I wanted to know just how you all feel without being told it by some one else.

I knew if I came here as Max Ingolby I shouldn't hear the whole truth; I wouldn't see exactly how you see, so I came as one of you, and you must admit, my French is as good as yours almost." He laughed and nodded at them.
"There wasn't one of you that knew I wasn't a Frenchman.

That's in my favour.

If I know the French language as I do, and can talk to you in French as I've done, do you think I don't understand the French people, and what you want and how you feel?
I'm one of the few men in the West that can talk your language.

I learned it when I was a boy, so that I might know my French fellow-countrymen under the same flag, with the same King and the same national hope.