Geneva 1924

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Geneva 1924

Paris and London 1926

Germany 1928

Geneva 1927

Geneva 1928

England 1936

Geneva 1924

After obtaining my degree, I landed my first job because I claimed I could speak French. Having been top in French at my public school for eight years and continued with it during my degree course in Chemistry, I was entitled to think so. In later years, I had many laughs with the firm's managing director about the test he put me through. He was suitably impressed because he could not speak a word.

Armed with all the introductions that a kind father could rake up to all the big-wigs then resident at the League of Nations, I caught the boat-train and duly landed at Calais. There was fifteen minutes delay so I went into the buvette in the Gare Maritime. This is as near Dover as one can get and still be in France and here in the French language that I had been studying for over a decade I ordered a beer. There was served to me a liqueur glass of bitter red stuff, advertised all over France as BYRRH. He was certainly an Irishman, who taught me my French, but I did rather let the party down. I tore up all my father's introductions and, except for writing home once a week, neither spoke nor wrote English for six months.

After perhaps a year, when I gesticulated with my hands and the workman in the factory had taught me to swear in French for 60 seconds without repeating myself, I went to the cinema to see a silent film that lasted four hours called "Koenigsmark." It appeared to be an excellent and exciting film but although I followed with ease all the captions flashed on the screen, I could not make head or tail of the film. On leaving I met a friend in the foyer and asked him what the one single word I had not understood meant. It was "le sosie" and it meams "somebody's double." The next day I went and saw it again.