It was not magnificent, for example, but it was natural, that Englishmen should, in all the circumstances, reveal a very materialistic passion to "capture Germany’s trade." Denied the opportunity of "enthusing" over events at the seat of war, they proceeded to dedicate themselves energetically to the task of eliminating the Germans as a factor in the markets of the world. A profound book on the subject appeared--_The War on German Trade_, with the sub-titles of "Ammunition for Civilians" and "Hints for a Plan of Campaign." My old friend, Sidney Whitman, the distinguished author of _Imperial Germany_, dignified it with a preface. England had not entered upon the war "in a commercial spirit or with a commercial purpose," he said, "yet it behooves her to seize and hold fast the ripe fruit which has dropped into Englishmen’s lap--as a first incident in the clash of nations." The volume had frankly been published, explained Whitman, "with the purpose of stimulating the English manufacturer and the English trader to seize the opportunities thrust upon them by the war." Then, as the Censorship, as callous to criticism and abuse as if it were a sphinx, still insisted that Englishmen must fight and die in the dark, as far as their kith and kin were concerned, patriotism at home found vent in a crusade against the Germans still at large on British soil. They numbered thousands. They were a distinct and undeniable danger. In days of peace they spied patriotically and flagrantly, thanks to John Bull’s easy-going, guileless toleration of the stranger within his gate. Personally I never believed that the German waiters and barbers in the Savoy or the Carlton, and their myriad of _confrères_ elsewhere in the country, were the advance guard of the German army of invasion in disguise. Nor did I imagine (as I actually made a very British friend once seriously believe) that Appenrodt’s restaurants in the Strand and Piccadilly were in reality masked commissariat-stations of the Kaiser’s General Staff. Nor could even so persuasive an authority as William Le Queux, author of _German Spies in England_, convince me that every German resident who kept homing-pigeons, owned a country-place near the East Coast suitable for wireless, or got drunk on the Kaiser’s birthday in the Gambrinus restaurant in Glasshouse Street, was a paid member of the Berlin secret-service. Most of these stories made me smile as broadly as the "star" rumor of the war--the story that seventy thousand armed Russians had been "actually seen" by Heaven knows how many veracious Britons sneaking across England from Newcastle to Southampton, on their stealthy way from Archangel to the Western allied front.