s in our Government.
I should say that no man even of Polk's rank ought to have a desk:
just as well give him a mill-stone. Even I try not to have a desk:
else I'd never get anything of importance done; for I find that
talks and conferences in my office and in the government offices
and wherever else I can find out things take all my waking hours.
The Foreign Office here has about five high position men to every
one in the State Department. God sparing me, I'm going one of
these days to prepare a paper for our Foreign Affairs Committee on
the Waste of Having too Few High Grade Men in the Department of
State; a Plea for Five Assistant Secretaries for Every One Now
Existing and for Provision for International Visits by Them.

Here's an ancient and mouldy precedent that needs shattering--for
the coming of our country into its proper station and influence in
the world.

I am sure that Mr. Balfour's visit has turned out as well as I
hoped, and my hopes were high. He is one of the most interesting
men that I've ever had the honour to know intimately--he and Lord
Grey. Mr. Balfour is a Tory, of course; and in general I don't like
Tories, yet liberal he surely is--a sort of high-toned Scotch
democrat. I have studied him with increasing charm and interest.
Not infrequently when I am in his office just before luncheon he
says, "Come, walk over and we'll have lunch with the family." He's
a bachelor. One sister lives with him. Another (Lady Rayleigh, the
wife of the great chemist and Chancellor of Cambridge University)
frequently visits him. Either of those ladies could rule this
Empire. Then there are nieces and cousins always about--people of
rare cultivation, every one of 'em. One of those girls confirmed
the story that "Uncle Arthur" one day concluded that the niblick
was something more than a humble necessity of a bad golfer--that it
had positive virtues of its own and had suffered centuries of
neglect. He, therefore, proceeded to play with the niblick only,
till he proved his case and showed that it is a club entitled to
the highest respect.

A fierce old Liberal fighter in Parliamentary warfare, who entered
politics about the time Mr. Balfour did, told me this story the
other day. "I've watched Balfour for about forty years as a cat
watches