Since then, in my efforts to return to the place where I believe honestly I can be of most use to my country in this war, I have shown that letter to some of the highest authorities in France, but without practical effect. Sometimes it has nearly melted their hearts, but not quite. But I mean to go on trying. That is why I am writing this chapter. I not only believe, but I am certain, not because I am I, but because I am a responsible correspondent of _The Times_, that “somewhere in France”—somewhere in the east of France for me—I can in my small way (but _The Times_ is not a small paper) help to win this war, and, with a little encouragement and help from the military authorities, do much more useful work than was possible under the restricted conditions by which M. Lamure and I were handicapped during our stay in Lorraine in 1914. And I believe firmly that that is true of the great mass of correspondents of the big English and French newspapers, and that a grave mistake is being made in not using us, and giving us real and not little snippets of pretended liberty. We are not out for scalps and “scoops,” as we might be in ordinary journalism and an ordinary war. We are ready to take the war as seriously as any general or any minister. What we want to do is to tell the truth, or as much of it as the Censor and our own discretion will let us, because we know that only the truth will prevail. CHAPTER XVII A DAY WITH A PREFECT Having said so much of what our friends of the various Préfectures did or tried to do for two humble newspaper correspondents, I should like, before going on to consider the next phase of the war, to try and give an idea of the work which they did for the people in their districts, and the risks which they often ran in doing it. I will begin with a description of a _Conseil de Révision_ at St. Nicholas-du-Port, to which I went with M. Mirman and one of the Generals of the district. While we were in Lorraine there were a large number of special sittings of these courts, at which the young men of the nation go through their final medical inspection before entering upon their statutory term of military service. Sometimes they were presided over by the Préfet himself, sometimes by M. Slingsby, the President of the Prefectorial Council, a direct descendant of the old Yorkshire family but a Frenchman to the bone. In ordinary times the regular annual inspections take place in March, and the normal age of enlistment is twenty. Soon after the war began boys of nineteen were called up to undergo training for service with the colours, and it was to judge of their fitness to bear arms and also to revise cases that had previously been turned down or put back that these extraordinary _Conseils de Révision_ were held.