We in the Secret Service had been impressively warned before leaving England to avoid our Ambassadors abroad as we would disciples of the devil. In so far as we possibly could we religiously remembered and acted upon this warning. But the cruel irony of it was, our own Ministers would not leave us alone. They seemed to hunt us down, and as soon as one of us was located, no matter who, or where, or how, a protest was, we were told, immediately sent to the Foreign Office, followed by hints or threats of resignation unless the Secret Service agent in question was instantly put out of action or recalled to England. I was informed that several of my predecessors had been very unlucky in Denmark. One had been located and pushed out of the country within a few hours of arrival. Another I heard was imprisoned for many months. I was further very plainly told by an English official of high degree that if the British Minister at ---- became aware of my presence and that I was in Secret Service employ, if I did not then leave the country within a few hours of the request which would with certainty be made, I would be handed over to the police to be dealt with under their newly-made espionage legislation. Considering that the German legations in Scandinavia increased their secretaries from the two or three employed before the war to twenty or thirty each after its outbreak; considering that it was a well-known fact, although difficult to prove, that every German Embassy was the local headquarters of their marvellously clever organisation of Secret Service[15] against which our Legations possessed rarely more than one over-worked secretary, whilst the British Embassies were a menace rather than a help to our Secret Service, it did seem to us, working on our own in England's cause, a cruel shame that these men, who posed not only as Englishmen but also as directly representing our own well-beloved King, should hound us about in a manner which made difficult our attempts to acquire the knowledge so important for the use of our country in its agony and dire peril. Dog-in-the-manger-like, they persisted in putting obstacles in the way of our doing work which they could not do themselves and probably would not have done if they could.