g it up an American citizen! The mother can't
go and get it for fear the French might detain her; I've got the
English Government's permission for the family to go to the United
States. Harold[77] is in Belgium, trying to get a group of English
ladies home who went there to nurse wounded English and Belgians
and whom the Germans threaten to kidnap and transport to German
hospitals--every day a dozen new kinds of jobs.

London is weird and muffled and dark and, in the West End,
deserted. Half the lamps are not lighted, and the upper half of the
globes of the street lights are painted black--so the Zeppelin
raiders may not see them. You've no idea what a strange feeling it
gives one. The papers have next to no news. The 23rd day of the
great battle is reported very much in the same words as the 3rd day
was. Yet nobody talks of much else. The censor erases most of the
matter the correspondents write. We're in a sort of dumb as well as
dark world. And yet, of course, we know much more here than they
know in any other European capital.

_To the President_

[Undated.]

Dear Mr. President:

When England, France, and Russia agreed the other day not to make
peace separately, that cooked the Kaiser's goose. They'll wear him
out. Since England thus has Frenchmen and Russians bound, the
Allies are strength-cued at their only weak place. That done,
England is now going in deliberately, methodically, patiently to do
the task. Even a fortnight ago, the people of this Kingdom didn't
realize all that the war means to them. But the fever is rising
now. The wounded are coming back, the dead are mourned, and the
agony of hearing only that such-and-such a man is missing--these
are having a prodigious effect. The men I meet now say in a
matter-of-fact way: "Oh, yes! we'll get 'em, of course; the only
question is, how long it will take us and how many of us it will
cost. But no matter, we'll get 'em."

Old ladies and gentlemen of the high, titled world now begin by
driving to my house almost every morning while I am at breakfast.
With many apologies for calling so soon and with the fear that they
interrupt me, they ask if I can make an inquiry in Germany for "my
son," or "my nephew"--"he's among the missing." They never weep;
their voices do not fal