Your letter telling me about Tyrrell and the President brought me great joy.  Tyrrell is in every way a square fellow, much like his Chief; and, you may depend on it, they are playing fair—­in their slow way.  They always think of India and of Egypt—­never of Cuba.  Lord!  Lord! the fun I’ve had, the holy joy I am having (I never expected to have such exalted and invigorating felicity) in delivering elementary courses of instruction in democracy to the British Government.  Deep down at the bottom, they don’t know what Democracy means.  Their Empire is in the way.  Their centuries of land-stealing are in the way.  Their unsleeping watchfulness of British commerce is in the way.  “You say you’ll shoot men into self-government,” said Sir Edward.  “Doesn’t that strike you as comical?” And I answered, “It is comical only to the Briton and to others who have associated shooting with subjugation.  We associate shooting with freedom.”  Half this blessed Sunday at this country house I have been ramming the idea down the throat of the Lord Chancellor[37]. He sees it, too, being a Scotchman.  I take the members of the Government, as I get the chance or can make it, and go over with them the A B C of the President’s principle:  no territorial annexation; no trafficking with tyrants; no stealing of American governments by concession or financial thimble-rigging.  They’ll not recognize another Huerta—­they’re sick of that.  And they’ll not endanger our friendship.  They didn’t see the idea in the beginning.  Of course the real trouble has been in Mexico City—­Carden.  They don’t know yet just what he did.  But they will, if I can find out.  I haven’t yet been able to make them tell me at Washington.  Washington is a deep hole of silence toward ambassadors.  By gradual approaches, I’m going to prove that Carden can do—­and in a degree has already done—­as much harm as Bryce did good—­and all about a paltry few hundreds of million dollars’ worth of oil.  What the devil does the oil or the commerce of Mexico or the investments there amount to in comparison with the close friendship of the two nations?  Carden can’t be good long:  he’ll break out again presently.  He has no political imagination.  That’s a rather common disease here, too.  Few men have.  It’s good fun.  I’m inviting the Central and South American Ministers to lunch with me, one by one, and I’m incidentally loading them up.  I have all the boys in the Embassy full of zeal and they are tackling the Secretaries of the Central and South American legations.  We’ve got a principle now to deal by with them.  They’ll see after a while.

     English people are all right, too—­except the Doctrinaires.  They
     write much rank ignorance.  But the learned men learn things last of
     all.