been nearly a week since the Note was published.  I have seen most of the neutral ministers.  Before the Note came they expressed great eagerness to see it:  it would champion their cause.  Since it came not one of them has mentioned it to me.  The Secretary of one of them remarked, after being invited to express himself:  “It is too—­too—­long!” And, although I have seen most of the Cabinet this week, not a man mentioned it to me.  People seem studiously to avoid it, lest they give offense.

I have, however, got one little satisfaction.  An American—­a half-expatriated loafer who talks “art”—­you know the intellectually affected and degenerate type—­screwed his courage up and told me that he felt ashamed of his country.  I remarked that I felt sure the feeling was mutual.  That, I confess, made me feel better.

As nearly as I can make out, the highwater mark of English good-feeling toward us in all our history was after the President’s Panama tolls courtesy.  The low-water mark, since the Civil War, I am sure, is now.  The Cleveland Venezuela message came at a time of no nervous strain and did, I think, produce no long-lasting effect.  A part of the present feeling is due to the English conviction that we have been taken in by the Germans in the submarine controversy, but a large part is due to the lack of courtesy in this last Note—­the manner in which it was written even more than its matter.  As regards its matter, I have often been over what I conceive to be the main points with Sir Edward Grey—­very frankly and without the least offense.  He has said:  “We may have to arbitrate these things,” as he might say, “We had better take a cab because it is raining.”  It is easily possible—­or it was—­to discuss anything with this Government without offense.  I have, in fact, stood up before Sir Edward’s fire and accused him of stealing a large part of the earth’s surface, and we were just as good friends afterward as before.  But I never drew a lawyer’s indictment of him as a land-thief:  that’s different.

I suppose no two peoples or governments ever quite understand one another.  Perhaps they never will.  That is too much to hope for.  But when one government writes to another it ought to write (as men do) with some reference to the personality of the other and to their previous relations, since governments are more human than men.  Of course I don’t know who wrote the Note.  Hence I can talk about it freely to you without implying criticism of anybody in particular.  But the man who wrote it never saw the British Government and wouldn’t know it if he met it in the road.  To him it is a mere legal entity, a wicked, impersonal institution against which he has the task of drawing an indictment—­not the task of trying to persuade it to confess the propriety of a certain course of conduct.  In his view, it is a wicked enemy to start with—­like the Louisiana lottery of a previous generation