Hear this in confirmation:  I suppose 1,000 English women have been to see me—­as a last hope—­to ask me to have inquiries made in Germany about their “missing” sons or husbands, generally sons.  They are of every class and rank and kind, from marchioness to scrubwoman.  Every one tells her story with the same dignity of grief, the same marvellous self-restraint, the same courtesy and deference and sorrowful pride.  Not one has whimpered—­but one.  And it turned out that she was a Belgian.  It’s the breed.  Spartan mothers were theatrical and pinchbeck compared to these women.

I know a lady of title, very well to do, who for a year got up at 5:30 and drove herself in her own automobile from her home in London to Woolwich where she worked all day long in a shell factory as a volunteer and got home at 8 o’clock at night.  At the end of a year they wanted her to work in a London place where they keep the records of the Woolwich work.  “Think of it,” said she, as she shook her enormous diamond ear-rings as I sat next to her at dinner one Sunday night not long ago, “think of it—­what an easy time I now have.  I don’t have to start till half-past seven and I get home at half-past six!”

I could fill forty pages with stories like these.  This very Sunday I went to see a bedridden old lady who sent me word that she had something to tell me.  Here it was:  An English flying man’s machine got out of order and he had to descend in German territory.  The Germans captured him and his machine.  They ordered him to take two of their flying men in his machine to show them a particular place in the English lines.  He declined.  “Very well, we’ll shoot you, then.”  At last he consented.  The three started.  The Englishman quietly strapped himself in.  There were no straps for the two Germans.  The Englishman looped-the-loop.  The Germans fell out.  The Englishman flew back home.  “My son has been to see me from France.  He told me that.  He knows the man”—­thus said the old lady and thanked me for coming to hear it!  She didn’t know that the story has been printed.

     But the real question is, “How are you?” Do you keep strong?  Able,
     without weariness, to keep up your good work?  I heartily hope so,
     old man.  Take good care of yourself—­very.

     My love to Mrs. Alderman.  Please don’t quote me—­yet.  I have to be
     very silent publicly about everything.  After March 4th, I shall
     again be free.

     Yours always faithfully,

     W.H.P.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 33:  A playful reference to the Ambassador’s infant grandson, Walter H. Page, Jr.]

[Footnote 34:  Drowned on the Hampshire, June 5, 1916, off the coast of Scotland.]