According to the _Berliner Tageblatt_, and other German newspapers, this letter was sent to Sir Edward Grey on February 1st, but no answer had been received up to February 15th, when some of the most material allegations were being quoted in the Press. Nor did any answer ever appear, to the writer's knowledge, from Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Mansfeldt de Cardonnel Findlay, or any other person; even after the letter had been re-published in full by the _Aftenposten_ in Christiania, and commented upon by other papers, and discussed from one end of Scandinavia to the other by men and women in every station of life. That omission was publicly and privately stated to be a colossal mistake which would cost England, and the countries fighting by her side, very dearly indeed. One would have thought that Mr. M. de C. Findlay would instantly have sent a short explanation in reply to every newspaper in Norway which reproduced any part of this fatal letter. He, however, remained in the seclusion of his castle on the hill of _Drammensvei_ and observed a prolonged and unbroken silence. The honest, open-minded, and clean-thinking Norwegian people were disgusted beyond words. They looked to him for an explanation as of right. They waited long, but they did not see, neither did they hear, a word of denial. Sorrowfully but very naturally they actually began to believe these extraordinary accusations to be true in substance and in fact. Now, references are made in this letter to "secret agents of the British Ambassador approaching the man whom Sir Roger Casement refers to as his servant." Therefore the writer takes this, his first opportunity, of most clearly and emphatically denying that any member of the British Secret Service was in any way employed or engaged in this affair. Such Secret Service agents as were then working in Scandinavia were known to him (the writer), also their locations; not one of them was within hundreds of miles of Christiania at the time of the alleged transaction. It should also be obvious that if any person exhibited such an amateurish display of incompetence and bungling as the accusations allege, that person would be more than useless for any Secret Service work, however simple it might be. It seems quite impossible to believe that any man could have acted as Mr. M. de C. Findlay is said to have done. What use was block letter-writing to conceal identity if it was cyphered on Ambassadorial note-paper? Why use English gold when Norwegian money was available? Why permit such a man to come near the Embassy at all? Why see such a man personally? Why give a key to a gate, or a door, which could be left open? Why give a scrap of writing or paper of any sort? Why offer such ridiculous sums of money to a stranger, who, if he were such a man as suggested, would have accepted a fraction of the amount for such work?