As the English army increased so increased the business of the bank, for young officers are impecunious all the world over. I am not going to say what steps were taken to secure information. This, however, I am willing to confess, that much news came to me which, otherwise, I should not have heard, for Mr. Ritten gave little dinners and went to clubs and met many men who were glad to talk to one who was so enthusiastically an anti-German, and I, Heine, sitting in my little Fleet Street office would receive short notes in the code and would learn that the 10th Blankshires and the division to which the 10th Blankshires were attached were being withdrawn to General Reserve, and the 19th Wessex were training for attack behind the lines and being taught by means of models the topography of the country to the east of Lens. For myself, I never went to the bank. If you had told me of its existence I should have expressed surprise and wonder. I saw the advertisements as everybody else saw them, but to me, Mr. Ritten was a name and nothing more. We Germans have the reputation of devoting too much attention to insignificant details, but let me tell you, my friends, that the might of Germany was built upon details, expanded on details, and came to its highest and most world-defying decision in August, 1914, upon the faith which we had in the detailed plan. Though I despised the English Secret Service, though I could shrug my shoulders and snap my fingers at these amateurs, I was too much of a German to rush bull-headed into danger. Realizing that Mister, or Major, Haynes, was a man of duplicity and low cunning, I purposely avoided associating myself in the slightest degree with the Jermyn Credit Bank, though it was originally the idea of those who sent me to England, that I should appear in London in the capacity of manager of that bank. Happily, I was too shrewd a fellow to agree to such stupidity. There is a certain bat-eyed ignorance about the officials who direct the Intelligence in Berlin, which is deplorable and incomprehensible. That they need new blood at Headquarters, is acknowledged all over the world. If they had had a man there with a knowledge of England and America, a man who himself had carried out difficult and dangerous tasks, and who, by reason of his long service in the department, was well entitled to greater promotion than that which was grudgingly given to him: if, in fact, they had such a man as I, many of the mistakes which disfigured the administration during the years of war would have been avoided.