This incident, related quite casually over a dinner-table, though trivial in itself, gave our military attaché—and through him our Military Intelligence—an intimation of the enormous depletion of Germany’s man-power. Taken in conjunction with similar reports from other sources, it convinced him that Germany was fast becoming desperately hard up for men. The attaché in Switzerland, perusing, as was his custom, the current issues of the German newspapers, had his attention attracted by an advertisement, inserted by a citizen of a south German city, offering to rent a pair of stout leather boots, in good condition, for six weeks for forty marks. When the equivalent of ten dollars is demanded for the use of a pair of boots for six weeks, there is only one conclusion to be drawn. “Germany must be at the last gasp for leather,” argued the attaché, and he so informed Washington. His surmise proved perfectly correct. Our military representative at The Hague was materially aided in his quest for information by a former sergeant in the American Army, who, upon his discharge, had bought a small truck-farm in southern Holland, within a few rods of the frontier. His dwelling was a recognized rendezvous for smugglers and deserters, the old soldier sending reports of the immensely important information which he obtained from them to the attaché at the capital as regularly as, when stationed at an army post in the Indian country, he turned in his company reports. All cable messages sent by the military attachés to the Military Intelligence Division habitually ended with the sentence “Pershing informed,” which signified that the information had also been communicated to the Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces. Shortly after the arrival of the former Kaiser at Amerongen, the newspapers carried circumstantial accounts of serious political unrest in Holland. In order to correct the impression thus created, the attaché at The Hague, who was evidently blessed with a sense of humor, sent the following message to Washington: “_Everything quiet in Holland. The Kaiser is still with us. Pershing informed. God also._”