It is true that I did not blow up munition works. It is true that I did not sink battleships like the heroic Weddigen, and that I did not drop bombs on the Houses of Parliament. That was not my duty. That that duty was ably performed I can prove by documents in my possession, notably one from the illustrious and High Admiral von Tirpitz, signed by his own hand, and I also adduce the statement of that saviour of Germany, the excellent and illustrious Prussian Field-Marshal von Hindenburg, who on one occasion mentioned me by name, as I can prove, and stated that for all he knew I might be one of the most useful men in the German service. All these things have been said to me and I only repeat them in self-defence. I do not boast. We Germans never indulge in frivolous talk nor do we use sport-terms. Otherwise I would say that these attacks by the gutter scourings of Altonia were not bally cricket, to use an English expression. I admit there have been lamentable errors, and possibly in the course of these memoirs I shall have to admit others by which _interfering and unofficially appointed amateurs have fallen a prey to their own arrogant ill-informedness_. As for me I can look the whole world in the face and say humbly that with no thanks for reward, and no hope of gain, facing an ignominious death from hour to hour, I have served the Fatherland. It does not matter to me whether I receive the Order of the Red Eagle, as I have been half-promised, or whether I do not. I feel my superiors must make some acknowledgment of my whole-hearted services on an inadequate and miserably insufficient salary. And if you dare to suggest, as this ink-slinging rascal on the _Vorwarts_ has done, that I have made large sums of money out of the expenses which the empire allow me for propaganda work, I fling the accusation in your teeth. I admit I am well off, but that is due to my private speculations on the Stock Exchange in the year 1914.[6] But to return to my work and to an adventure which was, to say the least, out of the ordinary. In the summer of 1915, I received a request from Berlin which somewhat surprised me. I was instructed to send to Holland as many good maps of London as I could buy, and I was told also to prepare one special map, marking the areas the street-lamps of which had been darkened. This was followed (or it may have come in the same dispatch, I forget) by a request that I should instruct my men to discover how it was that the British Government knew we contemplated an air-raid on London.