rance would be betrayed, and England would be accused of
forsaking her friends.

People came to the Embassy all day to-day (Sunday), to learn how they
can get to the United States--a rather hard question to answer. I
thought several times of going in, but Greene and Squier said there was
no need of it. People merely hoped we might tell them what we can't tell
them.

Returned travellers from Paris report indescribable confusion--people
unable to obtain beds and fighting for seats in railway carriages.

It's been a hard day here. I have a lot (not a big lot either) of
routine work on my desk which I meant to do. But it has been impossible
to get my mind off this Great Smash. It holds one in spite of one's
self. I revolve it and revolve it--of course getting nowhere.

It will revive our shipping. In a jiffy, under stress of a general
European war, the United States Senate passed a bill permitting American
registry to ships built abroad. Thus a real emergency knocked the old
Protectionists out, who had held on for fifty years! Correspondingly the
political parties here have agreed to suspend their Home Rule quarrel
till this war is ended. Artificial structures fall when a real wind
blows.

The United States is the only great Power wholly out of it. The United
States, most likely, therefore, will be able to play a helpful and
historic part at its end. It will give President Wilson, no doubt, a
great opportunity. It will probably help us politically and it will
surely help us economically.

The possible consequences stagger the imagination. Germany has staked
everything on her ability to win primacy. England and France (to say
nothing of Russia) really ought to give her a drubbing. If they do not,
this side of the world will henceforth be German. If they do flog
Germany, Germany will for a long time be in discredit.

I walked out in the night a while ago. The stars are bright, the night
is silent, the country quiet--as quiet as peace itself. Millions of men
are in camp and on warships. Will they all have to fight and many of
them die--to untangle this network of treaties and affiances and to blow
off huge debts with gunpowder so that the world may start again?

A hurried picture of the events of the next seven days is given in the
following letter to the President:

_To the President_
London, Sunday, August 9, 1914.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

God save us! What a week it has been! Last Sunday I was