For such a purpose I considered that I carried good enough credentials. In addition to a packet of mail for Ambassador Gerard, my letter from ex-President Roosevelt, and my United States passport, which had been vised by Herr von Mueller, German Ambassador at The Hague, I now carried a special laissez-passer which Mr. Marshall Langhorne had been kind enough to secure for me from the same legation. I had a letter from Count von Bernstorff, whom I had seen the night he arrived in America, and a letter from Herr von Biel, Secretary of the German Embassy at The Hague, recommending me to the Foreign Office in Berlin. Professor Hugo Munsterberg had taken the trouble to send me a note to Dr. R. W. Drechsler, head of the American Institute in Berlin, and I had also a letter to the head of the University of Berlin. It was a five-hours' run from The Hague to Bentheim, a small country village on the German frontier. The train stopped a quarter of a mile north of the border. Dutch officials came aboard to examine passports and baggage of every passenger. They were good-natured and talkative, and did not go minutely into details, as those leaving the country were less carefully watched than "immigrants." Me, however, they mistook for an Englishman (as was usually the case in Germany) and told me I could not cross the frontier. A Dutch manufacturer, with whom I had struck up an acquaintance, explained my identity, and the official, who looked astonished, waved me ahead with a doubtful expression, as much as to say, "On your own head be it, young man." That first night passed without trouble. At the border station we lined up, immigrant fashion, and went through an inspection by a number of the businesslike German militariat attached to the Zollamt, or customs service. For ten minutes I stood in suspense while a fiery-looking officer, with a snapping blue eye, looked through my credentials in silence. He wrote my name in a notebook, looked through my eye as if he would read my very soul, and then, without a remark, passed me on. I filed through a narrow gate--and so into the Realms of the Kaiser. It was now eleven o'clock at night and the Berlin express came through Bentheim at 7.45 the next morning. We stayed at a little inn, somewhat resembling the Wayside Inn, at Sudbury, Massachusetts. Here I fell in with a German manufacturer whom I had seen several weeks before as we were bringing the good news from Ghent to Aix. I was surprised at this man's change of opinion regarding the conflict. On the first occasion he laughed outright at the idea of an extended fight. Now, all through his arguments, he repeated such phrases as, "Well, if Germany doesn't win," or, "Suppose the war does last two years," etc., etc.