war, at the
Marne.

Everywhere, though there was no lack of determination to see the war
through to a finish, no matter how remote that might be, the feeling
was that this war was too huge, too vast, to last long. Exhaustion
would end it. War upon the modern scale could not last. So they said
--in September, 1914! So many of us believed--and this is the spring
of the fourth year of the war, and the end is not yet, is not in
sight, I fear.

Sydney turned out, almost as magnificently as when I had first landed
upon Australian soil, to bid me farewell. And we embarked again upon
that same old _Sonoma_ that had brought us to Australia. Again I saw
Paga-Paga and the natural folk, who had no need to toil nor spin to
live upon the fat of the land and be arrayed in the garments that
were always up to the minute in style.

Again I saw Honolulu, and, this time, stayed longer, and gave a
performance. But, though we were there longer, it was not long enough
to make me yield to that temptation to cuddle one of the brown
lassies! Aweel, I was not so young as I had been, and Mrs. Lauder--
you ken that she was travelling with me?

In the harbor of Honolulu there was a German gunboat, the _Geier_,
that had run there for shelter not long since, and had still left a
day or two, under the orders from Washington, to decide whether she
would let herself be interned or not. And outside, beyond the three
mile limit that marked the end of American territorial waters, were
two good reasons to make the German think well of being interned.
They were two cruisers, squat and ugly and vicious in their gray war
paint, that watched the entrance to the harbor as you have seen a cat
watching a rat hole.

It was not Britain's white ensign that they flew, those cruisers. It
was the red sun flag of Japan, one of Britain's allies against the
Hun. They had their vigil in vain, did those two cruisers. It was
valor's better part, discretion, that the German captain chose.
Aweel, you could no blame him! He and his ship would have been blown
out of the water so soon as she poked her nose beyond American
waters, had he chosen to go out and fight.

I was glad indeed when we came in sight of the Golden Gate once more,
and when we were safe ashore in San Francisco. It had been a
nerve-racking voyage in many ways. My wife and I were torn with
anxiety about our boy. And there were German raiders loose; one or two
had, so far, eluded the cordon the British fle