On Monday, August 24, I was lunching at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Bernstorff had landed that forenoon in the Dutch liner, _Noordam_. To my astonishment, the Ambassador, whom I had noticed lunching a few tables away with James Speyer, arose and advanced across the restaurant to where I was sitting. Bernstorff and I were old acquaintances. I liked him. Most newspapermen did. Through long residence in Washington, he had acquired an almost Rooseveltian art in dealing with us. I used to see him regularly during his periodical official visits to Berlin, having known him professionally from the days he was Councillor of the German Embassy in London during the Boer War. Few Americans are aware that Count Bernstorff was born in England while his father was serving as Prussian Minister to the Court of St. James. History was destined to repeat itself in the case of the son, who not only adopted the career of his father, but when he became an ambassador to a neutral country during one of Germany’s wars was called upon to occupy himself just as the elder Count Bernstorff had done in London in 1870-71. The father put in most of his time in England in a vain endeavor to persuade Queen Victoria’s Government to place an embargo on shipment of British arms and ammunition to the French. He failed as lamentably in that effort as his son and heir was destined to do in the United States under almost identical circumstances forty-four years later. Smiling his most persuasive diplomatic grimace, Count Bernstorff went straight to the object of his luncheon-table call on me. "Wile," he began, "you’ve gone back on us! I can see your hand at work in the attitude the _New York Times_ has taken up." I could not imagine at what the genial Count was driving. Perhaps he had read in the preceding day’s _Times_ my long account of the beginnings of the war as I observed them in Berlin, or my introduction to _The Times’_ exclusive publication of the German White Paper, printed that day. "Your Excellency flatters me," I ventured to rejoin. "I have only been in the country since Saturday night, and my activities at _The Times_ office have been limited to the very prosaic duty of handing in several wads of ’copy’ written aboard-ship."