To Frank L. Polk

     London, May 3, 1917.

     DEAR MR. POLK: 

...  Mr. Balfour accurately represents British character, British opinion, and the British attitude.  Nobody who knows him and knows British character and the British attitude ever doubted that.  I know his whole tribe, his home-life, his family connections, his friends; and, of course, since he became Foreign Secretary, I’ve come to know him intimately.  When the question first came up here of his going, of course I welcomed it enthusiastically.  About that time during a two-hour conversation he asked me why the British were so unpopular in the United States.  Among other reasons I told him that our official people on both sides steadfastly refused to visit one another and to become acquainted.  Neither he nor Lord Grey, nor Mr. Asquith, nor Mr. Lloyd George, had ever been to the United States, nor any other important British statesman in recent times, and not a single member of the Administration was personally known to a single member of the British Government.  “I’ll go,” said he, “if you are perfectly sure my going will be agreeable to the President.”  He himself recalled the fact, during one of our several conversations just before he left, that you had not come when he and Lord Grey had invited you.  If you had come, by the way, this era of a better understanding would have begun then, and half our old troubles would then have been removed.  Keeping away from one another is the best of all methods of keeping all old misunderstandings alive and of making new ones.

     I have no doubt that Mr. Balfour’s visit will cause visits of many
     first-class British statesmen during the war or soon afterward. 
     That’s all we need to bring about a perfect understanding.

You may remember how I tried to get an official report about the behaviour of the Benham[58], and how, in the absence of that, Lord Beresford made a disagreeable speech about our Navy in the House of Lords, and how, when months later you sent me Roosevelt’s[59] letter, Lord Beresford expressed regret to me and said that he would explain in another speech.  I hadn’t seen the old fellow for a long time till a fortnight ago.  He greeted me cheerily, and I said, “I don’t think I ought to shake hands with you till you retract what you said about our navy.”  He insisted on my dining with him.  He invited Admiral Sims also, and those two sailors had a jolly evening of it.  Sims’s coming has straightened out all that naval misunderstanding and more.  He is of immense help to them and to us.  But I’m going to make old Beresford’s life a burden till he gets up in the Lords and takes that speech back—­publicly.  He’s really all right; but it’s just as well to keep the records right.  The proceedings of the House of Lords are handsomely bound and go into every gentleman’s library.  I have seen two centuries of them in many a house.