Almost everywhere, down here, there are wireless stations and spy stations on the coast to inform the Boche submarines. They have only to listen and then go straight for their object. Neither Fourgues nor anyone else on board can understand the talk about stores of oil which the Germans, according to French papers, are keeping in neutral countries. They say that the Boches have supply-bases in Greece, Spain and elsewhere, and that without these they could not work as they do. That’s all sheer humbug. Every time anyone looks for these bases they aren’t to be found--because there aren’t any. The Boches carry as much as fifteen or twenty days’ supply in their submarines. People told us that in Bilbao, as they did in Norway last year. Well, then, will you tell me where they would need to get more? From Zeebrugge to the Mediterranean doesn’t take twenty days, and in the Mediterranean they have Pola and Cattaro, the Bulgarian coast and Constantinople, Syria, the points of Tripoli which have been retaken by the Turks, and those parts of Morocco that we haven’t got. No matter what they do, they are never more than three or four days from a friendly base, so they don’t need to go to the neutrals. We are making fools of ourselves, accusing the neutrals of things of which they aren’t guilty and which can’t be proved, when there are so many frightfully obvious things that we don’t dare mention. All this would be a joke if it didn’t prolong the war, but it will end by costing us dear. Well, this time the _Pamir_ doesn’t sail empty--she has three thousand tons of good ore which the Boches won’t get. We don’t know yet where we are going, but we shall hardly leave before a week, the loading is so slow. And now, old man, shake hands! I hope we go to Bordeaux because at Bordeaux there’s a train for La Rochelle. Good-bye. PART FOUR BALTIMORE, U.S.A., _July 16, 1916_. MY DEAR OLD MAN,