opposite great sagging warehouses behind
which the sun was setting.
As I picked up my bag to go ashore, a heavy hand fell on my
shoulder and I was asked to wait until we were boarded from the
police boat which was puffing alongside. My detainer, a government
inspector, a man of massive frame with deep set eyes and a shaggy
black beard, refused to say more than that the police wished to see
me. They had been signalled and were coming to the boat expressly
for that purpose.
American ammunition had not begun to play its part in German public
opinion at that time, and, moreover, America was being hailed
everywhere in Germany as a possible ally against Japan. Therefore,
although only a few days previously Russian guns had been booming
less than a dozen miles away, and Konigsburg was now the base
against Rennenkampf, my presence was tolerated, and I finally
managed to get lodgings for the night after I had found two hotels
turned into hospitals,
I spent the following day trying to obtain permission to pass the
cordon of sentries outside the city, but I received only the advice
to go back to Berlin and apply at the _Auswartiges Amt_ (Foreign
Office). I did not wish to wait in Berlin until this campaign was
over; I wished to follow on the heels of the army through the
ruined land and catch up to the fighting if possible. American
correspondents had done this in Belgium. I myself had done it with
the Austrians against the Serbs, and I succeeded in East Prussia,
but not through Berlin.
I was well aware that Germany was making a tremendous bid for
neutral favour. I had furthermore heard so much of Russian
atrocities that I was convinced that the stories were true;
consequently I decided to play the role of an investigator of
Muscovite crime. I won Herr Meyer of the Wolff Telegraph Bureau,
who sent me along with his card to Commandant von Rauch, who at
first refused to let me proceed, but after I had hovered outside
his door for three days, finally gave me a pass to go to Tapiau,
the high-water mark of the Russian invasion.
That night, "by chance," in the _Deutscher Hof_, I met the
black-bearded official who had arrested me on the boat, and I told
him that I had permission to go to Tapiau next morning. When he
became convinced, that I was a professional atrocity hunter who
believed that the Russians had been brutal, his hospitality became
boundless, and over copious steins of Munich beer he described the
inv
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