an early peace-seeking policy.  But his friends openly and incessantly predict that he will, at a favourable moment, take this cue.  I myself can hardly believe it.  Political victory in Great Britain doesn’t now lie in that direction.

The dominant section of opinion is much grieved at Russia’s surrender, but they refuse to be discouraged by it.  They recall how Napoleon overran most of Europe, and the French held practically none of his conquests after his fall.

Such real political danger as exists here—­if any exists, of which I am not quite sure—­comes not only now mainly of this split in public opinion but also and to a greater degree from the personal enemies of the present government.  Lloyd George is kept in power because he is the most energetic man in sight—­by far.  Many who support him do not like him nor trust him-except that nobody doubts his supreme earnestness to win the war.  On all other subjects he has enemies of old and he makes new ones.  His intense and superb energy has saved him in two notable crises.  His dismissal of Sir William Robertson[70] has been accepted in the interest of greater unity of military control, but it was a dangerous rapids that he shot, for he didn’t do it tactfully.  Yet there’s a certain danger to the present powers in the feeling that some of them are wearing out.  Parliament itself—­an old one now—­is thought to have gone stale.  Bonar Law is over-worked and tired; Balfour is often said to be too philosophical and languid; but, when this feeling seems in danger of taking definite shape, he makes a clearer statement than anybody else and catches on his feet.  The man of new energy, not yet fagged, is Geddes[71], whose frankness carries conviction.

     To the President

     London, March 17, 1918.

     DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: 

The rather impatient and unappreciative remarks made by the Prime Minister before a large meeting of preachers of the “free” churches about a League of Nations reminds me to write you about the state of British opinion on that subject.  What Lloyd George said to these preachers is regrettable because it showed a certain impatience of mind from which he sometimes suffers; but it is only fair to him to say that his remarks that day did not express a settled opinion.  For on more than one previous occasion he has spoken of the subject in a wholly different tone—­much more appreciatively.  On that particular day he had in mind only the overwhelming necessity to win the war—­other things, all other things must wait.  In a way this is his constant mood—­the mood to make everybody feel that the only present duty is to win the war.  He has been accused of almost every defect in the calendar except of slackness about the war.  Nobody has ever doubted his earnestness nor his energy about that.  And the universal confidence in his energy and earnestness is what keeps him in office.  Nobody sees