As we dined we sent for a police officer, in order that by reporting ourselves in time we should avoid delay in leaving on the following morning. An officer arrived so speedily that we could not fail to realise that he had been in waiting. We asked if we might leave at dawn. He said courteously that as the Military Commandant wished to see us at eight o’clock next day it would not be possible for us to get away before breakfast. With courtesy he refused to drink with us and with courtesy he bowed himself out. He was so pleasant that we felt that our affairs had become more serious during the day. Shortly after two o’clock I was awakened by the sound of marching and the rumbling of wagons. From that hour onwards until dawn battalion after battalion passed on its way to entrain for some battle front as yet unrevealed to us. Shortly after dawn troops ceased to pass for some hours and we were able to sleep again. During the wakeful period we each discovered, as we found on comparing notes next day, that a sentry was on duty in the corridor outside our rooms. The next morning we reported to the Commandant at his office, taking the car with us in case we got immediate leave to proceed. When we arrived we found the Commandant engaged and we had to wait in an outer room with a schoolmaster who had been brought in to act as our interpreter. While we sat here admiring a large engraving of the picture of the German troops greeting Admiral Seymour’s seamen in China (1900) hung on the wall over the door to the Commandant’s room, an old man was brought in by two policemen. He was crying bitterly in the hopeless, dreary manner of the aged. His sobs were painful to hear and we asked our interpreter who he might be and if we could do anything to assist him. The answer was ‘No, as he is a Russian spy who is charged with being concerned in an attempt to dynamite the railway bridge over the river. He will, it is undoubted, be shot!’ The charge may or may not have been true, but that afternoon the old man was shot after a summary trial. It made Keating and myself less optimistic as to our chances.