retirement. I am very grieved to think that you are going. There
was not a word of eulogy in the _Times_ articles that was not under
rather than over-stated, and reflecting thus I thought how rare it
is in public life to have an occasion that justifies the best that
can be said. But it is so now, and I am filled with deep regret
that you are going and with deep gratitude that you came to us and
were here when the war broke out and subsequently. If the United
States had been represented here by any one less decided as to the
right and wrong of the war and less firm and courageous than
yourself, the whole of the relations between your country and ours
would have been in peril. And if the two countries had gone apart
instead of coming together the whole fate of the world would be
very different from what I hope it will now be.

I have often thought that the forces behind public affairs are so
tremendous that individuals have little real, even when much
apparent, influence upon the course of events. But in the early
years of the war I think everything might have gone wrong if it had
not been that certain men of strong moral conviction were in
certain places. And you were preeminently one of these. President
Wilson I am sure was another, though I know him only through you
and Colonel House and his own public utterances. Even so your
influence must have counted in his action, by your friendship with
him as well as by the fact of your being the channel through which
communications passed between him and us.

I cannot adequately express what it was to me personally in the
dark days of 1914, 1915, and 1916 to know how you felt about the
great issues involved in the war.

I go to Fallodon at the end of this week and come to London the
first week of September--if you and Mrs. Page have not left by then
I hope I may see you. I long to do so before you go. I wish you may
recover perfect health. My eyesight continues to fail and I shall
soon be absolutely dependent upon other eyes for reading print.
Otherwise I feel as well as a schoolboy, but it is depressing to be
so well and yet so crippled in sight.

Please do not trouble to answer this letter--you must have too many
letters of the kind to be able to reply to them separately--but if
there is a chanc