unfortunately precluded my eagerly proffered services from acceptance in other spheres; that I was keen and eager to be of service to my country; and that I was eating my heart out through inactivity. If there was a chance of my being any use, I prayed that my services might be commanded.

I had been cautioned with impressive seriousness that if my services were accepted it might be only for enrolment in the "Forlorn Hope Brigade" and that my chances of survival might be very remote indeed.

Rather than damping my ardour, this warning merely added fuel to the flames of my desires. In early life I had been most bitterly disappointed. A somewhat sensitive nature had received a shock from which it never properly recovered. With the fatuity of early youth I had placed a whole family upon an idealistic pedestal—including a mere child of thirteen years of age. When that theoristic fabric fell, shattered to a million invisible fragments, at my feet, I could not understand, but I felt for years afterwards that life for me held nothing of worth.

Time heals wounds, and I survived in bodily health. In 1912 I lost a man's best friend on earth—my mother. At Christmas, 1913, my father, my dearest pal, followed her to the grave. I was unmarried. My brother and my sisters had homes of their own, far away. What mattered it to anyone, least of all to myself, if I crossed the Great Divide before my allotted time? I was at best a mere worthless atom of humanity dependent upon no one, with no one dependent upon me.

Here at least was a chance of doing something worth the while. 'Twas a far, far better thing to do than I had ever done.

Yea, indeed. I was ready, and willing, and eager, for the service, whatsoever that service might be, and withersoever it might take me, even to the jaws of death itself.

Having regard to all the circumstances, I do not believe I shall be accused of presumptuousness or of egotism if I say that I fully believed myself to be a fit and qualified person for the service for which I then had volunteered.

On October 17th, 1914, I received a letter from the Under Permanent Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Sir Arthur Nicholson—now Lord Carnock), acknowledging my letter of the previous day's date and saying Sir Edward Grey appreciated my offer, although he regretted there were no such appointments at the disposal of his department; but he added that my name had been noted in case my services might be utilised in any capacity at some further date.

On October 19th, I received a letter on War Office paper referring to my letter to Sir Edward Grey of the 16th, saying: "I should be very glad if you would arrange to come and see me here one morning. If you will let me know when I may expect you I shall arrange to be free." This letter was signed "P. W. Kenny, Captain"[4] and on its left-hand top corner specified a certain room number. I subsequently ascertained that this gentleman (and a real gentleman in every sense of that embracive word I found him) was the "Acting Buffer" between the Secret Service departments for both the War Office and the Admiralty to anyone who might attempt to approach either of these departments. It will be remembered that his name figured in the public Press as acting in that capacity when Admiral W. R. Hall, C.B., brilliantly defeated and frustrated the clever schemes so carefully yet vainly laid by the then notorious ex.-M.P. Trebitsch Lincoln, whose apparent intention and purpose was to work the double cross against the British Empire.

I promptly answered this communication by a special journey to London, of which I gave due notice as requested.

After passing the Police Guards at the entrance to the War Office, I traversed a long corridor to the inquiry room, where a number of attendants were busily engaged issuing forms to be filled up by applicants for interviews. Of course it was impossible to escape the inevitable form, on which I inserted the name of Captain P. W. Kenny, his room number, my name, address, and the nature of my business—private and confidential. It was a bit of a staggerer to hear from the attendant that he did not know Captain Kenny, nor of him, nor did he believe there was any officer of that name in the building. Inquiries, however, from others of his class elicited the information that someone had heard a name somewhat like it and if I went up to the floor on which the room was numbered as before-mentioned, and applied to the porter or commissionaire at the lodge up there, he might be able to locate him for me.

After a wait of some minutes in an ante-room where were collecting a large number of officers and others on errands of various natures, I was sent away in charge of a boy-scout, with about ten other form-fillers, whom he dropped at various floor lodges on the way. The system was for each boy-scout to conduct a whole bunch of followers, who carried their forms in their hands until the desired floors were reached, when the boy-scout guide handed one or more of his followers to the commissionaire in charge of the lodge on each floor sought, who in turn sent them off again in charge of another attendant to the desired room.

I was the last one to depart from our diminutive guide. But when I got to the lodge on the floor on which the room I was seeking was numbered, the commissionaire in charge said he knew nothing of the officer named on my form. After arguing the matter discreetly with him I persuaded him to take me to the room specified on my form, which we found unoccupied, although there were a table and chairs there, as I saw them through the half-open door.

As the bona fides of my quest seemed to be doubted I produced the letter I had received, when he politely escorted me to two other lodges on the other floors; but only one of the men in charge could help me at all, and in that he was very vague. He believed there had been an officer, whose name he did not know, using the room so numbered or another room a day or so ago, and he was not certain which it was; he had since changed his room, but where he could not say. Anyway, as he expressed himself, he was a mysterious kind of person, and what he did, or what functions he performed, no one seemed to know. I must confess I was at a loss to understand the position. Suddenly, however, the thought struck me that it might be a possible stunt to test one's capabilities for a research or investigation; so I listened with interest to the conversations of the various commissionaires and gleaned that the gentleman I sought, if such an individual had any business in the War Office at all, was tall, thin, and aristocratic. The one man who described him thought he knew whom I meant—"A horficer as spent his time a-dodging back'ards and forrards betwixt the War Hoffice and the Hadmiralty, who never said nothink to nobody, so one didn't know which he did belong to; one who 'ardly ever was in 'is room and one who 'ad some queer blokes come to see 'im."

I thanked the commissionaires politely and said I would try another floor on my own account, as once inside the building with a form in one's hand it seemed one could wander anywhere at will and without question.

Accordingly I at once made up my mind what to do. I went to the floor below, to the lodge there, and I asked for Lord Kitchener. There was no hesitation in answering that inquiry; within a few minutes I had reached the desired portion of the building, where I asked to see his Lordship's principal secretary. I have forgotten his name, but I was not kept waiting for a moment. I was accorded an opportunity to explain my mission. I showed him the letter I had summoning me to the War Office, and told