The Alaska citizen., 1914-09-07
AMERICAN IS
 ARRESTED AS
 SPY IN BERLIN
NEWSPAPER CORRESPOkOEk IS LIBERATED BY BRITISH
 INFLUENCE

NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDS cN
 IS LIBERATED BY BRITISH
 INFLUENCE.
 Adventures of Frederick William Vile. an American newspaper cor respondent, who was arrested in Berlin as a spy, and later released, is told by himself in the following published in the Chicago Herald
 LONDON, Aug S.-It required the intery ention of Ambassador Gerard of the United States and the court eous hospitality of Sir Edward Goschen, British ambassador at Der lin. to enable me to leave Germany under official protection.
 I was aboard the train wherein the British embassy staff was given safe conduct to the Dutch frontier. l arrived in London with Sir Ed ward Goschen at Il o'clock last night.
 l effected my escape from Ger many because the press bureau of the German foreign office not only declined to give me an official pass in my capacity as permanent Der lin representative of the Chicago Herald and the New York Times, inf that personal safety would be a matter of utmost preeariousness if stay ed in Germany.
 They told me this the day after my arrest on tine charge of being 9 British spy.
 CLUBBED WHILE A PRISONER.
 An hour after the declaration of war by England Tuesday night was dragged out of the lobby of the Hotel Adlon during a meeting of American war refugees and in the presence of Ambassador Gerard Three policemen threw me into an open taXicab which enabled the mob to belabor me at will with sticks and clubs.
 Dudley Ward, my office assistant, was arrested half an hour later. Then a German-American woman, aged 55, who had called on me to ask advice about her banking af fairs in the midst of the war crisis, was carted off to the police station, formerly having mentioned my name. At the desk she was taken into custody as one of my confederates.
 A British newspaper colleague who also had come to see me at the Adlon was summoned into the man. ager's office and informed:
 Your friend (myselO is now where he ought to be-"
 u. s. ENVOY FREES HIM.
 The release of myself and my ''ac- complices" followed within two hours.
 Ambassador Gerard, as soon as he heard of my arrest, demanded that the foreign office act instantly. He sent the first secretary of the embassy, Joseph Clark Grew, to the 1 foreign office with message that such outrages on American citizens were well designed to cost Germany i the friendship of about the orly i first-cIass power on earth which was still on speaking terms with ! her.
 1 Under Secretary Zimmerman eX- pressed to MT. Grew his profound apologies for my arrest, and present l ly MT. Grew came in MT. Gerard s private automobile and conveyed me in triumph from the police presi- dency.
 cannot speak too gratefully of the promptness and vigor wherein Ambassador Gerard intervened
 OTHERS SEIZED AS SPIES.
 s. Miles Bouton, one of the Der lin correspondents of the Associated Press, was also arrested as a spy 1 in the lobby of the Adlon; also Charles Tower, an Englishman, who represents the New York World.
 Both of them were perfectly well known in the Adlon. Yet they, too, were driven away like myself in open taxicabs through Unter den Linden while the superpatriotic chauffeurs egged on the crowd along the side walks to boot and jeer us.