President Woodrow Wilson, White House, Washington, D. C.

Mr. President:

It seems criminal to ask for a single moment of your time. But I
am strongly advised that it would be more criminal to delay any
longer calling to your attention a crime against American
citizenship in which the French Government has persisted for many
weeks--in spite of constant appeals made to the American Minister
at Paris; and in spite of subsequent action taken by the State
Department at Washington, on the initiative of my friend, Hon.
----.

The victims are two American ambulance drivers, Edward Estlin
Cummings of Cambridge, Mass., and W---- S---- B----....

More than two months ago these young men were arrested, subjected
to many indignities, dragged across France like criminals, and
closely confined in a Concentration Camp at La Ferte Mace; where,
according to latest advices they still remain--awaiting the final
action of the Minister of the Interior upon the findings of a
Commission which passed upon their cases as long ago as October
17.

Against Cummings both private and official advices from Paris
state that there is no charge whatever. He has been subjected to
this outrageous treatment solely because of his intimate
friendship with young B----, whose sole crime is--so far as can
be learned--that certain letters to friends in America were