With a shrug of the shoulders and outflung arms, a German gesture expressing indifference or helplessness, or both, Heilbron observed, sardonically: "For us you are a Daily Mail man--nothing else. You are known everywhere as such. Certainly if you remain here, your position will undoubtedly be a precarious one."
It was plain that the ethics which impelled Von Bethmann Hollweg to tear up the Belgian "scrap of paper"--brazen disregard of pledges--were now being pursued in my very insignificant case. The German Foreign Secretary had given a formal undertaking, as I understood it, as to the inviolability of my personal and professional status as an American newspaper man. Not five minutes before, I had been assured by an official of the German Foreign Office in the Foreign Office that the latter was fully aware of the arrangements which Mr. Gerard had effected in my favor. And now another official calmly denied its existence, and, moreover, declared in substance that a United States passport calling upon the friendly German Government "to permit Frederic William Wile safely and freely to pass, and, in case of need, to give him all lawful aid and protection," was not worth the parchment on which it was engraved. International law was being refashioned in Berlin in a hurry.
Once again I was compelled to flee to the American Ambassador for protection--reluctantly enough, for I had already usurped far more of his time than one citizen is entitled to. I told him that the German Foreign Office was trying to convert me into a man without a country; not only that, but that its cheerful intimation as to my "position" being "undoubtedly precarious" rang clearly ominous in my ears. The Ambassador shared that view. He was of the opinion, when he saw me earlier in the day, that my alarm was unwarranted. From what other American newspaper men had meantime reported, my fears seemed to be justified. He agreed that it was best that I should go--but how? The town was already choked with Americans waiting to "go." If it were impossible to move any of them across the frontier, what possible chance was there of exporting me? There was, of course, just one chance that I could think of--to leave next day with the British Embassy. The Ambassador suggested that I should ask Sir Edward Goschen if he would take me, along with the purely British correspondents, who, I learned, were going in his train.
So now, the United States having obviously exhausted its powers on my behalf, I threw myself on the mercies of His Britannic Majesty. I found Sir Edward Goschen unhesitatingly responsive to my request, on the important condition that the German authorities would permit a non-Englishman to accompany a safe-conduct party of British subjects of highly official character! Once again the gates leading out of Germany seemed barred to me, for my status at the German Foreign Office, as the afternoon had established, was not exactly that of a persona grata who had but to ask a favor to have it granted. But, by an act of Providence, as it then and always since has seemed to me, Ambassador Gerard strolled into the lobby of the British Embassy while I was in the midst of conversation with Sir Edward Goschen. The British Ambassador repeated the conditions on which he would gladly rescue me--the assent of the German Government--whereupon Mr. Gerard quietly remarked that he would "look after that." He had little notion, I suppose, of the herculean effort which would be necessary to give effect to his words.
It was now past six o'clock. The British Embassy train was timed to leave Berlin at seven next morning, Thursday, August 6. If anything was going to be done for me, all concerned realized that it would have to be done soon. "Go home, pack up all you can jam into two suit-cases, and turn up at the American Embassy at nine o'clock," said Gerard.
No home was ever deserted, I am sure, more reluctantly or so precipitately as my little ménage in Wilmersdorf. It seemed a woefully inglorious ending to thirteen very happy and fruitful years in Berlin. I thanked Heaven that my wife and little boy were not there to be evicted with me. A woman's attachment to the things which have spelled home--the books, the pictures, the thousand and one household trinkets, enshrined with priceless value to those who have accumulated them--is far stronger than a man's. The wrench of separation would have been correspondingly harder to bear. In the midst of such reveries, sandwiched between selecting the most essential contents for the two suit-cases to which I was limited, I had a caller.
"Herr Direktor Kretschmar, of the Hotel Adlon, has come to see you," announced Fräulein.
Kretschmar is probably known to more American travelers to Europe than any other hotel man on the Continent. The Adlon had been Yankee headquarters in Berlin ever since its opening in the autumn of 1907. Old man Adlon, its genial founder and proprietor, he of the arc-light face at midnight, after a liberal evening's libations o'er the flowing bowl, used to be fond of assuring people that "mein lieber Freund Wile" had "made" the Adlon. If telling people that the Adlon was the best hotel in Berlin, and reporting in my American dispatches, as necessity required, that Governor Herrick, Mr. Carnegie, Mr. Schwab, Doctor David Jayne Hill, Vice-President Fairbanks, Theodore P. Shonts, John Hays Hammond, Otto H. Kahn or some other famous fellow citizen was lodged in the marble and bronze caravansary at the head of Unter den Linden--if this "made" the Adlon--I plead guilty to Herr Adlon's charge. I shall never do it again. I divined at once the object of the curly-haired Kretschmar's visit. Having graduated, I believe, like many eminent German hotel keepers, from the humble ranks of hall-porters and head waiters, he was a past master in obsequious servility. Many a time I had seen him bow and scrape like a grinning flunky as he welcomed the arriving or sped the parting guest at the Adlon, but never was he so cringing a Kretschmar as he stood before me now. He got down to business without delay.
There had been a "terrible mistake" at the hotel the night before. He was there to offer the "deepest regret" of both the elder and junior Herren Adlon that their "best friend" should have been the victim of "such an outrage" on their premises. They had dismissed no less than ten members of the hotel staff for complicity in my arrest. The Adlon hoped, from the bottom of its unoffending heart, that I would "forgive and forget." Kretschmar, at this point in his peccavi, almost broke down. He was in tears, and, if I had let him, he would probably have gone down on his knees. If I had known what I was told next day as to his own connection with my experience at the Adlon, he would not only have gone down on his knees, but down the stairs of my flat-building as well. Whether it was he who incited the page-boys, desk-clerks, elevator-men, chambermaids and waiters to regard me as an "English spy" I can not say, but, in light of the experience which a colleague, Alexander Muirhead, a London newspaper-photographer, had in the Adlon shortly after my arrest, there is at least ground to fear that Kretschmar may have been something more than an innocent bystander.
"When I asked for you at the desk," Muirhead told me, "a supercilious clerk, eying me fiercely, referred me to the manager, whereupon I was escorted into Kretschmar's room. 'I've come to see my friend Wile,' I explained. 'Your friend Wile's a spy!' snarled Kretschmar, who seemed beside himself with fury. 'And he's now where he ought to be! As for you, mein Herr, stand there against the wall, hold up your arms, and be searched for weapons. For all we know, you're a spy, too!' The mere thought of your name appeared to fill Kretschmar with incontrollable rage. Having satisfied himself that I had nothing more explosive about me than some undeveloped films, he allowed me to go my way amid incoherent mutterings and imprecations about that '---- of a ---- spy, Wile.' I was, of course, completely mystified by this extraordinary episode, as I was at that time entirely ignorant of your fate."