the end
and he flashed up to town, only to find that old man Joffre had not
played the game. "Grandpere" had slept peacefully in the train, had
boarded a destroyer at some unearthly hour of the morning, and was
already in Whitehall before our staunch, precipitate emissary had cast
off from Boulogne.

On the occasion of that next pow-wow mentioned [p.228] above, Messrs.
Asquith, Balfour (now First Lord), Lloyd George and Sir Edward Grey
crossed over as our representatives. Sir H. Jackson (now First Sea
Lord), Sir W. Robertson, who had been summoned over to London, and I
accompanied them, as well as Colonel Hankey and some others. We
travelled by specials and a destroyer and took the Boulogne route. Our
warship tied up to the _East Anglia_, hospital ship, at Boulogne, and
as we passed across her some of us had a few words with nurses and
wounded on board, little anticipating that she would be mined next day
on the passage over to England, with most unfortunate loss of life.
Eventually we arrived at the Gare du Nord about midnight, to be
welcomed by a swarm of French Ministers and Lord Bertie, and to find
all arrangements made for us with typical French hospitality.

The Conference took place at the Foreign Office on the Quai d'Orsay,
M. Briand presiding. Several members of the French Government were
present, besides Generals Joffre, Gallieni and Graziani; and with our
party, as well as interpreters, secretaries and others, there was
quite a gathering. After M. Briand had welcomed us cordially and in
felicitous terms, Mr. Asquith got a charming little speech in French
off his chest; it may perhaps have had a whiff of the lamp about it
and had probably been learnt by heart, but the P. M. undoubtedly
managed to serve up a savoury _appetitif_, and we felt that in the
matter of courtesy and the amenities our man had held his own. In the
course of the discussion that followed, Sir E. Grey's minute-gun
process of turning our host's delightful language to account afforded
all present ample time to take in the drift of his cogent, weighty
arguments and to appraise them at their proper worth. Had it been any
one else, Mr. Lloyd George would have been voted an unmitigated
nuisance on all hands. As a result of prolonged residence in the Gay
City at a somewhat later date, the Right Honourable Gentleman is now,
it is understood, in the habit of bandying badinage with the
_midinettes_ in the _argot_ of the Quartier Latin. But at the