He would shout this over his shoulder to one of the many satellites whose work it was to produce the required parcel. The next few seconds would be anxious ones for the hungry _Gefangener_. He would watch the sentry move about among a store of boxes, moving one, displacing another. He would lift a parcel so small that it could assuredly contain nothing but boot polish, and a shiver would pass through the leanly expectant. But at last, after many vacillations and counter-marches, he would emerge triumphantly with a cardboard box bearing the large Red Cross of the Central London Committee. But even then there was more to be done. Each parcel had to be carefully opened and its contents examined. No tins nor paper could be taken away. Packets of tea and cocoa had to be stripped of their covering and emptied into baskets, while the tinned foods were spirited away to the block cellar, where later in the day they were opened in the presence of a number of sentinels. The reason for all this palaver we never quite managed to fathom. It was surely enough that the British Red Cross had pledged its word not to include for exportation tracts for the times, pulpit propaganda, or prismatic compasses. With delightful duplicity the German authorities laid the blame of this on to our Allies. “You see,” they said, “we’re very sorry, but the French get so many things in their tins; poison for our herbs, and knives and files. We must take precautions. Of course many parcels are quite all right, but the French, you see....” And to our Allies the Germans told the same tale. “You see,” they said, “your parcels are all right, but the English hide corkscrews in their bully beef. We must take precautions....” And so another link was added to the immense chain of queues. At this time, too, letters and books began to arrive, and over these officialdom wound all the intricacies that it could muster. Letters had to be fumigated first, each page had to be carefully censored, and stamped with a large messy blue circle usually deposited over the least legible portion of the correspondence. And every novel had to be read from beginning to end. Numerous were the regulations. Any reference to Germany was taboo, the mere mention of the word Hun or Boche was the signal for confiscation. Of my first consignment of books, two were suppressed. One of them being rather a prolix novel to the tune of khaki kisses, was not much loss; but the other, Ford Madox Hueffer’s volume of poems, I made valiant efforts to save. One evening I caught the censor unprepared, and pointed out to him that the author was a man of complete literary integrity, and that nothing he could write could be looked upon as dangerous. “Ah, but,” the censor expostulated, “it is all full of Huns and Boche.” “Ah, well,” I said, “can’t you tear those pages out?” “But then there would be no pages left,” and against this assertion argument was impossible. “And you see,” he went on, “we are not Huns.”