After securing this diplomatic triumph Wangenheim was granted a vacation--he had certainly earned it--and Giers, the Russian Ambassador, went off on a vacation at the same time. Baroness Wangenheim explained to me--I was ignorant at this time of all these subtleties of diplomacy--precisely what these vacations signified. Wangenheim’s leave of absence, she said, meant that the German Foreign Office regarded the Von Sanders episode as closed--and closed with a German victory. Giers’s furlough, she explained, meant that Russia declined to accept this point of view and that, so far as Russia was concerned, the Von Sanders affair had not ended. I remember writing to my family that, in this mysterious Near-Eastern diplomacy, the nations talked to each other with acts, not words, and I instanced Baroness Wangenheim’s explanation of these diplomatic vacations as a case in point. An incident which took place in my own house opened all our eyes to how seriously Von Sanders regarded this military mission. On February 18th, I gave my first diplomatic dinner; General Von Sanders and his two daughters attended, the General sitting next to my daughter Ruth. My daughter, however, did not have a very enjoyable time; this German field marshal, sitting there in his gorgeous uniform, his breast all sparkling with medals, hardly said a word throughout the whole meal. He ate his food silently and sulkily, all my daughter’s attempts to enter into conversation evoking only an occasional surly monosyllable. The behaviour of this great military leader was that of a spoiled child. At the end of the dinner Von Mutius, the German chargé d’affaires, came up to me in a high state of excitement. It was some time before he could sufficiently control his agitation to deliver his message. “You have made a terrible mistake, Mr. Ambassador,” he said. “What is that?” I asked, naturally taken aback. “You have greatly offended Field Marshal Von Sanders. You have placed him at the dinner lower in rank than the foreign ministers. He is the personal representative of the Kaiser and as such is entitled to equal rank with the ambassadors. He should have been placed ahead of the cabinet ministers and the foreign ministers.” So I had affronted the Emperor himself! This, then, was the explanation of Von Sanders’ boorish behaviour. Fortunately, my position was an impregnable one. I had not arranged the seating precedence at this dinner; I had sent the list of my guests to the Marquis Pallavicini, the Austrian Ambassador and dean of the diplomatic corps, and the greatest authority in Constantinople on such delicate points as this. The Marquis had returned the list, marking in red ink against each name the order of precedence--1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. I still possess this document as it came from the Austrian Embassy, and General Von Sanders’ name appears with the numerals “13” against it. I must admit, however, that “the 13th chair” did bring him pretty well to the foot of the table.