You may be sure that all this time the English made attempts to solve my personal identity as well as to learn the reason for my being in England. They could not shake my story. Time after time I told them: “I am Horst von der Goltz, an officer of the Mexican army on leave. I used the United States passport made out to Bridgman Taylor from necessity—to avoid the suspicion that would be attached to me because of my German descent. “Gentlemen, that is all I can tell you.” Over and over again I repeated that meagre statement to the men who questioned me. I would not tell them the truth, and I knew that no lie would help me. And then came an event which changed my viewpoint and made me tell—if not the whole story—at least a considerable part of it. I had, as I have said, managed to secure newspapers in my new quarters. It is difficult to say how eagerly I read them after so many months of complete ignorance, or with what anxiety I studied such war news as came into my hands. It was America in which I was chiefly interested, for I knew that after my capture, some other man must have been sent to do the work which I had planned to do. I know now that it was von Rintelen who was selected—that infinitely resourceful intriguer who planted his spies throughout the United States, and for a time seemed well on the way to succeeding in the most gigantic conspiracy against a peaceful nation that had ever been undertaken. But at the time I could tell nothing of this, although I watched unceasingly for reports of strikes, explosions and German uprisings which would tell me that that work which I had been commanded to do and from which I was only too glad to be spared, was being prosecuted. So several months passed—months in which I had time for meditation and in which I began to see more clearly some things which had been hinted at in Berlin—and of which I shall tell more later on. And then one day I read a dispatch that caused me to sit very silently for a moment in my cell, and to wonder—and fear a little. Von Papen had been recalled. I read the story of how he and Captain Boy-Ed had over-reached and finally betrayed themselves; of the passport frauds that they had conducted; of the conspiracies and sedition that they had sought to stir up. I learned that they had been sent home under a safe-conduct which did not cover any documents they might carry. It was this last fact which caused me uneasiness. Had von Papen, always so confident of his success, attempted to smuggle through some report of his two years of plotting? It seemed improbable, and yet, knowing his tendency to take chances, I was troubled by the possibility. For such a report might contain a record of my connection with him—and I was not protected by a safe-conduct! My fears were well-founded, as you know. Von Papen carried with him no particular reports, but a number of personal papers which were seized when his ship stopped at Falmouth.