r moustache."
"I see no reason, Madam, why you should come in contact with either."

My talk with Bonar Law: He was disposed to believe that if England had
declared at once that she would go to war with Germany if France was
attacked, there would have been no war. Well, would English opinion,
before Belgium was attacked, have supported a government which made such
a declaration?

Mr. Bonar Law thinks that President Wilson ought to have protested about
Belgium.

He didn't agree with me that much good human material goes to waste in
this Kingdom for lack of opportunity. (That's the Conservative in him.)

_Friday, April 30, 1915._

Sir Edward Grey came to tea to talk with Mr. House and me--little talk
of the main subject (peace), which is not yet ripe by a great deal. Sir
Edward said the Germans had poisoned wells in South Africa. They have
lately used deadly gases in France. The key to their mind says Sir
Edward, is this--they attribute to other folk what they are thinking of
doing themselves.

While Sir Edward was here John Sargent came in and brought Katharine the
charcoal portrait of her that he had made--his present to her for her
and Chud to give to W.A.W.P.[81] and me. A very graceful and beautiful
thing for him to do.

_April 30, 1915._

Concerning Peace: The German civil authorities want peace and so does
one faction of the military party. But how can they save their face?
They have made their people believe that they are at once the persecuted
and the victorious. If they stop, how can they explain their stopping?
The people might rend them. The ingenious loophole discovered by House
is--mere moonshine, viz., the freedom of the seas in war. That is a
one-sided proposition unless they couple with it the freedom of the land
in war also, which is nonsense. Nothing can be done, then, until some
unfavourable military event brings a new mind to the Germans. Peace
talk, therefore, is yet mere moonshine. House has been to Berlin, from
London, thence to Paris, then back to London again--from Nowhere (as far
as peace is concerned) to Nowhere again.

_May 3, 1915._

Why doesn't the President make himself more accessible? Dismiss X and
get a bigger man? Take his cabinet members really into his confidence?
Everybody who comes here makes these complaints of him!

We dined to-night at Y's. Professor M. was there, etc. He says we've got
to have polygamy in Europe after the war to keep the race up.

_Friday