“I produced my papers.  Some of them were very impressive.  There were letters from the French Ambassador in London, Monsieur Cambon, to leading French generals.  There was a letter to Sir John French and another letter expediting me through the customs, but unluckily the customs at Boulogne.

“They left him cold.  I threw myself on his mercy.  He apologised, but continued firm.  The Boulogne boat drew in its gangway.  I mentioned this, and that, so to speak, I had burned my Boulogne gangway behind me.  I said I had just had an interview with Mr. Winston Churchill, and that I felt sure the First Lord of the Admiralty would not approve of my standing there arguing when I was threatened with influenza.  He acted as though he had never heard of the First Lord.

“At last he was called away.  So I went into a deck cabin, and closed and bolted the door.  I remember that, and that I put a life preserver over my feet, in case of a submarine, and my fur coat over the rest of me, because of a chill.  And that is all I do remember, until this morning in a grey, rainy dawn I opened the door to find that we were entering the harbour of Calais.  If the officers of the boat were surprised to see me emerge they concealed it.  No doubt they knew that with Calais under military law I could hardly slip through the fingers of the police.

“This morning I have a mild attack of what the English call ‘flu.’  I am still at the hotel in Calais.  I have breakfasted to the extent of hot coffee, have taken three different kinds of influenza remedies, and am now waiting and aching, but at least I am in France.

“If the car from Dunkirk does not come for me to-day I shall be deported to-night.

“Two torpedo boats are coaling in the harbor.  They have two large white letters which answer for their names.  One is the BE; the other is the ER.  As they lie side by side these tall white letters spell B-E-E-R.

“I have heard an amusing thing:  that the English have built duplicates of all their great battleships, building them of wood, guns and all, over the hulls of other vessels; and that the Germans have done the same thing!  What would happen if one of the ‘dummy’ fleets met the other?  Would it be a battle of expletives?  Would the German consonant triumph over the English aspirate, and both ships go down in a sea of language?

“The idea is, of course, to delude submarines into the belief that they are sinking battleships, while the real dreadnoughts are somewhere else—­pure strategy, but amusing, except for the crews of these sham war flotillas.”

* * * * *

The French Ambassador in London had given me letters to the various generals commanding the divisions of the French Army.