Can this book which is now being advertised really be made of extracts from letters that were in my black bag, and that I thrust into the hands of a certain kind person on the night when the German bombing planes were making our hotel a place of peril? I verily believe they are, and shall be so happy to have them again. I will call at the publishers. I tried without success to find you in the cellar where I crouched with many others that dreadful Good Friday night when the building was struck. The next morning I took an early train for Bordeaux to embark for America, so I never saw any of the advertisements which the book notices say that you inserted in the Paris papers. When the war was ended, my husband, A. D. of the letters, went to Russia with the American Red Cross, but alas! he has been thrown into prison--perhaps the work of the Prince. The latter was released in Paris through some pressure brought to bear by his influential friends. My husband saw him in Moscow where Boris is at present in high standing with the Soviet authorities. Our government is only just now making an effort to have its citizens released, and I am starting in a few days for Europe, hoping to meet A. D. at the frontier. I hesitate about asking you to withdraw the book from publication at this late date. Ordinarily I should feel ashamed to have correspondence so personal go before the world, even anonymously. But under these circumstances I feel differently. I should like to see the Prince shown up in his true light. I feel that the American people ought to be warned against their sense of indifference and false security, and more and more publicity given to the true condition of affairs, namely, that their countrymen do not receive the protection of their own government, in Russia, in Mexico, and in other countries, where _de facto_ administrations can throw any of their fellow citizens into prison and keep them there months and years with impunity. Therefore you have my permission to publish the letters, and I sign myself again, as you have been used to seeing me, POLLY THE PAGAN. THE END End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Polly the Pagan, by Isabel Anderson