auspices and with the
necessary permits, excursions to the trenches from Nieuport to the La
Bassee region and Bethune, along Belgian, French and English lines,
always openly, always with a notebook. And nothing happened!

As my notebook became filled with data I grew more and more anxious,
while the authorities grew more calm. Suppose I fell into the hands of
the Germans! It was a large notebook, filled with much information. I
could never swallow the thing, as officers are supposed to swallow the
password slips in case of capture. After a time the general spy alarm
got into my blood. I regarded the boy who brought my morning coffee
with suspicion, and slept with my notes under my pillow. And nothing
happened!

I had secured my passport _vise_ at the French and Belgian Consulates,
and at the latter legation was able also to secure a letter asking the
civil and military authorities to facilitate my journey. The letter
had been requested for me by Colonel Depage.

It was almost miraculously easy to get out of England. It was almost
suspiciously easy. My passport frankly gave the object of my trip as
"literary work." Perhaps the keen eyes of the inspectors who passed me
onto the little channel boat twinkled a bit as they examined it.

The general opinion as to the hopelessness of my trying to get nearer
than thirty miles to the front had so communicated itself to me that
had I been turned back there on the quay at Folkstone, I would have
been angry, but hardly surprised.

Not until the boat was out in the channel did I feel sure that I was
to achieve even this first leg of the journey.

Even then, all was not well. With Folkstone and the war office well
behind, my mind turned to submarines as a sunflower to the sun.
Afterward I found that the thing to do is not to think about
submarines. To think of politics, or shampoos, or of people one does
not like, but not of submarines. They are like ghosts in that respect.
They are perfectly safe and entirely innocuous as long as one thinks
of something else.

And something went wrong almost immediately.

It was imperative that I get to Calais. And the boat, which had
intended making Calais, had had a report of submarines and headed for
Boulogne. This in itself was upsetting. To have, as one may say, one's
teeth set for Calais, and find one is biting on Boulogne, is not
agreeable. I did not want Boulogne. My pass was from Calais. I had
visions of waiting in Boulogne, of g