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.