The _Pamir_ was told to go to Newcastle for orders and, in case there were none, to take aboard coal. We were pretty well shaken up as we were empty. On the return trip we met a good many boats going to Archangel. They needed to hurry, for the ice will soon begin, and if the Russians do not set themselves seriously to work, they can’t smash the Germans with the stuff they received this summer. What good does it do not to tell the public the truth, when sooner or later it is sure to come out? They tell us that in two weeks or in three months everything will go like greased lightning, and then, three months later, things are just the same or a little bit worse. And on whom shall the public lay the blame? On those who have deceived it! For they knew that things would go badly and it was not worth while to say they would go well, and the public is obliged to believe the leaders are to blame, because they didn’t know how to get out of the scrape. You can’t deny it, it’s those who govern who are on the wrong track. At Newcastle they told us to go to Southampton to ship equipment for the English Expeditionary Forces in France. We had just enough coal to get us across and the _Pamir_ went down the North Sea and the Channel, the papers everywhere saying that the Channel is completely closed to German submarines by means of nets and a host of ingenious devices; saying too, that to reach the Atlantic or the Mediterranean, they will have to go around by way of Scotland, and as they haven’t sufficient radius of action there is nothing further to be feared from them. I don’t know much about it, but having seen what the Germans have done elsewhere, I expect them to find some way of getting through those ingenious devices and also of constructing submarines that will go to the ends of the earth. It’s as plain as the nose on your face and to say the contrary is to act the ostrich. Fourgues says there will be a painful awakening, but that everybody will blame it on the Boches instead of recognizing that we did not make proper provision for the danger. He gets into awful rages, but as far as I’m concerned, if I can only go to La Rochelle I ask for nothing more.