The Assault: Germany Before the Outbreak and England in War-TimeWile, Frederic William
History
The Assault: Germany Before the Outbreak and England in War-Time
Wile, Frederic William
World War, 1914-1918
embellished with saber-cuts. They had been stopped in England on their
way home to fight, but were graciously permitted to return whence they
came. Timorous friends beseeched me to beware of "saying too much" about
the Germans in the hearing of these would-be soldiers of the Kaiser; but
I escaped molestation and even heard next day that I had been "most
fair."
Not till many days after we landed in New York did I know that two very
eminent representatives of Allied Powers were sandwiched among the
_Campania’s_ home-fleeing American passengers--Sir Cecil Spring-Rice,
British Ambassador at Washington, and his colleague of France, the
cultured Monsieur Jusserand. They had crossed in impenetrable incognito.
Not only were their names missing from the passenger-list, but if they
had ever promenaded or eaten or smoked, they must have done it in
solitary enjoyment of their own exclusive society, as nobody during
seven whole days and nights ever heard of them or saw them, or, what is
vastly more miraculous aboard-ship, ever even talked about them.
American newspapermen afloat in a liner like to flatter themselves that
nothing with even the remotest odor of news ever escapes their
insatiable quest. I had myself bored with strenuous pertinacity into
every news-well in the _Campania_, and there were many. But Spring-Rice
and Jusserand eluded me as thoroughly as if they had been contraband
stored away in the hold, or stokers who only come to life out of the
black hole of Calcutta once or twice a trip, when everybody with a white
face is tight asleep. Bernstorff came in two days later like a brass
band. The British and French Ambassadors broke into the United States,
apparently, in felt-slippers through a back door on a dark night. The
manner of the respective arrivals of the German and the Allied
Ambassadors was to be characteristic of their conduct in the country
throughout the war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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