The Ligue has branches pretty well all over the world wherever there are French cooks. If London, under the presidency of M. Escoffier, takes the lead with sixty members, Paris comes a good second with forty-three members, and Marseilles, New York and Montreal tie for third place, with twelve members each. Brussels has a group of six members, and there is a forlorn hope of five devoted French chefs in the heart of the enemy at Berlin. Delhi and Dakar, Constantinople and Ajaccio, Bombay and Gumpoldskirschen, Lowestoft and Lahore, Shanghai and Syracuse, Yokohama and Zurich, and a hundred other towns are advance posts of the Ligue, and wherever there is a group of the leaguers they and their guests eat the St Fortunat dinner, the menu of which is composed by M. Escoffier, and the _recettes_ of the especial dishes in which are sent in advance to the members before the Saint's day. In 1913 the most important dinner of the Ligue next to that held at Gatti's was the one at Paris, where the leaguers dined together at Paillard's and sent congratulations to their brethren in London. M. Jean Richepin, the great French poet, is bracketed with M. Escoffier in the presidency of the Ligue, and many of the dishes that M. Escoffier has invented for the feasts of the Gourmands are named after celebrities in art and letters. The _fraises Sarah Bernhardt_, which was the surprise dish of the first dinner of the Ligue, has become a household word in all the restaurants of all the nations. M. Escoffier is no believer in keeping his inventions as _secrets de la maison_, and his _recettes_ for the dinners of the Ligue are always published both in French and English, in the _Carnet d'Epicure_, which is the mouthpiece of the Ligue. In this open-handedness and open-mindedness, M. Escoffier is very wise. I always assure ladies who ask me to obtain for them recipes of various dishes, and remind great chefs when I beg _recettes_ from them, that it is not so much the ingredients of a dish as the hand of the cook that makes a masterpiece. No painstaking amateur, following exactly the directions given by a master of the art, ever reproduces a _chef-d'œuvre_, any more than an amateur painter, copying the work of some great master of the brush is able to obtain that master's effects. The dish that M. Escoffier had invented for the Dîner St Fortunat in 1913 was the _cochon de lait St Fortunat_, with _pommes Aigrelettes_ and _sauce groseille au Raifort_.