"I find, too, that you boasted of being an Englishman."
"That helped me to do my work," was the jeering answer.
For some seconds there was a deathly silence save for the rustle of the papers which the President read. Each man who sat in the room listened almost breathlessly; each was so intensely interested that no one broke the silence.
"My father and my mother are German," went on Waterman; "when they lived in Germany they spelt their name German fashion, and there were two n's, not one, at the end of my name; but when they were in England they thought it would serve them best to spell it English fashion. But they never ceased being Germans. When I was a boy I was taught to love my country above all things; that was my religion, and I was always faithful to it. When I went to your British school I was always a German at heart; the other boys used to say that I was not a sportsman, and that I could not play the game."
"Evidently they spoke the truth."
Waterman shrugged his shoulders carelessly.
"Then you mean to say that you, born in England, educated in England, and receiving all the benefits of our country, were all the time a German at heart, and sought to act in Germany's interests."
"Certainly."
"And you didn't feel that you were acting meanly, ungratefully?"
"I thought only of my own country," was the reply. "I knew that this war was coming, knew too that I could best serve my country by professing to be an Englishman, and by entering the British Army. I proved myself in the right too," he added significantly.