I do not know what influence, aside from the telephone conversation, intervened in our behalf that night. But I am sure that conversation had little to do with it beyond perhaps securing an immediate rather than deferred action. Perhaps it was an accident, perhaps a change of opinion at the Military Governor's headquarters as to the sentence that had been passed upon us. At any rate, at the moment we were paying for our dinner and demanding a receipt dated from inside the prison walls (every one of us kept an eye open to newspaper copy in demanding the receipt in such fashion) the door was flung open and a high Government official whom most of us knew personally, entered the room.
His first act was to fling the money from the hands of the hotel servant back upon the table—snatch the receipts, and tear them in pieces.
"Gentlemen, the dinners are on me," was his greeting.
A few hours later the military attaché of the American Embassy who had been roused from his bed, explained that Mr. Herrick would undertake the personal responsibility for our parole. The gates of the Cherche Midi opened. The heavy arm of military authority had lightened; but the free road to the battle front was still closed.
UNDER THE CROIX ROUGE
I never expected to drive a motor ambulance, with badly wounded men, down the Champs Elysées. But I did. I have done many things since the war began that I never expected to do;—but somehow that magnificent Champs Elysées—and ambulances—and groans of wounded seemed a combination entirely outside my wildest imaginations.
This was a result of the eight days' parole, after my release from the Cherche Midi; I was forbidden to write anything concerning my trip to the battle fields.