stand London during the war. It seemed to have lost its bearings and
broken out into all manner of badges and uniforms which did not fit
in with my notion of it. One felt the war more in its streets than in
the field, or rather one felt the confusion of war without feeling the
purpose. I dare say it was all right; but since August 1914 I never
spent a day in town without coming home depressed to my boots.

I took a taxi and drove straight to the Foreign Office. Sir Walter
did not keep me waiting long. But when his secretary took me to
his room I would not have recognized the man I had known
eighteen months before.

His big frame seemed to have dropped flesh and there was a
stoop in the square shoulders. His face had lost its rosiness and was
red in patches, like that of a man who gets too little fresh air. His
hair was much greyer and very thin about the temples, and there
were lines of overwork below the eyes. But the eyes were the same
as before, keen and kindly and shrewd, and there was no change in
the firm set of the jaw.

'We must on no account be disturbed for the next hour,' he told
his secretary. When the young man had gone he went across to
both doors and turned the keys in them.

'Well, Major Hannay,' he said, flinging himself into a chair beside
the fire. 'How do you like soldiering?'

'Right enough,' I said, 'though this isn't just the kind of war I
would have picked myself. It's a comfortless, bloody business. But
we've got the measure of the old Boche now, and it's dogged as