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 I think I know now how a person feels who is going to his execution. We who walk up this steamship gangway are under sentence of death by the German Government. The old Latin proverb flashes into my mind: "Morituri te salutamus." It is we who may be about to die who salute each other here on the Carmania and then we are facing the steel line. Four British officers with swords at their sides and pistols in their belts wait for us in the drawing-room. All the other passengers go easily by but the New York Jewish gentleman with the German name. At last he, too, clears. But the British Government is not yet finished with a journalist. The Tower of London and its damp dark dungeons is again materialising clearly for me.

The lieutenant has been questioning me for half-an-hour. "I'm sorry," he says, "but I think I shall have to have you searched. This suitcase of journalistic data, you say that there is inside each package a note stating that the material has been passed by the Government? Why isn't that note on the outside of the package?"

"I don't know," I answer earnestly. "It's the question I asked in vain at Strand House. The censor said that it had to be this way. I assure you the note is there. But if you break the outside seal to find out, my government guarantee is gone. And if this boat by any chance goes to Halifax, how are they to know there that I'm not a German spy?"

The lieutenant's eyes are on my face. I think he believes I am telling the truth. "Well," he