DEALING WITH GOVERNMENT
Having crossed the Channel once alive, it seems like tempting fate to try it again. I draw in my breath as one about to plunge into a cold bath in the morning, and go out to secure from three governments the necessary permission that will allow me to return to England. From the police alone it sometimes takes eight days to secure this concession. But at the Prefecture of Police, they read my letter of introduction from the French consul in New York. And I have only to leave my photograph and sign on the dotted line. In five minutes they have given my passport the necessary visé. The American consul easily enough adds his. All my journey apparently is going as pleasantly as a summer holiday planned by a Cook’s Agency, when at length I come up with a bump against the British Control office in the Rue Cheveaux Lagarde. And the going away from here requires some negotiations. The British lieutenant in charge reads my nice French letter and without comment tosses it aside. “You wish to go to London?” he asks in great surprise. “Now, why should you wish to go to London?” He gives me distinctly to understand this is not the open season for tourists in England. “We don’t care to have people travelling,” he says in a tone of voice as if that settles it. “Why have you come over here in these difficult and dangerous times, anyhow?” he asks querulously and a trifle suspiciously. “The best thing you can do is to go home directly. And America is right across the water from here.”
“But, Lieutenant,” I gasp, “my trunk is in England and I’ve got to have a few clothes.”
“No,” he says, “personal reasons like that don’t interest the British Government. Neither am I able to understand a journalistic mission which should take a woman travelling in these days of war.” He looks at me. “The New Position of Women! It is not of sufficient interest to the British Government that I should let you go,” he says with finality.
“I know, Lieutenant,” I agree. “But surely you are interested in the Allies’ war propaganda for the United States?” The light from the window shines full on his face and I can see a faint relaxation about the lines of his mouth. “Now I wish to go to England so that I may tell the story of the British women’s war work. The readers of Pictorial Review are four million women who vote.” The lieutenant stirs visibly. His sword rattles against the rounds of his chair.
Well, my request hangs in the balance like this for a week. At length one day he says, “I’m thinking about letting you go. I shall have to consult with my superior officer. I don’t at all know that he will consent.”
There is the day that I have almost given up hope. I am waiting again before the lieutenant’s desk. He has gone for a last consultation with the superior officer. Will he never come back? I stare at his empty chair. The clock on the mantel ticks and ticks. The fire in the grate snaps and snaps. Other people at the next desk who get easier visés than mine, come and go—a Red Cross nurse, two French sisters of charity, a little French boy returning to school. I have counted the pens in the lieutenant’s glass tray. I know every blot on his desk-pad. The clock has ticked thirty-five minutes of suspense for me before the little French soldier in red trousers opens the door and the lieutenant is here.
“Well,” he says, “we have decided. You are to be permitted to go, but on one condition.” And he visés my passport, “No return to France during the period of the war.”
It has taken nearly two weeks to win my case. Two days later at 6 A. M., when the gardens of the Tuileries are outlined dimly against the faint rays of dawn, my taxicab is reeling through the streets of Paris to the Gare St. Lazare. It is noon before the train reaches Havre. The Red Cross nurse, the London newspaper correspondent and the Belgian air-man all file out of our compartment and the Irish major from Salonica is last. He turns to me with a frank Irish smile: “Your bag can just as well go along with my military luggage. And they’ll never even open it.”
At eight o’clock that night in Havre, my passport and the letter from the French consul in New York are handed down the steel line of ten men at a table. Each looks up with the same curious smile when his glance arrives at the last visé: “Who put that on your passport?” asks the officer at the head of the line. “The British Control Office?” he says with heat. “It’s none of their business.” In an inner room, four more men examine my documents. “Did the British officer see this letter from the French consul?” I am asked. I nod assent. A laugh goes round the room. “Pardon, madame,” says the man with the most gold braid, “the British Control Office does not control France. You are welcome to France, madame, welcome to France any time you choose to come.”