At the end of the first three weeks we heard rumors that a small expeditionary force was to be sent over immediately. We telephoned father at Oyster Bay and asked him if he could help us get attached to this expeditionary force. He said he would try, and succeeded in so far as Archie and I were concerned, as we already had commissions in the officers' reserve corps. We offered to go in the ranks, but General Pershing said we would be of more value in the grades for which we held commissions. Our excitement was intense when one day in an official envelope from Washington we received a communication, "Subject--Foreign Service." The communication was headed "Confidential," so we were forced to keep all our jubilation to ourselves. Some ten days after we received another communication, "Subject--Orders," and were directed to report to the commanding general, port of embarkation, New York, "confidentially by wire," at what date we would be ready to start. We both felt this was not the most expeditious way to proceed, but we obeyed orders and telegraphed. We supplemented this, however, by taking the next train and reporting in person at the same time the telegram arrived, in case they could not decode our message. General Franklin Bell was the commanding general, and he very kindly helped us get off at once, and we left on the liner _Chicago_ for Bordeaux on June 18th. Our last few days in this country we spent with the family. Archie and I went with our wives to Oyster Bay, where father, mother, and Quentin were. My wife even then announced her intention of going to Europe in some auxiliary branch, but she promised me she would not start without my permission. The promise was evidently made in the Pickwickian sense, as when I cabled her from Europe not to come the answer that I got was the announcement of her arrival in Paris. There were six of our immediate family in the American expeditionary forces--my wife, one brother-in-law, Richard Derby, and we four brothers. Father, busy as he was, during the entire time we were abroad wrote to each of us weekly, and, when he physically could, in his own hand. [Illustration: COLONEL ROOSEVELT IN AMERICA TO LIEUTENANT COLONEL ROOSEVELT IN FRANCE The last five years have made me bitterly conscious of the shortcomings of our national character; but we Roosevelts are Americans, and can never think of living anything else, and wouldn't be anything else for any consideration on the face of the earth; a man with our way of looking at things can no more change his country than he can change his mother; and it is the business of each of us to play the part of a good American and try to make things as much better as possible.