He made what he expected to be a single exception to this rule. He went to a dinner-party, at which he met Lloyd-George, Arthur Balfour, just back from his American mission, and half a dozen others of commensurate distinction. He found that his exception was no exception at all. The English do not merely have the reputation of doing their real work at their dinner-parties--they deserve that reputation. Staff-officers, telling all about it later on, said that it could hardly have been distinguished from a cabinet meeting, or a report from the Secretary of State for War. So were the final plans made and the business of the nations settled. Concerning all these meetings and all the national feeling that was behind them, General Pershing and his officers were of one voice--that England's welcome had been precisely of the sort that pleased them most. It was reticent, charming, too genuine for much open expression, too chivalrous at heart to be obtrusive. What with spending most of each twenty-four hours at work, the American vanguard finished up its affairs in four days. And early on the morning of June 13, long before the break of day, General Pershing and his officers and men boarded their Channel boat, the _Invicta_, and set sail for France. CHAPTER II "VIVE PAIR-SHANG!" THE _Invicta_ came into Boulogne harbor in the early morning, to find that her attempts at a secret crossing had amounted to nothing at all. Everybody within sight and ear-shot was out to show how pleased he was, riotously and openly, indifferent alike to the hopes of spy or censor. The fishing-boats, the merchant coastwise fleet, the Channel ships and hordes of little privately owned sloops and yawls and motor-boats all plied chipperly around with "bannières étoilées" fore and aft. The sun was very bright and the water was very blue, and between them was that exhilarating air which always rises over the coasts of France, whenever and wherever you land on them, which not all the smoke and grime of the world's biggest war could deaden or destroy. The _Invicta's_ own flags were run up at the harbor mouth. Again the lines of khaki-colored soldiers formed behind the deck-rails, and again the chieftain from overseas stood at the prow of his ship and waited the coming of a historic moment. When the _Invicta_ was made fast and her gang-plank went over, there was a half-circle of space cleared in the quay in front of her by a detachment of grizzled French infantrymen, their horizon-blue uniforms filmed over with the yellow dust of a long march.