Surrounded by German soldiers in a Dutch inn standing in a lonely stretch of No-Man's-Lanü between Holland and Germany, I have just had as narrow an escape from cap-picture, writes Ralph Izzard, "Daily Mail" correspondent, from Venlo, on the German-Dutch frontier.
I owe my safety to the presence of mind of a Dutch servant-girl, who casually answered the question of the officer in command of a search party with the remark, "Oh! There's only two Americans inside,"
My companion, Mr. McGroarty, of l. the United Press News Agency, and I approached the inn in a Dutch ta twisting and bumping along narra tracks between tilled fields and allotments, the main roads now being blocked by heavy cement barricades.
We struck the main road again at the last Dutch outpost about half a mile from the frontier. Arriving at the frontier station, we: found the small Dutch Customs office on the right-hand side of the road. Slightly beyond it to the left stands the inn and the German Customs house, from which the frontier barrier juts across the road.
The inn, although legally Dutch, actually in No-Man's-Land. Our car drew up outside the inn, and I ordered the driver to turn it round at once.
We were drinking our beer when I glanced out. of the window. towards Germany. To my dismay, the frontier barrier was slowly lifting, and from underneath it appeared the bulky bonnet of a German Army lorry.
From the vehicle jumped a number je.|of soldiers and one officer.
They were joined by other soldiers from behind the customs house. I saw the officer give instructions to his men and they filed into the building and started removing property, which they piled on the lorry.
At this point the officer, who was wearing silver-braided dress uniform, and not war kit, noticed our car. At once the scene changed. The officer curtly summoned a number of men, and a party was detailed off to surround the inn. With an escort of three, the officer approached the inn door, where a girl was scrubbing the steps, To his inquiry, she answered, "Oh, theres only two Americans inside."
By. this time, being a British citizen and a marked man as a public critic of the Nazi regime, my one thought "was escape. I passed through the door behind the counter to find myself in a narrow passage which proved a blind alley.
The one door off the passage opened to the men's cloakroom, and I was in two minds whether to destroy my British passport and attempt to-bluff out the situation as an American or to risk capture and to retain my passport.
I kept the passport. I again went to the saloon door, and through it I overheard the parley at the front-door which the hostess, by now hysterical, had joined, McGroarty, with a valid American passport, had less to fear, and he dodged back and forth between the passage and the saloon. Apparently the two women had disconcerted the officer, for he suddenly turned abruptly on his heel, and calling off his men with a command that went from mouth to mouth round the house, he returned to the business of filling the lorry. A son of the house then let McGroarty and myself out through a back-door, and we passed round the far side of the building to the car, Prince Tokugawa Enlists In Japanese Army Tokyo, Jan. 6.
Enlistment of Prince Yoshimitsu Tokugawa in the Japanese army was reported by the Japanese press today. Prince Tokugawa is the grandson of the 15th Shogun, Yoshinobu Tokugawa. Prince Tokugawa will become a second private.
He recently worked at the Libraries Bureau of the Imperial Household Department. He is a graduate from the Literature Department of Tokyo Imperial University—Domei.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.