A conservative lady, quite conscientious, was taken down to dinner by Winston Churchill.  Said she, to be quite frank and fair:  “Mr. Churchill, I must tell you that I don’t like your politics.  Yet we must get on together.  You may say, if you like, that this is merely a matter of personal taste with me, as I might not like your—­well, your moustache.”  “I see no reason, Madam, why you should come in contact with either.”

My talk with Bonar Law:  He was disposed to believe that if England had declared at once that she would go to war with Germany if France was attacked, there would have been no war.  Well, would English opinion, before Belgium was attacked, have supported a government which made such a declaration?

Mr. Bonar Law thinks that President Wilson ought to have protested about Belgium.

He didn’t agree with me that much good human material goes to waste in this Kingdom for lack of opportunity. (That’s the Conservative in him.)

Friday, April 30, 1915.

Sir Edward Grey came to tea to talk with Mr. House and me—­little talk of the main subject (peace), which is not yet ripe by a great deal.  Sir Edward said the Germans had poisoned wells in South Africa.  They have lately used deadly gases in France.  The key to their mind says Sir Edward, is this—­they attribute to other folk what they are thinking of doing themselves.

While Sir Edward was here John Sargent came in and brought Katharine the charcoal portrait of her that he had made—­his present to her for her and Chud to give to W.A.W.P.[81] and me.  A very graceful and beautiful thing for him to do.

April 30, 1915.

Concerning Peace:  The German civil authorities want peace and so does one faction of the military party.  But how can they save their face?  They have made their people believe that they are at once the persecuted and the victorious.  If they stop, how can they explain their stopping?  The people might rend them.  The ingenious loophole discovered by House is—­mere moonshine, viz., the freedom of the seas in war.  That is a one-sided proposition unless they couple with it the freedom of the land in war also, which is nonsense.  Nothing can be done, then, until some unfavourable military event brings a new mind to the Germans.  Peace talk, therefore, is yet mere moonshine.  House has been to Berlin, from London, thence to Paris, then back to London again—­from Nowhere (as far as peace is concerned) to Nowhere again.

May 3, 1915.

Why doesn’t the President make himself more accessible?  Dismiss X and get a bigger man?  Take his cabinet members really into his confidence?  Everybody who comes here makes these complaints of him!

We dined to-night at Y’s.  Professor M. was there, etc.  He says we’ve got to have polygamy in Europe after the war to keep the race up.

Friday, May 21, 1915.

Last night the Italian Parliament voted to give the Government war-powers; and this means immediate war on the side of the Allies.  There are now eight nations fighting against Germany, Austria, and Turkey; viz., Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Japan, Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro.  And it looks much as if the United States will be forced in by Germany.