ented. Also he,
too, lacked imagination.

He was a man who acted as if priding himself on his brusqueness of
language. He sat at his flat desk like a pagan image, never looked up,
never said aye, no, or go to the devil when I stepped in and wished him
"Good morning!"

I told him what I wanted. I wished to cruise with the American
destroyers in their U-boat operations.

His answer was a No! Bing! No, sir!

"Whoops!" I said to myself. "I've come more than 4,000 miles, with a
fine expense account to _Collier's_, and I'm turned down before I get
going."

I spread before him my credentials--from the department and elsewhere. I
spread before him a letter from Colonel Roosevelt, the same in his own
handwriting. In France I could have lost my passport and yet got along
on that letter. Batteries of inspectors used to sit up and come to life
at the sight of a letter in the colonel's own handwriting.

This man did not turn his head to look at what I might have. All the
credentials in the world were going to have no influence with him. He
repeated his No, putting about seventeen n's in the No!

Then, mildly, I told him that I thought I ought to have something more
than a No; that I should have a reason to go with the No. He intimated
that he didn't have to give reasons unless he wished to.

I asked him why he should not wish to? Was it not right and fair that he
should give a reason? I had come more than 4,000 miles at great expense
to _Collier's_, for one thing. For another--and this more
important--there was an anxiety among Americans to know something of the
doings of our little destroyer flotilla. They had sailed out into the
East, been swallowed up in the mists of the Atlantic--that was the last
we had seen of them. They were the first of our forces to come in
contact with the enemy. Were they doing good work over here, or were
they tied up to a dock in some port and their officers and crews
roistering ashore?

Still he said No.

Then I went on to tell him what I had told our own archaic type of
admiral in London--with additions: that it was possible that we had in
the United States a different idea of the navy from what the British
public held; that in our own country a lot of people held the notion
that the navy was not the property of the officers, not quite so much as
it was the property of the people; and that holding that view, these
same people thought themselves entitled to know what that navy was doing
t