Presently, as we began to pass some huge masses of buildings which, four or five stories in height, appeared to run on through two or three blocks of the not unattractive park-like grounds with which they were surrounded, my companion, indicating them with a proud wave of his hand, started speaking again. I could not hear him distinctly--for we were speeding up faster now, and consequently making more noise--but I thought I caught the drift of what he was trying to say. "Ja, ja," I roared back. "Ich verstehe sehr gut. Der naval barracks. Der German High Sea Fleet Base." I think that was hardly the way he was trying to put it, but his vigorous nod of assent showed that I had at least gathered the sense of his observations. As we slowed down at the next corner he put me completely right by saying, "Not for the ships themselves, the big barracks, but for the men when the ships were here. I think you make a joke." I admitted the shrewd impeachment with a grin, but hardly thought it necessary to add that I was afraid he had still missed the best part of the joke. He was a diverting lad, that young flying officer, and he told me many interesting things in the course of the day. Some of them were true, as subsequent events or observations proved; but one of them at least was a calculated and deliberate lie, told with the purpose of inducing one of the "air" parties to give up the plan it had formed of visiting a certain station. I will set down that significant little incident in its proper place. Although, as we learned later, the fact that a party from the Allied Commission was to land and pass through the city that day had been carefully withheld from the people, the latter exhibited very little surprise at the appearance of officers in uniforms which they seemed to recognize at once as foreign. They had been instructed that they were to make no demonstration of any kind when Allied officers were encountered in the streets, and, docile as ever, they carried out the order to the letter. A mild, unresentful curiosity would perhaps best describe the attitude of all the people who saw us that day, both in Wilhelmshaven and at the country stations.