flap and the contents pulled out without disturbing the seal, the
contents are then read, put in their place again, the end flap
re-inserted, a little gum used and the envelope is as intact as
before.

The only safe way to seal an envelope is thus:

[Illustration]

Even then a clever spy can open the letter, read the contents and
seal it again. This is done by cutting through the seals with a
hot razor--the divided seals are then united by pressing the hot
razor against each side of the cut and then pressing the two
parts of the cut seal together. This is, however, a very delicate
operation and doesn't always work.

From the outbreak of war we sent and received our official mail
through England, and couriers carried it between Berlin and
London through Holland via Flushing and Tilbury.

On account of the great volume of correspondence between
Ambassador Page and myself on the affairs of German prisoners in
England and English prisoners in Germany, there were many pouches
every week. These were leather mail bags opened only by duplicate
keys kept in London and Berlin and, for the American mail, in
Berlin and Washington. Our couriers did their best to keep the
numerous bags in their sight during the long journey but on many
occasions our couriers were separated, I am sure with malicious
purpose, from their bags by the German railway authorities and on
some occasions the bags not recovered for days.

Undoubtedly at this time the Germans opened and looked over the
contents of the bags. Later in the war our courier while on a
Dutch mail boat, running between Flushing and England, was twice
captured with the boat by a German warship and taken into
Zeebrugge. Undoubtedly here, too, the bags were secretly opened
and our uncoded despatches and letters read.

German spies were most annoying in Havana and one of them, a
large dark man, followed me about at a distance of only six feet,
with his eyes glued on the small bag which I carried from a thick
strap hanging around my shoulder. I brought it from Germany in
that way. I never let it out of my hands or sight.

What was in that bag? Among other things were the original
telegrams written by the Kaiser in his own handwriting,
facsimiles of which appear in my earlier book, "My Four Years in
Germany," and the treaty which the Germans tried to get me to
sign while they held me as a prisoner. Under the terms they
proposed the German ships interned in America were to have th