readth, and escaped disaster only because we happened to have
one of the great men of history as President. The ultimate victory was
won at a cost of which the following items were only a part:

750,000 lives.
10,000 million dollars in national debt and pensions.
25,000 million dollars in property damage.

All this would have been prevented by a protective expenditure of 75
millions a year.

No more fatal delusion was ever cherished than the belief that "it
takes two to make a quarrel." In world history it has seldom needed
two to make a quarrel. Did Belgium quarrel with Germany?

Our legation in Berne has always been the most isolated, humdrum spot
on earth. People stationed here nearly died of ennui; nothing ever
happened, until all Europe suddenly was plunged into the conflagration
of war, and then Berne became, of necessity, the clearing house for
the continent for dispatches, mail, telegrams, money, prisoners, and
refugees. Every telegram which the American Embassy in Paris sends to
the Embassies in Germany, Austria, or Italy is directed: "American
Legation, Berne. Repeat to Gerard"--or Penfield or Page, as the case
may be.

German prisoners in France are numbered in tens of thousands and for a
long time the only means of communication from them and to them was by
means of the two American Embassies through the American Legation in
Berne. The little three-room Berne Legation with its small staff was
simply overwhelmed with work.

Donait and I were sent by Minister Stovall to make a verbal report on
the situation of the Germans in France to Baron Romberg, the German
Minister to Switzerland. I was much impressed in this my first touch
with a German official. He is rather small, slim of body, but keen of
mind, with excellent repose and control. Like all German diplomats, he
speaks faultless English. A startling evidence of the efficiency of
the German Information Bureau was furnished by the fact that he
already knew to the minutest details nearly as much about my work in
Paris in caring for German subjects as did I myself.

He spoke quite unreservedly about many matters but did not attempt to
draw us into indiscretions as do so many foreign diplomats when
dealing with younger men.

This evening I walked out along the embankment in front of the
Parliament Houses and watched a gorgeous sunset and Alpine glow upon
the snow mountains of the Bernese Oberland.

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