now that there's going
to be no money on this side the world for a long time to buy
American securities. The whole world is going to be hard up in
consequence of the bankruptcy of these nations, the inestimable
destruction of property, and the loss of productive men. I fancy
that such a change will come in the economic and financial
readjustment of the world as nobody can yet guess at.--Are
Americans studying these things? It is not only South-American
trade; it is all sorts of manufacturers; it is financial
influence--if we can quit spending and wasting, and husband our
earnings. There's no telling the enormous advantages we shall gain
if we are wise.

The extent to which the German people have permitted themselves to
be fooled is beyond belief. As a little instance of it, I enclose a
copy of a letter that Lord Bryce gave me, written by an English
woman who did good social work in her early life--a woman of
sense--and who married a German merchant and has spent her married
life in Germany. She is a wholly sincere person. This letter she
wrote to a friend in England and--she believes every word of it. If
she believes it, the great mass of the Germans believe similar
things. I have heard of a number of such letters--sincere, as this
one is. It gives a better insight into the average German mind than
a hundred speeches by the Emperor.

This German and Austrian diplomatic business involves an enormous
amount of work. I've now sent one man to Vienna and another to
Berlin to straighten out almost hopeless tangles and lies about
prisoners and such things and to see if they won't agree to swap
more civilians detained in each country. On top of these, yesterday
came the Turkish Embassy! Alas, we shall never see old Tewfik[83]
again! This business begins briskly to-day with the detention of
every Turkish consul in the British Empire. Lord! I dread the
missionaries; and I know they're coming now. This makes four
embassies. We put up a sign, "The American Embassy," on every one
of them. Work? We're worked to death. Two nights ago I didn't get
time to read a letter or even a telegram that had come that day
till 11 o'clock at night. For on top of all these Embassies, I've
had to become Commissary-General to feed 6,000,000 starving people
in Belgium;