now. But I do know that she stood to her guns and kept
her honor intact and immortal.

The second request was of a different quality. It came to me from the
Imperial German Legation at The Hague. It was a note for transmission to
the Belgian Government, beginning with a reference to the fall of Liege
and the hopeless folly of attempting to resist the German invasion, and
continuing with an intimation of the terrible consequences which would
follow Belgium's persistence in her mad idea of keeping her word of
honor. In effect the note was a curious combination of an insult and a
threat. I promptly and positively refused to transmit it or to have
anything to do with it.

"But why," said the German counsellor, sitting by my study fire---a
Prussian of the Prussians--"why do you refuse? You are a neutral, a
friend of both parties. Why not simply transmit the note to your
colleague in Brussels as you did before? You are not in any way
responsible for its contents."

"Quite so," I answered, "and thank God for that! But suppose you had a
quarrel with a neighbor in the Rheinland, who had positively declined a
proposition which you had made to him. And suppose, the ordinary
post-boy services being interrupted, you asked me to convey to your
neighbor a note which began by addressing him as a 'silly s-- of a
b----,' and ended by telling him that if he did not agree you would
certainly grind him to powder. Would you expect me to play the post-boy
for such a billet-doux on the ground that I was not responsible for its
contents and was a friend of both parties?"

"Well," replied the counsellor, laughing at the North American
directness of my language, "probably not." So he folded up the note and
took it away. What became of it I do not know nor care.

The third request was of still another quality. It came from the
Imperial Austro-Hungarian Legation, which very politely asked me to
transmit a message in the American diplomatic code to my colleague in
Brussels for delivery to the Austro-Hungarian Legation, which still
lingered in that city. The first and last parts of the message were in
plain language, good English, quite innocent and proper. But the kernel
of the despatch was written in the numerical secret cipher of Vienna,
which of course I was unable to read. I drew attention to this, and
asked mildly how I could be expected to put this passage into our code
without knowing what the words were. The answer was that it would not