Chapter 3. THE INVASION OF ENGLAND

This is the true inside story of the invasion of England in
1911 by the Germans, and why it failed. I got my data from
Baron von Gottlieb, at the time military attaché of the
German Government with the Russian army in the second
Russian-Japanese War, when Russia drove Japan out of
Manchuria, and reduced her to a third-rate power. He told me
of his part in the invasion as we sat, after the bombardment
of Tokio, on the ramparts of the Emperor's palace, watching
the walls of the paper houses below us glowing and smoking
like the ashes of a prairie fire.

Two years before, at the time of the invasion, von Gottlieb
had been Carl Schultz, the head-waiter at the East Cliff
Hotel at Cromer, and a spy.

The other end of the story came to me through Lester Ford,
the London correspondent of the New York Republic. They gave
me permission to tell it in any fashion I pleased, and it is
here set down for the first time.

In telling the story, my conscience is not in the least
disturbed, for I have yet to find any one who will believe
it.

What led directly to the invasion was that some week-end
guest of the East Cliff Hotel left a copy of "The Riddle of
the Sands" in the coffee-room, where von Gottlieb found it;