The copper era and Morenci leader., 1915-10-01
DUR AMBASSADOR
 ID ENGLAND |S BUSY MAN
(By Wilbur S. Forrest.)


 To average Americans who may think that an American ambassador in London is delegated in wartime to drink cups of afternoon tea with itin- erant countrymen; to hand out fath- erly advice when they are in trouble; to hand them money when they are broke" and to perform myriad other duties of a social nature, they have got another think coming.
 For the busiest American institu- tion in Europe today is located at No. 4 Grosvenor Gardens, the American embassy.
 Here the enemy alien peoples in Great Britain, of three warning na- tions, look for money to buy their daily food; look for advice when they need it and will look for protection when protection is necessary.
 From an authoritative source, it was learned today that hundreds of thousands of American dollars have been necessary and will in future be , expended to care for the alien charges of Ambassador Page. He is the sole representative in Great Britain, not only of America, but of Germany, Aus tria and Turkey. Nearly twenty build ings in London, property of these countries, are in direct charge of the ambassador and he not only has vol luminous diplomatic correspondence of his own nation to handle, but the veritable bales" of mail and tele- graphic exchanges carried on with other warning powers by the kaiser, the emperor of Austria and the sultan of Turkey. To make this work pos sible the American embassy has in creased it's normal business ten fold. It has employed a round dozen of ex- tra secretaries to do the work that fell to the three before the war It has engaged a corps of expert account ants and clerks who respectively keep tab on the manifold disbursements and file away hundreds of documents 3 day.
  lands enemies during the war will be repaid to Uncle Sam when ho lieie5 cease, but in the meantime Uncle Sam's pocket must be the source of never ending supply.
 T addition to being in constant close touch with. the state depart ment at Washington, the American embassy in London is also in daily communication with tce embassies at Berlin, vienna, Corstantipople, Rome and Petrograd, which causes the cost ly interchange of teIegrarhic core spondcnce at least ten times the vol lme of peace times. Occasionally tel egrarls cost :ae government s1,OO0 each.
 An amusing episode was the outcome of a series of such telegraphic inter- changes with the American embassy in Constantinople, it has just been learned. Ambassador Morgenthau re- ported to London that the Turks had imprisoned many British citizens whom they were holding for ransom, the sum of $2000 being required in each case. The American enba.sJ in London inliaedia teiy c3nl.npnil ate ] ,ls information to the British 5over.- -ent --- I'd was sent back % Nor < 2nthau tc .. efce~S Tha 1e:--t -s d fry-n Morganthou was t3a- he
 5on ;nced ,,he Turks that $3O0 . --- .a far mU:e .eas1Ea5le figure than -$200e and t,-e Turks had agreed. In turn, .s fact ws. immediately com -aunic- od to the British government and the ransom was paid, though in- diran+'--. for rons<r is a word of which the British government takes no cognizance.
 However. hard work is but a part of the troubles of No. ,Grosvenor Square. The greatest are passports. The document, bearing the great seal ot the tate department, which guar antees' safe conduct for American travellers in Europs, is now the most rigidly drawn of any nation, but be- fore the war was the loosest. Eff cient clerks delegated ito handle the passport department at the embassy have become nervous wrecks and new hands are constantly neces- sary. The passport clerk begins by fnterrogating the applicant as to his antecedents and must almost require proof that the applicant at some time or other had been born. After the first round of questions the liberty loving American begins to get mad. Before he has been wormed out of his entire life's history, he or she, as the case may be, is thoroughly mad and he or she leaves the embassy heaping coals of fire on the head of the men