When the present administration turned out the diplomats it spared the consuls-general and consuls.  It was fortunate for the State Department that it showed this self-control, and fortunate for thousands of Americans who, when the war-cloud burst, were scattered all over Europe.  Our consuls rose to the crisis and rounded them up, supplied them with funds, special trains, and letters of identification, and when they were arrested rescued them from jail.  Under fire from shells and during days of bombardment the American consuls in France and Belgium remained at their posts and protected the people of many nationalities confided to their care.  Only one showed the white feather.  He first removed himself from his post, and then was removed still farther from it by the State Department.  All the other American consuls of whom I heard in Belgium, France, and England were covering themselves with glory and bringing credit to their country.  Nothing disturbed their calm, and at no hour could you catch them idle or reluctant to help a fellow countryman.  Their office hours were from twelve to twelve, and each consulate had taken out an all-night license and thrown away the key.  With four other Americans I was forced to rout one consul out of bed at two in the morning.  He was Colonel Albert W. Swalm, of Iowa, but of late years our representative at Southampton.  That port was in the military zone, and before an American could leave it for Havre it was necessary that his passport should be viseed in London by the French and Belgian consuls-general and in Southampton by Colonel Swalm.  We arrived in Southampton at two in the morning to learn that the boat left at four, and that unless, in the interval, we obtained the autograph and seal of Colonel Swalm she would sail without us.

In the darkness we set forth to seek our consul, and we found that, difficult as it was to leave the docks by sea, it was just as difficult by land.  In war time two o’clock in the morning is no hour for honest men to prowl around wharfs.  So we were given to understand by very wide-awake sentries with bayonets, policemen, and enthusiastic special constables.  But at last we reached the consulate and laid siege.  One man pressed the electric button, kicked the door, and pounded with the knocker, others hurled pebbles at the upper windows, and the fifth stood in the road and sang:  “Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light?”

A policeman arrested us for throwing stones at the consular sign.  We explained that we had hit the sign by accident while aiming at the windows, and that in any case it was the inalienable right of Americans, if they felt like it, to stone their consul’s sign.  He said he always had understood we were a free people, but, “without meaning any disrespect to you, sir, throwing stones at your consul’s coat of arms is almost, as you might say, sir, making too free.”  He then told us Colonel Swalm lived in the suburbs, and in a taxicab started us toward him.