"Mrs. Bullitt, if it were not for American ammunition, the war would have ended in six months."
"Yes, battles are dangerous, aren't they?" Whereas, I might mention our Spanish war and certain famous German munition factories. So, the crest of idiotic amiability being reached, we move on to the weather.
Count Szechenyi, the Austro-Hungarian Minister, thinks it would be a good plan for us to go to Vienna and Pest, as so little has been seen of them during the war. He has very kindly written to people there that we are coming. I played tennis with him this afternoon at the club, he in his suspenders and monocle, and I in street clothes, with a pair of borrowed tennis shoes two inches too long on my feet, and a racket like a spoon, as a means of defence, in my hand....
III—WITH AMBASSADOR GERARD IN BERLIN
Hotel Esplanade, Berlin, May 29th.
We got to Berlin. I must say I should have liked to wrap up in the American flag and sleep on Mr. Gerard's doorstep myself. The inspection this time was really too disgusting to repeat. I decided that, if I ever again heard any one say: "It's our orders," I should kill him. Orders apparently mean: Be as nasty to the man who can't hit you back as your imagination will allow....
We lunched at the Embassy the day after we got here. Mrs. Gerard is charming and Mr. Gerard one of the most amusing men I ever met. Brusque, frank, quick-witted, a typically judicial mind, and a typically undiplomatic manner, he is the last person in the world a German would understand. His dry, slangy, American humor, his sudden lapses into the comic in moments of solemnity, his irreverence for the great, shock the worthy German. That he treats the Emperor in any other way than as a business acquaintance is most unlikely....
The Embassy is filled with Harvard secretaries, whose lips, as Mr. Egan says, are still wet with the milk of Groton. The ballroom is bulging with stenographers. Never did the world see its few remaining diplomats so overworked. Instead of coming down and reading the papers for two hours a day, they now all work mornings, afternoons, and sometimes evenings.