all, Congress ought to make it possible
to have half a dozen or more permanent foreign
under-secretaries--men who, after service in the Department, could
go out as Ministers and Ambassadors; it ought generously to
reorganize the whole thing. It ought to have a competent study made
of the foreign offices of other governments. Of course it ought to
get room to work in. Then it ought at once to give its Ambassadors
and Ministers homes and dignified treatment. We've got to play a
part in the world whether we wish to or not. Think of these things.

The blindest great force in this world to-day is the Prussian War
Party--blind and stupid.--Well, and the most weary man in London
just at this hour is

Your humble servant,
W.H.P,

but he'll be all right in the morning.

_To Arthur W. Page_
[Undated][72]

DEAR ARTHUR:

. . . I recall one night when we were dining at Sir John Jellicoe's, he
told me that the Admiralty never slept--that he had a telephone by
his bed every night.

"Did it ever ring?" I asked.

"No; but it will."

You begin to see pretty clearly how English history has been made
and makes itself. This afternoon Lady S---- told your mother of her
three sons, one on a warship in the North Sea, another with the
army in France, and a third in training to go. "How brave you all
are!" said your mother, and her answer was: "They belong to their
country; we can't do anything else." One of the daughters-in-law of
the late Lord Salisbury came to see me to find out if I could make
an inquiry about her son who was reported "missing" after the
battle of Mons. She was dry-eyed, calm, self-restrained--very
grateful for the effort I promised to make; but a Spartan woman
would have envied her self-possession. It turned out that her son
was dead.

You hear experiences like these almost every day. These are the
kinds of women and the kinds of men that have made the British
Empire and the English race. You needn't talk of decadence. All
their great qualities are in them here and now. I believe that half
the young men who came to Katharine's[73] dances last winter and
who used to drop in at the house once in a while are dead in France
already. They went as a matter of course. This is the reason they
are going to win. Now