I remained in France so long because I was never so vitally interested in my life.  I could not tear myself away, although I found it impossible to put my material into shape there.  Not only was I on the go all day long, seeing this and that oeuvre, having personal interviews with heads of important organizations, taken about by the kind and interested friends my own interest made for me, but when night came I was too tired to do more than enter all the information I had accumulated during the day in a notebook, and then go to bed.  I have seldom taken notes, but I was determined that whatever else my book might be it should at least be accurate, and I also collected all the literature (leaflets, pamphlets, etc.) of the various oeuvres (as all these war relief organizations are called) and packed them into carefully superscribed large brown envelopes with a meticulousness that is, alas, quite foreign to my native disposition.

When, by the way, I opened my trunk to pack it and saw those dozen or more large square brown envelopes I was appalled.  They looked so important, so sinister, they seemed to mutter of State secrets, war maps, spy data.  I knew that trunks were often searched at Bordeaux, and I knew that if mine were those envelopes never would leave France.  I should be fortunate to sail away myself.

But I must have my notes.  To remember all that I had from day to day gathered was an impossibility.  I have too good a memory not to distrust it when it comes to a mass of rapidly accumulated information; combined with imagination and enthusiasm it is sure to play tricks.

But I had an inspiration.  The Ministry of War had been exceedingly kind to me.  Convinced that I was a “Friend of France,” they had permitted me to go three times into the War Zone, the last time sending me in a military automobile and providing an escort.  I had been over to the War Office very often and had made friends of several of the politest men on earth.

I went out and bought the largest envelope to be found in Paris.  Into this I packed all those other big brown envelopes and drove over to the Ministere de la Guerre.  I explained my predicament.  Would they seal it with the formidable seal of the War Office and write Propagande across it?  Of course if they wished I would leave my garnerings for a systematic search.  They merely laughed at this unusual evidence on my part of humble patience and submission.  The French are the acutest people in the world.  By this time these preternaturally keen men in the War Office knew me better than I knew myself.  If I had, however unconsciously and in my deepest recesses, harbored a treacherous impulse toward the country I so professed to admire and to desire to serve, or if my ego had been capable of sudden tricks and perversions, they would long since have had these lamentable deformities, my spiritual hare-lip, ticketed and docketed with the rest of my dossier.