Well, evidently a journalist should get in good standing with a war office which alone can press the button to everywhere she wants to go. The short cut to a war office is through a press bureau. But a press bureau modestly shrinks from the publicity that it purveys. You do not find it on Main Street with a lettered signboard and a hand pointing: “Journalists, right this way.” And you can’t run right up the front steps of a war office and ring the bell. It would be a what-do-you-call-it, a _faux pas_ if you did. Even for a private residence it would be that. There isn’t anywhere that I know of over here even in peace time that as soon as you reach town you can call a hostess up on the telephone and have her say, “Oh, you’re the friend of Sallie Smith that she’s written me about. Come right along up to dinner.” Why, the butler would tell you her ladyship or her grace or something like that was not at home. It just can’t be done like that outside of America. You don’t rush into the best English circles that way, much less the English government. Absolutely your only way around is through a formal correspondence. One day I wrap myself in the rose satin down bed-quilt at the Ritz and spread out my letters of introduction to choose a journalistic lead. There are carved cupids on the walls of this bedroom, and a lovely rose velvet carpet on the floor and heavy rose silk hanging at the windows. But there isn’t any place to be warm. The tiny open grate holds six or it may be seven coals—you see why Dickens always writes of “coals” in the plural—and you put them on delicately with things like the sugar tongs. It isn’t good form to be warm in England. The best families aren’t. It’s plebeian and American even to want to be.