He mentioned the blockade and said that it had become quite effective—­wonderfully effective, in fact; and he implied that he did not see why we now failed to recognize it.  Our refusal to recognize it had caused and doubtless is now causing such ill-feeling as exists in England.

Then he talked long about peace and how it would probably be arranged.  He judged, from letters that he receives from the United States as well as from Americans who come over here, that there was an expectation in America that the President would be called in at the peace settlement and that some persons even expected him to offer mediation.  He did not see how that could be.  He knew no precedent for such a proceeding.  The President might, of course, on the definite request of either side, make a definite inquiry of the other side; but such a course would be, in effect, merely the transmission of an inquiry.

But after peace was made and the time came to set up a League for Enforcing Peace, or some such machinery, of course the United States would be and would have to be a party to that if it were to succeed.  He reminded me that a little group of men here, of whom he was one, early in the war sketched substantially the same plan that the American League to Enforce Peace has worked out.  It had not seemed advisable to have any general public discussion of it in England till the war should end:  nobody had time now to give to it.

As he knew no precedent for belligerents to call in a third party when they met to end a war, so he knew no precedent for any outside government to protest against the invasion of a country by a Power that had signed a treaty to guarantee the integrity of the invaded country—­no precedent, that is to say, for the United States to protest against the invasion of Belgium.  “That precedent,” I said, “was found in Hysteria.”

Lord Bryce, who had just returned from a visit to the British headquarters in France, hardly dared hope for the end of the war till next year; and the intervening time between now and the end would be a time, he feared, of renewed atrocities and increasing hatred.  He cited the killing of Captain Fryatt of the Brussels and the forcible deportation of young women from Lille and other towns in the provinces of France occupied by the Germans.

The most definite idea that he had touching American-British relations was the fear that the anti-British feeling in the United States would become stronger and would outlast the war.  “It is organized,” he said.  “The disaffected Germans and the disaffected Irish are interested in keeping it up.”  He asked what effect I thought the Presidential campaign would have on this feeling.  He seemed to have a fear that somehow the campaign would give an occasion for stirring it up even more.

“Good-bye.  Give my regards to all my American friends; and I’m proud to say there are a good many of them.”

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