him: "If the
American Minister had delivered this message what would have been its
reception?" Without an instant's hesitation, M. Davignon replied: "We
should have resented his action and should have declined to receive the
communication."

That was all I wanted to know and I was ready to go back to the
Legation.

I took Baron van der Elst home in the car and had the pleasure of seeing
him explain who he was to several Gardes Civiques, who held up the car
from time to time. He was very good-natured about it, and only resented
the interruptions to what he was trying to say. His son is in the army
and he has no news of him. As he got out of the car he remarked that if
it were not so horrible, the mere interest of events would be enough to
make these days wonderful.

When I got back to the Legation and reported the result of my visit, we
went to work and framed a telegram to Washington, giving the text of
the German message, explaining that we had nothing to prove its
authenticity and adding that we had reason to believe that the Belgian
Government would not accept it. The same message was sent to The Hague.
This pleasant exercise with the code kept us going until four in the
morning. Eugene, the wonder chauffeur, had no orders, but curled up on
the front seat of his car and waited to take me home. He was also on
hand when I got up a couple of hours later, to take me back to the
Legation. Chauffeurs like that are worth having.

When I came in this morning the place was packed with Germans. Some
cheerful idiot had inserted a notice in the papers that all Germans were
to be run out of the country, and that they should immediately apply to
the American Legation. As the flood poured in, Leval got on the
telephone to the Surete Publique and found out the true facts. Then we
posted a notice in the hall. But that was not enough. As is always the
case with humans, they all knew better than to pay any attention to what
the notice said and each one of the hundred or more callers had some
reason to insist on talking it over with somebody. When they once got
hold of one of us, it was next to impossible to get away without
listening to the whole story of their lives. All they had to do was to
go down to the German Consulate-General, where we had people waiting to
tell them all there was to know. It was hard to make them realise that
by taking up all our time in this way, they were preventing us from
doing things that were really