...  See as many people as you can, present all your letters, accept invitations.  Remember that while you are there and we miss you, we are not spending our time in moping.  Every night we go to dinner and we chatter with the rest of the magpies, as if the world were free from suffering.  Last night I talked with Paderewski for an hour on the sorrows of Poland, and it was one long tale of horror. ...

To-day the Russians are calling their people back to arms to stop the oncoming Germans.  Foolish, foolish idealists who believed that they could establish what they call an economic democracy, without being willing to support their ideal in modern fashion by force.  The best of things can not live unless they are fought for, and while I do not think that their socialism was the best of anything, it was their dream. ...  With much love, my dear boy, your Dad

To George W. Lane February 16, 1918

My dear George,—...  Things are going much better with the War Department.  My expectation is that this war will resolve itself into three things, in this order:—­ships for food, aeroplanes, big guns.  We must, as you know, do all that we can to keep up the morale of our own people.  There is a considerable percentage of pacifists, and of the weak-hearted ones, who would like to have a peace now upon any terms, but the treatment that Russia is receiving, after she had thrown down her arms, indicates what may be expected by any nation that quits now.

...  The prospects for democratization of Germany is not as good as it was a year ago, when we came in, because of their success in arms due to Russia’s debacle.  The people will not overthrow a government which is successful, nor will they be inclined to desert a system which adds to Germany’s glory.  It is a fight, a long fight, a fight of tremendous sacrifice, that we are in for.  I said a year ago that it would be two years.  Then I thought that Russia would put up some kind of front.  Now I say two years from this time and possibly a great deal longer.  Lord Northcliffe thinks four or six or eight years.

Ned writes me that things are very gloomy and glum in England and in Ireland, where he has been.  He was out in an air raid, in several of them, in London, not up in the air, but from the ground could see no trace of the airships that were dropping bombs on the town.  The Germans seem to have discovered some way by which they can tell where they are without being able to see the lights of the city, for now they have bombarded Paris when it was protected, on a dark night, by a blanket of fog, and London also under the same conditions.  The compass is not much good, the deviations are so great.  It may be that the clever Huns have found some way of piloting themselves surely.  We are starting two campaigns through the Bureau of Education which may interest you.  One is for school gardens.  To have