De Leval adroitly turned this to the best advantage.  It was the last straw.  The General capitulated.  Walking over into the adjoining room, he wrote on the blue folder:  “Er ist frei gelassen.”  I would give lots for those folders; but, though safety was by no means certain, I found I yet had nerve enough to take a venture.  When I was bidden to pick up my papers strewn across the desk, I tried my best to gather in some of the other documents.  Besides the copies of the letter I wrote to the Ambassador the only thing I got on my case was this letter, written by Mr. Whitlock to Baron von de Lancken, the official German representative in charge of the dealings with the American Embassy.  It has the well-known Whitlock straight-from-the-shoulder point and brevity to it.

Bruxelles, le 29 Septembre, 1914, excellence: 

J’apprends a l’instant que Mr. Williams, citoyen Americain residente a l’Hotel Metropole, aurait ete arrete lundi par les Autorites allemande.

Pour le cas ou il n’aurait pas encore ete mis en liberte, je vous saurais gre de me faire connaitre les raisons de cette arrestation, et de me donner le moyen de communiquer aussitot avec lui, pour pourvoir eventuellement lui fournir toute protection dont il pourrait avoir besoin.

Veuillez agreer, Excellence, la nouvelle assurance de ma haute consideration.

(S) brand Whitlock.  A Son Excellence Monsieur le Baron von der Lancken, Bruxelles.

Before my final liberation I was escorted into the biggest and busiest office of all.

Here I was given an Erlaubnis to travel by military train through Liege into Germany, and from there on out by way of Holland.  The destination that I had in mind was Ghent, but passing through the lines thereto was forbidden.  Instead of going directly the thirty miles in three hours, I must go around almost a complete circle, about three hundred miles in three days.  But nothing could take the edge off my joy.  A strange exhilaration and a wild desire to celebrate possessed me.  With such a mood I had not hitherto been sympathetic; on the contrary, I had been much grieved by the sundry manifestations of what I deemed a base spirit in certain Belgians.  One of them had said, “Just wait until the Allies’ army comes marching into Brussels!  Oh, then I am going out on one glorious drunk!” In the light of the splendid sacrifices of his fellow-Belgians, this struck me as a shocking degradation of the human spirit.

I could not then understand such a view-point.  But I could now.  In the removal of the long abnormal tension one’s pent-up spirits seek out an equally abnormal channel for expression.  I, too, felt like an uncaged spirit suddenly let loose.  I didn’t get drunk, but I very nearly got arrested again.  In my headlong ecstasy I was deaf to the warnings of a German guard saying, “Passage into this street is forbidden.”  I checked myself just in time, and in chastened spirit made my way back to the Metropole.