THE LAST FAREWELL
Such sleep as I enjoyed in what remained of the night between August 4
and 5 was secured, for the first time in a week, beneath my own roof. I
had finished with the "hospitality" of the Hotel Adlon for all time to
come. After a brief visit at the Embassy, to assure the Ambassador of
my everlasting gratitude for having thrown out the life-line, and seeing
Mrs. Hensel safely started for her home in Charlottenburg under trusted
escort, I betook myself to Wilmersdorf, where our faithful little German
governess, Anna Kranz, had been holding the fort all summer during the
absence of my family in the United States. I telephoned Fraeulein from
the Embassy a summary of the night's events, fearing that police minions
might be paying me a domiciliary visit and cause the poor girl
unnecessary alarm. I told her Schrape was coming home with me for the
night and that as neither of us had had a bite since the preceding noon,
we could do full justice to anything, however frugal, which might at
that romantic hour still be discoverable in the larder. It was a
wide-eyed, then tearful and always sympathetic Thuringian damsel, who
listened to our story over bread and cheese at the romantic hour of
two-thirty A.M. I can hear her now interrupting with a characteristic
and condoling "_Aber, Herr Wile!_"
Having dispatched Schrape to the Adlon early next day to pay my bill and
fetch the belongings I had had so abruptly to leave behind me there the
night before, I proceeded to town. At the Embassy was a host of friends
anxious for news of me. The most absurd rumors, it seemed, were in
circulation. There was a detailed version of my last moments in front
of a firing-squad at Spandau, and somebody "who had a friend at the
Police Presidency" had told somebody else that I was in shackles which
would probably not be removed till the war was over--if then. Still
another tale related circumstantially of how I had been "hurried" from
Berlin at the dead of night, under military guard, to the Dutch
frontier, across which, by this time, I was unceremoniously "expelled."
When I was able to gain the ear of the Ambassador--the American
war-refugee panic was now at tempestuous zenith, with the Embassy like a
place besieged--I represented to him that I feared my hopes of remaining
in Germany, after what had happened, were slender in the extreme.
Scouts had brought in the intelligence, I informed him, that a miniature
mob of evident purpose was waiting in front of the Equitable Building,
where _The Daily Mail_ office was, now and then knowingly pointing to
our big gilt window-sign, in order that passers-by might understand why
traffic was being blocked in front of No. 59 Friedrichstrasse. If the
crowd waited long enough, it probably saw at work the sign men whom I
had ordered to take down the red rag. Discretion is ever the better
part of valor, and I felt no compelling desire to superintend the job in
person.
The Ambassador thought I was unduly disturbed. He was convinced that my
arrest was purely an unfortunate blunder, due to a combination of
officious patriotism and excessive zeal, and meant nothing. I was
inclined to agree with him. Berlin and the Berliners had suddenly lost
their minds, and nothing which occurs when a community of men are in a
state of mental aberration ought in reason to be charged against them.
I had obviously fallen victim to the mass _dementia_ which robbed
Germans of their senses when their lingering fears of war with England
became terrifying actuality. I certainly did not overestimate the
importance of the episode.
I now ran across von Wiegand of the _United Press_ (as he then was) and
Swing, of the _Chicago Daily News_. Being Americans, like myself, they
had just taken the precaution of applying to the Foreign Office for
credentials which would protect them from such delicate attentions as
the police had shown me. They suggested that I should see
_Legationsrat_ Heilbron and get an _Ausweiskarte_. Swing was in
jubilant mood. He had a scheme under promising way to accompany Major
Langhorne, our military attache, to the front as a "secretary." My
heart pumped with envy. Von Wiegand had not yet worked out his
forthcoming campaign for interviewing the German Empire and the Vatican,
but all of us felt sure that his German noble origin, plus his nose for
news and excellent official connections, would land Karl Heinrich on his
feet, as far as reporting the war was concerned, if any one was going to
be favored at all. The Anglo-American newspaper fraternity was already
a rather decimated body. Conger, of the Associated Press, was still
jailed at Gumbinnen. Wilcox, of _The Daily Telegraph_, had been
fortunate enough, only a few days previous, to get to Russia. Ford, of
_The Morning Post_, had not waited for the crash and left for England on
one of the last peace-time trains. Tower, my night's partner in woe,
had slept in the porter's basement of the American Embassy and was now a
refugee in the British Embassy, where, I understood, all the other
purely English correspondents were being rounded up during the day, to
accompany Sir Edward Goschen and his staff out of Germany next morning
on the safe-conduct train provided by the German government. Mackenzie,
of _The Times_, with whom I had plotted by telephone, was still
unarrested, for some miraculous reason; I had not yet seen the original
"denunciation" of our espionage operations, from which I later knew that
he had only been identified as "Kingsley." He can blame that
circumstance, no doubt, for having been denied the privilege of my own
experiences.
At five o'clock, the customary hour for newspaper men to visit the
Foreign Office, I went to call on _Legationsrat_ Heilbron. He had not
yet come in, so I sent my card to his colleague, _Legationsrat_
Esternaux, with whom I had enjoyed professional acquaintance ever since
the hour of my arrival in Germany, thirteen years previous to the week.
I assured Esternaux that I cherished no particular animosity toward the
police authorities for my silly arrest, being convinced that a grotesque
mistake alone was responsible. Mildly apologetic, he acquiesced in this
view.
"You were a victim," Esternaux then began, "of our just and universal
rage over the treacherous and treasonable action of England in stabbing
us in the back. Never, as long as they live, will Germans forgive the
perfidy of the British Government in betraying the common blood in favor
of uncivilized Pan-Slavism. It is the most criminal faithlessness in
the world's history--this taking advantage of our difficulties to vent
long pent-up spite against the merely dangerous German commercial
rival." Herr Esternaux did not mention Belgium, though the flow of his
righteous indignation was increasing from phrase to phrase. "Race
treason! That is what has fired the German soul to its depths! That is
what caused last night's unseemly demonstrations. Nobody condones mob
fury less than the German Government, but it is explained, if not
justified, by what has happened. Of one thing the world may be
sure--with whatever bitterness we make war on our Russian and French
foes, it will be nothing--it will be child's-play--compared to the
spirit of revengeful rancor and holy wrath in which we shall fight the
English race-traitors. That was the temper of the Berlin mob last night.
It is the temper in which we are going to war with Great Britain. It is
the temper in which we shall wage the struggle with her to the bitter
end. Make no mistake about that." I had listened, on the authoritative
premises of the Imperial German Government, to perhaps the first
official proclamation of the hate and frightfulness programme so far
uttered. _Gott strafe England_! How graphically succeeding events were
to bear it out!
After _Legationsrat_ Esternaux had fired this high-explosive, he ushered
me out, and I knocked on _Legationsrat_ Heilbron's door, fifteen yards
farther down the passageway. Fur-mittens and ear-muffs are not _de
rigueur_ in northern Germany in midsummer, but I should have worn them
that afternoon of August 5, for the reception awaiting me at Heilbron's
hands was of arctic frigidity. It was a vastly changed Heilbron from
the obliging functionary who had pressed upon me, forty-eight hours
previous, copies of the German White Paper, in order that I might spread
the official truth about "how the Fatherland had worked to prevent the
war" broadcast in England and the United States. It was also a
strangely less courteous _Legationsrat_ than the one (Esternaux) whose
presence I had just quitted.
"_Herr Legationsrat_," I began, "I have come to ask you for an
_Ausweiskarte_. You know, I suppose, of my little experience last
night. I am quite willing to take my chances with the mob, but I ought
to have something to protect me from the excesses of the police."
"Mobs are mobs," he rejoined. "I can do nothing for you."
"That is strange," I interposed. "Surely you know that the American
Ambassador has arranged for my remaining in Germany?"
"I know nothing about that whatever," said Heilbron.
"Well, _Legationsrat_ Esternaux does," I retorted, "because he told me
so not five minutes ago, and he said you would issue the necessary
credentials."
Heilbron, who like all German bureaucrats has the backbone of a crushed
worm in the presence of superior authority, or the mere suggestion of
it, now reached for his telephone-receiver and asked to be connected
with somebody in the Foreign Office. He repeated the object of my call
to whomever was at the other end of the line, nodded in assent to
something apparently said to him, then turned to me:
"It is just as I thought. The Foreign Office can do nothing for you.
If you want credentials, you must apply to the police."
"But, _Herr Legationsrat_," I persisted, "there can be no objection to
your giving me something which will insure me ordinary safety at such a
time as this. After all, I'm an American."
With a shrug of the shoulders and outflung arms, a German gesture
expressing indifference or helplessness, or both, Heilbron observed,
sardonically: "For us you are a _Daily Mail_ man--nothing else. You are
known everywhere as such. Certainly if you remain here, your position
will undoubtedly be a precarious one."
It was plain that the ethics which impelled Von Bethmann Hollweg to tear
up the Belgian "scrap of paper"--brazen disregard of pledges--were now
being pursued in my very insignificant case. The German Foreign
Secretary had given a formal undertaking, as I understood it, as to the
inviolability of my personal and professional status as an American
newspaper man. Not five minutes before, I had been assured by an
official of the German Foreign Office in the Foreign Office that the
latter was fully aware of the arrangements which Mr. Gerard had effected
in my favor. And now another official calmly denied its existence, and,
moreover, declared in substance that a United States passport calling
upon the friendly German Government "to permit Frederic William Wile
safely and freely to pass, and, in case of need, to give him all lawful
aid and protection," was not worth the parchment on which it was
engraved. International law was being refashioned in Berlin in a hurry.
Once again I was compelled to flee to the American Ambassador for
protection--reluctantly enough, for I had already usurped far more of
his time than one citizen is entitled to. I told him that the German
Foreign Office was trying to convert me into a man without a country;
not only that, but that its cheerful intimation as to my "position"
being "undoubtedly precarious" rang clearly ominous in my ears. The
Ambassador shared that view. He was of the opinion, when he saw me
earlier in the day, that my alarm was unwarranted. From what other
American newspaper men had meantime reported, my fears seemed to be
justified. He agreed that it was best that I should go--but how? The
town was already choked with Americans waiting to "go." If it were
impossible to move any of them across the frontier, what possible chance
was there of exporting me? There was, of course, just one chance that I
could think of--to leave next day with the British Embassy. The
Ambassador suggested that I should ask Sir Edward Goschen if he would
take me, along with the purely British correspondents, who, I learned,
were going in his train.
So now, the United States having obviously exhausted its powers on my
behalf, I threw myself on the mercies of His Britannic Majesty. I found
Sir Edward Goschen unhesitatingly responsive to my request, on the
important condition that the German authorities would permit a
non-Englishman to accompany a safe-conduct party of British subjects of
highly official character! Once again the gates leading out of Germany
seemed barred to me, for my status at the German Foreign Office, as the
afternoon had established, was not exactly that of a _persona grata_ who
had but to ask a favor to have it granted. But, by an act of
Providence, as it then and always since has seemed to me, Ambassador
Gerard strolled into the lobby of the British Embassy while I was in the
midst of conversation with Sir Edward Goschen. The British Ambassador
repeated the conditions on which he would gladly rescue me--the assent
of the German Government--whereupon Mr. Gerard quietly remarked that he
would "look after that." He had little notion, I suppose, of the
herculean effort which would be necessary to give effect to his words.
It was now past six o'clock. The British Embassy train was timed to
leave Berlin at seven next morning, Thursday, August 6. If anything was
going to be done for me, all concerned realized that it would have to be
done soon. "Go home, pack up all you can jam into two suit-cases, and
turn up at the American Embassy at nine o'clock," said Gerard.
No home was ever deserted, I am sure, more reluctantly or so
precipitately as my little _menage_ in Wilmersdorf. It seemed a
woefully inglorious ending to thirteen very happy and fruitful years in
Berlin. I thanked Heaven that my wife and little boy were not there to
be evicted with me. A woman's attachment to the things which have
spelled home--the books, the pictures, the thousand and one household
trinkets, enshrined with priceless value to those who have accumulated
them--is far stronger than a man's. The wrench of separation would have
been correspondingly harder to bear. In the midst of such reveries,
sandwiched between selecting the most essential contents for the two
suit-cases to which I was limited, I had a caller.
"_Herr Direktor_ Kretschmar, of the Hotel Adlon, has come to see you,"
announced _Fraeulein_.
Kretschmar is probably known to more American travelers to Europe than
any other hotel man on the Continent. The Adlon had been Yankee
headquarters in Berlin ever since its opening in the autumn of 1907.
Old man Adlon, its genial founder and proprietor, he of the arc-light
face at midnight, after a liberal evening's libations o'er the flowing
bowl, used to be fond of assuring people that "_mein lieber Freund
Wile_" had "made" the Adlon. If telling people that the Adlon was the
best hotel in Berlin, and reporting in my American dispatches, as
necessity required, that Governor Herrick, Mr. Carnegie, Mr. Schwab,
Doctor David Jayne Hill, Vice-President Fairbanks, Theodore P. Shonts,
John Hays Hammond, Otto H. Kahn or some other famous fellow citizen was
lodged in the marble and bronze caravansary at the head of _Unter den
Linden_--if this "made" the Adlon--I plead guilty to Herr Adlon's
charge. I shall never do it again. I divined at once the object of the
curly-haired Kretschmar's visit. Having graduated, I believe, like many
eminent German hotel keepers, from the humble ranks of hall-porters and
head waiters, he was a past master in obsequious servility. Many a time
I had seen him bow and scrape like a grinning flunky as he welcomed the
arriving or sped the parting guest at the Adlon, but never was he so
cringing a Kretschmar as he stood before me now. He got down to
business without delay.
There had been a "terrible mistake" at the hotel the night before. He
was there to offer the "deepest regret" of both the elder and junior
_Herren Adlon_ that their "best friend" should have been the victim of
"such an outrage" on their premises. They had dismissed no less than
ten members of the hotel staff for complicity in my arrest. The Adlon
hoped, from the bottom of its unoffending heart, that I would "forgive
and forget." Kretschmar, at this point in his _peccavi_, almost broke
down. He was in tears, and, if I had let him, he would probably have
gone down on his knees. If I had known what I was told next day as to
his own connection with my experience at the Adlon, he would not only
have gone down on his knees, but down the stairs of my flat-building as
well. Whether it was he who incited the page-boys, desk-clerks,
elevator-men, chambermaids and waiters to regard me as an "English spy"
I can not say, but, in light of the experience which a colleague,
Alexander Muirhead, a London newspaper-photographer, had in the Adlon
shortly after my arrest, there is at least ground to fear that
Kretschmar may have been something more than an innocent bystander.
"When I asked for you at the desk," Muirhead told me, "a supercilious
clerk, eying me fiercely, referred me to the manager, whereupon I was
escorted into Kretschmar's room. 'I've come to see my friend Wile,' I
explained. 'Your friend Wile's a spy!' snarled Kretschmar, who seemed
beside himself with fury. 'And he's now where he ought to be! As for
you, _mein Herr_, stand there against the wall, hold up your arms, and
be searched for weapons. For all we know, you're a spy, too!' The mere
thought of your name appeared to fill Kretschmar with incontrollable
rage. Having satisfied himself that I had nothing more explosive about
me than some undeveloped films, he allowed me to go my way amid
incoherent mutterings and imprecations about that '---- of a ---- spy,
Wile.' I was, of course, completely mystified by this extraordinary
episode, as I was at that time entirely ignorant of your fate."
Muirhead is a plain-spoken Scotchman, as well as one of Europe's bravest
and most famous "camera men," and although the lachrymose Kretschmar
indignantly repudiates the occurrence, I hope he will not mind if I
prefer to believe Muirhead. The manager of the Adlon still keeps my
memory green. Periodically during the war, whenever some German paper
has outdone itself in dignifying me with vile abuse, Kretschmar has
faithfully marked it in blue pencil and sent it to me by two
routes--Switzerland and Holland--to make sure that it reached me. As I
have not taken the trouble to acknowledge these little tokens of his
abiding interest, I hope he may learn from these pages that they have
been duly received and fill not the least conspicuous niche in my
chamber of German war horrors.
A weepy good-by scene with _Fraeulein_, a parting, lingering look around
my beloved _Arbeitszimmer_--so soon to be ransacked by the German
police--an undying vow from the little woman to guard our Lares and
Penates as if they were her own last earthly possessions, and all was at
an end, so far as my habitat in Berlin was concerned. It has not been
my privilege to say farewell to fireside and dear ones and then leave
for the front in field-gray or khaki, but no soldier-man anywhere in
this war has torn himself away from home ties more sorrowfully than I
turned my back in the gathering dusk of August 5, 1914, on dear old
Helmstedter-strasse. Instinctively I felt that I should never see it
again, and my heart was heavy.
"What's Baron von Stumm got against you?" asked Second Secretary Harvey,
smilingly, at the American Embassy, when I arrived, bag and baggage, at
nine o'clock. "He says you're not an American." Stumm was the chief of
the Anglo-American section of the German Foreign Office. He knew
perfectly well that I am an American. He had entertained me at his own
table in May, 1910, when he gave a luncheon-party in honor of the
American newspaper correspondents stationed in Berlin and those
traveling with Mr. Roosevelt on the occasion of the Colonel's visit to
the Kaiser. Stumm had "nothing against me" in June, I explained to
Harvey, because of his own sweet volition he distinguished me with a
call at my hotel during Kiel Regatta. I could not imagine what had
suddenly come over the scion of the humble Westphalian blacksmith's
house, which was one of the first of the _nouveau riche_ German
industrial tribes to be ennobled. I could only think that, like the
Berlin police, _Legationsrat_ Heilbron, _Herr Direktor_ Kretschmar and
nearly all other Germans, Stumm had temporarily gone mad. If I was "not
an American," it had taken the Imperial German Foreign Office thirteen
years to make the discovery. Some day I am going to send Stumm a
Christmas card. It will be embellished with a gilded birth-certificate
attested by the clerk of the County of La Porte, Indiana.
No one supplied me with the details of the final negotiations which were
necessary to induce the German Government graciously to consent to
permit me to leave Germany alive. I have since learned that my pass was
not secured without some extremely forcible remonstrances and
representations. Stumm had denounced me as a "scoundrel" and in other
knightly terms. Why the German Foreign Office so ardently desired to
prevent my departure, after having earlier in the same day declined to
promise me immunity from physical harm, is a mystery which I trust it
may some day elucidate. To fathom it is beyond my own feeble powers of
divination, and in this narrative of farewell tribulations in the
Fatherland, I have confined myself strictly to facts. I have resolutely
not yielded to the temptation to surmise. But as the official Genesis
of Armageddon is not likely to honor me with mention, I have presumed to
set forth my own diminutive part in it with perhaps a tiring superfluity
of detail. I have the more eagerly ventured to do so because grotesque
versions of the "terms" on which I, an American citizen, if you please,
"secured permission to leave Germany," have been, and still are, for all
I know, in circulation in Berlin. They are believed--and that is the one
saddening thought they inspire in me--by people who were once my
friends, among them Americans who place bread-and-butter business
necessities and social expediency in Germany above the elementary
dictates of gratitude and personal loyalty, which are traits one
encounters even in a _Dachshund_. It is these insufferable lickers of
German bootheels who "have heard" that I "gave my word of honor" to seal
my lips forever "about Germany," to "go back to the United States at
once" (perhaps as press-agent to Dernburg, who was also leaving
Germany), to "renounce all connection with English journalism," and
other pledges of equally imbecilic character. The only "broken pledge"
which the rumor-mongers did not foist upon me was an outright agreement
to join Germany's army of kept journalists. I should have been better
off, financially no doubt, if I had enlisted in that immaculate service,
which is one of the best paid in the world.
My permit to leave Germany, Harvey said, would be issued during the
night and be handed me next morning at the British Embassy. Meantime,
evidently to make assurance doubly sure, Ambassador Gerard gave me in
his own handwriting an attest that I was leaving the country with Sir
Edward Goschen. He affixed to it the great seal of the Embassy, handed
me the note with a merry "Good luck," I wrung his hand in a last grip of
gratitude and good-by, and we parted company.
[Illustration: Ambassador Gerard's Note]
Meantime I had opened negotiations with the Embassy porter to pass the
night on a cot in his lodge, where Tower had bunked after our arrest,
and arranged with him to call me at four-thirty, so that I could be at
the British Embassy well before six o'clock. While I was chatting in
the hallway, Mrs. Gerard came along. "Where are you going to sleep
to-night?" she inquired, solicitously. I told her. She would not hear
of my lodging plans in the porter's basement. There were half-a-dozen
bedrooms in the Embassy, and I must use one of them. Then she hustled
away, in the most motherly fashion, to prepare for me what turned out to
be a _suite-de-luxe_. My last night in Germany was slept on "American
soil." It was not the most restful night I have spent in my life, but
it lingers as the sweetest memory I cherish among a myriad of
recollections which crowded thick one upon another in that great wild
week in Berlin. "And do you like your breakfast eggs boiled three or
four minutes?" was the cheery "Good night" and _Auf Wiedersehen_ I had
from "Molly" Gerard.
At least one German, in addition to my secretary and governess, who were
models of devotion to the last, took the trouble to show me a parting
mark of esteem. He was a colleague, Paul R. Krause, of the
_Lokal-Anzeiger_ staff, a son-in-law of Field Marshal von der Goltz, and
one of the best of fellows. Krause lived abroad so long--his life has
been spent mostly in Turkey, South Africa and South America--that he
will perhaps not mind my saying that he always struck me as effectually
de-Germanized. At any rate, having heard of my plight, he came to the
Embassy late at night to offer me not only fraternal sympathy, but
physical assistance in the form of readiness to become my "body-guard,"
if I really considered myself in personal danger! He could hardly be
made to believe that Heilbron had been "such an ass," when I told of my
parting interview in the Foreign Office. Krause and I exchanged _Auf
Wiedersehen_ in the "American bar" of the Hotel Kaiserhof, round the
corner from the Embassy, where I noticed Doctor Dernburg, August Stein,
of the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, and Doctor Fuchs, of the Deutsche Bank,
gathered dolefully round a beer-table, and amazed, no doubt, to find
Krause in such doubtful company.
I did not seek my downy couch in the Embassy until I had had a farewell
promenade and visit with two very dear newspaper pals, Swing, of the
_Chicago Daily News_, and Feibelman, of the _New York Tribune_ and
_London Express_. Feibelman was still in the throes of the anxiety from
which I was about to be relieved, as the Foreign Office had also refused
him credentials owing to his connection with an English journal. He
sincerely envied my good fortune in being able to escape with the
British Ambassador. I was glad to hear a week later that he too had
eventually contrived, with the American Embassy's assistance, to reach
Holland, where he has done excellent work for his paper during the war.
Swing, Feibelman and I, arm-locked, walked the silent streets around and
about the Embassy until long past midnight, speculating as to what the
red-clotted future had in store for each of us, embittered at Fate for
so ruthlessly disrupting friendships of affectionate intimacy, and
wondering, when all was over, if it ever would be, whether Berlin or
Kamchatka would be the scene of our next reunion....
Something told me that even a twelfth-hour attempt might be made to
hamper my get-away, so, as a "positively last farewell" favor I asked
"Joe" Grew, my rescuer from the police, to escort me to the train.
Though it meant his tumbling out of bed at the unromantic hour of five,
his breezy "Sure, I will" set my mind completely at rest. He arrived at
the appointed minute. The sight of the Stars and Stripes flapping at
the front of his car was a reassuring little picture. They had meant
much to me during the preceding forty-eight hours. At the British
Embassy, which looked more like a baggage-room or express-office struck
by lightning, with the floors littered indiscriminately with
hastily-packed boxes of documents and records, trunks, suit-cases,
golf-bags and batches of clothing hastily slung or strapped into or
around traveling-rugs--and all the other indescribable impedimenta of a
suddenly-retreating army or an evicted family--I found my German pass
awaiting me. It had been delivered to Godfrey Thomas, one of Sir Edward
Goschen's able young attaches, all of whom, like the Ambassador himself,
had given so characteristic an exhibition of British imperturbability
during the final hours of crisis. The pass described me as "the English
newspaper correspondent, Wile." It is reproduced opposite this page. I
treasure it with the same pride which probably inspires a reprieved man
to cherish the document which cheats the hangman.
[Illustration: Facsimile of the Pass]
There was no guard of honor to bid Sir Edward Goschen and his staff
Godspeed from the Wilhelmstrasse. No single German was so poor as to do
them reverence except a couple of sleepy policemen and half-a-dozen
blear-eyed, early-rising Berliners on their way to work. None of them
had yet learned to say _Gott strafe England_, so the lonely cavalcade of
luggage-laden taxis, which were hauling Great Britain's official
representatives on the first stage of their journey out of the enemy's
capital, proceeded on its way without molestation or demonstration.
The very day the Kaiser's ambassador to England, Prince Lichnowsky, was
accorded a departure from London amid honors customarily reserved for a
ruling sovereign. Great Britain's ambassador to Germany was leaving
like a thief in the night, the Imperial Government having requested him,
when shaking the dust of Berlin from his miscreant feet, to slink to the
railway station as inconspicuously as possible and long before the
righteous metropolis waked. Otherwise, it was solicitously suggested,
_Kultur_, giving vent to the holy venom which now filled the Teutonic
soul, might feel constrained to stone the Ambassador afresh. Thus, I,
too, chaperoned by Grew, sneaked out of Berlin.
My old German teacher was right. She said there was no word for
"gentleman" in the Kaiser's language. The fashion in which his people
went to war with England proved it.