The Land of Deepening Shadow; Germany-At-War

General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1917 Original Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton Subjects: World War, 1914-1918 Fiction / Classics History / General History / Military / World War I Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER I GETTING IN in November, 1915, I sailed from New York to Rotterdam. I spent nearly a month in Holland completing my preparations, and at length one grey winter morning I took the step that I dreaded. I had left Germany six months before with a feeling that to enter it again and get safely out was hopeless, foolish, dangerous, impossible. But at any rate I was going to try. At Zevenaar, while the Dutch customs officials were examining my baggage, I patronised the youth selling apple cakes and coffee, for after several months' absence from Germany my imagination had been kindled to contemplate living uncomfortably on short rations for some time as the least of my troubles. Furthermore, the editorial opinion vouchsafed in the Dutch newspaper which I had bought at Arnhem was that Austria's reply to the Ancona Note made a break with America almost a certainty. Consequently as the train rolled over the few remaining miles to the frontier I crammed down my apple cakes, resolved to face the unknown on a full stomach. The wheels ground under the brakes, I pulled down the window with a bang and looked out no longer uponthe soft rolled military cap of Holland but upon the business-like spiked helmet of Germany. I steeled myself. There was no backing out now. I had crossed the German frontier. The few passengers filed into the customs room, where a corps of skilled mechanics prised open the contents of bags and trunks. Each man was an expert in his p...