I think, so free from care.  We get plenty to eat (such as it is in this tasteless wet zone), at a high cost, of course; we have comfortable beds and shoes (we spend all our time in these two things, you know); we have good company, enough to do (!!), no grievances nor ailments, no ill-will, no disappointments, a keen interest in some big things—­all the chips are blue, you know; we don’t feel ready for halos, nor for other uncomfortable honours; we deserve less than we get and are content with what the gods send.  This, I take it, is all that Martin[27] would call a comfortable mood for Christmas; and we are old enough and tough enough to have thick armour against trouble.  When Worry knocks at the door, the butler tells him we’re not at home.

And I see the most interesting work in the world cut out for me for the next twenty-five or thirty years—­to get such courtesy into our dealings with these our kinsmen here, public and private—­as will cause them to follow us in all the developments of democracy and-in keeping the peace of the world secure.  I can’t impress it on you strongly enough that the English-speaking folk have got to set the pace and keep this world in order.  Nobody else is equal to the job.  In all our dealings with the British, public and private, we allow it to be assumed that they lead:  they don’t. We lead.  They’ll follow, if we do really lead and are courteous to them.  If we hold back, the Irishman rears up and says we are surrendering to the English!  Suppose we go ahead and the English surrender to us, what can your Irishmen do then?  Or your German?  The British Navy is a pretty good sort of dog to have to trot under your wagon.  If we are willing to have ten years of thoughtful good manners, I tell you Jellicoe will eat out of your hand.

Therefore, cheer up!  It’s not at all improbable that Ford[28] and his cargo of cranks, if they get across the ocean, may strike a German mine in the North Sea.  Then they’ll die happy, as martyrs; and the rest of us will live happy, and it’ll be a Merry Christmas for everybody.

     Our love to Mrs. House.

     Always heartily yours,

     W.H.P.

     To Frank N. Doubleday and Others

     London, Christmas, 1915.

     DEAR D.P. & Co.

...  Now, since we’re talking about the war, let me deliver my opinion and leave the subject.  They’re killing one another all right; you needn’t have any doubt about that—­so many thousand every day, whether there’s any battle or not.  When there’s “nothing to report” from France, that means the regular 5,000 casualties that happen every day.  There isn’t any way of getting rid of men that has been forgotten or neglected.  Women and children, too, of course, starve in Serbia and Poland and are massacred in Turkey.  England, though she has by very much the largest army she ever had, has the smallest of all the