nd conviction.

Now, if in the next regular session the President takes a firm
stand against the ship subsidy that this discrimination gives,
couldn't Congress be carried to repeal this discrimination? For
this economic objection also exists.

No Ambassador can do any very large constructive piece of work so
long as this suspicion of the honour of our Government exists. Sir
Edward Grey will take it up in October or November. If I could say
then that the President will exert all his influence for this
repeal--that would go far. If, when he takes it up, I can say
nothing, it will be practically useless for me to take up any other
large plan. This is the most important thing for us on the
diplomatic horizon.

To the President

Dornoch, Scotland,

September 10, 1913.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

I am spending ten or more of the dog days visiting the Englishman
and the Scotchman in their proper setting--their country
homes--where they show themselves the best of hosts and reveal
their real opinions. There are, for example, in the house where I
happen to be to-day, the principals of three of the Scotch
universities, and a Member of Parliament, and an influential
editor.

They have, of course--I mean all the educated folk I meet--the most
intelligent interest in American affairs, and they have an
unbounded admiration for the American people--their energy, their
resourcefulness, their wealth, their economic power and social
independence. I think that no people ever really admired and, in a
sense, envied another people more. They know we hold the keys of
the future.

But they make a sharp distinction between our people and our
Government. They are sincere, God-fearing people who speak their
convictions. They cite Tammany, the Thaw case, Sulzer, the
Congressional lobby, and sincerely regret that a democracy does not
seem to be able to justify itself. I am constantly amazed and
sometimes dumbfounded at the profound effect that the yellow press
(including the American correspondents of the English papers) has
had upon the British mind. Here is a most serious journalistic
problem, upon which I have already begun to work seriously with
some of the editors of the better London papers. But it is more
than a journalistic problem.