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Updated: June 15, 2025
"Vos papiers, s'il vous plait!" Again I produced bundles of papers permis de sejour in Paris, Amiens, Rouen, Orleans, Le Mans; laisser-passer to Boulogne, Dieppe, Havre, Dunkirk, Aire-sur-Lys, Bethune and Hazebrouck; British passports and papiers vises by French consuls, French police, French generals, French mayors, and French stationmasters. But they were hardly satisfied.
If there had been no officer along and I had not had a laisser-passer on my person, the American Ambassador to France would probably have had to get another countryman out of trouble. The incident shows how thoroughly the army is policed and how surely. It was dark when we returned to the little village on the plateau where we had left the car.
Even if one succeeded in obtaining the necessary laisser-passer from the military Government, there was no way of reaching the front, as all the automobiles and all except the most decrepit horses had been requisitioned for the use of the army. There was, you understand, no such thing as hiring an automobile, or even buying one.
The urgency of the matter being explained to him, however, he reluctantly issued the necessary laisser-passer, though intimating quite plainly that our mission would probably end in providing "more work for the undertaker, another little job for the casket-maker," and that he washed his hands of all responsibility for our fate.
And finally, there was the much-prized laisser-passer which was issued by the military government and usually bore the photograph of the person to whom it was given, which proved an open sesame wherever shown, and which, I might add, was exceedingly difficult to obtain. Only once did my laisser-passer fail me.
Thackara, our consul-general, and, thanks to him, was not more than an hour in obtaining my laisser-passer. The police assured me I might consider myself fortunate, as the time they usually spent in preparing a passport was two days.
Robert Dunn, war correspondent of the New York Evening Post, who is the only newspaper man I have talked with who really saw the fighting near La Cateau and Saint Quentin. Mr. Dunn went on a train with his bicycle last week, provided only with a laisser-passer for Aulnay in the Department of the North.
I afterwards went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to see about having my coupe-file, or special pass, vised with a laisser-passer label. This can only be obtained at the Prefecture of Police upon the special authorization of the Foreign Office. I was told that although a few such permits had been granted, no decision will be taken in the matter before Saturday.
I called at the Ministry of War this morning, and Colonel Commandant Duval, chief of the press bureau there, gave me a laisser-passer to enter the Ministry three times a day: ten in the morning, three in the afternoon, and at eleven o'clock at night to get the official news communicated by the War Department to the newspapers.
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