greater slander.  They absolutely hold the Seven Seas.  They have caught about seventy submarines and some of them are now destroying German ships in the Baltic Sea.  They’ve sent to France by several times the largest army that any people ever sent over the sea.  They are financing most of their allies and they have turned this whole island into gun and shell factories.  They made a great mistake at the Dardanelles and they are slower than death to change their set methods.  But no family in the land, from charcoal burners to dukes, hesitates one moment to send its sons into the army.  When the news comes of their death, they never whimper.  When you come right down to hard facts, the courage and the endurance of the British and the French excel anything ever before seen on this planet.  All the old stories of bravery from Homer down are outdone every day by these people.  I see these British at close range, full-dress and undress; and I’ve got to know a lot of ’em as well as we can ever come to know anybody after we get grown.  There is simply no end to the silly sides of their character.  But, when the real trial comes, they don’t flinch; and (except the thoroughbred American) there are no such men in the world.

A seven-foot Kansas lawyer (Kansas all over him) came to see me yesterday.  He came here a month ago on some legal business.  He told me yesterday that he had always despised Englishmen.  He’s seen a few with stud-horse clothes and white spats and monocles on who had gone through Kansas to shoot in the Rocky Mountains.  He couldn’t understand ’em and he didn’t like ’em.  “So infernally uppish,” said he.

     “Well, what do you think of ’em now?”

     “The very best people in the world,” said he.  I think he has a
     notion of enlisting!

     You’re still publishing books, I hear.  That’s a good occupation. 
     I’d like to be doing it myself.  But I can’t even get time to read
     ’em now.

But, as you know, nobody’s writing anything but war books—­from Kipling to Hall Caine.  Poor Kipling!—­his boy’s dead.  I have no doubt of it.  I’ve had all the German hospitals and prison camps searched for him in vain.  These writing men and women, by the way, are as true blue and as thoroughbred as any other class.  I can never forget Maurice Hewlett’s brave behaviour when he thought that his flying corps son had been killed by the Germans or drowned at sea.  He’s no prig, but a real man.  And the women are as fine as the men....

To go back to books:  Of course nobody can tell what effect the war will have on the writing of them, nor what sort of new writers may come up.  You may be sure that everything is stirred to its profoundest depths and will be stirred still more.  Some old stagers will be laid on the shelf; that’s certain.  What sort of new ones will come?  I asked H.G.  Wells this question.  He has promised to think