Out of it all, one conviction and one purpose grows and becomes clearer.  The world isn’t yet half-organized.  In the United States we’ve lived in a good deal of a fool’s paradise.  The world isn’t half so safe a place as we supposed.  Until steamships and telegraphs brought the nations all close together, of course we could enjoy our isolation.  We can’t do so any longer.  One mad fool in Berlin has turned the whole earth topsy-turvy.  We’d forgotten what our forefathers learned—­the deadly dangers of real monarchs and of castes and classes.  There are a lot of ’em left in the world yet.  We’ve grown rich and-weak; we’ve let cranks and old women shape our ideas.  We’ve let our politicians remain provincial and ignorant.

     And believe me, dear D.P. & Co. with affectionate greeting to every
     one of you and to every one of yours, collectively and singly,

     Yours heartily,

     W.H.P.

     Memorandum written after attending the service at St. Paul’s in
     memory of Lord Kitchener[34].

     American Embassy, London.

There were two Kitcheners, as every informed person knows—­(1) the popular hero and (2) the Cabinet Minister with whom it was impossible for his associates to get along.  He made his administrative career as an autocrat dealing with dependent and inferior peoples.  This experience fixed his habits and made it impossible for him to do team work or to delegate work or even to inform his associates of what he had done or was doing.  While, therefore, his name raised a great army, he was in many ways a hindrance in the Cabinet.  First one thing and then another was taken out of his hands—­ordnance, munitions, war plans.  When he went to Gallipoli, some persons predicted that he would never come back.  There was a hot meeting of the Cabinet at which he was asked to go to Russia, to make a sort of return visit for the visit that important Russians had made here, and to link up Russia’s military plans with the plans of the Western Allies.  He is said to have remarked that he was going only because he had been ordered to go.  There was a hope and a feeling again that he might not come back till after the war.

Now just how much truth there is in all this, one has to guess; but undoubtedly a good deal.  He did much in raising the army, but his name did more.  What an extraordinary situation!  The great hero of the Nation an impossible man to work with.  The Cabinet could not tell the truth about him:  the people would not believe it and would make the Cabinet suffer.  Moreover, such a row would have given comfort to the enemy.  Kitchener, on his part, could not afford to have an open quarrel.  The only solution was to induce him to go away for a long time.  Both sides saw that.  Such thoughts were in everybody’s mind while the impressive funeral service was said and sung in St. Paul’s.  The Great Hero, who had failed,