BARBADOS-ANTIGUA EXPEDITION 27 
should find it as difficult to get into the United States as we did to 
get out of it, our country would be safe. In obtaining a pass- 
port we came to entertain serious doubts as to whether we really 
had been born or not, so difficult was it to furnish details of 
the event that would satisfy the inquisitive Department of 
State, which demanded the testimony of either a parent or the 
attending physician. With a man past middle life this is an 
embarrassing situation. In my case none of the persons who 
could testify regarding the interesting event of my nativity was 
living. Although personally present, my own testimony was 
not admitted, probably on the ground that I was regarded as a 
prejudiced party. And so the Bureau of Citizenship, Depart- 
ment of State, had to be content with the information that the 
applicant had good reason to believe that he actually had been 
born and had grown up under the personal impression, from 
hearsay evidence, it is true, that he was born at a certain place 
and date and that the family Bible so stated. 
The obtaining of passports, however, was mere child’s play in 
comparison with the attempt to satisfy the War-Trade Board in 
regard to getting out our equipment. The officials of that 
board, after expressing a most courteous desire to issue the 
necessary war-trade license, proceeded to put the whole set of 
papers in a pigeon-hole and forget all about it. The trouble 
was that the regulations were devised to meet the necessities of 
legitimate commercial enterprises and not to provide for the 
very unusual situation when a State desired to use its own prop- 
erty for its own purpose in a foreign country, and that purpose 
had no commercial bearing whatever. The various blanks to be 
filled out would in no wise fit a situation such as this. To give 
just one item: It was expressly demanded that a special permit 
be applied for on a separate blank for ‘‘each commodity’’ for 
which a permit to export was desired. Now as our outfit em- 
braced over a hundred separate commodities, it would have 
taken several weeks to fill out the separate blanks and Heaven 
only knows how many months to have them passed by the War- 
Trade Board! Then the consignor and consignee were the 
Same person, namely, the director of the expedition, and I was 
required to solemnly swear that both of these individuals were 
