repeating the information on my passport. He
attached this to the passport. On the London
train I asked other passengers if they had been
similarly decorated. Enthusiastically they denied
it. It seemed definite, since I was a correspondent, that a check had been placed upon my movements. The American embassy offered that
doleful interpretation. When I applied at Bow
Street for an identity book the clerk admitted that
the slip was a code for the police. So I went to
an acquaintance in the intelligence department and
threw myself on his mercy.
“What in the name of heaven," I demanded, is this soiled piece of paper?'
He smiled.
"They gave you your identity book at Bow Street, didn't they? You know it might be a recommendation on information from America."
I explained patiently that I had sailed on two days' notice. His smile didn't alter, and from all that happened afterwards I know he was right. It isn't simple to elude a system that works so quickly, and that's the reason the Germans early in the war ceased getting many spics to England or France through New York. They turned, as a consequence, to Spanish America. That menace, too, a distinguished officer of the intelligence corps told me, was well under control. A few
