Carelessly leaving behind me my typewriting-machine, fifty-pfennig map of the North Sea, copies of my preceding week’s cablegrams, scissors, paste-pot, carbon-paper, the latest Berlin newspapers, and other telltale emblems of my infamy, I went to the American Embassy to discuss the latest and obviously greatest turn of the war kaleidoscope with Judge Gerard. There were a thousand and one questions to level at him. Was it true that Sir Edward Goschen had already asked him to take charge of Great Britain’s interests? What would panic-stricken American war refugees do now, with British warships blockading the German coasts? Would it any longer be safe in Berlin for our people to talk their own language in public? Would the United States Government be making any declaration of neutrality, or something of that sort, to the German Government? Was the Embassy still in direct communication with Washington? Could it facilitate the transmission of our news-cablegrams to New York or Chicago? These were the things the journalistic brethren _en masse_ were anxious to know--and I recall vividly that the Ambassador and his staff, despite a week of worries unprecedented, were still smiling and managing to reply to every question, however abstract or unanswerable, with invincible equanimity. I have since heard that there were fellow citizens who found Gerard, Grew, Harvey and Ruddock "inattentive." I suppose they were the patriots who couldn’t understand why local checks on the First National Bank of Roaring Branch, Pennsylvania, "weren’t good" at the Embassy, and who were "peeved" because the Ambassador couldn’t tell them why Uncle Sam hadn’t already started a fleet of dreadnoughts and liners-_de-luxe_ to Hamburg and Bremen to rescue his stranded tourist family. Or one of the complainants, who was "going to write to Bryan" about our "inefficient diplomatic service," may have been that plutocratic dame from Boston who demanded that Gerard should at least be able to commandeer "a special train" for the Americans, even if every military line in all Germany was at that hour choked with troop-transports. And yet we Yankees rank in effete Europe as a cool-headed and common-sense race!