hope to retain through whatever new trials we may yet encounter.
For it will fall to us yet to loose and to free the British, and a
Briton set free is an American. That's all you can do for a man or
for a nation of men.

These Foreign Secretaries are not only men of much greater
cultivation than their Prime Ministers but of greater moral force.
But I've come to like Lloyd George very much. He'd never deliver a
lecture on Dryden, and he doesn't even play a good game of golf;
but he has what both Lord Grey and Mr. Balfour lack--a touch of
genius--whatever that is--not the kind that takes infinite pains,
but the kind that acts as an electric light flashed in the dark. He
said to me the other day that experts have nearly been the death of
him. "The Government has experts, experts, experts, everywhere. In
any department where things are not going well, I have found boards
and committees and boards of experts. But in one department at
least I've found a substitute for them. I let twenty experts go and
I put in one Man, and things began to move at once. Do you know any
real Men? When you hear of any, won't you let me know?"

A little while ago he dined with me, and, after dinner, I took him
to a corner of the drawing room and delivered your message to him
about Ireland. "God knows, I'm trying," he replied. "Tell the
President that. And tell him to talk to Balfour." Presently he
broke out--"Madmen, madmen--I never saw any such task," and he
pointed across the room to Sir Edward Carson, his First Lord of the
Admiralty--"Madmen." "But the President's right. We've got to
settle it and we've got to settle it now." Carson and Jellicoe came
across the room and sat down with us. "I've been telling the
Ambassador, Carson, that we've got to settle the Irish question
now--in spite of you.

"I'll tell you something else we've got to settle now," said
Carson. "Else it'll settle us. That's the submarines. The press and
public are working up a calculated and concerted attack on Jellicoe
and me, and, if they get us, they'll get you. It's an attack on the
Government made on the Admiralty. Prime Minister," said this Ulster
pirate whose civil war didn't come off only because the big war was
begun--"Prime Minister, it may be a fierce attack. Get ready for
it." W