thought, the Englishman appeared at his best.  I said, “As an ancestor to Americans!” And this is the fundamental reason why we (two peoples) belong close together.  Reasons that flow from these are such as follows:  (1) The race is the sea-mastering race and the navy-managing race and the ocean-carrying race; (2) the race is the literary race, (3) the exploring and settling and colonizing race, (4) the race to whom fair play appeals, and (5) that insists on individual development.

Your mother having read these two days 1,734 pages of memoirs of the Coke family, one of whose members wrote the great law commentaries, another carried pro-American votes in Parliament in our Revolutionary times, refused peerages, defied kings and—­begad! here they are now, living in the same great house and saying and doing what they darn please—­we know this generation of ’em!—­well, your mother having read these two big volumes about the old ones and told me 175 good stories out of these books, bless her soul! she’s gone to sleep in a big chair on the other side of the table.  Well she may, she walked for two hours this morning over hills and cliffs and through pine woods and along the beach.  I guess I’d better wake her up and get her to go to bed—­as the properer thing to do at this time o’night, viz. 11.  My golf this afternoon was too bad to confess.  But I must say that a 650 and a 730 yard hole argues the audacity of some fellow and the despair of many more.  Nature made a lot of obstructions there and Man made more.  It must be seven or eight miles around that course!  It’s almost a three hour task to follow my slow ball around it.  I suggested we play with howitzers instead of clubs.  Good night!

     W.H.P.

     To Frank N. Doubleday and Others

     Royal Bath and East Cliff Hotel,
     Bournemouth, May 29, 1916.

     DEAR D.P. & Co.: 

I always have it in mind to write you letters; but there’s no chance in my trenches in London; and, since I have not been out of London for nearly two years—­since the war began—­only an occasional half day and a night—­till now—­naturally I’ve concocted no letter.  I’ve been down here a week—­a week of sunshine, praise God—­and people are not after me every ten minutes, or Governments either; and my most admirable and efficient staff (now grown to one hundred people) permit few letters and telegrams to reach me.  There never was a little rest more grateful.  The quiet sea out my window shows no sign of crawling submarines; and, in general, it’s as quiet and peaceful here as in Garden City itself.

I’m on the home-stretch now in all my thoughts and plans.  Three of my four years are gone, and the fourth will quickly pass.  That’s not only the limit of my leave, but it’s quite enough for me.  I shouldn’t care to live through another such experience, if the chance should ever come to me.  It has changed