, no letters of recall ever
having been presented. The fact that the American Ambassador is
accredited to none of these courts is a distinct disadvantage
because without letters of credence he does not come into contact
with any of the twenty-four rulers of Germany who control the
Bundesrat in which their representatives sit, voting as they are
told by the kings, grand dukes and princes. A number of these
kings and princelings, combining in the Bundesrat, can outvote
the powerful king of Prussia. But they don't dare!

CHAPTER XI

ROYALTY'S RECREATION

I had a shooting estate about twenty miles from Berlin, one that
I could reach by automobile in forty-five minutes from the door
of the Embassy. Because of the strict German game laws I had
better shooting there than within two hundred miles of large
cities in America.

There seemed to be something to shoot there almost every day of
the year. On the sixteenth of May the season opened for male
roe--a very small deer. About the first of August the ducks,
which breed in northern Germany, can be shot. These were mallards
and there were about two thousand or more on a lake on my
preserve. We usually shot them by digging blinds in the oat
fields, shooting them after sunset as they flew from the lake to
feed in the newly harvested grain. The season for Hungarian
partridge opened on August 20th. These were shot over dogs in the
stubble and in the potato fields. After a few weeks partridges
became very wild and we then shot them with a kite. When we had
put up a covey out of range and marked where they went down in a
potato patch or field, perhaps of lucern or clover, a small boy
would fly a kite made in the form of a hawk over the field. This
kept the partridges from flying and they would lie while the dogs
pointed until we put them up.

By October 1st pheasants could be shot; English pheasants become
wild. These roosted in the trees at night and so escaped the
plentiful foxes. Later on came shooting at long ranges, after
they had collected in bands, of the female roedeer and also the
hare shooting. Rabbits were shot at all times, and in November
and December and January on foggy days it was not difficult to
get a wild goose.

The hares were shot in cold weather, after the snow was on the
ground, by walking in line of ten or fifteen beaters with two or
three guns at intervals along the line and later, when the hares
were very wild and the weather very cold, by w