"And how does the frontier run?" I queried, offering him a light for his cigar.
He showed me with his hand.
"Here in front of you, then right through the woods, then up there; those high steeples towering over the woods belong to the factories of Venlo."
I knew enough. After a few remarks I left him. All goes according to my program, I thought. But there was a new undertaking before me. I had to venture close enough to the frontier to be able to watch the patrols without being seen by them. That I succeeded in doing during the following night.
I hid in the thick underwood; open country was in front of me. I remained at that spot for three days and nights. It rained and at night it was very chilly. On the evening of the third day I resolved to execute my plan that night.
Regularly every fifteen minutes a patrol of from three to six soldiers arrived. When it had got dark I changed my place for one more to the right, some five hundred yards from the frontier. I said to myself that I would have to venture out as soon as it got a little lighter. In the darkness I could not see anything. It would have to be done in twilight. I had rolled my overcoat into a bundle to avoid making a noise against the trees. I advanced just after a patrol had passed. I went forward slowly and stepped out cautiously without making a noise. Then I walked with ever increasing rapidity. Suddenly a patrol appeared on my right. The frontier was about three hundred yards away from me. The patrol had about two hundred yards to the point of the frontier nearest to me. Victory would fall to the best and swiftest runner. The patrol consisted of five men; they fired several times. That did not bother me. I threw everything away and, summoning all my strength, I made in huge leaps for the frontier which I passed like a whirlwind. I ran past the pointed frontier stone and stopped fifty yards away from it. I was quite out of breath, and an indescribable happy feeling took hold of me. I felt like crying into the world that at last I was free.
I seated myself on the stump of a tree and lit a cigar, quite steadily and slowly; for now I had time. Scarcely fifty yards away, near the frontier stone, was the disappointed patrol. I read on the side of the frontier stone facing me, "Koningrjk der Nederlanden" (Kingdom of the Netherlands). I had to laugh with joy. "Who are you?" one of the German patrol called to me. "The Hollanders have now the right to ask that question; you've got that right no longer, old fellow," I replied. They called me all manner of names, but that did not excite me. I asked them: "Why don't you throw me over my bag which I threw away in the hurry? It contains some washing I took along with me so as to get into a decent country like a decent man."
Attracted by that conversation, a Dutch patrol, a sergeant and three men, came up. The sergeant questioned me, and I told him all. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Be glad that you are here—wij Hollanders weuschen de vrede (we Hollanders wish for peace), and you are welcome here in hospitable Holland."
I had to go with the soldiers to their guard-room and take breakfast with them. Thereupon they showed me the nearest road to Venlo, where I arrived at seven o'clock in the morning. From Venlo I traveled to Rotterdam. I soon obtained a well-paid position and became a man again, a man who could live and not merely exist. Thousands upon thousands of Belgian refugees are living in Holland and are treated as the guests of the people. There are also great numbers of German deserters in Holland, where their number is estimated to be between fifteen and twenty thousand. Those deserters enjoy the full protection of the Dutch authorities.
I would have never thought of leaving that hospitable country with its fairly liberal constitution if the political sky had not been so overclouded in the month of March, 1916.