“This is the difference between your ambassadors and ours,” he said.  “An English ambassador won’t let you in to see him; your American ambassador comes out to see you.”  However true that may be, it was extremely fortunate that when war came we should have had a man at the storm-centre so admirably efficient.

Our embassy was not embarrassed nor was it greatly helped by the presence in Paris of two other American ambassadors:  Mr. Sharp, the ambassador-elect, and Mr. Robert Bacon, the ambassador that was.  That at such a crisis these gentlemen should have chosen to come to Paris and remain there showed that for an ambassador tact is not absolutely necessary.

Mr. Herrick was exceedingly fortunate in his secretaries, Robert Woods Bliss and Arthur H. Frazier.  Their training in the diplomatic service made them most valuable.  With him, also, as a volunteer counsellor, was H. Perceval Dodge, who, after serving in diplomatic posts in six countries, was thrown out of the service by Mr. Bryan to make room for a lawyer from Danville, Ky.  Dodge was sent over to assist in distributing the money voted by Congress, and Herrick, knowing his record, signed him on to help him in the difficult task of running the affairs of the embassies of four countries, three of which were at war.  Dodge, Bliss, and Frazier were able to care for these embassies because, though young in years, in the diplomatic service they have had training and experience.  In this crisis they proved the need of it.  For the duties they were, and still are, called upon to perform it is not enough that a man should have edited a democratic newspaper or stumped the State for Bryan.  A knowledge of languages, of foreign countries, and of foreigners, their likes and their prejudices, good manners, tact, and training may not, in the eyes of the administration, seem necessary, but, in helping the ninety million people in whose interest the diplomat is sent abroad, these qualifications are not insignificant.

One might say that Brand Whitlock, who is so splendidly holding the fort at Brussels, in the very centre of the conflict, is not a trained diplomat.  But he started with an excellent knowledge of the French language, and during the eight years in which he was mayor of Toledo he must have learned something of diplomacy, responsibility, and of the way to handle men—­even German military governors.  He is, in fact, the right man in the right place.  In Belgium all men, Belgians, Americans, Germans, speak well of him.  In one night he shipped out of Brussels, in safety and comfort, five thousand Germans; and when the German army advanced upon that city it was largely due to him and to the Spanish minister, the Marquis Villalobar, that Brussels did not meet the fate of Antwerp.  He has a direct way of going at things.  One day, while the Belgian Government still was in Brussels and Whitlock in charge of the German legation, the chief justice called upon him.  It was suspected, he said, that on the roof of the German legation, concealed in the chimney, was a wireless outfit.  He came to suggest that the American minister, representing the German interests, and the chief justice should appoint a joint commission to investigate the truth of the rumor, to take the testimony of witnesses, and make a report.