With the French in France and Salonika by Richard Harding Davis

February, 1916.

A year ago you could leave the Continent and enter England by showing a passport and a steamer ticket. To-day it is as hard to leave Paris, and no one ever _wants_ to leave Paris, as to get out of jail; as difficult to invade England as for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. To leave Paris for London you must obtain the permission of the police, the English consul-general, and the American consul-general. That gets you only to Havre. The Paris train arrives at Havre at nine o'clock at night, and while the would-be passengers for the Channel boat to Southampton are waiting to be examined, they are kept on the wharf in a goods-shed. An English sergeant hands each of them a ticket with a number, and when the number is called the passenger enters a room on the shed where French and English officials put him, or her, through a third degree. The examination is more or less severe, and sometimes the passenger is searched.