Our friend[59] in Washington thinks it is worth while for me to go to Germany, and that determines the matter.  The press is shrieking to-day over the Mexican situation, but I hope they will be disappointed.  It is not the intention to do anything further for the moment than to blockade the ports, and unless some overt act is made from the North, our troops will not cross the border.

     Your friend always,
     E.M.  HOUSE.

     To Edward M. House
     London, April 27, 1914.

     MY DEAR HOUSE: 

Of course you decided wisely to carry out your original Berlin plan, and you ought never to have had a moment’s hesitation, if you did have any hesitation.  I do not expect you to produce any visible or immediate results.  I hope I am mistaken in this.  But you know that the German Government has a well-laid progressive plan for shipbuilding for a certain number of years.  I believe that the work has, in fact, already been arranged for.  But that has nothing to do with the case.  You are going to see what effect you can produce on the mind of a man.  Perhaps you will never know just what effect you will produce.  Yet the fact that you are who you are, that you make this journey for this especial purpose, that you are everlastingly right—­these are enough.

Moreover, you can’t ever tell results, nor can you afford to make your plans in this sort of high work with the slightest reference to probable results.  That’s the bigness and the glory of it.  Any ordinary man can, on any ordinary day, go and do a task, the favourable results of which may be foreseen. That’s easy.  The big thing is to go confidently to work on a task, the results of which nobody can possibly foresee—­a task so vague and improbable of definite results that small men hesitate.  It is in this spirit that very many of the biggest things in history have been done.  Wasn’t the purchase of Louisiana such a thing?  Who’d ever have supposed that that could have been brought about?  I applaud your errand and I am eagerly impatient to hear the results.  When will you get here?  I assume that Mrs. House will not go with you to Berlin.  No matter so you both turn up here for a good long stay.

I’ve taken me a little bit of a house about twenty miles out of town whither we are going in July as soon as we can get away from London.  I hope to stay down there till far into October, coming up to London about thrice a week.  That’s the dull season of the year.  It’s a charming little country place—­big enough for you to visit us. . . .

     From Edward M. House

     An Bord des Dampfers Imperator

     den May 21, 1914.

     Hamburg-Amerika Linie

     Dear Page: 

Here we are again.  The Wallaces[60] land at Cherbourg, Friday morning, and we of course go on to Berlin.  I wish I might have the benefit of your advice just now, for the chances for success in this great adventure are slender enough at best.  The President has done his part in the letter I have with me, and it is clearly up to me to do mine. . . .

     Faithfully yours,