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Rh hence our failure to obtain our long-overdue permission.

"Your friend," said Monsieur in English, "is here a short while ago. I ask him if he is up in the aeroplane flying over Germans will he drop the bombs on Germans and he say no, he will not drop any bombs on Germans."

By this falsehood (such it happened to be) I confess that I was nonplussed. In the first place, I was at the time innocent of third-degree methods. Secondly, I remembered that, a week or so since, B., myself and another American in the section had written a letter—which, on the advice of the sous-lieutenant who accompanied Vingt-et-Un as translator, we had addressed to the Under-Secretary of State in French Aviation—asking that inasmuch as the American Government was about to take over the Red Cross (which meant that all the Sanitary Sections would be affiliated with the American, and no longer with the French, Army) we three at any rate might be allowed to continue our association with the French by enlisting in l'Esquadrille Lafayette. One of the "dirty Frenchmen" had written the letter for us in the finest language imaginable, from data supplied by ourselves.

"You write a letter, your friend and you, for French aviation?"

Here I corrected him: there were three of us; and why didn't he have the third culprit arrested, might I ask? But he ignored this little digression, and wanted to know: Why not American aviation?—to which I answered: "Ah, but as my friend has so often said to me, the French are after all the finest people in the world."

This double-blow stopped Noyon dead, but only for a second.

"Did your friend write this letter?"—"No," I answered truthfully.—"Who did write it?"—"One of the Frenchmen attached to the section."—"What is his name?"—"I'm sure I don't know," I answered; mentally swearing that, whatever might happen to me the scribe should not suffer. "At my urgent request," I added.

Relapsing into French, Monsieur asked me if I would have