saved them from a virtual defeat--I mean
the public sees this more and more clearly, for, of course, the
Government has known it from the beginning. I even find a sort of morbid
fear lest they do not sufficiently show their appreciation. The
Archbishop last night asked me in an apprehensive tone whether the
American Government and public felt that the British did not
sufficiently show their gratitude. I told him that we did not come into
the war to win compliments but to whip the enemy, and that we wanted all
the help the British can give: that's the main thing; and that
thereafter of course we liked appreciation, but that expressions of
appreciation had not been lacking. Mr. Balfour and Sir Edward Carson
also spoke to me yesterday much in the same tone as the Archbishop of
Canterbury.

"Try to think out any line of action that one will, or any future
sequence of events or any plan touching the war, one runs into the
question whether the British are doing the best that could be done or
are merely plugging away. They are, as a people, slow and unimaginative,
given to over-much self-criticism; but they eternally hold on to a task
or to a policy. Yet the question forever arises whether they show
imagination, to say nothing of genius, and whether the waste of a slow,
plodding policy is the necessary price of victory.

"Of course such a question is easy to ask and it is easy to give
dogmatic answers. But it isn't easy to give an answer based on facts.
Our General Lassiter[57], for instance--a man of sound judgment--has in
general been less hopeful of the military situation in France than most
of the British officers. But he is just now returned from the front,
much cheered and encouraged. 'Lassiter,' I asked, 'have the British in
France or has any man among them what we call genius, or even wide
vision; or are they merely plodding along at a mechanical task? His
answer was, 'We don't see genius till it has done its job. It is a
mechanical task--yes, that's the nature of the struggle--and they surely
do it with intelligence and spirit. There is waste. There is waste in
all wars. But I come back much more encouraged.'

"The same sort of questions and answers are asked and given continuously
about naval action. Every discussion of the possibility of attacking the
German naval bases ends without a plan. So also with preventing the
submarines from coming out. These subjects have been continuously under
discussion by a long se