffee-room, where von Gottlieb found it; and the fact that Ford attended the Shakespeare Ball. Had neither of these events taken place, the German flag might now be flying over Buckingham Palace. And, then again, it might not.
As every German knows, "The Riddle of the Sands" is a novel written by a very clever Englishman in which is disclosed a plan for the invasion of his country. According to this plan an army of infantry was to be embarked in lighters, towed by shallow-draft, sea-going tugs, and despatched simultaneously from the seven rivers that form the Frisian Isles. From there they were to be convoyed by battle-ships two hundred and forty miles through the North Sea, and thrown upon the coast of Norfolk somewhere between the Wash and Mundesley. The fact that this coast is low-lying and bordered by sand flats which at low water are dry, that England maintains no North Sea squadron, and that her nearest naval base is at Chatham, seem to point to it as the spot best adapted for such a raid.