My attention has been called to the omission of the Angel Gabriel, Mary Pickford and Ty Cobb from the list of my intimate friends in the above document.  That was not meant as a slight—­purely an oversight.  At any rate, I felt that the long list of men whose names were written here would make the right response to any cablegram.  To atone for dragging them into the affray I call attention to the highly deferential and decorative manner in which I referred to them.  Be it remembered that this document was prepared quite as much for German eyes as for the Ambassador’s, and nothing gives a man standing and respect in the Teutonic mind as much as a name fearfully and wonderfully adorned.  I resolved that my importance was not to suffer from lack of glory in my friends.  I bestowed more honorary degrees on them than the average small college does in ten commencements.  So lavish was I that my friends hardly recognize their own titular selves.  An officer designated the guard who would deliver the letter.  I gave it to him along with a franc, which he protestingly accepted.  He reported that it was delivered to Javert.  That was the last I ever heard from that message.  I imagine that it was by no means the last that the German authorities heard from it, for when I related the story to the Ambassador some time later I saw a characteristic Brand Whitlock letter a-brewing.  My message to Vice-Consul Naesmith and to the Hotel Metropole shared a like fate—­they were undelivered.

I simply offer the facts as they are.  It may be that the courtesies of polite intercourse are not easy to observe in war.  Certainly they were not obtrusive in Belgium.  In extenuation it may be said that the Brussels postmen had struck about this time; but, on the other hand, through the forbidden shutters I saw fully fifty German Boy Scouts marshaled in the courtyard below.

I had noticed them before as messengers going down the most unguarded by-ways of the slums, quite as if they were agents of a welcomed instead of hated army.  They rode along serenely as if totally unconscious of the shining targets that they made.  I felt certain that no American gang would let slip this opportunity for the heaving of a brick.  Were Brussels boys made of flabbier stuff?  Not if Belgian sons were of the same stripe as Belgian fathers.  The fact then that none of these German Scouts were massacred, as was to be expected by all the rules of the game, showed how the threat of reprisals operated to curb the strongest natural impulses of the spirit.  I presumed that one of these Scouts was speeding posthaste to the Ambassador with my note, but he never did.

I am not berating the Germans.  They were running their own war according to their own code.  In this code reporters, onlookers, and uplifters of any brand were anathema.