The Enormous Room | Page 2

was reported lost.
iii. A week later a third cable correcting this cruel error and saying the
Embassy was renewing efforts to locate Cummings--apparently still
ignorant even of the place of his confinement.
After such painful and baffling experiences, I turn to you--burdened
though I know you to be, in this world crisis, with the weightiest task
ever laid upon any man.
But I have another reason for asking this favor. I do not speak for my
son alone; or for him and his friend alone. My son has a mother--as
brave and patriotic as any mother who ever dedicated an only son to a
great cause. The mothers of our boys in France have rights as well as
the boys themselves. My boy's mother had a right to be protected from
the weeks of horrible anxiety and suspense caused by the inexplicable
arrest and imprisonment of her son. My boy's mother had a right to be
spared the supreme agony caused by a blundering cable from Paris
saying that he had been drowned by a submarine. (An error which Mr.
Norton subsequently cabled that he had discovered six weeks before.)
My boy's mother and all American mothers have a right to be protected
against all needless anxiety and sorrow.
Pardon me, Mr. President, but if I were President and your son were

suffering such prolonged injustice at the hands of France; and your
son's mother had been needlessly kept in Hell as many weeks as my
boy's mother has--I would do something to make American citizenship
as sacred in the eyes of Frenchmen as Roman citizenship was in the
eyes of the ancient world. Then it was enough to ask the question, "Is it
lawful to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?" Now, in
France, it seems lawful to treat like a condemned criminal a man that is
an American, uncondemned and admittedly innocent!
Very respectfully, EDWARD CUMMINGS
This letter was received at the White House. Whether it was received
with sympathy or with silent disapproval is still a mystery. A
Washington official, a friend in need and a friend indeed in these trying
experiences, took the precaution to have it delivered by messenger.
Otherwise, fear that it had been "lost in the mail" would have added
another twinge of uncertainty to the prolonged and exquisite tortures
inflicted upon parents by alternations of misinformation and official
silence. Doubtless the official stethoscope was on the heart of the world
just then; and perhaps it was too much to expect that even a post-card
would be wasted on private heart-aches.
In any event this letter told where to look for the missing
boys--something the French government either could not or would not
disclose, in spite of constant pressure by the American Embassy at
Paris and constant efforts by my friend Richard Norton, who was head
of the Norton-Harjes Ambulance organization from which they had
been abducted.
Release soon followed, as narrated in the following letter to Major ----
of the staff of the Judge Advocate General in Paris.
February 20, 1921.
My dear ----
Your letter of January 30th, which I have been waiting for with great
interest ever since I received your cable, arrived this morning. My son

arrived in New York on January 1st. He was in bad shape physically as
a result of his imprisonment: very much under weight, suffering from a
bad skin infection which he had acquired at the concentration camp.
However, in view of the extraordinary facilities which the detention
camp offered for acquiring dangerous diseases, he is certainly to be
congratulated on having escaped with one of the least harmful. The
medical treatment at the camp was quite in keeping with the general
standards of sanitation there; with the result that it was not until he
began to receive competent surgical treatment after his release and on
board ship that there was much chance of improvement. A month of
competent medical treatment here seems to have got rid of this painful
reminder of official hospitality. He is, at present, visiting friends in
New York. If he were here, I am sure he would join with me and with
his mother in thanking you for the interest you have taken and the
efforts you have made.
W---- S---- B---- is, I am happy to say, expected in New York this week
by the S. S. Niagara. News of his release and subsequently of his
departure came by cable. What you say about the nervous strain under
which he was living, as an explanation of the letters to which the
authorities objected, is entirely borne out by first-hand information.
The kind of badgering which the youth received was enough to upset a
less sensitive temperament. It speaks volumes for the character of his
environment that