_Hotel Esplanade, Berlin, May 29th._
We got to Berlin. I must say I should have liked to wrap up in the
American flag and sleep on Mr. Gerard's doorstep myself. The inspection
this time was really too disgusting to repeat. I decided that, if I
ever again heard any one say: "It's our orders," I should kill him.
Orders apparently mean: Be as nasty to the man who can't hit you back
as your imagination will allow....
We lunched at the Embassy the day after we got here. Mrs. Gerard
is charming and Mr. Gerard one of the most amusing men I ever met.
Brusque, frank, quick-witted, a typically judicial mind, and a
typically undiplomatic manner, he is the last person in the world a
German would understand. His dry, slangy, American humor, his sudden
lapses into the comic in moments of solemnity, his irreverence for the
great, shock the worthy German. That he treats the Emperor in any other
way than as a business acquaintance is most unlikely....
The Embassy is filled with Harvard secretaries, whose lips, as Mr. Egan
says, are still wet with the milk of Groton. The ballroom is bulging
with stenographers. Never did the world see its few remaining diplomats
so overworked. Instead of coming down and reading the papers for two
hours a day, they now all work mornings, afternoons, and sometimes
evenings.