That does not mean that for the help Americans have given France and her Allies, the Allies are ungrateful. That the French certainly are not ungrateful I was given assurance by no less an authority than the President of the republic. His assurance was conveyed to the American people in a message of thanks. It is also a message of good-will. It recognizes and appreciates the sympathy shown to France in her present fight for liberty and civilization by those Americans who remember that when we fought for our liberty France was not neutral, but sent us Lafayette and Rochambeau, ships and soldiers. It is a message of thanks from President Poincare to those Americans who found it less easy to be neutral than to be grateful. It was my good fortune to be presented by Paul Benazet, a close personal friend of the President, and both an officer of the army and a deputy. As a deputy before the war he helped largely in passing the bills that called for three years of military service and for heavier artillery. As an officer he won the Legion of Honor and the Cross of War. Besides being a brilliant writer, M. Benazet is also an accomplished linguist, and as President Poincare does not express himself readily in English, and as my French is better suited to restaurants than palaces, he acted as our interpreter. The arrival of important visitors, M. Cambon, the former ambassador to the United States, and the new prime minister, M. Briand, delayed our reception, and while we waited we were escorted through the official rooms of the Elysee. It was a half-hour of most fascinating interest, not only because the vast salons were filled with what, in art, is most beautiful, but because we were brought back to the ghosts of other days. What we actually saw were the best of Gobelin tapestries, the best of Sevres china, the best of mural paintings. We walked on silken carpets, bearing the fleur-de-lis. We sat on sofas of embroidery as fine as an engraving and as rich in color as a painting by Morland. The bright autumn sunshine illuminated the ormulu brass of the First Empire, gilt eagles, crowns, cupids, and the only letter of the alphabet that always suggests one name. Those which we brought back to the rooms in which once they lived, planned, and plotted were the ghosts of Mme. de Pompadour, Louis XVI, Murat, Napoleon I, and Napoleon III. We could imagine the first Emperor standing with his hands clasped behind him in front of the marble fireplace, his figure reflected in the full-length mirrors, his features in gold looking down at him from the walls and ceilings. We intruded even into the little room opening on the rose garden, where for hours he would pace the floor. But, perhaps, what was of greatest interest was the remarkable adjustment of these surroundings, royal and imperial, to the simple and dignified needs of a republic.