Page:Women Wanted.djvu/51

 the Service de l'Information Diplomatique, whither my Briand letter leads me, I seem to spend hours.

They are going to be charmed, as Frenchmen can be, to take me to the front. And the days pass and the days pass. "Ah, but you see, for a lady journalist it is so different and so difficult. The trip must be specially arranged." And the weeks go by. And M. Polignac is so polite and polite and polite—just that and nothing more.

One day he says to me: "And, Mme. Daggett, how long is it you will be in Paris?" "Why," I falter, "I hadn't expected to winter here. I'm waiting, you know, just waiting until I can go to the front." "And how much longer now could you wait?" he inquires. "Oh," I answer desperately, "I'll surely have to go by the 29th. I couldn't stay longer than that."

So in the course of the next few days there comes a letter telling me how it pains the French government that they should not be able to "take that trip in hand" before the 29th. And of course if I must leave them on that date, as I had said I must, oh, they so much regret, etc., etc.

If I intend to get to the front, evidently then I must dig through! And in my room at the Hotel Regina in the Rue de Rivoli, I take my pen in hand.

To "Maison de la Presse, Service de l'Information Diplomatique," I write: "Gentlemen, your favour of the 26th inst. with your regrets just received. And I hasten to write you that I cannot, for the sake of France, accept your decision as final, without