I was, of course, looking forward to meeting Dr. Jacobs, and sent her a note asking for the privilege of an interview. A reply came, curt and blunt; she would not see me. She was not concerned with my studies or with me, because it was a doctor’s subject and one in which laymen should not interfere. Already I had come to the same conclusion in principle, but was dismayed at this first rebuff I had encountered. I was also hurt as much as I could be hurt during that period when I seemed to be one mass of aches, physically and mentally. Not until much later did I learn that to be a nurse was no recommendation in Europe, where she was more like an upper servant, a household drudge who took care of the sick instead of the kitchen. For two months I wandered about the Netherlands, visiting clinics and independent nurses in the Hague, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam. In spite of the League propaganda against commercialization I found many shops in which a woman, if she so desired, could purchase contraceptive supplies as casually as you might buy a toothbrush. Unfortunately in some of them she could be examined and fitted by saleswomen who had but little training in technique and scant knowledge of anatomy. Although the Dutch League had several thousand members—each one active, writing to papers, talking to friends, attending meetings—and although fifty-four clinics were in operation, many well-informed people did not know anything about them. More surprising still, the medical profession as a whole appeared to be utterly ignorant of the directed birth control work that was going on. It did not, therefore, seem extraordinary that no inkling of all this—either clinics or contraceptive methods—had ever reached the United States, and practically no attempt to copy it been made in England. Even in this neutral country signs of war were everywhere. Along the way were soldiers in uniform, armed and keeping guard, and at the stations Red Cross wagons were in readiness. Feeling among the Dutch was greatly mixed: Queen Wilhelmina’s husband was a German; the army and the aristocracy were for the Triple Alliance; the poorer classes were more influenced by the sufferings of the thousands and thousands of Belgians who had flocked to Dutch firesides for food and shelter. Nowhere else was I so impressed with the tragedies of war. Often about four o’clock I had _kaffee klatch_ at the home of some Dutch lady who sat, very proper, while the maid served coffee, the best in Europe, from the big, white, porcelain pot. I suspected most of the morning had been spent in supervising preparations for the delicious food.