ABSTRACT
Crossing the Atlantic in the first half of 1944 was a complicated business. Peter and Conrad travelled on the Queen Mary at great speed but with extreme discomfort, in a ship completely crowded with young children and their mothers, all the mothers complaining of all the other children, and all the children causing the maximum trouble by conduct exposing them to the danger of falling into the sea. But of all this I knew nothing until I myself arrived in England. As for me, I was sent in a huge convoy which proceeded majestically at the speed of a bicycle, escorted by corvettes and aeroplanes. I was taking with me the manuscript of my History of Western Philosophy, and the unfortunate censors had to read every word of it lest it should contain information useful to the enemy. They were, however, at last satisfied that a knowledge of philosophy could be of no use to the Germans, and very politely assured me that they had enjoyed reading my book, which I confess I found hard to believe. Everything was surrounded with secrecy. I was not allowed to tell my friends when I was sailing or from what port. I found myself at last on a Liberty ship, making its maiden voyage. The Captain, who was a jolly fellow, used to cheer me up by saying that not more than one in four of the Liberty ships broke in two on its maiden voyage. Needless to say, the ship was American and the Captain, British. There was one officer who wholeheartedly approved of me. He was the Chief Engineer, and he had read The ABC of Relativity without knowing anything about its author. One day, as I was walking the deck with him, he began on the merits of this little book and, when I said that I was the author, his joy knew no limits. There was one other passenger, a business man, whom the ship’s officers did not altogether like because they felt that he was young enough to fight. However, I found him pleasant and I quite enjoyed the three weeks of inactivity. There was
considered to be no risk of submarines until we were approaching the coast of Ireland, but after that we were ordered to sleep in trousers. However, there was no incident of any kind. We were a few days from the end of our journey on D-day, which we learned about from the wireless. Almost the whole ship’s crew was allowed to come and listen. I learned from the wireless the English for ‘Allons, enfants de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé.’ The English for it is: ‘Well, friends, this is it.’
