are acting those same scenes over again, having the same emotions, the same purpose:  nobody must invade or threaten England.  “If they do, we’ll spend the last man and the last shilling.  We value,” they say truly, “the good-will and the friendship of the United States more than we value anything except our own freedom, but we’ll risk even that rather than admit copper to Germany, because every pound of copper prolongs the war.”

There you are.  I’ve blinked myself blind and talked myself hoarse to men in authority—­from Grey down—­to see a way out—­without keeping this intolerable slaughter up to the end.  But they stand just where I tell you.

And the horror of it no man knows.  The news is suppressed.  Even those who see it and know it do not realize it.  Four of the crack regiments of this kingdom—­regiments that contained the flower of the land and to which it was a distinction to belong—­have been practically annihilated, one or two of them annihilated twice.  Yet their ranks are filled up and you never hear a murmur.  Presently it’ll be true that hardly a title or an estate in England will go to its natural heir—­the heir has been killed.  Yet, not a murmur; for England is threatened with invasion.  They’ll all die first.  It will presently be true that more men will have been killed in this war than were killed before in all the organized wars since the Christian era began.  The English are willing and eager to stop it if things can be so fixed that there will be no military power in Europe that wishes or prepares to attack and invade England.

I’ve had many one-hour, two-hour, three-hour talks with Sir Edward Grey.  He sees nothing further than I have written.  He says to me often that if the United States could see its way to cease to protest against stopping war materials from getting into Germany, they could end the war more quickly—­all this, of course, informally; and I say to him that the United States will consider any proposal you will make that does not infringe on a strict neutrality.  Violate a rigid neutrality we will not do.  And, of course, he does not ask that.  I give him more trouble than all the other neutral Powers combined; they all say this.  And, on the other side, his war-lord associates in the Cabinet make his way hard.

So it goes—­God bless us, it’s awful.  I never get away from it—­war, war, war every waking minute, and the worry of it; and I see no near end of it.  I’ve had only one thoroughly satisfactory experience in a coon’s age, and this was this:  Two American ships were stopped the other day at Falmouth.  I telegraphed the captains to come here to see me.  I got the facts from them—­all the facts.  I telephoned Sir Edward that I wished to see him at once.  I had him call in one of his ship-detaining committee.  I put the facts on the table.  I said, “By what right, or theory of right, or on what excuse, are those ships stopped?  They are engaged in neutral