a proceeding. The
President might, of course, on the definite request of either side, make
a definite inquiry of the other side; but such a course would be, in
effect, merely the transmission of an inquiry.

But after peace was made and the time came to set up a League for
Enforcing Peace, or some such machinery, of course the United States
would be and would have to be a party to that if it were to succeed. He
reminded me that a little group of men here, of whom he was one, early
in the war sketched substantially the same plan that the American League
to Enforce Peace has worked out. It had not seemed advisable to have any
general public discussion of it in England till the war should end:
nobody had time now to give to it.

As he knew no precedent for belligerents to call in a third party when
they met to end a war, so he knew no precedent for any outside
government to protest against the invasion of a country by a Power that
had signed a treaty to guarantee the integrity of the invaded
country--no precedent, that is to say, for the United States to protest
against the invasion of Belgium. "That precedent," I said, "was found in
Hysteria."

Lord Bryce, who had just returned from a visit to the British
headquarters in France, hardly dared hope for the end of the war till
next year; and the intervening time between now and the end would be a
time, he feared, of renewed atrocities and increasing hatred. He cited
the killing of Captain Fryatt of the _Brussels_ and the forcible
deportation of young women from Lille and other towns in the provinces
of France occupied by the Germans.

The most definite idea that he had touching American-British relations
was the fear that the anti-British feeling in the United States would
become stronger and would outlast the war. "It is organized," he said.
"The disaffected Germans and the disaffected Irish are interested in
keeping it up." He asked what effect I thought the Presidential campaign
would have on this feeling. He seemed to have a fear that somehow the
campaign would give an occasion for stirring it up even more.

"Good-bye. Give my regards to all my American friends; and I'm proud to
say there are a good many of them."

* * * * *

One episode that was greatly stirring both Great Britain and the United
States at this time was the trial of Sir Roger Casement, the Irish
leader who had left Wilhelmshaven for Ireland in a German submarine and