" he said, seeking to diminish the tension so
often felt by a journalist, even at the moment of a highly appreciated
occasion, "to break into graceful license after so long a life of
decorum; therefore you must excuse me if my egotism doesn't run very
free or my complacency find quite the right turns."

He had received me in the offices of the corps, businesslike rooms,
modern for London, low-ceiled and sparely furnished. It was not by any
means the sort of setting in which as a reader of Henry James I had
expected to run to earth the author of "The Golden Bowl," but the place
is, nevertheless, today, in the tension of war time, one of the few
approaches to a social resort outside his Chelsea home where he can be
counted on. Even that delightful Old World retreat, Lamb House, Rye, now
claims little of his time.

The interviewer spoke of the waterside Chelsea and Mr. James's long
knowledge of it, but, sitting not overmuch at his ease and laying a
friendly hand on the shoulder of his tormentor, he spoke, instead, of
motor ambulances, making the point, in the interest of clearness, that
the American Ambulance Corps of Neuilly, though an organization with
which Richard Norton's corps is in the fullest sympathy, does not come
within the scope of his remarks.

"I find myself Chairman of our Corps Committee for no great reason that
I can discover save my being the oldest American resident here
interested in its work; at the same time that if I render a scrap of
help by putting on record my joy even in the rather ineffectual
connection so far as 'doing' anything is concerned, I needn't say how
welcome you are to my testimony. What I mainly seem to grasp, I should
say, is that in regard to testifying at all unlimitedly by the aid of
the newspapers, I have to reckon with a certain awkwardness in our
position. Here comes up, you see, the question of our reconciling a
rather indispensable degree of reserve as to the detail of our activity
with the general American demand for publicity at any price. There are
ways in which the close presence of war challenges the whole claim for
publicity; and I need hardly say that this general claim has been
challenged, practically, by the present horrific complexity of things at
the front, as neither the Allies themselves nor watching neutrals have
ever seen it challenged before. The American public is, of course,
little used to not being able to hear, and hear as an absolute right,
about anyt