“Yes. We’re all there, Miss Ryerson and her brother and Widding and I.”
“Call up the hotel—quick. We must know about this.”
A minute later I had Miss Ryerson on the ‘phone and as soon as I heard her voice I knew that something was wrong.
“What does she say?” asked the general anxiously, as I hung up the receiver.
“She is very much distressed. She says Widding and her brother disappeared from the hotel last night and no one has any idea where they are.”
Here were startling happenings and the developments were even more startling, but, before following these threads of mystery (days passed and they were still unravelled) I must set forth events that immediately succeeded the rupture of peace negotiations. I have reason to know that the Committee of Twenty-one brought pressure upon our peace commissioners, through Washington and the public press, with the result that their attitude stiffened towards the enemy and presently became almost defiant, so that on October 2, 1921, all efforts towards peace were abandoned. And on October 3 it was officially announced that the United States and Germany were again at war.
CHAPTER XVIII. — I WITNESS THE BATTLE OF THE SUSQUEHANNA FROM VINCENT ASTOR’S AEROPLANE
During the next week, in the performance of my newspaper duties, I visited Washington and Baltimore, both of these cities being now in imminent danger of attack, the latter from von Hindenburg’s army south of Philadelphia, the former from the newly landed German expedition that was encamped on the shores of Chesapeake Bay near Norfolk, Virginia, which was already occupied by the enemy.