offices of other governments.  Of course it ought to get room to work in.  Then it ought at once to give its Ambassadors and Ministers homes and dignified treatment.  We’ve got to play a part in the world whether we wish to or not.  Think of these things.

     The blindest great force in this world to-day is the Prussian War
     Party—­blind and stupid.—­Well, and the most weary man in London
     just at this hour is

     Your humble servant,
     W.H.P,

but he’ll be all right in the morning.

     To Arthur W. Page
     [Undated][72]

     DEAR ARTHUR: 

     . . .  I recall one night when we were dining at Sir John Jellicoe’s, he
     told me that the Admiralty never slept—­that he had a telephone by
     his bed every night.

     “Did it ever ring?” I asked.

     “No; but it will.”

You begin to see pretty clearly how English history has been made and makes itself.  This afternoon Lady S——­ told your mother of her three sons, one on a warship in the North Sea, another with the army in France, and a third in training to go.  “How brave you all are!” said your mother, and her answer was:  “They belong to their country; we can’t do anything else.”  One of the daughters-in-law of the late Lord Salisbury came to see me to find out if I could make an inquiry about her son who was reported “missing” after the battle of Mons. She was dry-eyed, calm, self-restrained—­very grateful for the effort I promised to make; but a Spartan woman would have envied her self-possession.  It turned out that her son was dead.

You hear experiences like these almost every day.  These are the kinds of women and the kinds of men that have made the British Empire and the English race.  You needn’t talk of decadence.  All their great qualities are in them here and now.  I believe that half the young men who came to Katharine’s[73] dances last winter and who used to drop in at the house once in a while are dead in France already.  They went as a matter of course.  This is the reason they are going to win.  Now these things impress you, as they come to you day by day.

There isn’t any formal social life now—­no dinners, no parties.  A few friends dine with a few friends now and then very quietly.  The ladies of fashion are hospital nurses and Red Cross workers, or they are collecting socks and blankets for the soldiers.  One such woman told your mother to-day that she went to one of the recruiting camps every day and taught the young fellows what colloquial French she could.  Every man, woman, and child seems to be doing something.  In the ordinary daily life, we see few of them:  everybody is at work somewhere.

We live in a world of mystery:  nothing can surprise us.  The rumour is that a servant in one of the great families sent word to the Germans where the three English cruisers[74]