And they know they’re doing so, as we saw clearly in the German papers Flannigan brought from his boat and which he translated to us by the hour, as neither Fourgues nor I know the language. I’ll not tell all that, because you must know what they are saying from the wireless communications received on the _Auvergne_. But there are a lot of little details by which one can see how they pull the strings and how we move accordingly. For instance, we are forbidden to say where the English fleet is. Well, the illustrated halfpenny papers present the Germans with photographs of the English fleet, the names of all the ships, their anchorage, the number of their guns, and everything. No one in France knows the names of the French generals in command of the armies nor the official description of sectors, but the German papers serve this up to their readers every morning. As to Naval espionage, Flannigan repeated a hundred times that the Germans know more than no matter what high Admiral of the Entente, and that before the news of the movement of an Allied cargo-boat or warship reaches Paris or London it is known in Berlin and corresponding orders have been given. It would be nothing if they stopped there, but Flannigan says they have understood that the maritime problem will be solved for them by the submarine. He gave us details of such precision that we saw very well he had been in there and had heard the Germans talk at home. Then he recollected himself. But one thing is certain, the Germans are constructing a formidable type of submarine with guns, mines, etc., and though time is needed to manufacture a series of such craft, within a definite period they will have something thoroughly ugly ready in the way of under-sea warfare. Fourgues repeated to Flannigan how he had been made fun of at the Admiralty in Paris when he talked of submarines, and Flannigan answered that it was our business if we waited till the Huns started; that the Germans didn’t hesitate to say what they meant to do and that when we were once in the soup it wouldn’t do any good to call them pirates while they simply went on sinking our ships. In regard to piracy, Flannigan, who, being a neutral, is above all a partisan of the freedom of the seas, says that everybody is laughing at the Allies with our scrupulous observance of the Hague Convention and that the Germans won’t be more scrupulous at sea than they are on land, if they have the means, because the new international laws will be made by the victor and because, with their submarines, they will soon show us that the old ones no longer count. Flannigan reasoned well: