17 FEBRUARY 1917, Page 2

Mr. Gerard, the American Ambassador, left Berlin last Saturday and

reached Switzerland on Sunday night. He has made no official statement, but the American correspondents who came with him report that the German Foreign Office, with its usual want of tact, tried to bully the Ambassador into enlarging the old German- American treaties which dealt with the rights of enemy subjects in case of war between the two countries. The Foreign Office, it is alleged, even threatened to detain the Americans, and especially the journalists, in Germany, to which Mr. Gerard replied that he would not be " sandbagged " into making a treaty which he had no power to do. The episode has naturally produced a very bad impression in America.