The American Ambassador had been acting for Great Britain in the enemy’s country barely thirty-six hours, when Sir Edward Goschen, Great Britain’s retiring Ambassador in Berlin, in his official report on the knightly treatment accorded him and his staff during their last hours on German soil, wrote: "I should also like to mention the great assistance rendered to us all by my American colleague, Mr. Gerard, and his staff. Undeterred by the hooting and hisses with which he was often greeted by the mob on entering and leaving the Embassy, His Excellency came repeatedly to see me, to ask how he could help us and to make arrangements for the safety of stranded British subjects. He extricated many of these from extremely difficult situations at some personal risk to himself and his calmness and _savoir faire_ and his firmness in dealing with the Imperial authorities gave full assurance that the protection of British subjects and interests could not have been left in more efficient and able hands." Nobody who ever knew "Jimmy" Gerard--that is the affectionate way in which old friends and even acquaintances of brief duration almost invariably speak of him--would expect him to be anything in the world except "undeterred" by the cowardly onslaughts of the Berlin barbarians. An expert swimmer, clever amateur boxer, crack shot, volunteer soldier and veteran of New York politics, "Jimmy" Gerard never knew the meaning of the word fear, and the unfailing courage with which he has "stood up" to the Kaiser’s Government throughout the various crises of the war has been in full keeping with his virile temperament. It is sometimes said that our diplomatic system, or such as it is, reduces American ambassadors and ministers to the status of messenger-boys, who have little to do but to carry back and forth between their offices and the foreign ministries to which they are accredited the communications and instructions which Washington sends them. There could, of course, be no more obtuse misconception. Berlin, the capital of _Macht-politik_, is particularly a capital in which everything depends on the manner in which a foreign Government’s views are expressed or its wishes conveyed. It has not been my privilege to be behind the innocuous von Jagow’s screen when "Jimmy" Gerard strolled across the Wilhelms Platz to the ramshackle old _Auswärtiges Amt_, to tell the German Government what Washington thought of this, that or the other of her recurring acts of lawlessness, but I vow that von Jagow has got to know Gerard for just what he is--an American from the top of his extraordinarily well-shaped head to the soles of his feet. The war has brought us many blessings. Among them we may count high the fact that at the capital of the enemy of all mankind we had, ready to speak up and to stand up for us, in gladness or vicissitude, a real man.