In the Claws of the German Eagle | Page 4

under the bed and unlocked the closet door. Finding nothing,
he asked for the key to my room. I handed it over, Room Number 502.
"You will be so good as to follow me now."
Now every one knows that the Spy-Season in Europe opened with the
beginning of the war. Spy hunting became at once a veritable mania.
Consequently no self-respecting person returns from the war-zone
without at least one hair-raising story of being taken as a spy. Being

just an average species of American, I exhale no particular air of
mystery or villainy; yet I suffered a score of times the laying on of
hands by German, French, Belgian, and even Dutch authorities.
But this experience is marked off from all my other ordeals in four
ways. In the first place, instead of casually falling into the hands of my
captors, they came after me in full force. In the second place, a specific
charge of using money for bribing information was laid against me, and
witnesses were at hand. In the third place, the leader of the party
arrested me in civilian dress, but before examination and trial he
changed to military uniform. In the fourth place, the officials were in
such a surly mood that my message to the American Ambassador was
undelivered, and at the last trial before the American representatives
there was no apology, but rather the sullen attitude of those who had
been balked in bagging their game.
When my captor bade me follow him I asked:
"Can I leave word with my friends?" For an answer he smiled
satirically. By accident or design, the time chosen for my taking off
was one when both of my two casual acquaintances were out of the
hotel.
"Not now, but a little later perhaps, when this is fixed up," my captor
answered me.
We stepped into a carriage. The two assistants at the little surprise party
walked away, and my rising sense of fear was allayed by the friendly
offer of a cigarette. It was a brand-new experience to ride away to
prison in royal state like this. The almost pleasant attitude of my
companion reassured me. "After all," I mused, "this is a lucky stroke; a
little uncertain perhaps, but on the whole an interesting way to while
away the tedium of an otherwise eventless birthday."
We stopped before the Belgian Government building, on the Rue de la
Loi, the headquarters of the German staff. At a word the sentries
dropped back and my companion bade me walk down a long, dark
corridor. I opened a door at the end, and found myself in a room with a
few officers in chairs, and a large array of documents upon a table.
The moment I came within the safe confines of that room the whole
attitude of my captor changed. His mask of friendliness dropped away.
Perhaps his spirit responded and adapted itself to the official
atmosphere of the headquarters. Anyhow, at once he froze up into the

most rigid formality. Sitting down, he wrote out what I deemed was the
report of the morning's proceedings. I watched him writing with all the
semblance and precision of a machine, except for a half-smile that
sometimes flickered upon his close-pressed lips.
He was a machine, or, more precisely, a cog in the great fighting
machine that was producing death and destruction to Belgium. Just as
the Germans have put men through a certain mold and turned out the
typical German soldier, in like manner through other molds they have
turned out according to pattern the German secret service man. He is a
kind of spy-destroyer performing in his sphere the same service that the
torpedo-boat destroyer does in its domain. This man was the German
reincarnation of Javert, the police inspector who hung so relentlessly
upon the flanks of Jean Valjean. In his stolid silence I read an iron
determination to "get" me, and in that flickering smile I saw an
inhuman delight in putting the worst construction upon my case as he
wrote it down. Hereafter he shall be known as Javert.
Towards Javert I sustain a very distinct aversion. This is not the result
of any evil twist put into my constitution by original sin. Quite the
contrary. Hitherto I have always felt that I, like the man in Oscar
Wilde's play, could forgive anybody anything, any time, anywhere.
One can forgive even a hangman for doing his duty, however it may
thwart one's plans. Some men must play the part of prosecutor and
devil's advocate.
But such was the cold, cynical delight in this fellow's doing his duty,
such was his arrogant, overbearing attitude toward the helpless peasant
prisoners, that I know my prayers for the end of the war were not
motivated entirely by