The Attache protested eagerly, volubly, stubbornly, pathetically, but all to no purpose. Then, when at last we rose to our feet, Lord K., finding his visitor wholly unconvinced, drew himself up to his full height. He seemed to tower over the Attache, who was himself a tall man, and--well, it is hard to set down in words the happenings of a tense situation. The scene was one that I never shall forget, as, by his demeanour rather than by any words of his, Lord K. virtually issued a command that no Serb soldier was to cross the Bulgar border unless the Bulgars embarked on hostilities. The Attache stood still a moment; then he put his kepi on, saluted gravely, turned round and went out without a word. I followed him out on to the landing. "Mon Dieu!" he said; "mon Dieu!" And then he went slowly down the great marble staircase, looking a broken man. But for that interview the Serbs might perhaps have given their treacherous neighbours an uncommonly nasty jar before these got going, and this might have rendered their own military situation decidedly less tragic than it came to be within a very few days. But I do not see that Lord Kitchener could have done otherwise than support the attitude of the Government of which he was a member. Striking testimony to the confidence which his name inspired amongst our Allies is afforded by the action of the Russians in the summer of 1915, in entrusting the question of their being furnished with munitions from the United States into his hands. They came to him as a child comes to its mother. This, be it noted, was at a time when our own army fighting in many fields was notoriously none too well fitted out with weapons nor with ammunition for them, at a time when the most powerful group of newspapers in this country had recently been making a pointed attack upon him in connection with this very matter, at a time when an idea undoubtedly existed in many quarters in the United Kingdom that the provision of vital war material had been neglected and botched under his control. That there was no justification whatever for that idea does not alter the fact that the idea prevailed. As I assumed special responsibilities in connection with Russian supplies at a later date, a date subsequent to the _Hampshire_ catastrophe, and as the subject of munitions will be dealt with in a later chapter, no more need be said on the subject here. But the point seemed to deserve mention at this stage.