The hour at which Alexander was to meet the girl was eight o’clock in the evening. His table (already booked) was No. 47, which is near the window facing Piccadilly. I telephoned through to the café and booked No. 46, for I was anxious to witness the comedy. All was now moving like clockwork--and let me say that the smoothness of the arrangements was due largely to the very thorough and painstaking organisation-work which I had carried out in the piping days of peace. We Germans have a passion for detail and for thoroughness and for this reason (apart from the inherent qualities of simplicity and honesty, apart from the superiority of our kultur and our lofty idealism) we have been unconquerable throughout the ages. For example, we had foreseen the necessity in organizing our Intelligence Department, to employ, not Germans, but subjects of neutral states wherever possible. People who talk of “German spies” or “the uninterned German peril” cannot realise that from the moment war broke out, all Germans, known as such, were under the observation of the police, and not only the police but their own neighbours. It would be impossible, as I had foreseen, for such men to offer assistance to our great and splendid cause, because the least suspicious movement on their parts would result in their arrest. I have a considerable respect for the Scotland Yard routine investigation. No, my sirs, you do us no justice when you talk of “German spies.” Search not for the “Hun,” as in the bitterness of your impotent rage you call us, but for the---- I think that I have said that much of my time was taken up by answering telephone calls. You must remember that I was in London as the representative of a Chinese News Bureau. I was also an agent for a firm of importers in Shanghai. It was therefore only natural that I should be called up all hours of the day and night with offers of goods. “I can let you have a hundred and twenty bales of Manchester goods at 125.” Now 120 and 125 added together make 245, and turning to my “simple code” to paragraph 245, I find the following: “2nd Battalion of the Graniteshire Regiment entrained to-day for embarkation.” The minor agents carried this code (containing 1,400 simple sentences to cover all naval or military movements) in a small volume. The code is printed on one side of very thin paper leaves, and the leaves are as porous and absorbent as blotting paper. One blot of ink dropped upon a sheet will obliterate a dozen--a fact which our careless agents have discovered. Clipped in the centre of the book (as a pencil is clipped in an ordinary book) is a tiny tube of the thinnest glass containing a quantity of black dye-stuff. The agent fearing detection has only to press the cover of the book sharply and the contents of the book are reduced to black sodden pulp. Need I say that this ingenious invention was German in its origin.[2]