German spies travel on all the transatlantic liners running from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Holland to America, and back again. They find out as much as they can about their fellow-travelers, so that the secret police may be forewarned as to whom and what they are to receive. These agents are rarely employed by the German Government for the secret transmission of mail; that is usually done by men of solid reputation, American or other neutrals who are persuaded to accept the task on the ground of a service to the empire. Obviously, they must be violently pro-German before they are asked to assume the undertaking. The difficulty of communication is one of the severe hardships that the German Government and people suffer. Mails to and from the empire are seized by the Allies, and if delivered at all, are so belated as to make them valueless. Only such cables as the Allies choose to pass are permitted transmission. Male Germans are not permitted to travel on the seas. So German communication is restricted to the wireless, to supposedly neutral couriers, and to submarines, both of the commercial type as the _Deutschland_, and of the war type, which have been secretly conveying important German mail to Spanish waters, where it is loaded upon friendly neutral vessels, which carry it into Spanish ports and thence forward it to America and other points. This last method has been a carefully guarded secret of the German Government. Mail sent out by Spain is not seized and censored by the Allies.... IV--A VISIT TO GENERAL LORINGHOVEN To get the official view of the situation held by the officers of the general staff, I called on General von Freytag-Loringhoven at the general staff building in Berlin, where the great Moltke long presided. He received me in a room the distinguishing features of which were maps, not only showing the disposition of the German forces, but immense wall-sized ones on which were diagrammed the present locations of the Allies, showing their number, their commanders (designated by name and locations of headquarters), with their relative ranks indicated by little parti-coloured flags. I had just returned from the Somme, and as I saw how each of the French and British lines was clearly marked, I expressed my surprise. The general smiled. "Yes, our intelligence department is pretty thorough," he said, "but it is no better on the Somme than our enemy's is, for in France, where we stand on occupied soil, almost every civilian is an aid to the Allies. "But despite that, despite all the French and English can do at the Somme," he went on, "they will never break through."... I asked the general for his impressions of the French and British soldiers. He answered: