A policeman challenged me and I replied--I hadn't much German--"Deutsch." All, I think, would have gone well had he not glanced at my feet. Then he promptly switched on an electric lamp, worn at his breast, and covered me with a revolver. The game was up; my race was run! I had to admit that I was an "Engländer." To add to my mortification, I learned from the officer that I was only five or six kilometres from the Dutch frontier. Well, to give the German his due, that policeman played the good Samaritan. He knocked up a cottager and got me some coffee and bread--and never did anything taste so sweet. I was utterly reckless as to my fate, for I had developed a devil-may-care frame of mind. I was disappointed--that was inevitable. Who wouldn't have been disappointed at seeing a scheme that had arrived so near fruition come toppling down like a house of cards? Punishment I knew I should get, and punishment I certainly received. I was sentenced to ten days' solitary confinement in a cell, at first totally dark, to which the light was gradually admitted. Next I was paraded round the camp as a standing example of Germany's might, and a hideous warning to "evil-doers." A red and white band sewn to my sleeve gave notice to all and sundry that this was the ill-mannered churl who spurned _Kultur_ and wanted to get back to that despicable England about which the Germans sang. I should here explain that, in the intervals of contriving splenetic irritants for their prisoners, my captors often sang the notorious "Song of Hate." I have seen them march in all solemnity around the camp singing the "Vaterland" and "Gott Strafe England"--and the spectacle was too much even for my limited sense of humor. Their brutalities were beyond the belief of any commonplace civilized beings. At the Sennelager camp, for instance, there were many civilian prisoners, and they were treated far worse than we soldiers were--and that's saying something. One especial form of amusement (for the Huns) was the shaving of civilians. Whether it was as punishment or as sheer deviltry I don't know, but I have seen many civilians shaved on one side of the head and face, with half their hair, half their whiskers, and half their moustaches gone. Fit game for a Nero, wasn't it? Neither that ten days' confinement, nor yet the beautiful red and white band, and my exhibition before my compatriots, broke my spirit, and I was still determined to see England or die. The Germans talked of their glorious deeds. Goodness knows how many times they sent our navy to the bottom of the sea, and I have forgotten how often they told me their Zepps were "sending England to H----." They were very full of their Zepps, by the way, but we didn't swallow all their stories either of their ships in the air, their ships on the sea, or their victorious armies on land.