CHAPTER XX. — GENERAL VON LICHTENSTEIN
That afternoon, Edestone took occasion to call at the American Embassy, where he found that Ambassador Gerard, broken down by the strain of the first few months of the war, during which he had accomplished such wonderful work, had been forced to go to Wiesbaden for a rest.
The Ambassador had left in charge Mr. William Jones, First Secretary of Legation, who with his wife was occupying the Embassy and representing the United States. The doctors had warned the Secretary that the Ambassador’s condition was such that he must have absolute quiet, and that he should under no circumstances be troubled or even communicated with in regard to affairs of state. Jones was, therefore, to all intents and purposes the Ambassador.
This suited Edestone’s plans perfectly, for Jones was only a few years older than himself and he had known him intimately since boyhood.
His friend received him with almost the delight of a man who has been marooned on a desert island and was pining for the sight of a friendly face.
“Well, well, Jack,” he said, “what foolish thing is this that you are up to now? We have received the most extraordinary instructions from the State Department—I gather that the Secretary of State has either lost his mind or that you have got him under a spell, and then with your hypnotic power have suggested that he order us to do things which we could not do in peace times and which are simply out of the question now. Don’t you people over home understand that these Germans, from the Kaiser to the lowest peasant, are all in such an exalted state of Anglophobia that they regard everyone with distrust, and are especially suspicious of us. My advice to you, as Lawrence would say,”—referring to one of his under-secretaries, a college mate and intimate friend of Edestone’s,—“is to ‘can that high-brow stuff’ and come down to earth.”
“Now, speaking for myself as your friend, I advise you to go and see General von Lichtenstein, whom you will find a delightful old gentleman but as wise as Solomon’s aunt. Talk to him like a sweet little boy, and then come back to the Legation and stop with us while you see something of the war. I can take you to within one hundred and fifty miles of the firing line and show you the crack regiments of Germany looking as happy and sleek as if they were merely out for one of the yearly manoeuvres. I would have difficulty, though, in showing you any of the wounded, as they are very careful to see that we are not offended by any of the horrors that one reads of in the American papers.”
“Berlin is being forced to fiddle, eh, while Germany is burning?”
“Yes, she suggests the hysterical condition of Paris just before the Reign of Terror, while I, like Benjamin Franklin, in ‘undertaker’s clothes’ in the midst of barbaric splendour, wait for the inevitable.”
“Is your face, like his, ‘as well known as that of the moon’?” asked Edestone.