A correspondent sends the following by way of Antwerp:
“Yesterday morning a little man wearing an American army shirt, a pair
of British officer’s breeches, French puttees and a Seaforth
Highlander’s helmet, and carrying a camera the size of a parlor
phonograph, blew into the American Consulate in Ostend while I was
paying a flying visit there. He announced that his name was Donald C.
Thompson, a photographer from Topeka, Kan. Thompson made nine attempts
to get from Paris to the front. He was arrested nine times and spent
nine nights in prison. Each time he was taken before a military
tribunal. Utterly ignoring the subordinate officers, he would demand to
see the commanding officer. He would grasp that astonished official by
the hand and nearly wring it off, meanwhile inquiring solicitously after
the General’s health and that of his family.
“‘How many languages do you speak?’ I asked.
“‘Three,’ said he--‘English, American, and Yankee.’
“On one occasion he explained to the French officer who had arrested him
that he was in search of his wife and daughter, who were dying somewhere
on the Belgian frontier. The officer was so affected by the pathos of
the story that he wept on Thompson’s neck and sent him forward in a Red
Cross automobile.”