Shortly before noon on Saturday, August 1, we again went to Johannisthal, this time by car. We arrived at the aerodrome at about half-past one o’clock and decided that, as our interview with the directors of the Albatross Company was sure to be short, we would have lunch on the way back to Berlin. It was a foolish decision, as after events will show. We found sentries at every entrance to the ground. By the small door leading into the garden in front of the Albatross offices stood a German soldier in the service dress of a regiment of the line. As we passed in he said something long in German and seemed to wish to prevent our entry. Keating smiled, which is not usual when one deals with German soldiers on duty, and the sentry was too surprised to stop us. Once inside we were met by the works manager, a Herr Huttney, who had learnt English in the United States of America when acquiring merit in his early youth. He took us before several of the directors of the company and we again talked of the purchase of an aeroplane. There was an atmosphere of restraint and suspicion which, in the light of later knowledge, was not unnatural. Now we were told that no machine at all could be sold to us for many months, as the army required them all; ‘even,’ they said, ‘Austria will not be allowed to purchase more.’ Keating offered to buy an Albatross which we knew to be in England. In reply we were shown a telegram from London saying that aeroplane had just been commandeered by the Admiralty! This incident was the first to bring home to us the possibility of Great Britain joining in the new war. There was an unwieldiness about the conversation that showed us they did not desire to do business with us, and so after farewells we were conducted outside the boundaries of the grounds by the works’ manager. Here to our amazement, and at the time amusement, we found two soldiers, fully armed and rationed, standing by the car. When I tried to start the engine, I was pressed back gently by rifle and bayonet. Herr Huttney asked for reasons and was told, or so he said, that an officer had been sent for and until his arrival we could not leave. So, resignedly and hungrily, for it was by now four o’clock and we had had no lunch, we sat in the car with Herr Huttney as company. He, too, was not permitted to leave, if his own statement was to be believed. For nearly two hours we sat here waiting for the officer who did not come. At six o’clock we were moved, under instructions from an N.C.O., to an open-air guard-room by the Zeppelin shed and just inside the aerodrome fence. Here our wait continued, relieved a little by some lager beer and leberwurst sandwiches, brought by the kindness of one of our guard. At dusk we were taken by two policemen in plain clothes before the officer commanding the aerodrome, who had an extemporised orderly room in the smaller dirigible shed. With him were several subalterns of infantry and of the flying section of the service.