After three and a half hours of deck-pacing on the steamer, and twenty-two hours of sitting up straight in third-class wooden seats, I made the naval base; and late at night though it was, there was a British naval officer at the hotel to let me know I was to report next morning to the British admiral in charge. This admiral had a reputation in London for having no use for newspaper men. When this staff-officer asked me if I had heard of his admiral before, I told him what I heard in London. "He eats 'em alive," I was told by a big London journalist, and I repeated that now, of course without naming the journalist. "And what do you think of that?" asked this staff-officer. "If he tries to eat me alive I hope he chokes," I answered to that. I figured he would tell his chief that, but there had been so much boot-licking done by a couple of writers over there that, for the honor of the craft, I thought somebody ought to have a wallop at these press crushers once in a while. This admiral is worth a paragraph, because he was a type. He was a capable man up to his limitations; a good executive, a devotee to duty; but he should have lived before printing-presses were invented. Also he, too, lacked imagination. He was a man who acted as if priding himself on his brusqueness of language. He sat at his flat desk like a pagan image, never looked up, never said aye, no, or go to the devil when I stepped in and wished him "Good morning!" I told him what I wanted. I wished to cruise with the American destroyers in their U-boat operations. His answer was a No! Bing! No, sir! "Whoops!" I said to myself. "I've come more than 4,000 miles, with a fine expense account to _Collier's_, and I'm turned down before I get going." I spread before him my credentials--from the department and elsewhere. I spread before him a letter from Colonel Roosevelt, the same in his own handwriting. In France I could have lost my passport and yet got along on that letter. Batteries of inspectors used to sit up and come to life at the sight of a letter in the colonel's own handwriting. This man did not turn his head to look at what I might have. All the credentials in the world were going to have no influence with him. He repeated his No, putting about seventeen n's in the No! Then, mildly, I told him that I thought I ought to have something more than a No; that I should have a reason to go with the No. He intimated that he didn't have to give reasons unless he wished to.