incoming, the other
outgoing, and the preparation of a lot of answers; (5) going to the
Foreign Office, not every day but often, to discuss more troubles
there; (6) home to dinner at 8 o'clock--at home or somewhere else,
and there is more talk about the war or about the political
troubles. That for a regular daily routine for pretty nearly a year
and a half! As I say, if anybody is keeping the war up for my
entertainment, he now has my permission to stop. No time to read,
no time to write, little time to think, little or no time to see
the people you most wish to see, I often don't know the day of the
week or of the month: it's a sort of life in the trenches, without
the immediate physical danger. Then I have my cabinet meetings, my
financial reports (money we spend for four governments: I had till
recently about a million dollars subject to my check); then the
commission for the relief of Belgium; then the Ambassadors and
Ministers of the other neutral states--our task is worse than war!

Well, praise God for sleep. I get from seven to nine hours a night,
unbroken; and I don't take Armageddon to bed with me.

I don't mind telling _you_ (nobody else) that the more I see just
how great statesmen work and manage great governments--the more I
see of them at close range--whether in Washington or London or
Berlin or Vienna or Constantinople (for these are _my_ Capitals),
the more I admire the methods of the Long Island farmers. Boys, I
swear I could take our crowd and do a better job than many of these
great men do. I have to spend a lot of time to correct their moves
before the other fellow finds out the mistake. For instance I know
I spent $2,000 in telegrams before I could make the German
Government understand the British military age, and the British
Government understand the German military age, for exchanging
prisoners who had lost two legs or arms or both eyes; and I've had
to send a man to Berlin to get a financial report from one man on
one floor of a building there and to take it to another man on the
floor above. Just yesterday I was reminded that I had made eighteen
requests for the same information of the British Government, when
the nineteenth request for it came from Washington; and I have now
telegraphed that same thing nineteen times si