I could not share the hate of Germany, in spite of my profound devotion to France, my conviction that Germany had believed a war of conquest essential to realize what she called her destiny, that she had been consciously preparing for it, that she thought the Day had come when she could venture it. The awful thing seemed too big for hate by puny humans, and I was amazed and no little shocked soon after the outbreak when, visiting my friend John Burroughs at Squirrel Lodge in the Catskills, I found him whom I had always regarded as an apostle of peace and light in a continuous angry fever against all things German. Woodchucks were troubling his corn, and every morning he went out with his gun. “Another damned Hun,” he would cry savagely when he returned with his dead game. Time did not cure John Burroughs’ wrath, for in December, 1917, he pledged himself in an open letter published in the New York _Tribune_ never to read a German book, never to buy an article of German make. But John Burroughs was not the only one of my supposedly gentle-souled friends who felt this serious necessity to punish not only now but forever. I was too befogged to hate or to take part in the organizations looking to ending the War which sprang up all about, and which I felt so despairingly were all futile. There was Mr. Ford’s Peace Ship. Mr. Ford had startled me one day in the spring of 1915, when in Detroit I was observing his methods for making men, by saying suddenly: “You know I am rather coming to the conclusion that we ought to join the Allies. If we go in we can finish the thing quickly. And that is what should be done. As it is now, they will fight to a finish. It ought some way to be stopped, and I see no other way.” Six months later Mr. Ford called me up at my home in New York and asked if I would not come to his hotel: he and Miss Addams wanted to talk with me. Of course I went at once. It is curious how sometimes, when one steps inside a door without knowing what is behind it, one senses caution. The door was open to Mr. Ford’s suite—nobody in sight, no answer to my ring; but I could hear voices and followed them to a room at the end of the hall. Mr. Ford was standing in the corner facing me. Before him were two rows of men—reporters, I knew. “Here, boys, is Miss Tarbell—she will go with us,” he called. “Go where, Mr. Ford?” I asked. “Oh,” he said, “we are chartering a Peace Ship. We are going to Europe and get the boys out of the trenches by Christmas.” I had a terrible sinking of heart. “Oh, Mr. Ford, I don’t think I could go on such an expedition!” “Come with me and we will convince you.” And he led me into a room where Madame Rosika Schwimmer and my old friend Fred Howe were talking—Jane Addams was not there. “Tell Miss Tarbell what we are going to do. We want her to go along.” And he went back to the reporters.