villa originally built as a two-family house, pleasantly enough
situated, but two miles from the centre of Berlin and entirely
unsuitable for an Embassy.

There are few private houses in Berlin, most of the people living
in apartments. After some trouble I found a handsome house on
the Wilhelm Platz immediately opposite the Chancellor's palace
and the Foreign Office, in the very centre of Berlin. This house
had been built as a palace for the Princes Hatzfeld and had later
passed into the possession of a banking family named von Schwabach.

The United States Government, unlike other nations, does not
own or pay the rent of a suitable Embassy, but gives allowance
for offices, if the house is large enough to afford office room
for the office force of the Embassy. The von Schwabach palace
was nothing but a shell. Even the gas and electric light fixtures
had been removed; and when the hot water and heating system,
bath-rooms, electric lights and fixtures, etc., had been put
in, and the house furnished from top to bottom, my first year's
salary had far passed the minus point.

The palace was not ready for occupancy until the end of January,
1914, and, in the meantime, we lived at the Hotel Esplanade,
and I transacted business at the old, two-family villa.

There are more diplomats in Berlin than in any other capital in
the world, because each of the twenty-five States constituting
the German Empire sends a legation to Berlin; even the free cities
of Hamburg, Lubeck and Bremen have a resident minister at the
Empire's capital.