deal of your mother and me.  Here we are left alone by every one of you—­in a foreign land; and, contrary to all predictions that any of you would have made about us four or five years ago, we’re faring pretty well, thank you, and not on the edge of dying of loneliness at all.  I tell you, I think we’re pretty brave and hardy.

     We’re even capable of becoming cocky and saucy to every one of you. 
     Be careful, then.

     You see if you have a war to live with you don’t necessarily need
     children:  you’ll have strife enough without ’em.  We’ll console
     ourselves with such reflections as these.

And the truth is—­at least about me—­that there isn’t time to think of what you haven’t got.  Of course, I’m working, as always, to soften the relations between these two governments.  So far, in spite of the pretty deep latent feeling on both sides—­far worse than it ought to be and far worse than I wish it were—­I’m working all the time to keep things as smooth as possible.  Happily, nobody can prove it, but I believe it, that there is now and there has been all along more danger of a serious misunderstanding than anybody has known.  The Germans have, of course, worked in 1000 ways to cause misunderstanding between England and the United States.  Then, of course, there has been constant danger in the English bull-headed insularity which sees nothing but the Englishman’s immediate need, and in the English slowness.  Add to these causes the American ignorance of war and of European conditions.  It has been a God’s mercy for us that we have so far had a man like Sir Edward Grey in his post.  And in my post, while there might well have been a better man, this much at least has been lucky—­that I do have a consciousness of English history and of our common origin and some sense of the inevitable destiny of the great English-speaking race—­so that, when we have come to sharp corners in the road, I have known that whatever happen we must travel in the right general direction—­have known that no temporary difference must be allowed to assume a permanent quality.  I have thought several times that we had passed the worst possible place, and then a still worse one would appear.  It does look now as if we had faced most of the worst difficulties that can come, but I am not sure what Congress may do or provoke.  If we outlast Congress, we shall be safe.  Now to come through this enormous war even with no worse feeling than already exists between the two countries—­that’ll be a big thing to have done.  But it’s work like the work of the English fleet.  Nobody can prove that Jellicoe has been a great admiral.  Yet the fleet has done the whole job more successfully than if it had had sea-fights and lost a part of their ships.

Our Note has left a great deal of bad feeling—­suppressed, but existent.  A part of it was inevitable and (I’d say) even necessary.  But we put in a lot of things