But the truth was that these thirty secretaries were engaged with their Imperial master-spy in reorganising and perfecting the various sections of his amazing spy-system in this country--a system that the British Government were with culpable untruthfulness declaring only existed in the imagination of a novelist--myself. I wrote pointing out this, but only execrations again fell upon my unfortunate head. I was laughed at as a "sensationalist," scorned by the Party of Criminal Apathy, and a dead set was made at me by a certain section of the Press to jeer at, and crush myself and all my works into oblivion. Let us go a step further. Mr. Anthony Nugent, who writes with considerable authority in the _Globe_, shall here speak. "The oddest situation in England," he says, "was just before the outbreak of the war. We had then, not only an Ambassador's cloak in London covering Prince Lichnowsky, but a real Ambassador in Herr Kühlmann, Companion of the Victorian Order. [I wonder if he still wears the honourable insignia?] The Ambassador was an honest man, and believed that he had a free hand in trying to improve our relations with Germany. He was only here to give us 'taffy'--as the Yankees say. All his speeches at Oxford and at City banquets were sincere enough from his point of view, but he knew nothing of what was going on in the Chancelleries at Berlin, or downstairs in the Embassy residence at Carlton House Terrace. "Those who descend the Duke of York's steps in Pall Mall, will see a common, unpretentious door on the right hand side, part of the way down. That was one of the entrances to the Embassy, and quite a different class of people used it from those gay folk who came boldly in motor-cars to the front door, which sported the decoration of the Imperial eagle. It was by the lower door there passed the principals in the espionage system, and it was in the lower rooms that Herr Kühlmann interviewed his 'friends.' He was a tall, good-looking man, with a specious suggestion of being straightforward and open dealing, but probably there never was so tortuous-minded a person at the Embassy. He was there for many years, and knew all who were worth knowing. He it was who furnished the reports on which the Emperor and the Crown Prince acted.