On Sunday the English clergyman reads the service including the phrases in brackets: “God save the King (and the President of the United States). Vanquish their enemies and preserve them in felicity.” Down beneath the sea the Germans in their submarines too are praying like that to the same God. But one hopes, oh, one earnestly hopes, that God will not hear them. After the sixth day out, we have probably escaped the submarines. The American men are no longer kindly asking me in anxious tone, “You’re not nervous, are you?” On the eighth day they get out the shuffleboard. Two mornings later when we awake, the sea is a beautiful blue, all dimpling with sparkling points of golden light. It is real New York sunlight again! The captain comes down from the pilot house smiling: “Well, we got away this time,” he says. The Statue of Liberty is rising on the horizon. The Manhattan sky-line etches itself against the heavens. Do you know, I’d rather be a door-keeper here at Ellis Island, than a lady-in-waiting anywhere in Europe. The _Carmania_ warps into dock in sight of the Metropolitan Tower. Was Fourteenth Street ever cheap, common, sordid? As my taxicab rolls across town, see how beautiful, oh, see how beautiful is Fourteenth street, a little landscape cross-section right out of Paradise! Nobody here is blinded, nobody maimed, nobody in crêpe, nobody broken-hearted—yet. I have escaped from a nightmare of the Middle Ages. I lift my face to the sunlight again. I know I am tired, terribly tired of doing difficult things and saving my life from day to day. But I have not realised how near collapse I am until I drop in a chair before the Editor’s deck in the office of the _Pictorial Review_. I, who have been so crazy to get to the country where there is still free speech, that I had insanely hoped to stand in Broadway and shout, have suddenly lost my voice. I can only report in a whisper! My chief looks at me in concern. “For God’s sake, girl,” he says, “go somewhere and go to bed!” CHAPTER III HER COUNTRY’S CALL One Thousand Women Wanted! You may read it on a great canvas sign that stretches across an industrial establishment in lower Manhattan. The owner of this factory who put it there, only knows that it is an advertisement for labour of which he finds himself suddenly in need. But he has all unwittingly really written a proclamation that is a sign of the times.