But quite otherwise with the women of France.  In the first place there was little interest.  They were, after all, foreigners.  Your honest dyed-in-the-wool American has about the same contemptuous tolerance for foreigners that foreigners have for him.  They are not Americans (even after they immigrate and become naturalized), they do not speak the same language in the same way, and all accents, save perhaps a brogue, are offensive to an ear tuned to nasal rhythms and to the rich divergencies from the normal standards of their own tongue that distinguish different sections of this vast United States of America.

But the American mind is, after all, an open mind.  Such generalities as, “The Frenchwomen are quite wonderful,” “are doing marvelous things for their country during this war,” that floated across the expensive cable now and again, made little or no impression on any but those who already knew their France and could be surprised at no resource or energy she might display; but Owen Johnson and several other men with whom he talked, including that ardent friend of France, Whitney Warren, felt positive that if some American woman writer with a public, and who was capable through long practice in story writing, of selecting and composing facts in conformance with the economic and dramatic laws of fiction, would go over and study the work of the Frenchwomen at first hand, and, discarding generalities, present specific instances of their work and their attitude, the result could not fail to give the intelligent American woman a different opinion of her French sister and enlist her sympathy.

I had been ill or I should have gone to England soon after the outbreak of the war and worked with my friends, for I have always looked upon England as my second home, and I have as many friends there as here.  If it had not been for Mr. Johnson and Mr. Warren, no doubt I should have gone to England within the next two or three months.  But their representations aroused my enthusiasm and I determined to go to France first, at all events.

My original intention was to remain in France for a month, gathering my material as quickly as possible, and then cross to England.  It seemed to me that if I wrote a book that might be of some service to France I should do the same thing for a country to which I was not only far more deeply attached but far more deeply indebted.

I remained three months and a third in France—­from May 9th, 1916, to August 19th—­and I did not go to England for two reasons.  I found that it was more of an ordeal to get to London from Paris than to return to New York and sail again; and I heard that Mrs. Ward was writing a book about the women of England.  For me to write another would be what is somewhat gracelessly called a work of supererogation.