"Well, _Legationsrat_ Esternaux does," I retorted, "because he told me so not five minutes ago, and he said you would issue the necessary credentials." Heilbron, who like all German bureaucrats has the backbone of a crushed worm in the presence of superior authority, or the mere suggestion of it, now reached for his telephone-receiver and asked to be connected with somebody in the Foreign Office. He repeated the object of my call to whomever was at the other end of the line, nodded in assent to something apparently said to him, then turned to me: "It is just as I thought. The Foreign Office can do nothing for you. If you want credentials, you must apply to the police." "But, _Herr Legationsrat_," I persisted, "there can be no objection to your giving me something which will insure me ordinary safety at such a time as this. After all, I’m an American." With a shrug of the shoulders and outflung arms, a German gesture expressing indifference or helplessness, or both, Heilbron observed, sardonically: "For us you are a _Daily Mail_ man--nothing else. You are known everywhere as such. Certainly if you remain here, your position will undoubtedly be a precarious one." It was plain that the ethics which impelled Von Bethmann Hollweg to tear up the Belgian "scrap of paper"--brazen disregard of pledges--were now being pursued in my very insignificant case. The German Foreign Secretary had given a formal undertaking, as I understood it, as to the inviolability of my personal and professional status as an American newspaper man. Not five minutes before, I had been assured by an official of the German Foreign Office in the Foreign Office that the latter was fully aware of the arrangements which Mr. Gerard had effected in my favor. And now another official calmly denied its existence, and, moreover, declared in substance that a United States passport calling upon the friendly German Government "to permit Frederic William Wile safely and freely to pass, and, in case of need, to give him all lawful aid and protection," was not worth the parchment on which it was engraved. International law was being refashioned in Berlin in a hurry.