e. And, since this is
meant quite as much for your amusement as for any information it
may carry, don't read it "in office hours."

The future of the world belongs to us. A man needs to live here,
with two economic eyes in his head, a very little time to become
very sure of this. Everybody will see it presently. These English
are spending their capital, and it is their capital that continues
to give them their vast power. Now what are we going to do with the
leadership of the world presently when it clearly falls into our
hands[22]? And how can we use the English for the highest uses of
democracy?

You see their fear of an on-sweeping democracy in their social
treatment of party opponents. A Tory lady told me with tears that
she could no longer invite her Liberal friends to her house: "I
have lost them--they are robbing us, you know." I made the mistake
of saying a word in praise of Sir Edward Grey to a duke. "Yes, yes,
no doubt an able man; but you must understand, sir, that I don't
train with that gang." A bishop explained to me at elaborate length
why the very monarchy is doomed unless something befalls Lloyd
George and his programme. Every dinner party is made up with strict
reference to the party politics of the guests. Sometimes you
imagine you see something like civil war; and money is flowing out
of the Kingdom into Canada in the greatest volume ever known and I
am told that a number of old families are investing their fortunes
in African lands.

These and such things are, of course, mere chips which show the
direction the slow stream runs. The great economic tide of the
century flows our way. _We_ shall have the big world questions to
decide presently. Then we shall need world policies; and it will be
these old-time world leaders that we shall then have to work with,
more closely than now.

The English make a sharp distinction between the American people
and the American Government--a distinction that they are conscious
of and that they themselves talk about. They do not think of our
_people_ as foreigners. I have a club book on my table wherein the
members are classified as British, Colonial, American, and
Foreign--quite unconsciously. But they do think of our Government
as foreign, and as a frontier sort of thing without go