that the time is come to make sure that no great nation shall emerge from the war with a clear commercial advantage over the others; and in the meantime they will prove to the world by playing with us that a democracy is necessarily pacific and hence (in their view) contemptible.  I felt warranted the other day to remark to Lord Bryce on the unfairness of much of the English judgment of us (he is very sad and a good deal depressed).  “Yes,” he said, “I have despaired of one people’s ever really understanding another even when the two are as closely related and as friendly as the Americans and the English.”

You were kind enough to inquire about my health in your last note.  If I could live up to the popular conception here of my labours and responsibilities and delicate duties (which is most flattering and greatly exaggerated), I should be only a walking shadow of a man.  But I am most inappreciately well.  I imagine that in some year to come, I may enjoy a vacation, but I could not enjoy it now.  Besides since civilization has gone backward several centuries, I suppose I’ve gone back with it to a time when men knew no such thing as a vacation. (Let’s forgive House for his kindly, mistaken solicitude.) The truth is, I often feel that I do not know myself—­body or soul, boots or breeches.  This experience is making us all here different from the men we were—­but in just what respects it is hard to tell.  We are not within hearing of the guns (except the guns that shoot at Zeppelins when they come); but the war crowds itself in on us sensibly more and more.  There are more wounded soldiers on the streets and in the parks.  More and more families one knows lose their sons, more and more women their husbands.  Death is so common that it seems a little thing.  Four persons have come to my house to-day (Sunday) in the hope that I may find their missing kinsmen, and two more have appealed to me on the telephone and two more still have sent me notes.  Since I began this letter, Mrs. Page insisted on my going out on the edge of the city to see an old friend of many years who has just lost both his sons and whose prospective son-in-law is at home wounded.  The first thing he said was:  “Tell me, what is America going to do?” As we drove back, we made a call on a household whose nephew is “missing.”—­“Can’t you possibly help us hear definitely about him?”

This sort of thing all day every day must have some effect on any man.  Then—­yesterday morning gave promise of a calm, clear day.  I never know what sensational experience awaits me around the next corner.  Then there was put on my desk the first page of a reputable weekly paper which was filled with an open letter to me written by the editor and signed.  After the usual description of my multitudinous and delicate duties, I was called on to insist that my government should protest against Zeppelin raids on London because a bomb might kill me!  Humour doesn’t bubble