Parrott's own explanation of the affair was that he met a woman in a London music hall and went over to Ostend to see her. While he was there he failed to meet the woman, but a man came up to him and asked him if he was expecting to meet anyone. He replied that he expected to meet a lady, and the man then professed to know about her, and said she was unable to come. After that he received a letter from the man he met at Ostend. At that time he had been dismissed from the Service, and the letter expressed the concern of the writer, and the lady had offered to help him. He replied asking what assistance they could give, and had a letter asking him to go to Hamburg. He went and met the man, who said he was a newspaper correspondent, and asked him to write an article once a week dealing with naval matters--a story curiously like that told by the spy Schulz. He afterwards received a letter from "Richard" outlining the kind of article required. The man said: "Let me know the progress of warships building, ships launched, ships laid down, and the movements of ships. Send me a specimen article dealing with the subject." He then bought a copy of a naval paper and from it wrote an article, which he sent. Then Parrott described how he got a letter from the lady asking him to go to Rotterdam to see her. This he did, hoping, as he said, "to induce her to come to England, as he wished to raise the question why he was dismissed from the Service." Not unnaturally the lady declined to come, but Parrott admitted that she told a man who was with her to pay his expenses, and then gave him 100 francs. "I have little doubt but that you were entrapped by a woman," said Mr. Justice Darling, in sending Parrott to four years' penal servitude. "You have been long under suspicion," his Lordship added; "I do not believe for a moment it was a first offence." Even the Liberal journals which had long insisted that there were no German spies in England thought this sentence was inadequate. "It will strike most people," said the _Daily Chronicle_, "as not erring on the side of over-severity." The case was a flagrant abuse of a most sacred trust, and deserved all the punishment the law allowed; as a matter of fact, it deserved a good deal more, and Parrott was more than lucky that he was on trial, not in Germany, but in England. The case of Karl Gustav Ernst is of very great interest, not only as revealing some of the methods of the Kaiser's "master-spy," the man Steinhauer, but also as showing the utter futility of relying on "naturalisation" of Germans to protect us against spying.