I found the _Pamir_ at Boulogne in the Loubet dock, taking on a cargo of scrapped _matériel_ from the British front here: wagons, guns, motor-cars, sheds, and scrap iron, to be repaired in England. Fourgues explained that the _Pamir_ should have gone to America to get steel bars for the manufacture of shells in France, but as that order wouldn’t be ready for a month, they had seized the opportunity to have us potter around a little in the English Channel. For “pottering” it was rather important work, seeing that we made two trips each way and that both times in England we took on from two hundred to two hundred and fifty brand-new chassis for motor-cars and trolleys for the Flanders front. The English are beginning to get under way seriously. They were slow about it, but it’s not the same now as it was when we were there during the first year of the war. I don’t know how long it’s going to take them to train their new army and to make soldiers and officers, but as far as munitions go, there’s no question. You have no idea of the traffic between England and France. It is coming into all the ports--Calais, Boulogne, Fécamp, Le Tréport, Dieppe, Le Havre, Rouen, Caen--without counting the little ones. They are all crowded. As soon as we arrived in England they got to work, the _Pamir_ was made fast to a wharf, and they pulled out her cargo and shoved in another. It took longer in France, although that, too, is a little better now than last year. Oh, it’s not ideal yet, and one often wonders what all the empty boats and cars are doing. In four or five years, maybe the officials and the office-Johnnies will look at their watches instead of piling up Forms--and Forms--and Forms. At last we got off for Baltimore with some dozens of cases of French exports--fabrics, Parisian specialities--nothing much. When I think that the Germans continue to send their catalogues and merchandise over the whole world by way of the neutrals, and that the three-thousand-ton _Pamir_ was sent out with scarcely two or three hundred tons of cheap stuff, it seems hardly worth while to talk in the papers about economizing. This little Atlantic trip will have cost the country some twenty-five thousand francs, some of which she ought to have recovered. And it’s like that everywhere. They can issue a new loan, but Fourgues says it’s saving the pennies and wasting billions of pounds. Villiers and Fourgues have spent their time during the voyage squabbling at meals, arguing about all that has happened during the last two or three months: the Irish rebellion, the retreat in Mesopotamia, the Jutland battle, and the death of Kitchener--to say nothing of our own troubles. * * * * *