"I've got a few weeks' sick leave left," I said, "and after that I was looking forward to going back to the front for a rest. This sort of thing is too exciting for me!"
"Well, well," answered the Chief, "we'll see about that afterwards. In the meantime, we shall not forget what you have done ... and I shall see that it is not forgotten elsewhere."
On that we left him. It was only outside that I remembered that he had told me nothing of what I was burning to know about the origin and disappearance of the Kaiser's letter.
It was my old friend, Red Tabs, whom I met on one of our many visits to mysterious but obviously important officials, that finally cleared up for me the many obscure points in this adventure of mine. When he saw me he burst out laughing.
"'Pon my soul," he grinned, "you seem to be able to act on a hint, don't you?"
Then he told me the story of the Kaiser's letter.
"There is no need to speak of the contents of this amazing letter," he began, "for you are probably more familiar with them than I am. The date alone will suffice ... July 31st, 1914 ... it explains a great deal. The last day of July was the moment when the peace of Europe was literally trembling in the balance. You know the Emperor's wayward, capricious nature, his eagerness for fame and military glory, his morbid terror of the unknown. In that fateful last week of July he was torn between opposing forces. On the one side was ranged the whole of the Prussian military party, led by the Crown Prince and the Emperor's own immediate entourage; on the other, the record of prosperity which years of peace had conferred on his realms. He had to choose between his own megalomania craving for military laurels, on the one hand, and, on the other, that place in history as the Prince of Peace for which, in his gentler moments, he has so often hankered.
"The Kaiser is a man of moods. He sat down and penned this letter in a fit of despondency and indecision, when the vision of Peace seemed fairer to him than the spectre of War. God knows what violent emotion impelled him to write this extraordinary appeal to his English friend, an appeal which, if published, would convict him of the deepest treachery to his ally, but he wrote the letter and forthwith dispatched it to London. He did not make use of the regular courier: he sent the letter by a man of his own choosing, who had special instructions to hand the letter in person to Prince Lichnowski, the German ambassador. Lichnowski was to deliver the missive personally to its destined recipient.
"Almost as soon as the letter was away, the Kaiser seems to have realised what he had done, to have repented of his action. Attempts to stop the messenger before he reached the coast appear to have failed. At any rate, we know that all through July 31st and August 1st Lichnowski, in London, was bombarded with dispatches ordering him to send the messenger with the letter back to Berlin as soon as he reached the embassy.
"The courier never got as far as Carlton House Terrace. Someone in the War party at the Court of Berlin got wind of the fateful letter and sent word to someone in the German embassy in London—the Prussian jingoes were well represented there by Kühlmann and others of his ilk—to intercept the letter.