The motor trip that the Houses, the Wallaces, and the Pages took about a year ago was the last trip (three days) that I had had out of London; and I’d got pretty tired.  The China case having been settled (and settled as we wanted it), I thought it a good time to try to get away for a week.  So here Mrs. Page and I are—­very much to my benefit.  I’ve spent a beautiful week out of doors, on this seashore; and I have only about ten per cent. of the fatal diseases that I had a week ago.  That is to say, I’m as sound as a dollar and feel like a fighting cock.

Sir Edward was fine about the China[39] case.  He never disputed the principle of the inviolability of American ships on the high seas; but the Admiralty maintained that some of these men are officers in the German Army and are now receiving officers’ pay.  I think that that is probably true.  Nevertheless, the Admiralty had bungled the case badly and Sir Edward simply rode over them.  They have a fine quarrel among themselves and we got all we wanted and asked for.

Of course, I can’t make out the Germans but I am afraid some huge deviltry is yet coming.  When the English say that the Germans must give up their militarism, I doubt if the Germans yet know what they mean.  They talk about conquered territory—­Belgium, Poland, and the rest.  It hasn’t entered their heads that they’ve got to give up their armies and their military system.  When this does get into their heads, if it ever do, I think they may so swell with rage at this “insult” that they may break loose in one last desperate effort, ignoring the United States, defying the universe, running amuck.  Of course it would be foolhardy to predict this, but the fear of it keeps coming into my mind.  The fear is the more persistent because, if the worst comes to them, the military caste and perhaps the dynasty itself will prefer to die in one last terrific onslaught rather than to make a peace on terms which will require the practical extinction of their supreme power.  This, I conceive, is the really great danger that yet awaits the world—­if the Allies hold together till defeat and famine drive the Germans to the utmost desperation.

In the meantime, the Allies still holding together as they are, there’s no peace yet in the British and French minds.  They’re after the militarism of Prussia—­not territory or other gains; and they seem likely to get it, as much by the blockade as by victories on land.  Do you remember how in the Franco-Prussian War, Bismarck refused to deal with the French Emperor?  He demanded that representatives of the French people should deal with him.  He got what he asked for and that was the last of the French Emperor.  Neither the French nor the English have forgotten that.  You will recall that the Germans starved Paris into submission.  Neither the French nor the English have forgotten that.  These two leaves out of the Germans’