We found when we were leaving England another of those curious contrasts between the nations of the earth that one meets in a long journey. Coming into Bordeaux we were convoyed for three hours by a ratty little French destroyer and a big dirigible French balloon. Leaving Liverpool, we lay two nights and a day sealed in the harbour, and then sailed out with the Arabic, the Mongolian, the Victorian, and two freighters, amid a whole flock of cruisers and destroyers. The protecting fleet stayed with us two nights and three days. On the French boat the barber practically had no news of sudden deaths and hairbreadth escapes which had happened while we slept. We sailed into the Gironde River peacefully, almost joyously. But we left the Mersey with a story that a big fleet of destroyers hovered at the river's mouth; that the Belgic had been beached out there on a shoal by a "sub," and that we would be lucky if our throats were not cut in the water as we tried to swim ashore after we had been blown out of our boats. The French certainly are more casual than the English. But then, the Germans have sunk virtually no French liners, while the British liner is the favourite food of von Tirpetz! They even showed us his teeth marks on our American liner, the New York. On an earlier trip during the summer of 1917 the boat had been torpedoed when Admiral Sims was a passenger, going to England. The Admiral was sitting at dinner when the explosion occurred and the force of it threw him to the high ceiling of the dining saloon! At least that's what they told us. Caution and conflicting doubts, "fears within and foes without," were not so unreasonable as one might fancy, coming out of any British port.