In the meantime Mr. Engles and our treasurer, Roger Townsend, had to smooth out all kinds of new difficulties and complications, among which the passport nuisance was the greatest. War conditions still prevailed and passports had to be carefully viséd by the ambassadors of every country we visited. All our orchestra were practically Americans, but technically they belonged to America, France, Belgium, Italy, England, Russia, Germany, Austria, and Czecho-Slovakia. Many of them had had only their first American papers when the war broke out, and according to war regulations could not yet obtain their American citizens’ papers. They were therefore compelled to travel on foreign passports and some of their visés were exceedingly difficult to obtain, as new countries like Czecho-Slovakia, for instance, had not yet a properly organized diplomatic service. Others, like Russia, were not recognized at all and our Russians had to travel on Kerensky passports issued for them by the Kerensky ambassador who was still “holding the fort” in Washington. Through the kindly help of Mr. Grew, councillor at our embassy in Paris, and other friends in high places, we finally obtained our hundred visés and left Paris for Bordeaux on May 11, and—in spite of the railroad strike—with the passage of our train assured as far as Bordeaux. The only fly in the ointment was a little revolution before we left the station. Some of the members of the orchestra had brought their wives and even a few small children to Europe with them. They very naturally desired to give their families a good time and wanted to have them with them and in the orchestra cars on the entire trip. As railroad space was exceedingly limited and the bachelor and straw-widower members of the orchestra strenuously objected to this addition, I had to veto the plan, and painted the difficulties of travel, hotels, passports, etc., in such lurid fashion that I succeeded in preventing their departure from Paris with us. The husbands promised to leave their families in Paris until our return, about three weeks later, but as all the wives and children came to the station to see their respective husbands and fathers off, I was nervous until the last doors of the car were slammed to and the whistle of the French locomotive, which always sounds like the shrill wail of the damned, announced that we were really off.