their correspondence were catalogued by the police).  I have been amazed at the activity of some of them whose doings I have since been informed of.

We now pay this tribute to the submarines—­that we have entered the period of compulsory rations.  There is enough to eat in spite of the food that has gone to feed the fishes.  But no machinery of distribution to a whole population can be uniformly effective.  The British worker with his hands is a greedy feeder and a sturdy growler and there will be trouble.  But I know no reason to apprehend serious trouble.

The utter break-up of Russia and the German present occupation of so much of the Empire as she wants have had a contrary effect on two sections of opinion here, as I interpret the British mind.  On the undoubtedly enormously dominant section of opinion these events have only stiffened resolution.  They say that Germany now must be whipped to a finish.  Else she will have doubled her empire and will hold the peoples of her new territory as vassals without regard to their wishes and the war lord caste will be more firmly seated than ever before.  If her armies be literally whipped she’ll have to submit to the Allies’ terms, which will dislodge her from overlordship over these new unwilling subjects—­and she can be dislodged in no other way.  This probably means a long war, now that after a time she can get raw materials for war later and food from Rumania and the Ukraine, etc.  This will mean a fight in France and Belgium till a decisive victory is won and the present exultant German will is broken.

The minority section of public opinion—­as I judge a small minority—­has the feeling that such an out-and-out military victory cannot be won or is not worth the price; and that the enemies of Germany, allowing her to keep her Eastern accretions, must make the best terms they can in the East; that there’s no use in running the risk of Italy’s defeat and defection before some sort of bargain could be made about Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, and Serbia.  Of course this plan would leave the German warlordship intact and would bring no sort of assurance of a prolonged peace.  It would, too, leave European Russia at least to German mercy, and would leave the Baltic and the Black Seas practically wholly under German influence.  As for the people of Russia, there seems small chance for them in this second contingency.  The only way to save them is to win a decisive victory.

As matters stand to-day Lord Lansdowne and his friends (how numerous they are nobody knows) are the loudest spokesmen for such a peace as can be made.  But it is talked much of in Asquith circles that the time may come when this policy will be led by Mr. Asquith, in a form somewhat modified from the Lansdowne formula.  Mr. Asquith has up to this time patriotically supported the government and he himself has said nothing in public which could warrant linking his name with