peech about our Navy in the
House of Lords, and how, when months later you sent me
Roosevelt's[59] letter, Lord Beresford expressed regret to me and
said that he would explain in another speech. I hadn't seen the old
fellow for a long time till a fortnight ago. He greeted me
cheerily, and I said, "I don't think I ought to shake hands with
you till you retract what you said about our navy." He insisted on
my dining with him. He invited Admiral Sims also, and those two
sailors had a jolly evening of it. Sims's coming has straightened
out all that naval misunderstanding and more. He is of immense help
to them and to us. But I'm going to make old Beresford's life a
burden till he gets up in the Lords and takes that speech
back--publicly. He's really all right; but it's just as well to
keep the records right. The proceedings of the House of Lords are
handsomely bound and go into every gentleman's library. I have seen
two centuries of them in many a house.

We can now begin a distinctly New Era in the world's history and in
its management if we rise to the occasion: there's not a shadow of
doubt about that. And the United States can play a part bigger than
we have yet dreamed of if we prove big enough to lead the British
and the French instead of listening to Irish and Germans. Neither
England nor France is a democracy--far from it. We can make them
both democracies and develop their whole people instead of about 10
per cent. of their people. We have simply to conduct our affairs by
a large national policy and not by the complaints of our really
non-American people. See how a declaration of war has cleared the
atmosphere!

We're happy yet, on rations. There are no potatoes. We have
meatless days. Good wheat meantime is sunk every day. The
submarine must be knocked out. Else the earth will be ruled by the
German bayonet and natural living will be _verboten_. We'll all
have to goose-step as the Crown Prince orders or--be shot. I see
they now propose that the United States shall pay the big war
indemnity in raw materials to the value of hundreds of billions of
dollars! Not just yet, I guess!

As we get reports of what you are doing, it's most cheerful. I
assure you, God has yet made nothing or nobody equal to the
American people; and I don't th