To Ruhleben and Back - A Great Adventure in Three Phases #232077

IN September of 1914, two months after war had started between Germany and England, I set out to reach Berlin in order, it is hardly necessary to add unknown to the German authorities, to act as a correspondent on behalf of the Daily Chronicle of London. I had also been asked to write letters for the Cambridge Magazine. Ruhleben was not then in existence as a prison camp, and I should certainly have had no intention of going there even if it had been. My object was to go to Berlin and see what there was of interest going on there, and then to travel across to the Rhine and the industrial districts of the West and South I reckoned a couple of months would see the whole thing done, and that if I felt matters were becoming hot and unpleasant I would bolt as quickly as possible. It must be remembered that the desire to know the truth of what was going on at that time in the interior of Germany was intense. At the words Krieg, Mobil, the floodgates of news had clanged to, and not a word that could be pre vented, or had not a purpose in it, was leaving Germany. At home masses of information were being produced in newspapers of all complexions.