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Leacock, Stephen, 1869-1944

"The Hohenzollerns in America"




II.--With the Bolsheviks in Berlin
Two years ago as my readers will remember,--but of course
they don't,--I made a secret visit to Germany during the
height of the war. It was obviously quite impossible at
that time to disclose the means whereby I made my way
across the frontier. I therefore adopted the familiar
literary device of professing to have been transported
to Germany in a dream. In that state I was supposed to
be conducted about the country by my friend Count Boob
von Boobenstein, whom I had known years before as a waiter
in Toronto, to see GERMANY FROM WITHIN, and to report
upon it in the Allied press.
What I wrote attracted some attention. So the German
Government--feeling, perhaps, that the prestige of their
own spy system was at stake--published a white paper,
--or a green paper,--I forget which,--in denial of all
my adventures and disclosures. In this they proved (1)
that all entry into Germany by dreams had been expressly
forbidden of the High General Command; (2) that astral
bodies were prohibited and (3) that nobody else but the
Kaiser was allowed to have visions. They claimed therefore
(1) that my article was a fabrication and (2) that for
all they knew it was humorous.


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