2110-3-1-26

JOSEPH S AMES JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

July 3, 1917.

Lieutenant Colonel John Buchan, Foreign Office, London, England.

My dear Col. Buchan:-

I had no opportunity while in England to thank you for your kindness in securing for me the permission to pay a second visit to the Visitors Chateau in France. I enjoyed myself immensely and was able this time to find all the scientific men in whom I was interested. Some of them were in Hesdin, others at headquarters. I had a most profitable series of interviews with them.

You told me that you were thinking of opening another chateau for Americans. Please do not send all Americans to this one and thus isolate them from the English and French whom they might meet at the other chateau. I have enjoyed few things more than meeting the men I did while there. Such men as Belloc, the Abbe Dimnet, and others were perfectly delightful people. I don't mind at all if you send all the American journalists off by themselves because that is the way we would treat them here.

When the War is over and you come to this country to write your life of General Lee please do not forget that my wife was an intimate friend of Lee's for many years and she has many recollections which might be of value to you. I suppose you know also that Lee's chief of staff - Col. Marshall - lived in Baltimore after the War, and that his papers are all in the hands of his sons. I believe they have never been touched by any biographer.

Very sincerely yours,

Joseph S. Ames