I am facing France and the Channel crossing. Here in London it is so long since the Zeppelins have been heard from that we are almost lulled into a sense of security that they will not come again. If they do high government circles usually hear in advance. A friend whose cousin’s brother-in-law is in the Admiralty will let me know as soon as he finds out. But now all of these neatly arranged life and death plans must go into the discard. For you see I am changing my danger back again from Zeppelins to submarines. Let us see about the sinkings. Rumour reports now that about four out of six boats are getting across. I may get one of the four. On the night train from London, I wrap myself in my steamer-rug in the unheated compartment. Travelling is not what you might say encouraged. This journey to Paris, accomplished ordinarily in four hours, will now take twenty-four. No two time-tables will anywhere connect. There are as many difficulties as can possibly be arranged. Governments don’t want you doing this every day in the week. And there is always a question whether you will be permitted to do it at all. At Southampton I must meet the steel line with the challenge, “Who goes there?” Again I tell all my life to the man with a pistol at his belt and a sword at his side. He looks a second time at my passport: “You want to go all sorts of places you’ve no business to,” he says sharply. “Not all of them now,” I answer humbly, “only France.” “Well, why even France?” he persists testily. I try to tell him. I present for a second consideration one of my “most important credentials.” It is a personal letter from the French consul in New York specially and cordially recommending me to the “care and protection of all the civil and military authorities in France.” At last he tosses the letter inquiringly down his khaki line as much as to say, “Oh, well, if they want her over there?” It comes back with a nod of acquiescence from the last man, and a visé in purple ink lets me through to the boat. Shall I remember the _Sussex_? You don’t so much after you’ve lived daily with death for a while. Some time during the night I am drowsily conscious that the boat begins to move. A skilled pilot has taken the wheel to guide us in and out among mines placed perilously as a protection against German submarines. Our lives are coming through dangerous narrows. In the morning we are safe in Havre. The next steel line, here, is French. And with the letter from the consul at New York in my hand I am literally and cordially and politely bowed into France.