la? It is really a
remarkable position all round. Asquith's speech was frank if
nothing else. There appears to have been discord in the Cabinet,
so now we are about to have something like a "Committee of Public
Safety." Marvellous race, the English! Lord Derby seems to be an
outstanding personality just now. Have you noticed how each month
of the war is marked by some new phase of public opinion?
Optimism, pessimism, spies, Zeppelins, economy, pink forms,
voluntaryism, conscription, munitions--each of these has been for
a time the centre of public interest, and each has swiftly fallen
from its pedestal to be replaced by some other phase. Curiously
enough, the talk at home has not been influenced in any direct
way by the real progress of the war, but by the effect on the
popular imagination of trivial incidents, magnified out of all
proportion by sensational journals. The war goes on,
nevertheless, showing that the great British spirit is something
far too strong and deep to be really influenced by the caprices
of public opinion.

It is amusing to see how the views of certain newspapers vary
from month to month, and even more diverting to observe how all
the amateur strategists claim that they had really predicted
every phase of the military operations. Believe me, however, the
war has been and is quite different from any ideas entertained in
regard to it in the early weeks and months. It is a blend of
grotesque incongruities that would be humorous were not one side
of them so tragic and terrible. No one here seems to know
anything definite about what is going on. One has considerable
local knowledge but very little general information. Probably the
latter is impossible to get in this sort of mix-up--the scale on
which the war is being waged is so vast.

You will see roughly from Sir John French's latest dispatch the
part played by the cavalry in the advance of 25th September-5th
October. You will not, of course, be able to glean much of what
actually happened, but I can tell you we had a most interesting
time.

How tiresome is the tosh written in the papers and spoken in
Parliament about the war! One wonders if it would not be a good
plan to shut up Parliament for a time, though I suppose it is a
good thing to have a place where