Page:Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.djvu/100

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70
AMBASSADOR MORGENTHAU'S STORY

seen, he displayed an agitated interest. Immediately after lunch he called at the American Embassy with Pallavicini, the Austrian Ambassador, and asked for an interview with my daughter. The two ambassadors solemnly planted themselves in chairs before Mrs. Wertheim and subjected her to a most minute, though very polite, cross examination. "I never felt so important in my life," she afterward told me. They would not permit her to leave out a single detail; they wished to know how many shots had been fired, what direction the German ships had taken, what everybody on board had said, and so on. The visit seemed to give these allied ambassadors immense relief and satisfaction, for they left the house in an almost jubilant mood, behaving as though a great weight had been taken off their minds. And certainly they had good reason for their elation. My daughter had been the means of giving them the news which they had desired to hear above everything else—that the Goeben and the Breslau had escaped the British fleet and were then steaming rapidly in the direction of the Dardanelles.

For it was those famous German ships, the Goeben and the Breslau, which my daughter had seen engaged in battle with a British scout ship!

The next day official business called me to the German Embassy. But Wangenheim's animated manner soon disclosed that he had no interest in routine matters. Never had I seen him so nervous and so excited. He could not rest in his chair more than a few minutes at a time; he was constantly jumping up, rushing to the window and looking anxiously out toward the Bosphorus, where his private wireless station, the Corcovado, lay about three quarters of a mile away. Wangenheim's