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a wireless transmitter was safe. None of these denunciations, no matter how foolish, could be disregarded as the nerves of the public were on edge . . .’
    All along the British coast, Boy Scouts and well-meaning if often overzealous members of the public acted as volunteer coastguards, patrolling seaside paths and tracks on the lookout for the enemy at sea and spies on land.
    Harry Siepmann, the son of Otto Siepmann and Grace Baker, was in Cornwall enjoying the August bank holiday weekend as a chance to have a break from his work in London. One evening, as he was about to make his way back to his cottage, a thick fog descended and he took a lantern to help light his way. It was only after he had gone some distance that a shadowy figure emerged from the gloom. Levelling a doubled-barrelled shotgun at Harry’s chest, the figure asked him what he was doing.
     
I swallowed my resentment and introduced myself.
‘I see,’ he said, apparently satisfied. ‘I had better take your name and address to put in my report.’
That was unfortunate. In 1914, names of Germanic origin did not inspire confidence. In the glow of the lantern I could see the man’s expression change, and the gun was once more levelled in my direction.
‘I think I had better take the lantern off you,’ he said.
I was so shocked that I just gawped. Incredulously I listened while it was explained to me that I was now suspected of being a spy who had gone out to the cliffs to signal with a lantern to a ship, or more probably a submarine. I was promptly arrested.
     
    Harry Siepmann was taken to Falmouth Castle from where he was quickly released. No one bothered to ask why a man would attempt to signal to a submarine with a lantern in fog dense enough to reduce visibility to a few yards.
    For the first time, Harry felt acutely conscious of his name and the national hostility to all things Germanic. In his own mind he was English: he had been educated at Rugby School and joined the Officer Training Corps (OTC) there before going up to New College, Oxford. He graduated and in 1912 he had become a civil servant employed at the Treasury. Suddenly, he was under suspicion. At his father’s home in London, windows were broken and slogans daubed on walls even before the declaration of war, acts of stupidity that Harry assumed would abate. But family friends turned vindictive and spiteful and, after the incident in Cornwall, Harry realised that his optimism was misplaced. He determined to join the army. ‘At least my father would be able to point to that mitigating fact the next time a brick landed on the sitting-room floor.’
    No one could have predicted the rising public excitement when MPs passed the Aliens Restriction Act requiring foreigners to register themselves with the police. Nationwide announcements in the press circulated the information and by 10 August the Manchester Guardian reported a motley queue of people outside Tottenham Court Road police station including: ‘many quiet looking old ladies, probably teachers, young German girl students, tourists caught without money, barbers, stockbrokers, shipping clerks, waiters, bankers and some of the much less reputable occupations.’
    Their number included one London-based German, name unknown, who joined a queue, little realising the confusion that lay ahead:
     
. . . Yesterday morning [8 August] I went straight to the police station to register myself which I thought would take me 1 to 2 hours at the outside. Well, I joined the queue outside the police station at 9.10 a.m. and I got inside at 20 minutes to 7 p.m.!!! It was a terrible experience to stand there for 10 hours in an awful crush whilst it was raining all the morning and with nothing to eat since breakfast.
     
    The cause of the delay was not one of numbers but the intricacies of the government form, bamboozling police officers unused to such detailed questions. Blunders were made in understanding the full requirements of the law. The