On entering Hungary I braced myself to endure the same hostile attitude. To my intense surprise I was everywhere welcomed with great cordiality and received as a sincere friend and protector of the Hungarian people who had been interned in France. The great families of Hungary sent me invitations to visit them on their estates, they threw open their most exclusive clubs, offered me opportunities to view the fighting on the Russian front, and treated me like one of themselves. Of expressions of appreciation and gratitude there was no limit, and they greatly over-emphasized my services. Not only were the nobles thus demonstratively grateful, but in nearly every village and town to which I went I found inhabitants who had returned from internment in France to relate how helpful Monsieur Wood at the American Embassy had been to them. Often I remembered neither the individuals nor the incidents they so gratefully dwelt upon, but the general atmosphere of friendliness thus created was like springtime after frost. In Germany, even after establishing my identity, I have by citizens or German Secret Service men been the object of grossly insulting remarks. In Hungary no one even asked what was my personal bias on the present war, but everyone remembered only the services which the Embassy of neutral America had in France rendered to any Hungarian subject who needed assistance. If the other nations of the Dual Alliance possessed the generosity and courtesy of the Hungarians, people outside the war would find it easier to be neutral in sentiment as well as in deed. CHAPTER XII A GERMAN PRISON-CAMP