A swift succession of moods and emotions gives color to the pages of Whitlock's diary in 1918. As the year began the German High Command was expending all its ingenuity upon plans for a great offensive in the west to end the war. We catch in Whitlock's pages the dread which sickened half the world when the first terrific blows fell upon the British armies in front of Amiens; the fresh wave of apprehension which swept over the Allies when the second thrust developed on both sides of Lille; the ordeal of anxiety as still a third German attack was awaited, and as the French were swept back from the Chemin des Dames; and finally the tremendous relief when news came that at Château-Thierry, only forty miles from Paris, the Germans had been prevented---partly by American troops---from crossing the Marne. Then we catch in the diary the increasing elation of Allied observers as the series of limited attacks planned by Foch succeeded one after another, and became a sweeping forward advance. Whitlock was not in a position to see leaders or active operations. But he was so close to the line that the guns of the great German onset in March and April beat in his ears, while later he saw in the unceasing column of American troops pouring through Havre, visible evidence of the decisive factor in ending the war. His characteristic sensitiveness to all kinds of impressions, his capacity for deep feeling, his glow and imagination, went partly into his diary even though most of his days were given to writing the Belgium.

January 8, 1918.---Heavy snow today-what a beastly climate! Telegram from Brown saying that he had disposed of serial rights for £1,000 to Daily Telegraph.(1)

Indoors all day; working all morning on French text of Lincoln, and all afternoon on the book.

Lloyd George's speech is good. He's a man, anyhow, even if one can't always approve his methods.

January 10, 1918.---The President's message to Congress published today.(2) An excellent document, exposing our war aims---there is not a thing he asks for ourselves! And to my delight, he will have none of all this nonsense about the economic war---"the war after the war"---in other words, "protective" and vindictive tariffs everywhere. It clears the air, perhaps, or would, were it possible to get any news into Germany or into German skulls after it got there.

Meanwhile it is calm---before the storm no doubt, waiting Hindenburg's heavy blow on the western front.

January 12, 1918.---Walk with Kinnie---then working on my book.

After luncheon, while I was working on the MS. in French of my Lincoln Eugène brought me a telegram; I opened it; and there to my utter, complete surprise was a telegram from Robert Underwood Johnson announcing my election to the Academy!(3) I never had dreamed of such a thing; and nothing has so delighted me for a long time. Coming thus, and from them---ah! but it is sweet!

Nicholson was in to tea .... Stuart doesn't have to go to the front, but will go about arranging entertainments at hospitals, and so on, which is better than to waste a life at the front.

French Socialists---but bah! Why waste words! The French Chamber yesterday! What hope of France can any one see anywhere?

January 14, 1918.---Another mild, lovely, sunny day; a fine walk with Kin Kung and Taï Taï.

Lunched at Hôtellerie with Carton de Wiart, René Bazin,(4) wife and daughter there, and General Jungbluth. Bazin, a little man, who looks something like van Dyke, and struts as all little men do; but very pleasant and agreeable, though I had no chance of a long talk with him. However, he kindly asks me to come to Paris---to a reception at the Académie.

Took a little walk this afternoon---working since.

Belgians call Havre, whose full name is Havre de Grace, Havre de Crasse, and Nice Havrais, "Nice pas vrai."

Vandervelde at the luncheon, wishes me to cable my Government to use its influence to have Gompers send representatives to conference of the comrades at London. He admires Gompers; detests, as he said, Lenin and Trotsky. I remarked that the Allies make a mistake in impugning the motives of Lenin and Trotsky and in speaking of them as bought men, and so forth. They are sincere---that is the worst of it, that's the danger. Vandervelde agreed.

January 17, 1918.---I am too busy these days on my book, too much absorbed in and by it to write much in my journal. I wrote too much anyway; it all makes the work of the book much harder ---so much silliness and trifling detail and vain repetition. The French newspapers are full of the Caillaux scandal---what an incubus that man has been to France!---and today are all agog over the revelations made by Lansing---dispatches, and so on.(5) Meanwhile history moves on its monotonous way, always the same; in Germany the reaction grows stronger and stronger. Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and the generals more and more savage, intolerant, blind, more and more autocratic, seizing all power, until even the Kaiser counts no more, isn't often mentioned. It will go on then until Saturn begins to devour his own children. In Russia, the same thing in other terms; Lenin, Trotsky et al. more and more savage, intolerant, blind, more and more autocratic, seizing all power, until the people, their god, count no more. And both nations hurrying, morally at least, to the same end.

A dull, heavy day; a short walk this morning, but Havre is so filthy that I dread to take the dogs out---they have to be bathed every time, and too much bathing isn't good for them, however fine it would be for France, morally and physically.

January 29, 1918.---Another fine day, quite like spring. Raymond, down from Etretât, and here today for tea, says that the fishermen say that winter is over and that the old shepherd who leads his flocks over the golf links says that spring and peace are near.

Meanwhile every one is anxious over the coming German offensive.

Paul Kellogg just back from England and the Nottingham labour conference. Says the English workingmen are growing more radical and menace Lloyd George. They say that Curzon made a failure in India, Milner in South Africa, and Carson in Ireland; that they are now, or have been, directing foreign policies in Great Britain, and that they are responsible for the secret treaties; that they, the workers, are willing to go on with the war, but that they are opposed to imperialism and conquest and wish the ends of the war defined and some readiness to discuss as well as fight.

January 30, 1918.---Another day of sun---with fog covering the valley and the sea. The dogs and I had our walk on the hills, when the sun was shining.

No couriers today, and the Southampton packet not in; the boat yesterday was fired at by two torpedoes, the first time the packet has ever been molested.

Nell and I walked on the beach. Nicholson here for tea.

I forgot to make a note of Arthur Hill's story---a friend of his at Boston has a cook who knew Trotsky when he was in America; Trotsky borrowed ten dollars of her, and never paid it back. Recently she said to her master: "Now that Trotsky has become a great Minister don't you think I can make him pay me the ten dollars he borrowed?"

January 31, 1918.---Another of those strange days, when a silver fog covers the sea, and the sun shines on the hills; we had a long walk, Kin Kung and Taï Taï and I, this morning. Kin has a photograph of his father Boy Boy which came in a charming letter from Mme. Allard last night .... Reseis here to luncheon. Nell and I for a walk this afternoon. I am miserable with dyspepsia again.

A terrible raid of Gothas on Paris last night-and again on London. What unspeakable beasts the Germans are!

February 1, 1918.---Newspapers are full of the raid in Paris and of the hate which is its dirty product.

February 2, 1918.---A year ago-those days in Brussels! The submarine warfare, that was to have reduced England to impotency in a few months, has now been on a year---and peace is no nearer, apparently, than it was. I said at the time, I think, that the submarines would lose, not win, this war for Germany. Whether my prediction will be realized I don't know, but I do know that the German hopes have not been realized.

February 4, 1918.---There is as much noise as filth in Havre.

The ships bellow, bellow, all night long, for the pilots. Nicholson says the pilots are drunk, and it is the way they call for them. Then there are at least six steeple clocks which strike the quarters, though at different times, so bells are booming all night. Last night, a band of Apaches paraded up and down the street until long after midnight---yelling nothing particular, but yelling for the sake of yelling. There are no words to express the loathing and disgust and hatred I feel for this vile town.

February 5, 1918.---Spent the whole afternoon with Nicholson among the picturesque scenes on the wharves and in the hangars, where great gangs of coolies and Kaffir boys are working. Saw Americans landing---they say that 100,000 have passed through here---and all the ships---the Archangel, which was rammed the other day, and the torpedoed what's-her-name, and the old Lorraine being camouflaged now. She always has steam up, and never goes anywhere save that she took Joffre to America.

Nicholson's story of the influence which French politicians tried to bring to bear upon him---even a deputy---to permit a brothel at the Australian camp; most illuminating as to the state of things in France. He had finally to write to the Admiral to have it stopped.

February 18, 1918.---I have wondered why all the lamp posts at Havre were constantly without glass, which lies in broken bits at their bases, and this invariably. I thought of many reasons, but no, the old man up on the hill who sweeps the streets explained it to me. "It is the boys," said he. It is the hoodlums, who are everywhere in vile Havre.

Mme. Renkin told me this afternoon---we met by accident at a florist's---that everybody is fleeing Paris.

The result of the revolt in Belgium is wonderful. Shows how the Belgians feel there about the Flemish movement and should have a good effect on the activistes here, in the army, and so on. What a cursed, petty thing is particularism!

February 19, 1918.---I am so busy on my book that I have no time and no energy for my journal, and do not set down the reflections on my walks, and so forth. It has been clear and bright today.

But I must make a note of the fact that Lloyd George seems slowly but surely to realize the prophecies I made of him two years ago. How far behind the President he lags, and the old Tiger at Paris of course has no more conception of what the President is talking about than Hindenburg would have. The President could lead the allies to peace with honour and victory. Lloyd George, who has no principles, and Clemenceau cannot even lead them to victory---to say nothing of the other two things.

February 22, 1918.---Word has come that E. H. Sothern and Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop Ames were in town, engaged in Y.M.C.A. work---entertainment in huts, and so on; and that Sothern was to read at the dedication of a new hut the Americans have given the English... called Lincoln Hut; would I come and speak and introduce Sothern? Nell and I went at three. Glad to see Sothern, whom I met in 1888---Mon Dieu! thirty years ago!---he is very fine, very genuine, very able, and very distingué with his white hair.

Mass of khaki, English and American; cold hut; duly introduced Sothern, who read beautifully the soliloquy and the closet scene from Hamlet. The soldiers would have preferred George M. Cohan.

March 4, 1918.---My birthday---forty-nine years old today. Not half the things I have planned; scarcely begun, indeed. However, I have had more than my share; people seemed to have been kind and generous enough to take the will for the deed, the intention for the performance. I am not the novelist it was always my ambition to be! I have written so very much less than I had planned, partly because I have always been going off after strange gods in politics and elsewhere, tried to do too many things, and so frittered away time and energy. And I have the terribly depressing sense of the waste of life occasioned by this war. We mark time, mark time, waiting to be allowed to live again.

Sir Francis and Lady Villiers have been here. Sir Francis very blue and reports England as blue with the outlook. The unspeakable treason of the Russians! Now he fears that the idea of a stalemate is growing in England! Thinks Germany will make no offensive because she has all she can take care of; they may make an advantageous offer of peace, on the basis of keeping what she has got in Russia. Alsace-Lorraine she will never give up; that, of course, as I told him, was really the key to the whole situation, the crux of the whole difficulty. Nothing could be changed unless the Allies were strong enough to make an offensive---and could they successfully undertake that?

Belgian Ministers too very blue, fear themselves in a delicate situation. How could they resist an offer of an advantageous peace? Vandevyvere says that there are indications that the Germans, if they can get food from Russia, will abolish the C.R.B. and organize local committees of Flemish activistes. Every day the war lasts imperils Belgium.

Meanwhile the conservative ministers are very indignant with Vandervelde for his imprudent speech, made without consulting them, in favour of the meeting of the International.(6) There will be no crisis now; they have spoken sharply to him, and he may eventually go the way of Albert Thomas and Henderson.

March 8, 1918.---After tea this afternoon, Mme. Carton de Wiart came to see me with a note from l'Institut saying that Hoover had been proposed for the Prix d'Audiffret for what he had done in the North of France. Carton wished my advice and opinion. I said by all means do it; it's well deserved and would have the best effect. Mme. Carton smiled. "If you had opposed it," she said, "it would not have been given, but since you approve, it will be done, and you may be the one to tell him. After what he tried to do to you, too!" She referred, I know, to Hoover's effort to have me removed from Brussels.

March 9, 1918.---Fine weather. Raids on London and Paris last night, though there was no moon. And the Kaiser is out in a statement on the Russian peace saying that the hand of the most high God is plainly visible in the event. One is dumb with astonishment at such brazen blasphemy. I can't write any more in my journal. I am too much moved, too much depressed. It goes on and on, without check, or let, or very much hindrance, as it has for nearly four years. This morning little Marie said:

"If the Germans win this war, one will no longer believe in God. And I am Catholic, if you please."

There is talk of Japan, but that's too late now. They might once have aided Russia to repulse Germany, and to prevent Russia's being dismembered, but now to say to them to dismember Russia still further, to carve off a slice of her eastern side as Germany has carved off a slice of her western side, would not be aiding very much the cause of democracy.

Sunday, March 10, 1918.---It has been a lovely day, quite like spring, but the sunlight is darkened as though by great clouds of dust by the gloom and horror of the war. One hears, and reads, nothing but dreadful things, and there is no end to it, no hope of its ever ending. The English and the French, after the Russian débâcle, realize if they do not admit that they can do nothing more than they have done and are doing they can only try to hold on and wait for America while Germany is apparently stronger than ever, and capable of going on indefinitely. There is much talk of Japan's going in---mostly silly, for that's too late now. The time for that was last summer.

As for me, my opinion is worth nothing any more. I have lived in an atmosphere, for nearly a year, of Tory sentiment and speech; my ideas are all warped, my liberalism compromised. I have drifted far out of my course; all I ever hear anywhere in my sphere is the parroting of the notions of the London Times, at which I should have scoffed four, or three, or two years, or one year ago. So I'd better shut up.

March 12, 1918.---Home, and while Nell went to the tea she was giving to the British soldiers who had volunteered to dig the graves for the American lads who had died in camp---the tea was given in the Y. M. C. A. hut at the Convalescent Camp---I walked out to Ste.-Adresse to see Hymans. The walk in the sun was delightful, and I had a pleasant half-hour with Hymans. He was disturbed by a report in some German newspapers to the effect that Gompers had said that Belgium should be divided between Holland and France---Flanders to Holland, and Wallonia to France. I told Hymans that it could not be true that Gompers had said such a preposterous thing.

March 15, 1918.---Nell and I went out after luncheon. Oh but Havre is foul! These dry days the gusts of wind swirl the filth everywhere, in your eyes, ears, mouth, down your neck. It is a city filthy inside and out, morally and physically, beyond any words in any language. It is fifty years behind the times, as all France is no doubt.

At 6:30 Nell, Swift, and I went to the Y. M. C. A. Lycée Theatre to hear the concert given by the Herron Sisters, and greatly enjoyed their nonsense and farce and American songs and jokes and accent---and the Tommies went wild with delight.

Sunday, March 17, 1918.---Every one talks of the air-raids, when he is not talking of the coming offensive. How the Germans have ruined all life and beauty; people dread the beauty of starlight nights, and in the full moon see only an enemy!

There is much talk too of the Japs entering Siberia; but the time is gone by for that. Had they gone in there to help the Russian Government when there was a Russian Government and a Russian army, it would have been worth while.(7)

March 18, 1918.---The day has been made memorable for me because I have spent it with E. H. Sothern, who came to luncheon, and went with me for a long walk afterwards. He talked of everything. He and his wife are to settle down at Broadway (England) after the war and wish us to come there too. It would be a joy. Life passes---it is necessary to prepare for a happy ending. I haven't time to write down all that this day has meant to me; it is refreshing after so much depression to be with a man like Sothern, and life might be made up of such joys if there were no Germans in it!

March 21, 1918.---Nell and I lunched with good old Nicholson, and then we three walked to the French cemetery, with its huddled stones, photographs, and flowers. We went to look at the little plots where the English and American soldiers are buried---with their little crosses to mark their graves. Most touching and significant.

March 23, 1918.---A beautiful day, it might be May---made horrid by the tales of the awful battle going on along the English front and the hideous air-raid at Paris this morning.(8) Mrs. Schmidt in to tea, says that 100 Gothas bombarded Paris between seven and ten this morning and destroyed the place Vendôme.

Sunday, March 24, 1918.---Walked with Nell and the dogs to Sanvic, the walking being fine. Went with Swift after luncheon to see a ball-game played by the American soldiers on the vacant ground there by the sea, but there was no game. Very hot in the sun.

Nicholson in to tea.

It is said that there were no Gothas over Paris yesterday, but that the Germans have invented some devilish new gun that shoots shells a distance of 100 kilometres and at intervals of fifteen minutes into Paris all day long. This, of course, to have something new and Kolossal with which to astonish and frighten humanity.

The offensive goes on---the British hold and are heroic.

March 25, 1918.---Strange, and horrid, these sunny days of spring, and that butchery going on up there, that terrific gigantic battle on which the fate of humanity rests! There is something almost unreal in the very light of the day; one feels that one must wake and find it all a horrid nightmare. And yet---there are the British, the colour of the dull earth, marching through the streets as Nell and I saw them this afternoon.

The British hold on, against overwhelming numbers.

March 26, 1918.---These are solemn, anxious days---that hecatomb, that holocaust, going on up there, and the fate of humanity depending upon the issue. How noble the English have been, how brave and true and stout-hearted! God bless them and keep them and give them victory!

March 27, 1918.---Our hearts are very full---reading of the gigantic battle---the Germans with no care for the lives of their own people, battering bullheadedly like rams, and the English gallantly holding, but slowly receding.

We can only admire them, love them, believe in them, and trust them, and hope and pray that they may win; what splendid, splendid heroism! What a race! God guard them for the saving of the world!

March 28, 1918.---A rainy day; indoors, working hard all day, after a walk with the dogs this morning. The English, the noble, gallant English are holding from all we hear; we read the newspapers with bated breath. A flaming gorgeous sunset just now---and wild geese, or ducks, in a V flying in the sky just afterward.

March 29, 1918.---Nicholson in for tea; tail up, wonderfully bucked and in fine spirits; said all was going well. General Coulter came in, with Major Walker, then Mme. Carton de Wiart, to tell me that I might cable Hoover that the Prix d'Audiffret was to be given him.

I am sick of the praise of the French in the French newspapers; there is little else in them.

Nicholson's story of the sergeant with eleven boche prisoners, in a raid, bombed and compelled to flee; sad at having to abandon his prisoners, but no, the prisoners were not to be abandoned, they came right along, running faster than he did. Nicholson's story too of the advance in masses, like billows rolling up, and of the awful destruction of life, the two divisions, for instance, completely annihilated by the airmen, flying low, back and forth, and around and around over them.

March 30, 1918.---The long-range gun struck a church in Paris yesterday---and killed seventy-five women and children, and wounded many more than that, assembled for Good Friday prayer for peace! What monstrous irony! It has greatly impressed the peasants and Marie is full of doubts. Indeed the war, were it won by the Germans, would be the end of faith in justice as in God.

I have just had a talk this morning with Prescott; he very much bucked, says all goes well, the English hold, may fall back a bit, but they hold. The German prisoners, even those of the crack regiments, say that they have had enough. German regiments seeing the piles of dead, got the wind up, and refused to march. Prescott thought American troops might come into action later, for offensive proposed. It takes old and trained soldiers to stand, to resist, to retreat in order under fire. He knew more that he dared not tell, but was confident.

What anxious days, with the fate of civilization hanging in the balance!

Sunday, March 31, 1918.---What can one write these tragic days! They say the news is satisfactory, that the English and French hold; Pershing has made a beau geste in offering all his forces to the French, and Foch has been placed in supreme command of all the armies---rather fine in Haig to consent. Amiens threatened, bombarded, we hear, and then in flames.

The anxiety is very great; and these days are in some ways the hardest of the war to live. One of our new steel ships, built in seventy-six days, in port with 8,500 tons of flour. A record.

As I sit here tonight working on my book, I hear, as I hear every evening now, the British troops marching by, shouting, whistling, singing "Smile, Smile, Smile!"

Ah me! What days! What implications! What pain and anxiety!

April 1, 1918.---The awful battle goes on-and one is never free from the anxiety of these hours of anguish. English troops arriving constantly; they sing through the streets; morning, noon and night. They sing many American songs---"Down where the cotton blossoms grow," and "Marching through Georgia." This morning some were singing, "You take the high road," a Scotch song that, of course.

April 3, 1918.---Working all day, save for my walk with the dogs this morning, and a stroll to the sea this afternoon. In the book I have reached the deportations---it is so depressing!

Indeed, depression is my common state since I came to Havre; the city itself is beyond words depressing, ugly, grey, filthy, no charm or interest; the climate, here at the river's mouth, is bad; and always the war.

April 5, 1918.---The communiqués---we live on communiqués, yet are afraid to read them---announce this morning the resumption of the offensive, Hindenburg trying to batter his way on to Amiens and to Paris. Will he? These are dreadful hours.

We expect too much of others---too much devotion, loyalty, unselfishness, intelligence, and so on. These are rare---why worry because our friends haven't diamonds, platinum and radium?

In my book I am trying to be generous to everybody---Hoover, Francqui, Gibson, de Leval. But they will not see it as generosity; only as something less than their just deserts!

The French are a very hard, egotistical, conceited people---terribly pandour, and cynical. The only one of their writers who has pity or the milk of human kindness is Victor Hugo, and he is sneered at as a romantic. They regard all kind, generous thought as unsophisticated. They have absolutely no sense of humour whatever---though wit, cruel, and at the expense of others. They like repartee if it hurts enough. French boys are always throwing stones, and they don't know how to throw, either. The one game they, like their elders, play well, is war.

The newspapers do not say much for the English: it is all the French and Foch. The inhospitality, for instance, shown the Belgians, is shameful. Not a Belgian that is not made to feel it; now little Marie even, poor Albertine, etc. They hate the Belgians because the Belgians are clean, competent, frugal .... There is much maudlinism in America over France.

April 6, 1918.---The battle goes on---the fate of the world hangs in the balance---the rain falls---boys whistle in the streets---what a world and what a life!

Foch seems to be a man. And there must have been something in that first advance not good for English history---that fifth army. It must have been that which induced the British to consent to a generalissimo.

Sunday, April 7, 1918.---Nell and I went walking with the dogs, and this afternoon I watched American soldiers playing ball on the hard yellow ground there by the sea. What implications! Baseball in France---and all the familiar slang, the shouting, the kidding, and a great crowd of French, English, Belgian, Australian soldiers looking on. I explained the game in French to some French persons.

Sunday, April 14, 1918.---Days of the anguish of anxiety over the terrible battle raging there. Very much depressed.

April 15, 1918.---This afternoon walked out to see Hymans, who thinks the situation is slightly improved; the Belgians of course in an awful position. Told Hymans about Edith Wharton's work for Belgian children.

April 16, 1918.---The anxiety, the anguish of anxiety about the battle! The Villiers in this afternoon, Sir Francis explaining story that the Belgian Government had been offered hospitality in England. He had asked what they would do in case of eventualities, and they said that they could only take to the sea---and wished to be received in England. Sir Frances wired---has had no answer. Now Villiers says the Belgians exalt him as having offered them hospitality---and the British Government doesn't want them! In the event of the Germans winning in the North and breaking through, Sir Francis says that they might reach Havre in four to eight days.

April 17, 1918.---Went to the bank for the last of my papers. We are packing up to be ready for another flight, which seems each day more certain. The news is all bad---Bailleul taken---the Germans advancing steadily, step by step, the English falling back. I have never in my life known such horrid depression .... Hymans pale, anxious, worried.

April 23, 1918.---I am too constantly overtired in the feverish effort I am making to finish my book, to write in my journal these days. What few energies I have are exhausted by the book.

There is, or has been, a lull in the offensive, which means only that it will now break out with more hideous violence than ever ---may come even as I write.

April 27, 1918.---Last night at 10:20 I finished my book, that is, I finished it in its first draft. It is, at any rate, all down on paper, and there are months of work in revising it, and so on.

And now, this evening, we face again the probability of having to fly before the Germans, who have been hounding us for four years. This morning's communiqué contained what, I suppose, is the most serious news since the war began---the capture by the Germans of Mount Kemmel---which means that the Messines Ridge and all the other heights will fall, and the route to Calais be opened. Then Paris---and Havre.

May 1, 1918.---The battle goes on, and the anxiety continues, with no man knowing what may happen at any minute, though Monday seems to have been a fairly good day for the Allies.

May 6, 1918.---Nicholson, at tea yesterday, quite seriously, "There was an Australian chap in yesterday, nice fellow, who said they had never had such splendid killing as on last Monday."

Cablegram from Hoover---one of his "bombs" saying that if King Albert cannot induce the King of Sweden to force the chartering of 170,000 of the 300,000 tons of shipping lying idle in Swedish ports, there is no hope of saving the relief. Of course it is but one of Hoover's bombs, bluffs---always trying to force to frighten people into doing things his way. It brings back the old days at Brussels, when I didn't know Hoover quite as well as I do now. I'm glad at last I have little to do with him any more. What a bully! He would even bully a poor exiled King!

May 7, 1918.---After luncheon, went to see Hymans, communicating to him Hoover's telegram, somewhat improved by my translation into French. Hymans made a wry face, but said he knew Hoover, and his ways.

May 10, 1918.---Delighted by a note from Klobuskowski telling me that Kellogg is to have the Legion of Honour. I have been at him for a long time to get it for Kellogg .... Finished tonight the revision of the book, in the form for serial publication. It doesn't satisfy me, is not very interesting after the Cavell case---but, for good or bad, there it is, done at last, after a long gloomy winter ---eight solid months of steady work, day and night, especially night, and will have to stand. I shall try to improve it for book publication, but it is cast in its own mould and I can't change it much. It has brought me or will, according to contracts, bring me about $10,000 in its present form.

May 11, 1918.---I have worked so hard on the book that I have had no time or energy to keep up my journal. There hasn't, indeed, been much to enter. The days have been gloomy, with this hard work, and the agony of the offensive---in peace for the moment, but to begin any day worse than ever. This week has been crowded, one of those hurried, social weeks, very tiring. Three luncheons and two funerals, and always those devastations of the day, callers. Social life is like war; there are offensive advances of invitations to luncheons, dinners, and so on, the enemy establishes himself in the first line trenches of our obligation: then the usual counter attack by giving luncheons, dinners, and so on, to recover the lost ground, and reestablish our lines.

Sunday, May 12, 1918.---Overcast sky this morning, as Nell and I went walking with the dogs on the hill. Commandant du Pont here to luncheon. Went over to place St.-Roche to hear a concert, which was poor. So walked with Higgins awhile, and coming back watched a regiment of American troops pass, or perhaps it was only a battalion---good, stout fellows trudging along under their heavy load of equipment. "Bon jour, monseer," they cried, guying the Frenchmen along rue d'Etretât, and now and then sang.

May 15, 1918.---This is the first of the "three days without meat" that we are to have each week---the French, after four years of war, not having yet settled on any policy of food conservation. They have discovered, however, a new way to blunder and be unjust in taxation, namely, 10 per cent, on luxuries, which means, add 10 per cent, to the price of everything you buy---and let the shopkeeper retain it in most cases. Strange, that humanity persists in trying every way of taxing except the right way!

Nell and I for a walk.

May 20, 1918.---Another hot, lovely day. The usual walk with Kinnie and Taï Taï. Nap this afternoon, worn out after a night made hideous by celebrants .... At 10:.30 a soldier lay down on the sidewalk outside our wall, roaring and singing. Groups passing by stopped to argue with him, until long after midnight; he continuing to howl, yawn, sing, roar, snore, vomit, and so on, until three this morning---when I fell into a troubled sleep.

Typical thing in Havre. There are no policemen, no order, no authority, nothing.

Cunningham here this afternoon.

May 21, 1918.---Gloriously hot. Our walk this morning, the dogs and mine, their little pink tongues lolling; then I went down to try and buy a straw hat, and succeeded finally---very hard to get anything here now. While there saw a collision between a fire cart, and a tram car, a sickening sight .... Went to get a cane! Saw a young American lieutenant buying a riding crop, poor chap, trying to use a phrase book; the woman, with the usual Normandy instinct was trying to sell him one for $10.00---I intervened---finally got him one for three francs.

Went with Coulter, did Nell and I---to visit a German ship, once a North-German Lloyd steamer, seized by the Brazilians. Nice little Brazilian Captain and handsome dark first officer. Showed us over the fine ship---the Aurore now---then served us with coffee, and so forth. The Germans had wrecked the ship at Rio, and when they left said, "In Germany they could repair her in one month, in New York, in three, in Brazil---never." "But the ship is here," said the good-looking first officer. They are very proud of it.

May 27, 1918.---Hymans told me that the offensive had begun this morning on the front between Soissons and Rheims.(9) And now for more anxiety and anguish! Ah me! What awful days we live!

Mme. Carton de Wiart told Nell that de Broqueville had resigned, and that the King has sent for Carton de Wiart. So they have got him at last---and he is the best of them!

May 28, 1918.---A beautiful day, but the depression, the anxiety, the anguish, caused by the offensive is terrible. I walked with the dogs. I strolled in the afternoon, looked at the bulletins, at the newspapers, the Germans advancing, crossing the Aisne, and so on, and was good for nothing.

May 29, 1918.---Alarm last night, just as we were going to bed.

The night before a Gotha was over Rouen, killing one and wounding four persons. Today the extent of the bad news is known---the Huns advance, advance, advance---and who is ever going to stop them?... Nell and I walked down to see the bulletins---always depressing. The news always bad, as it has been for four years, until one can only say, "Despair and Die." They are near Soissons and Rheims, and those cities seem about to fall! Oh, the days of anxiety and anguish and fear of this spring! And these bright nights when the moon, once a gentle, lovely friend, has become a terrible sinister enemy!

May 30, 1918.---It has been a beautiful, an impressive, and in many ways a happy day, if one dared be happy any more! The sun has been brilliant in a cloudless sky. At eleven, we were at the cemetery; there were the Grenadier Guards, a detachment of French, the Belgian gendarmes, and American soldiers, bluejackets, and marines. The under-prefect, some representative of the Mayor, a colonel representing Admiral Didelot, Nicholson, and many others. We marched about and I laid a wreath on the Belgian plot while they presented arms. De Rouette, tears in his eyes, thanked me. Then on the French, and the Colonel thanked me; then to the plot where the British and Americans lie. I laid the wreath for the British, Nicholson thanking me, and Sir Francis also. He had walked with me in the procession. Then I laid the wreath for our own boys, whose graves had been pleasantly decorated, with little flags and the flowers. Then the services; a British clergyman prayed. The choir sang, "The Son of God Goes Forth to War." I spoke first in English, then in French. Then another hymn, "Jerusalem the Golden"; the national anthems, Belgian, French, British, American; then a bugler, blowing taps---"last post," as the English say.

June 1, 1918.---A perfect June day---and three red roses blooming in the garden in the very center of the arched bush over the gate.

And, yet, not far, that awful battle. We can know very little of it; this morning's bulletins may be interpreted as meaning that the offensive is slowing up at the wings, if not at the center. However, it is not ever much one learns from the communiqués. Nell and I go downtown usually after tea; there is a great crowd---French, English, Australian, Scotch, Belgian, American standing there reading the bulletins; and for the first time since I have been at Havre I read on those bulletins something that pleased me. It was the brief announcement of the splendid conduct of the Americans at Cantigny.(10) I thrilled with pride. Oh! If we only had them all over here!

Sunday, June 2, 1918.---The distant throb of the guns audible today for the first time since I have been at Havre. In the forest this morning, there in the tall pines, looking on a lovely peaceful scene, the sound suddenly came to me, just as it used to at Brussels.

June 3, 1918.---Another lovely day, and the battle goes on. I know of it only what the military experts write and print, and they know nothing at all. They are kept busy eating their own words in a solemn manner and assumption of wisdom that will, as they think, provide a camouflage for their ignorance. Our week of agony -oh, what a long, hard terrible week it has been! The awful anguish and anxiety, and then the horror of all that demanding series of luncheons and dinners. The one pleasant time the drive to Etretât, when, like an ostrich, I deliberately forgot the war. The week seems an age---one week of agony, then, and---what?

June 6, 1918.---I felt so sorry over de Broqueville's fall.(11) He is a good sort and a gentleman, and a gentleman out of place among the Crotters---to use a Brussels word---who for the most part make up the Belgian Ministry. Not Hymans, who is a good sort, and intelligent, and all right, but that's what most of the others are; little politicians who would be, perhaps, up to the level of the state legislatures at home. De Broqueville is the victim of their spleen and jealousy; he may have deceived them a little, which was unfortunate and wrong, but they are not the ones to complain of that .... But---that is politics. Everywhere and in all times the filthiest, foulest mess imaginable, dirty as Havre, for instance; and it always comes to some such thing in the end. I begin to get nasty letters now about my articles in Everybody's, inspired by Republican partisanship evidently.

June 10, 1918.---This afternoon Nell and I drove with Coulter to No. 1 Rest Camp, where we were photographed for the cinema with the one hundred and thirtieth artillery, Kansas troops, marching past. Fine lads, with many Indians among them.

June 12, 1918.---Hearing a band, we turned, and at the corner of the rue d'Etretât, there was a crowd, and a regiment, and a splendid band swinging along, playing "Way Down Upon the Swanee River," then "Dixie," and "Maryland, My Maryland!" My old heart gave a bound, and the mist was in my eyes, and something in my throat as those stalwart lads of the artillery---their red guidons fluttering, and the colours!---went by, and suddenly, out of the line, a hardy little lieutenant was standing there, an enormous pistol in his holster, shaking Nell's hand---Ridgely Hudson of Springfield! We were delighted, stood and talked a moment, then he ran to catch up with his battery again, swallowed up in that khaki stream that flows steadily by now-a-days.

Then to the bulletin board, the news not bad, better indeed. The morning communiqué had shown some French victories---and an American victory too, thank God!

June 14, 1918.---I went to look at the communiqué. The news good.

American troops pour through by the thousands, several regiments each day. Splendid big handsome fellows, and the young officers so fine, so straight, so serious, so clear eyed. They come from the boats in the morning, and afternoon and evening they march to the trains, bands playing, flags flying. Only a moment ago the strains of a band came to our ears, and while at tea we heard one. They sing, too, late at night. The sight of them cheers the French immensely, and they wring praise even from the English. To see it is significant, sublime, moving beyond words. I am always near tears. And how proud I am! Proud to be American.

June 22, 1918.---The French are at last waking up to the fact that there is an American Army in France, though at Havre no notice, beyond gaping at them as they pass in the street, has ever been taken of their presence----never a welcome, never even a little "merci." But there is a good article in Le Temps today, and Le Journal, apropos of the expected bombardment of Paris and the consequent necessity of evacuating, eventually, the children, and so on, says that doubtless the Americans will give up their barracks for them. There are signs, too, of their celebrating the Fourth of July.

June 29, 1918.---After luncheon two young Americans, E. B. Hatrick and C. Joe Hubbell, of New York, in uniforms and belonging to the corps of motion pictures for the army, came in.

Sitting here they told, with remarkable simplicity, their experiences at the battle of Château-Thierry. They were the first Americans to arrive there, and they set up their cameras on a hill, and photographed the battle. They told how the 3rd Division, raw troops, were thrown in to stop the German advance. The 7th machine gun battery and the 30th Infantry held their ground; and then the 2nd Division, the 5th and 6th Marines and the 23rd Infantry made a drive and drove the Huns back, saving the day, Paris, and civilization. As fine and glorious a feat of arms as history ever saw.

And Pershing won't let the names of the regiments be mentioned!

Too bad, as Woog said, that a thing so important as war should be conducted by military men!

July 3, 1918.---All France is en fête for the Fourth of July. The newspapers teem with articles lauding America, there are proclamations of Mayors, and so on, streets named for the President, and everywhere flags---French, British, Belgian, American.

July 4, 1918.---It has been a memorable day, a historic day, a remarkable day of implications so varied and so vast that the mind at once cannot grasp them, notice them, envisage them. It is a sort of apotheosis of America, in which appear, resplendent, the figures of Washington, of Hamilton, of Jefferson, of Lincoln, of Wilson.

All the papers have articles, poems, pictures, in honour of America and more and better than all, they all seem to realize the spiritual significance of it all. But it is beyond the reach of the imagination; I cannot express it all, as yet; perhaps never shall be able to do so. I am too tired after the fatigues and emotions of the day, to write it down. Only I know that it has been a great day to live, that something better and nobler has entered into me because of it; that I feel a great love and admiration for these French, these English, these Belgians, who understand us at last, and that with them there is henceforth an indissoluble bond. And what pride to be able to say tonight that I am American.

How to begin? It has been a clear, perfect day, of sparkling sunshine. First at nine o'clock, Nell and I drove up to the Villa Louis XIV at Ste.-Adresse, where the Belgians were gathered, all the ministers, all the colleagues, and Belgian gendarmes, foot and mounted. General de Rouette asked me to step to the front with him; giving the order "To the colours!" our flag goes up the mast, we uncover, the troops present arms. General de Rouette cries, "Vive le Président Wilson! Vive les États Unis d'Amérique!" and the band plays the "Star-Spangled Banner." At the conclusion I cry "Vive le Roi des Belges! Vive le Belgique!" and they all repeat the cry. Then the band plays "La Marseillaise," "God Save the King," the Portuguese Hymn, and then "la Brabançonne." Then all sorts of congratulations, and I am sent for to go to Ste.-Adresse.

There, beyond the Mairie, a vast crowd of school children with their teachers and elders, and the Mayor and council of Ste.-Adresse, very solemn, in their tricoloured sashes. The children all bore flowers; they had been waiting, poor little things, since eight o'clock for the incoming regiment, which arrives every morning at that hour. But by the eternal irony of things, so unfailing in life that it grows monotonous, this morning for the first time in two months no regiment arrived; held in England, explained the grizzled old Mayor, because of a German design to celebrate our fête by torpedoing a transport. However, they had telephoned to Coulter, who had sent officers scurrying about, to rake together a company or two of men, and at ten o'clock they arrived, bearing the flag to be hoisted by the kiddies. And then speeches by everybody, the Mayor, a councillor in excellent English, then in French; by me, and then Belgians .... Finally we got away, the people throwing flowers into the motor as we went, and drove to the Hôtel de Ville in Havre. There an enormous crowd, and the Hôtel de Ville beautifully and chastely decorated in French flags. We were received in the Mayor's chambers, all the notables there, and addressed by Didelot, by the Mayor .... Then downstairs, and the ceremony of hoisting of our flag over the Hôtel de Ville; then a march past of French soldiers, Welsh Guards, Belgian gendarmes, and American marines. Then presentation of a silk flag by the women of Havre to the American troops ....

After luncheon, Nell and Swift and I went to the field sports at Sanvic, Nicholson meeting us there. An enormous crowd, and a hot ball game between Etretât and Havre, and sunlight, and cheers, and rooting throngs, and a lot of fun.

The celebration goes on all over Havre tonight---soldiers fraternizing in the streets, and Havre at last growing thawed out.

July 6, 1918.---The President's speech at Mt. Vernon makes a profound impression.

Sunday, July 7, 1918.---Article from Le Temps.

Nicholson, Coulter and Mrs. Van Schaick here to tea. Nicholson says the German offensive is due tomorrow, east of Rheims.

July 9, 1918.---Went to see Hymans to convey to him my Government's thanks for the honour rendered us on the Fourth of July. Long talk. He too had heard that the offensive was to begin yesterday east of Rheims, but nothing has thus far developed, to our knowledge. Hymans said that there are eighteen American divisions behind that line. Picked up Nell at Mrs. Cruger's house. Sir Francis here after tea.

July 11, 1918.---There is a very persistent rumour that some sort of peace negotiations are in prospect, instigated, it is said, by Spain. There has been a story in every one's mouth, for weeks, to the effect that the King of Spain was for days in Paris, and that this fact explained the failures of the boche to bombard and make air-raids. The Pope, too, may be active.

Priestley came, to tell me of his feeling that de Broqueville really has something to do with the defeatist articles appearing in La Nation. Priestley rather worried about those articles. Says they do harm in the army, where the Flemish activity continues strong. Thirty Flemish soldiers deserted to the boche not long ago, and the boche do all they can to encourage desertions by showing special favours to Flemish prisoners---letting them go home, and so on. Priestley says this situation is all well enough so long as there is no reverse, but that the Belgian army would be seriously affected if there were to be a serious retreat. The Flemish priests are responsible for the condition and for most of the defeatist sentiment. They object to the Belgians associating with the French, especially the children, saying the French teach them evil things, and so on, and really encourage the dislike of the French; which is not difficult to do, for the French meet them much more than half way.

July 16, 1918.---The offensive in the hearts of all. The first day was not unsatisfactory---but it is only the first day. Our boys fight well .... I met some of our boys on my walk this morning. They are a distinct type, easily recognized here. Something very lithe and agile and strong, they are good humoured, kind, somewhat naïve, but no fools, and they are very dangerous with tongues, fists, or guns when aroused. Mostly tall, something almost of the Indian about them, and their campaign hats very distinctive. I've totally changed my ideas on that, and have come out strongly for that hat. The boys call themselves and each other "Yanks." How unerring their united judgment, spontaneous and natural, for the appropriate thing.

July 19, 1918.---The news is gratifying; the French and Americans made a counter attack yesterday, with fine success. Every one enthusiastic over the Americans---as well they may be.

July 23, 1918.---The news is great. The Germans are still retreating, it appears.

July 24, 1918.---Visit this afternoon from M. de Smet, a Brussels lawyer who had escaped out of Belgium. Told me of his journey from Brussels to Louvain, where he stopped all night; then up at five to go to Hasselt; then three days hiding in gorse and heather, walking by night forty miles guided by poachers who were heavily armed with big revolvers. They cut the wires for him at the frontier and he was free at last.

A call this morning from Charles Edward Russell, en route from London to Paris. This afternoon Nell and I went to Mrs. Henrotin's for tea .... Afterwards we all went to the Camp of the Convalescents, where Nell works in the morning in the British Y.M.C.A. hut.

July 27, 1918.---Lunched with Sir Francis .... News today is good.

July 29, 1918.---We are waiting now for the news that the Crown Prince Rupprecht has attacked. Telegram from Sharp to say that ten Congressmen are to arrive in Havre on Wednesday en route to England.

This morning, seeing a group of urchins in their little black jackets hopping about pitching pennies (they seem always to be gambling in some form or other) I approached and saw that they were using American pennies with the head of Lincoln. The familiar, bright little pieces in the dust and sand had attracted my attention. The children beg them from our soldiers as they are passing along the rue de la Reine Elizabeth morning and afternoon. The boys adore the children, lead them along by the hand, and give them all their spare change. The only English the French kiddies know is "Pennies, please."

July 30, 1918.---On my walk this morning I encountered an American regiment at rest in the rue de la Reine Elizabeth; stopped for a chat with some of them. The kiddies were there, and the fruit vendors who so outrageously exploit our soldiers. They were charging today five sous for a single plum---five American cents! A nice young lieutenant said to me: "But it is only these street fakirs that do that, isn't it? The other French wouldn't treat us that way?" Poor lad; I wouldn't destroy his illusions!

A hot day. Colonel Firth, Colonel Lowe, and Colonel Goldthwaite, the latter of our army, here for lunch. After tea we went over to call on the de Carbonnels and the Havenith's, and from the maisonnette in the Haveniths' garden we watched a regiment of Americans pass by.

July 31, 1918.---Well, the Congressmen have come and gone---eight of them, or nine counting Young, who wouldn't come, saying he didn't care for any tea-party. I had sent Swift with three motors to meet the noon train and to fetch them to the Legation for tea. They were all in a hurry to get away, to embark for England at five-thirty.

August 1, 1918.---About one o'clock this morning awakened by what I thought was a thunderstorm, but which I soon recognized as guns firing. I got up and looked out of the window and saw the flashes of the guns at the fort of Bléville. I thought they were firing at something out at sea. Tried to switch on the electric light; no light, and so it was an air raid. We went down to our little cellar and after a while the firing ceased. We learnt this morning that the aircraft that were over Havre had wrecked a house and killed a doctor.

General Swift... came to lunch. We were old friends long ago in Springfield. He has been on duty in Italy, but having reached the age-limit, has been retired. He says there's a theory in the army that, because lobsters live to be a great age, all who live to a great age are lobsters!

August 2, 1918.---Ray Stannard Baker came to tea, just back from his visit to the Belgian front. He thought that a military decision of the war was impossible, and that is what Swift thought yesterday.

It is said that many have left town because of the air raid.

August 3, 1918.---A call from Walter Lippmann, now a captain in the Intelligence Department, with three other officers. Lippmann says that our officers at General Headquarters are anxious for an organization purely American in which the French would have nothing to do.

Dined tonight at the Hymans's .. . . Everyone happy over the news of Foch's victory and the German retreat.

August 4, 1918.---Everybody indignant over the fact that there was no alarm or any defence the night of the air raid. The officers were all at the theatre or dining out; no one at his post; the gunners at the batteries all asleep, or else gone home. "They will never raid Havre," was the common saying. The city blazes with light---a scene from fairyland as seen from La Côte as we saw it last night, and Hymans and I looking out of the windows at a sinister full moon. Nicholson told me there is much criticism of the French Admiral. People say, "He is good for ceremonies, for conferring decorations, but that's all."

Foch has won a great victory, the second battle of the Marne.

This morning, lying on the calm sea just before our windows here, and there again this afternoon, is a steamer not all of whose camouflage could deprive it of its familiarity. It is the Napotin which used to ply between Boston and Portland; now transporting American troops between Southampton and Havre.

August 5, 1918.---The Queen is to give Mrs. Wilson the Medal of Queen Elizabeth, and sent word through Hymans to me to write out a letter for her in English which she will copy.

A telegram from Sharp announcing that a party, consisting of a Senator and several Congressmen, has arrived tonight.

August 7, 1918.---To tea at Nicholson's, and then to the Red Cross cinema: "The First Reply of the Americans to the Boches." Like all movies, very tiresome. I had been asked to make a speech at this wonderful event, but had declined, and I was glad of it this afternoon.

Malvy condemned to five years' banishment.

Foch is made Marshal of France, and Pétain is given the Military Medal as a result of the victory of the Marne. Pershing has got the Legion of Honour. The Belgians have made Hoover an honorary citizen and great friend of Belgium; he had refused a decoration in pique.

August 9, 1918.---The English have had a grand victory, attacking on a twenty-mile front and driving the Germans back so that Amiens is released.

Hymans sent for me, and we had a long talk. Gave him a letter for the Queen to copy. Hymans told me that Törring had not returned to Berne on the fifteenth but went on the twentieth, and there was only the Dutch Minister, to whom he said that he wished ardently that the Belgian Government would reply to his questions as to the effect of a satisfactory proposal on the part of the German Government, and said he had just come from the Chancellor.(12) The Belgian Government instructed Peltzer to say to his Dutch colleague, for repetition to Törring, that the two speeches of Chancellor Herding on the eleventh and twelfth of July had aroused such universal reprobation in the Belgian mind, and in Allied and neutral countries, and even in some quarters of Germany, that is, the speeches in which Herding spoke cynically of Belgium as a pawn in Germany's hand, that so long as such a theory was held in Germany further conversations were impossible. And there the matter rests.

August 10, 1918.---Villiers here for lunch. Villiers told me that Balfour had asked him to say to Hymans, in regard to the latest developments in the Törring case, that the British Government felt that no clear proposal from Germany should be discussed without conference with the Allies.

August 14, 1918.---Another alarm last night. Weather hot and clear with a brazen sky.

August 15, 1918.---Another alarm last night .... Nicholson here to tea. Loveliest of summer weather.

August 16, 1918---We had hardly got to bed last night when we were aroused by heavy firing, and another alarm. Got up and went down to the cellar, or, rather, to the kitchen, as there is hardly any cellar to speak of, and spent nearly two hours there. Strange sensations: the darkness, save for an electric pocket lamp; the silence; clear sky suddenly grown sinister and terrible; that which was once so lovely and so peaceful, so serene and reassuring. The night---voices far away---soldiers marching somewhere---bugles blowing---now and then a falling star trailing across the sky. At 1:30 the lights came on, and we went back to bed.

August 19, 1918.---I had a call this afternoon from Prince Reginald de Cröy, who is now an attaché at the Belgian Legation in London. I saw him in Brussels in 1914. He remained in Belgium for about a year after the war began, and then was obliged to flee, having been concerned with his sister in the affair that led to the Cavell tragedy. He was twenty-five days in reaching the frontier from Brussels, and was piloted out by Henri Bain, who was later condemned to death but succeeded in having his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. The Prince is a youngish man with a pleasant open countenance, a good manner, reddish moustache and sandy hair, combed flat but curiously waved at the ends. He is on his way to the Pyrenees for a rest. He talked to me about Prince Sixte de Bourbon, whom he knows well. Sixte is very angry over the treatment he received in the affair of the letter of Emperor Charles in which peace was offered to France. He told de Cröy that Czernin had written a similar letter to him, and feels that he was shamefully treated because Clemenceau had promised him to treat the whole matter as secret. De Cröy thinks that a chance for peace was lost because of the stupid way in which the whole matter was handled by the Allies. He thinks also that the allied recognition of the Czechoslovaks is another mistake, as it is a notice to Austria that her Empire will be dismembered and that therefore all chance to separate Austria from Germany and to make peace with her is now lost.

Nicholson was here---we were going to Brunevalle for dinner---but we stopped to have tea, during which de Cröy told us an interesting story of his experiences in the first days of the war. He was then with his sister at their château south of Mons on the French frontier, already engaged in that work of rescuing British soldiers which ultimately cost his sister her liberty and Miss Cavell and poor Baucq their lives. He said incidentally that Baucq was a fine fellow, and that Miss Cavell was exceedingly imprudent---talked to many persons about her work. The Prince himself went to see her and though she had never met him before she told him freely all that was going on, and advised him to escape, as she was being watched. This in the summer of 1915. To return, however, to August, 1914. The Prince and his sister had converted their château into a hospital and had many English wounded there. On the twenty-fourth he saw Sir John French, then in retreat. On the twenty-fifth, in the afternoon, he and his sister sat down to have a cup of tea. Looking out of the window they saw some German officers entering the gates. They came in and proved to be General von Kluck, the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, and his nephew Saxe-Meiningen. They said they wished to be quartered in the château and asked for a cup of tea. The Princess sent for extra cups. Von Kluck was correct, very grave, polite and rather silent. The Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, on the contrary, was very loud, offensive, and brutal. He began by being excessively pleasant in manner, and then sitting down to tea said: "You Belgians have certainly acted very badly towards us. We came to you as friends and look how you have received us." Said also that if King Leopold had been living he would not have done so. "He would have said: 'You want to pass? Very well.' Then he would have taken a map and said: 'You may pass here for one billion francs; here for two billions, and so on.'" The Princess was exasperated and said this was not so, whereupon the Duke became more and more offensive. They had the château searched, saying that English soldiers were hidden there. There were only four or five wounded English left. They demanded to know where their arms were. Prince de Cröy had thrown their guns and cartridges down a well; he told them they had no arms.

One of the officers, a doctor, brutally tore the bandages off their legs, saying he thought they were shamming. When they could find no arms the Duke noted the knives they had, took one of them and held it before the eyes of an English soldier, nearly dead with double pneumonia, saying in perfect English: "You kill German prisoners with these." The soldier revived and in anger denied the accusation.

The young Duke of Saxe-Meiningen told the Princess that the officers wished her and her brother to dine with them. She replied: "We do not wish to dine with you. You must know that you are our enemies. We did not invite you here, and we do not feel like sitting at table with you." The young Duke understood and seemed to sympathize with her point of view, and went away. A table in the dining-room was arranged for about fifteen of the officers. When the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein sat down to dine he demanded to know why the Princess and her brother were not at table. He got up and went into the hall, called them before him and flew into a beastly rage, saying; "You refuse to sit at table with us. You have poisoned the food," and so on. He made a most disgusting exhibition of himself, much to the discomfiture of Saxe-Meiningen, who seemed to be embarrassed by his uncle's behaviour. He called the Prince de Cröy aside and said: "Can't you do something to quiet his rage? Can't you come to the table?" De Cröy, wishing to placate him, more especially as his sister absolutely refused to appear at dinner, said: "Since you accuse us of having poisoned the food, I will sit down at the table and taste the food before you." In this way the rage of the Duke was somewhat appeased, and de Cröy sat at table with them.

The Germans had expected to stay the night at the château, but at about nine o'clock, without notice, and without giving any reason, they all got up and left, went a few miles farther on and spent the night at a country house which had been abandoned by its owners. Prince de Cröy visited this house as soon as the Germans had left it, a day or so after. They had broken, evidently with deliberation, all the finer articles of furniture and objets d'art, and had committed acts of an unspeakable bestiality in all the bedchambers.

Later on they had a visit from the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who recently committed suicide. He conducted himself well, was very considerate, apologized for his presence, saying that it was one of the unfortunate incidents of war, that he was acting under orders, and so on. He sat by the bedsides of the wounded British soldiers, and talked to them kindly in perfect English.

Later on they had also as a guest, General von Kuehen, if I give the name correctly. He was commanding at Maubeuge, was very brutal and disgusting. De Cröy says that Maubeuge need not have fallen when it did, that there was plenty of food, arms, ammunition, and soldiers in the citadel, and that the German line was very thin. They might not have prevented the ultimate capture of the city, but the garrison could have escaped very easily, in fact the Germans were fearful that it would do so. Four hundred French soldiers of those ordered to surrender refused under the leadership of a captain to do so and made their way easily to Dunkirk. De Cröy thinks there was something queer in the whole affair, and so did Nicholson.

De Cröy gave us also many interesting incidents of their experiences in helping British stragglers to escape out of the country.

After he had gone Nicholson and Nell and I drove to Brunevalle by way of St.-Jouin. Very cloudy and threatening. Began to rain as soon as we reached Brunevalle---a fine Scotch mist. While waiting for our dinner to be prepared, we walked down to the sea and then along the roads in this fine, penetrating mist, which settled in a cloud of grey fog over those valleys with their gorse and heather. A wild melancholy country in the rain. We dined in wet clothes and drove back to town in the mist and fog.

The Wild-Cat Division came through town today.

August 26, 1918.---General Harts, of our army, the smartest American officer I have seen over here, came to lunch with Cresson and Lieutenant Jennings. At two o'clock went to the Grand Théâtre for the Louvain ceremony. Frightful bore. Etienne Lamy, Secretary of the French Academy, a fine old man, all snow white, made a speech in exquisite French. Imbar de la Tour made a speech, long, pitiless, unending. There were five other speeches---one by a Swiss with a German accent on his French, and one by a dirty, greasy, insincere, screaming little black Spaniard. We thought it would never end. It was hot and stuffy in the theatre and Nicholson, who sat beside me in the box, snoozed from time to time. We didn't get away until six o'clock-about four hours. They are going to restore the library at Louvain, apparently with discourses; those delivered today, if bound, would make a beginning of thousands of volumes. Nicholson said he would donate his copy of The Silence of Colonel Bramble. Nicholson introduced me to the Earl of Athlone. "Oh, there's Teck!" he said; "Tubby, we used to call him."

August 27, 1918.---Thomas Nelson Page, en route to England, called this afternoon. Our best type of gentleman, very charming---left his wife in the motor, waiting while he called, and I didn't know it until he was going. I went out with apologies, and am still chagrined. She was very nice.

August 28, 1918.---Reading Manchester Guardian this morning I learn that the Bolsheviks propose, as who would bring about the millennium, to install at Government expense a telephone in each and every house. There you have it, in its Marxian perfection, Socialism. That is its idea of perfect bliss; the measure of its longing and aspiration, the limit of its imagination, the telephone, that imperial invention of the devil, in each house so that one could never have any rest or privacy, so that every bum and scoundrel and ruffian in town could bawl at you when he pleased. But one thing more, and as Socialism the ideal would be achieved: They should have a dictaphone in each house, so that all the riff-raff and rag-tag and bobtail and scum and off-scouring would know what everybody in town was talking about in private.

Charles Edward Russell called en route to England. Reports French Socialism in good order so far as the war goes; all the Socialist leaders at Paris are thinking of is how they can get portfolios in the Government, but can't unhorse old Clemenceau.

The papers today announce the retirement of Walter Hines Page from the London Embassy. Ill health.

Nell and I expect to go tomorrow to visit Mme. Dodd in her château across the river.

August 29, 1918.---Left at 10:15 in motor, Havre to Quillebœuf, a jolly village perched along a high stone wall on the Seine. Went across in the "Barc Electrique de Dion Bruton," a little ferry boat, and then along a pretty road that winds through woods to Pont Audemer, thence to Honfleur, and so on to Mme. Dodd's place---La Manoir, which is a few miles beyond Honfleur on the road to Deauville. It is a charming spot; a wide lawn, noble fence, a lovely garden, and the old house of pure Louis XIV. Mrs. Dodd, a sound, plump, jolly little woman of the kindest heart imaginable, has had the place nearly a dozen years; her husband died just before the war. It is furnished in perfect taste, even if she has in her Louis XIV dining-room a Sheraton sideboard and a dozen Chippendale chairs. After luncheon we drove in Mrs. Dodd's motor along a charming road by the sea, through the pretty Norman scene, so much more tender, and soft and amiable on that side of the river than on this, with its rocks and barrenness, to Trouville and Deauville; this latter a summer town of, by, and for the fat and placid rich. Many fine houses, and the usual summer resort scene---hotels, white flannels, white shoes, the men bareheaded, the women, every line save the lines of discontent massaged from their faces, in sweaters of bright colored silks. We went to the golf links; there a lot of Jews, who have invaded Deauville for the first time, they say, this year.

There are many embusqués, young men who ought to be at the front, and the whole place crowded with them who have fled the great battle and the bombardment at Paris. The beach with its bathing pavilions and Venuses, in the scantiest of attire, white bare legs rising everywhere from the waves; the whole rather vulgar place a symbol of that class of rich French people who have not made a single sacrifice during the war, who regard it only as a stupid and unwarranted interruption of their pleasures, and who wait impatiently for peace only to resume their vices.

Mrs. Dodd hunted for Lady Waddington but she was not to be found, then took us to a stadium where four French girls, in loose tunics with sun-browned arms and legs, as stately and lovely as Dianas, were teaching gymnastics to some poor little rickety French school children. The girls then went through all their movements for us---most charming. Back to the golf club for tea.

August 31, 1918.---Telegram from Lansing, asking me to notify the Belgian Government, informally and confidentially, that Lieutenant de Man of the Belgian army, who is in America with the Belgian military mission, is making public speeches which have caused a painful impression. He openly disparages America's military and at Lake Placid the other day said that 99 per cent of the stories about German atrocities in Belgium are exaggeration.

Went this afternoon to see Hymans, but he and apparently the whole Belgian Government gone to La Panne.

Reading Louis Barthou's "Les Amours d'un Poète" in La Revue de Paris. The poet is Victor Hugo and the account is of Madame Hugo's liaison with Sainte-Beuve, who from all the evidence accumulated by Barthou was a blackguard of the first degree, a cad and a rotter sufficiently developed to be the hero of a French novel. The whole lot of them, Sainte-Beuve, Mme. Hugo, Victor, Juliette Drouet, and all her lovers, are indeed a pack of licentious whores and whoremongers as herein delineated, most of them writing down their sensations, so that the book when published is assured of its sensation in France. It is well written, of course, and unintentionally shows up this France which we are all trying to save, as Deauville does.

Mrs. Dodd told us that when she installed a bathroom in the château, and took her daily bath, the servants and neighbours, when they heard of it, thought that she had some contagious disease of the skin.

September 2, 1918.---After the usual morning walk, I was at luncheon when Clampett called on the telephone, and wished me to go to Camp No. 1 and address his regiment, which was about to leave. The hour was fixed at 3:30. Nell and I drove there and the regiment, the one hundred and forty-fourth California, was formed, and a table set before them for me to stand on. Colonel Williams, if I understood the name, one of the handsomest men I ever saw, ordered them to present arms, then introduced me, and when he had brought them to "at ease" I spoke in a raw wind, amid clouds of dust; a poor speech, of course.

They are fine looking men; the same evidently I saw come in Sunday. Many miners among them and Indians, and Mexicans and one Chinaman, to say nothing of Montana Kid, the champion Broncho Buster. The regiment is known as the California Grizzlies. Peter B. Kyne, the writer, though I am ignorant as to what he has written, is an officer; captain in the regiment.

The British have taken Peronne.

September 3, 1918.---What with my speech in the wind and all the talking until bedtime, I had a bad night of it, coughing and hacking. And I cannot or should not smoke.

September 4, 1918.---The British have a fine victory; have broken the Hindenburg line and taken Friant.

September 7, 1918.---A heavy thunder storm this morning, after the heat, and no walk in consequence, save a very short one at midday. Working all morning on various dispatches.

Some days ago Vandervelde wrote to me asking me to arrange for him and his wife a visit to the American front. I telegraphed Pershing, who replies that they will be glad to have Vandervelde whenever he will come, but regrets that there are no conveniences at the front for the entertainment of ladies. I sent the news on to Vandervelde, who probably is relieved if not delighted.

Down at the foot of the rue Marie Talbot, climbing the avenue de la Reine Elizabeth, the khaki column of American troops goes forever past, with slow long strides, the tall forms bent under the enormous packs. They go by at all hours, thousands every day, and they have been going by every day now for months all summer long: always going by, slowly plodding on under those heavy packs. A most impressive sight: heartening yet saddening too. Those tall, gaunt, serious forms, in the colourless khaki, the sombreros, bent under the heavy pack, plodding on, on, on!

Sunday, September 8, 1918.---Dispatch this morning from Washington asking me to arrange for General Leman and a guard of honour to visit America during the Fourth Liberty Loan.

Hymans came at three; wished to talk with me about the charities, adoption of Belgian children, and so on, in which we all have been so much interested, which Vandevyvere came to talk over and arrange.

September 9, 1918.---After luncheon, in the middle of the afternoon, who should telephone from the Consulate but Clarence Darrow! He came out at once, accompanied by Dr. White, an independent preacher of Chicago who, by the way, is a friend of my old friend John Eastman of the Chicago Journal. I should have preferred to have Darrow alone. I was delighted to see this old friend, whom I have known since early in the 90's---a matter now of a quarter of a century, Mon Dieu! How old one grows! He was indeed one of the idols of my youth. In those days he was the tribune of the people, the eloquent defender of the downtrodden and the oppressed, the man of literary tastes and culture, the dauntless leader of humanity's forlorn hope! He was a wonderful speaker, very great and strong before a jury. I used to wish I could be like him. He had a superb mind, was humorous and witty, was growing rapidly famous, one of those men of whom everybody expects confidently the greatest things. There was, indeed, in all the Middle West and West no more fascinating, sympathetic, popular figure. Every one liked him, admired him; he could be radical and retain the respect of the conservatives. There was a certain pungency, I know not what, in his eloquence, his wit, his humour, his truth and honesty and sincerity. I have told in Forty Years of It how he first impressed me.

Then, I don't know precisely how... I discovered that my idol had feet of clay. However, I was rapidly growing accustomed to that experience, disillusions were crowding on me everywhere and on all sides; I began to ask and to expect very little of men, and so took them as I found them, and as they came. In the early years of our acquaintance I saw much of Darrow. He used to come to us at Toledo for week-ends, and they were always pleasant visits, his wit and humour, his perfect taste in literature, his aims, liberal and radical, quite in accord with my own of the period. He was excellent company, not always a comfortable guest, for he disdained or condemned conventionalities, but he had what I may call a sparkling mind; it never failed to respond. He once wished me to go into law partnership with him, but I declined, some instinct telling me not to.

Then, after I was mayor, I saw less of him. We were both busy with our personal affairs. Then came his trouble in Los Angeles. I saw him only once after that, and then but for a minute at New York, at some club or other.

And now today there he sat before me, hardly changed, looking at first no older until one examined closely, when one saw that the skin was inclined to be flabby at the neck--he was somehow softly fatter---and the great plume of hair, that once hung over his right eye and shook so dramatically when he was in the heat and passion of forensic effort---he was strangely handsome in such moments, a sort of beautiful ugliness, as the French say---was now thinned, not greyed, and combed over the baldness of his head.

He was as of old-delightful in his witty and agreeable pessimism, full of humorous and true observations, and on the war, wholly right. Much disillusionment of course; as to labour unions, for instance, down on the leaders ....

He was enthusiastic, so far as he can be enthusiastic, about the English: considers them, and rightly, the greatest nation in the world; says they have carried on this war and defeated Germany, and that he would like to live in England and become a British citizen.

Dr. White wished to know if our troops got the credit for what they did, and Nell answered "No" (though I think they do). Darrow said in his droll way, in his sympathetic, low voice:

"Well, our papers make up for any lack over here. To read some, you'd think there were no soldiers but American soldiers in Europe, and to read the Chicago papers you'd think they all came from Chicago. I suppose that if the First Ward had newspapers, they'd say they all came from the First Ward."

Another time, "Yes, a man must be respectable, unless he lives in a tough ward."

He said that to get along one must be cold, cruel, unsympathetic.

We talked mostly of books. He is very enthusiastic over Eden Phillpotts. Said too that he owed me apologies and gratitude. Five years ago I had given him A Shropshire Lad, but he had not read it at the time; took it up later; now knows it by heart. He advised me to read a Dutch writer, Couperus, who has written Small Souls.

On the whole, the happiest two hours I have spent in a year, an oasis in the midst of the wide and arid desert of dullness in which I live. Darrow has all of his old charm, and with all his faults I love him still.

September 10, 1918.---I asked de Weede(13) about Couperus. He knew him; said he was an ass, a ridiculous fellow, a clown. Mme. de Weede had read Kleine Zeelen---in Dutch, of course; very pessimistic. Had met Couperus at The Hague years ago. He was a tiresome person;---but, she added whimsically, more interesting than the aristocracy at The Hague.

September 12, 1918.---Went to see du Pont about getting Owen to come to us in Eugène's place; du Pont always kind and obliging, will try to arrange it.

Told me that our troops had made a big attack this morning at St. Mihiel, and took me into the chart room, where two officers of the staff office showed me on the great maps on the walls, with pins stuck in them, where the attack was made beyond Verdun, in the salient below Metz. They had progressed about five miles, they said, but they knew nothing more.

September 13, 1918.---We lunched with Nicholson---had grouse from Yorkshire, very good. Another British general was there, I don't recall his name. He told us of the Australian's saying that the Americans fight well, but were a "bit rough," which amused him and all of us greatly. I like the Americans for that, said the General. Of course every one talks of little else than the American victory at the St. Mihiel salient.(14) The American flag flew from the Belgian war office and I have numerous felicitations.

Sunday, September 15, 1918.---A perfect day, blue sea and sky, clear sparkling air. Nell and I went for a walk with the dogs this morning. Nicholson here to luncheon. At 2:30 Poland came, en route for Paris. He is full of worry, as usual, and all sorts of fears for the revictualing. The necessity of tonnage for our troops, for that army of 3,000,000 with which he says the Allies intend to give the coup de grâce to Germany next June, will interfere with the shipment of food by the C.R.B.; he fears too that the Germans when driven out of Belgium will destroy everything as they go. Then, this: the Germans were using forced Belgian labour, and forced French labour in military work; these men, then, the C.R.B. refused to feed. The Germans also had companies of "free-will workingmen," at work in the fields, who suffered and even died from hunger. These the C.R.B. gave food to. Now, the Germans have abandoned the forced labour and are using the free will companies in military work. The question is shall the C.R.B. continue to feed them? It is a difficult problem: they don't like to feed men who are engaged in military work for the enemy, and they don't like to let them starve. The allied governments are firm on the point---not to feed those who work---even Hoover, he says, is turning callous and cold.

September 16, 1918.---Today's newspapers publish a note by the Austrian Government addressed to all the belligerent powers, proposing a secret conference to discuss peace, to be held in some neutral country. They had no official news at the Foreign Office. The note is strangely like Germany's note of 1916. Nothing will, or should come of it. There is no discussion with those beasts. There is nothing now but to go on, and on, and on, until they are crushed wholly, utterly.

September 17, 1918.---The loveliest of sunsets tonight! The vast expanse of the western sea, the green hill with the Chapelle de Notre Dame in silhouette against a golden sky, and great splashes of rose, and pale bluish strips of sky between. Priestley and I stood looking at it an instant, in silence, then he said: "It's things like that that make it hard to go on with the war."

"Yes," I said. "The world was once so sweet, so lovely---and now!"

Silence again. Then he said, very softly: "I've lost two brothers in this war. I'm ready to go under myself if we---you Americans and we British---can win it, kill the spirit behind it, and prevent its ever happening again." And he went down the grand walk to the gate, Kin Kung and Taï Taï barking impudently after him.

I came upstairs, depressed. Now and then on some such evening in some such scene, it all comes over me, the horror of it; and it never ends. Everything that happens only makes it worse, puts the end off, farther and farther ....

I had a walk this morning with the dogs: saw a sickening sight, the arrest by a French policeman of a Frenchwoman, screaming--- who had sold wine and charged too much for it to American soldiers, coloured troops---by the church. The crowd thought the policeman did right and so did I. I have wanted Coulter to station soldiers, a few of them, at that point, to seize and break the bottles of vile stuff the women shamelessly sell to our boys---charging them exorbitantly; but he doesn't do it.

We lunched at Didelot's. Siegfried there, and two French naval officers. Many compliments on St. Mihiel. Siegfried telling interesting stories of his visit to America, during the Civil War. He saw Lincoln---and laid the foundation of his fortune in cotton at the time of the Mason-Slidell incident. He asked Seward at a White House reception if there would be war; Seward said "No." He telegraphed his brother, then at Mülhausen, "Buy cotton." Et-voilà!

September 18, 1918.---Today we have the President's reply to the Austrians' peace note, and Clemenceau's reply which took the form of a speech in the Senate---a fine effort; impassioned and eloquent and very French---not without its inevitable bombast and blow. I prefer the President's brief calm reply.

September 19, 1918.---Maurice Barrès has been publishing a series of articles on "Le Secteur Américain de la Bataille," intended to praise the Americans, which it does, though in its delicate French way it praises the French more. It is amazing, the lack of humour on the part of the French! They are so intelligent, so witty, but absolutely no sense of humour. The naïve assumption that France is preëminent in everything is never for an instant questioned. It is axiomatic with all of them. Their patronage of America is amusing.

September 23, 1918.---The Chanoine Tharcicius Bootsma came to tea. Big, fine-looking blond Dutch priest, who was private secretary to the Bishop of Namur. Was expelled from Belgium by the Germans in July. Most interesting stories to tell of Belgium. How, for instance, when the King of Bavaria came to Namur, the Bishop refused to receive him officially, would not show him the cathedral, would not be at the cathedral when the king went to visit it; the sacristan refused to open the front door of the cathedral, so that the king had to go in alone. We compared notes about von der Lancken, whom he found as false as every one does. Told of his trick to get a copy of the German White Book on atrocities; then of his distributing the Bishop's response to the White Book in Brussels to the Legations. He came to my Legation the morning in November, 1915, that we were leaving for America. Von der Lancken was furious with him. He described the scene---very accurately; how little Conrad looked black when he appeared; how von der Lancken raged in that little room upstairs, shouting at him, crying "shut-up!" each time the Chanoine attempted to speak, and how at last he subsided and became pleasant---all very familiar to me. The Chanoine was greatly disillusioned when he arrived here; the atmosphere of petty intrigue, of politicians' nastiness, so different from the fine spirit prevailing in Belgium, greatly depressed him. He wishes he were back in Belgium. So do I.

September 24, 1918.---Cipher dispatches for Nell, signed imposingly, Honnold, Kellogg, Gray, Rickard, telling her that Dr. Clampett represents Spreckels' Committee in California, and that she was to accept no money from him. An echo, of course, of Hoover's fight with Spreckels in California. The phenomenal growth of Hoover's ego and presumption is astounding to all mankind. The C.R.B. thinks it is the Society of Nations.

September 25, 1918.---To see Hymans, at his request, at four.

Asked about the propriety of distributing leaflets among American soldiers explaining Belgium's rôle in the war. Also asked as to propriety of seeking aid for the University of Brussels in America. He said that the burning of the University of Louvain, while an outrage, was really a good thing for the university, since it had won it such sympathy and support. The University of Brussels, the only free, liberal institution in Belgium, was in need of funds. I told him the idea would have much sympathy in America.

September 27, 1918.---A telegram from Washington this morning announcing that the President is to deliver an important address tonight .... Went for a walk, and waited all day for the speech, which came at dinner time this evening. It is a noble speech, full of a righteous wrath, and on a level too high for the European chancelleries.(15) It came too late to be utilized by the press .... Our troops have made another fine drive, in Argonne. And we have the great news that Bulgaria asks for an armistice!

September 28, 1918.---A cold dismal rain. All morning translating the President's great speech into French, and over to the Convalescent Camp, as the English call their Convalescence Camp, for luncheon with Colonel Lowe, and his staff at their mess. Good talk.... Finished the translations, and went to deliver the note to Hymans, with the President's discourse. He read it, and reserved his opinion. The speech is too high, too fair, for Europe.

Sunday, September 29, 1918.---What great news! Never in four years have we had such good news. It seems almost impossible and unreal; one hardly dares trust it! All along the line the Allies advance, and every one is full of hope, of cheer, after the long months and years of darkness.(16) And yet go slow!

September 30, 1918.---At last! de Weede has just been here---after having been here for tea, with his wife and son---returning to tell me the news. Ferdinand has abdicated; the terms proposed are all accepted, and Franchet d'Esperey goes to Sofia!(17)

Is it really the beginning of the end? Will Turkey follow? And Austria, with her meeting at The Hague? And Germany, now that the crack has come, will she show the yellow streak inherent in her character?

October 1, 1918.---Telegram from Lansing. But---the other day I had a letter from Curtis Brown saying that he had made an excellent contract with Elisabeth Marbury to make a photoplay of my book. He sent me the contract to sign. Before doing so I telegraphed Lansing asking if he thought there would be any impropriety in my assenting. It had been stipulated that I was not to appear in the picture. This morning he replies: "I should prefer not to have your book on Belgium brought out as a photoplay because I feel that it is not helpful at this present time to visualize further than has already been done the atrocities committed in Belgium. The President, I know, shares my views in this respect."

So there you are!

October 2, 1918.---Proofs of the English edition of the book came today, and I begin the dull work of reading them. The book is not good, too personal, too enthusiastic for Europe. Not very good! I often wish that I hadn't yielded to all the importunities to print it. Lansing was opposed to my doing so, I fancy; doesn't think it proper. In fact, I myself never had the least notion of writing the book now, but after Gibson had published his, I was so besieged on every hand by editors and publishers, and by my friends at home, that there was no resisting. Indeed, the instant I came out of Belgium, all America seemed determined that the curtain be lifted on the tragedy. It is like America, where privacy is democratically resented; everything must be in the newspapers, the curtains must be up at all the windows, every one must know just how every one else lives. And so I wrote it. I have told as much of the truth, as I dared, but not all---not all, for instance about Hoover, about Gibson, that thorn in my side! about Villalobar, about Francqui, about von der Lancken. I don't like the book, and yet, alas, as I read it, in disgust sometimes, I realize sadly that that is the best I can do in the way of writing. Of course, it has made me some money, but no fortune and unless it amounts to a fortune, a liberating, enfranchising fortune, money is not worth much.

October 5, 1918.---Walking with Kinnie and Taï Taï this morning, passing the usual heavy army trucks---Belgian, English, sometimes French; the French trucks, always filthy... the Belgian, English, and American trucks always spick and span. I thought, How tired I am of looking at such things. How ugly they are! How hideous everything that pertains to war, everything that war touches! That's why I hate war, that's why I hate the Germans---they are so ugly, in all they think, and do, and make.

Sunday, October 6, 1918.---Marie came into our room this morning saying, "The Germans are demanding peace!"

For an instant, only an instant, my heart leaped---but no, it couldn't be. In the morning newspapers there was the note from Prince Max(18)---but that will not do. It would be folly to accept that offer. It would only give the boches time to reform---and continue the war. There is only one thing to do---go on and beat them, beasts that they are .... I hope the President won't listen for a second.

It is of course on everybody's tongue today, though I saw no one until tea-time .... Nicholson came for tea, then Coulter, then the Villiers and afterwards Adatci,(19) and all of the opinion that the offer of the boches is inacceptable and all hoping that the President would not listen to the proposal or, at any rate, not accept it.

October 7, 1918.---This afternoon to see Hymans, who sent for me to say that in the event of an armistice being considered, the Belgian Government would like to be heard as to the guaranties it would consider necessary to Belgium's safety.

October 9, 1918.---Nicholson in with the news that Cambrai has fallen, and that the President has responded that there will be no armistice until territories are evacuated---two bits of good news. Nicholson goes home on leave tomorrow.

October 10, 1918.---Working on proofs of the book---tiresome task and discouraging too; the fact is I can't write---it's so bald, and awkward.

The response of the President, so very clear because it is so very honest, open, and sincere, does not please the Paris newspapers, with their cynicism and blind hate. L'Echo de Paris does not approve any of it, save the part that refuses the armistice, French journalism is on a low plane; almost, though not quite, as low as German journalism.

October 11, 1918.---Again l'Echo de Paris criticises the President. The French can't see, as yet, with all their vaunted intelligence, that he has gained already a great diplomatic victory. Germany can never extricate herself from the hole into which he has placed her.

The Germans retreat everywhere and hopes are high.(20) The Belgians are saying that they will be in Brussels by Christmas. I am wondering whether there will be any Brussels left by Christmas. What is to stop the Germans from destroying all as they go?

Strange! The war at last seems won, or the boches beaten at least and yet---where is the exultation, the relief one would have expected? Relief there is, to be sure, but no joy, no exultation. Indeed, this war has brought me no emotions---nothing but depression, which I fear will be permanent.

October 12, 1918.---Went to tea at Penguièrs. The weather dreadful, so heavy and damp, and la grippe and Spanish flu raging. Everybody there, and a great layout of food on the table; no shortage of sugar or flour in that rich household. Villiers said he hoped the President would consult his allies before making his final reply; he said that he sent the note the other day off the bat. Mme. Didelot asked Nell if the President was going to direct the allies, or some such thing. There is much dissatisfaction with him; fickle France will be against him any day now. L'Echo de Paris is particularly nasty in its insinuations as in the concluding paragraph of the article of Pertinax today, where he is reproached with being the only man in the world today who deliberates alone.

We are evidently on the eve of great events, perhaps, yes, doubtless in the midst of them. Germany is going to pieces; and I have always maintained that when she broke, she would break badly. The German has no guts. It is rumoured that the Kaiser has abdicated; that cannot be true, but the statement in today's newspaper that Germany will accept the President's demands may be true.

As to French opinion it is inevitable, sooner or later, that that portion of it which is represented by the Paris press---L'Echo, Figaro, Temps, and others,---will ultimately be anti-American, or anti-Wilson. France is imperialist and always has been; only---it hasn't any longer the force, the power, to do anything. It would have been eaten alive by Germany in this war had it not been for Belgium, England, America. And it has no gratitude, or very little; forgets its readiness to make any kind of peace a year ago, or six months ago, and now talks big and blows and boasts and blusters and brags---when it ought humbly to sit still, and thank Belgium, England and America for saving it.

Letter from Curtis Brown saying that the cinema rights which Lansing sat down on would have brought me $100,000! Ouch!

Sunday, October 13, 1918.---The German reply to the President is published this morning---an acceptance of all the points, including the evacuation---and yet no one seems to be pleased especially by it. The Paris newspapers are exceedingly reserved. They seem to wish that no peace would be made until the Allied armies had entered Germany. The President dwells at a moral altitude far above most of his contemporaries, certainly above his French contemporaries, who have all the French cynicism and malice.

October 15, 1918.---Villiers in at tea-time, and while he was here, I was called to the telephone and the Signal Service read me the President's reply---when I told Villiers, he said with evident pleasure, "It leaves nothing to be desired."

It is indeed superb. I had the text of it later and sent copies to Hymans and to Villiers. The President will shake the lunatic of Berlin off his throne yet---and maybe awaken the German people.

October 17, 1918.---A day of great news. Ostend is taken by the Belgians and the British. De Weede was here twice with the news, and du Pont telephoned it officially from the War Office.

October 18, 1918.---The news grows. The King and Queen were at Ostend yesterday, and Lille has fallen; the Germans in retreat apparently everywhere. This afternoon we hear that the Belgians have taken Bruges.

It is all hard to believe! Every one is very calm, there are no flags, no shouting. And yet what a difference between this and those terrible days of Spring, from the 21st of March until the 14th of July, when the Germans were advancing on Paris.

The Belgians are saying that we shall be back in Brussels by Christmas---some say by the middle of November. We shall see.

October 19, 1918.---Bruges has fallen; the Belgians are there. Marcel Hutin says "Brussels in a week,"---and he has a typically French bit of bragging, in which he gives the credit for all the victories in Flanders to the French.

Wrote letters of felicitations to Hymans and to de Ceuninck.

October 21, 1918.---The news continues to be good; we wonder when the Germans will make a stand.

October 23, 1918.---Another fine day, though the fog fills the air with silver morning and evening ....

Letters from Villalobar that reflect the anticipation and excitement at Brussels. But the advance is slowing down and we are still far from Brussels. There is much talk of the Government's going to Ostend, which is the last place on earth I care to go. I trust that there will be no more moves until we move back to Brussels.

A letter this morning from Coleman.(21) He had just come out of battle, unscathed, he said, but very tired. He had been in command of his company. The letter modest and sincere. What stuff those boys are made of!

October 25, 1918.---The President's reply to Germany published this morning. It is---well, perfect; could be no better.(22) What now?

October 26, 1918.---Tonight dined at Hymans'. The Defrances and the Robins there. The Hymans are delightful, but every one goes reluctantly to dine, and grumbles about it, because of the dark streets with their lugubrious blue lights and the Spanish influenza. In a kind of desperation, nearly every one seemed to be there tonight, after dinner. Much gossip, of course, about the war and the liberation of Brussels and when we shall go back, and so on. Hymans said that the story to the office that von der Lancken had constituted a central commission to report on devastations is not true. Villalobar said Van Vollenhoven went to see what could be done for the refugees, that is all; their condition deplorable. They die like flies along the roads, and are brutally treated by the Germans.

Hymans said they had expressed the desire at Washington, London, Paris, Rome, and so on, that Brussels be the seat of the peace conference. Asked Villiers what he thought, said it would be a frightful bore, as it would, but we have to pretend to like it anyway and to support it.

The King has gone to Bruges. No decision yet as to the advance of the diplomatic corps. We all wish to remain here until we can go to Brussels.

Sunday, October 27, 1918.---More notes from Adatci, who, in fixing Brussels as the seat of the peace conference, is buzzing about like a mosquito. Wishes me to win President and House---who, by the way, is at Paris.

The big news today is that Ludendorff has resigned. Is it the beginning of the fall of the military! When will Kaiser Bill get down?

October 29, 1918.---A pleasant day, though a heavy fog lay on the sea and on the fields this morning---the cattle lying on the wet grass, vague figures. This evening the foghorn blows lugubriously. This morning the usual walk with the dogs.

The news is tremendous. Austria asking for a separate peace, and the Empire breaking up; closing its centuries of history. Germany is deserted by all. When will Hohenzollern abdicate?

October 30, 1918.---A perfect autumn day, and a long, long walk with the dogs to Blerik, where a column of German prisoners was being marched in by British soldiers just as an American regiment arrived.

"What the hell's that?" the captain asked me. "Those are boches,

I said. A sorry ragged lot they were, and our lads who arrived in France this morning stood and stared at them.

Over to see Hymans, who wished to give me some notes on the annexation by Belgium of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the left bank of the Scheldt, and Dutch Luxemburg. Also wished me to help to have the peace conference held at Brussels; gave me notes of that too. Francqui had sent an appeal that the conference be held there.

Reading proof of book.

October 31, 1918.---Adatci here to tea. Has been to Paris, had seen Hanotaux,(23) who has just visited the devastated regions of the Aisne and is full of bitterness and hate---not surprising, since his own property was all destroyed---and says that it is a mistake to make peace now, that the President should not have had any correspondence with the Germans, that in five years the Germans will renew the war; and so forth.

Adatci says that there is much sentiment at Paris for holding the peace conference at Versailles. Hymans said yesterday that early in the war the French would promise Belgium anything-but now they have changed.

November 2, 1918.---I hear, through Priestley, that the Allies' terms for an armistice with Germany are evacuation to a point beyond the Rhine, the surrender of all their arms and material, all their submarines, half their fleet, and the occupation of Hamburg and some other German city, I forget which.

November 4, 1918.---Brilliant sun, a cold raw wind and a walk with the dogs.

Austria surrenders---and Germany stands alone!

November 6, 1918.---Heavy fog and rain all day long. Went out only a little while this morning for exercise.

No news of the elections at home. The indications are that the President's partisan appeal, which has aroused those two blatherskites, Roosevelt and Lodge, endangers Democratic success.(24)

Clemenceau has had another big day---essentially French in its emotion---in the chamber. The Allies' terms sent to the President.

November 7, 1918.---The President has sent the Allies' terms to Germany or told the German Government that Foch is authorized to receive their plenipotentiaries if they wish to know the Allies' terms for an armistice. This means that the boches must send out a white flag. Pertinax still has the President by the nose. Indeed, the President and Americans generally grow more and more unpopular in France, and probably in England and Europe generally. The whole French press has reflected this, if in a courteous and guarded way, for weeks, especially since the exchange of notes between Wilson and Germany. Little or no credit is given to American troops, and when they do anything, the credit is given to the French, or claimed by the French. And yet American soldiers have saved France from defeat and annihilation; their gratitude of six months ago---like the leaves that were then budding on the trees---is gone now. As I have always thought, the Franco-American alliance was a thin thing of silly sentiment for the most part, and has no real reason for existing. The French don't understand us, don't like us, and never will. And now, in jealousy of what America has done, the inevitable expression of dislike more and more appears, and will continue to do so. Their immense conceit prevents them from having any consideration for others, it is all and always France, France, France---nothing and no one else.

In the Allies' note, while they adhere to the President's declarations, they reserve full independence of action as to the freedom of the seas, and amplify the President's remark as to indemnities---which Washington accepts. In the reservation as to freedom of the seas is the germ of future misunderstanding with England, unfortunately, for the English are the best of them and America should have a close understanding with Great Britain.

But there is undeniably a feeling against America in France, and elsewhere in Europe, due partly to jealousy and fear of American strength, partly to the cold and cruel cynicism of European chancelleries which cannot believe America, or any one disinterested, partly to a concealed dislike of the President's real belief in democracy---the French Government, for instance, believes no more in democracy than the Kaiser himself---and partly to our own folly ---own silly soldiers who come over here abusing the English ....

The Republicans have carried the Congressional elections.

7:45. Swift has just telephoned saying that it is true; the armistice was signed at two o'clock this afternoon.

People are kissing each other in the streets, he says.

November 8, 1918.---Well, it was all a mistake; there has been no armistice. The rumour was all over Havre last night and there was much rejoicing and celebrating, crowds drifting through the streets and singing half the night. The workmen in the Belgian Government shops sent representatives to demand that the shops be closed so that they might celebrate the victory. The rumour probably was an exaggeration of the report that German representatives were on their way to Foch's headquarters, where they are now. And yet Swift had the news as official from Prague---somebody of the British Signal Service. But it can't much longer be delayed. Germany is going to pieces, and our troops have taken Sedan. Veti told me this afternoon that the armistice is expected by Sunday. Hymans has gone to Bruges.

Orts had sent for me to discuss the question of restoration of Belgium. The Belgian Government had sent a note to Washington on the 23rd of October, as well as to London and Paris, asking that an Inter-allied Commission for the Industrial and Agricultural Restoration of Belgium---la "Ciriab" they call it, be established. Paris has not replied, London is sympathetic, Washington will not but proposes the C.R.B. instead. The Belgians, who have delayed of course too long, are deeply disappointed .... Cartier has word that Washington will not enter into agreement with these countries, but will do it all---through the C.R.B. It is, of course, Hoover again---and his desire to monopolize, to have all the credit. Belgium cannot, of course, ignore England and France, and she can't restore her ruined life and industry without America. England will help. France would but cannot. What to do? The Belgian Government had asked that a competent American be designated to investigate and discuss the question here, but Washington refused. Orts wishes me to telegraph---which I shall do.

November 9, 1918.---News today all of Revolution in Germany. That, of course, was inevitable, but the President was the only one who saw it---and he kept at it until he had it.

Sent a long cablegram to Washington imploring them there to do something to help reconstruct Belgium. Dispatch from Washington says that Hoover is en route here to revictual Europe.

No news of the armistice. What a historic scene chez Foch!(25) Too big yet for the imagination.

Sunday, November 10, 1918.---Yes, too big for the imagination. The Kaiser has abdicated, the Crown Prince has renounced the throne, what prodigious things are happening with each minute!

"He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword." The scoundrel at Berlin was a rotter to the end---hid at military headquarters, afraid to go to Berlin, afraid to see it through, afraid to play the game out.

At the beginning of the war there was a story to the effect that on seeing von Kluck after the Marne the Kaiser said, "And you're still alive?" Though, of course, he didn't say that.

Poor little cheap actor and coward and cad---who brought such war and sorrow to this world!

Now Bolshevism! What Germany sowed in Russia, she will reap.

"His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealings shall come down upon his own pate."

No news as to the armistice; will the representatives now have any authority---any quality?

November 11, 1918.---This morning, awaking, I heard Max in the garden below my window, saying, in a loud, excited voice, and in his strong Flemish accent:

"Yes, it is signed! I have it from a good source."

Then the gardener said something and Max, very important, repeated.

"Yes, yes, I got it from a good source!"

And I knew that he meant the armistice---the news for which we have been waiting. And yet, we had been deceived once.

When Marie came with the newspaper, she insisted that it was true. Charles had heard it in town .... It was not in the newspapers; instead the abdication, and the Kaiser, the Crown Prince, and Hindenburg in flight, having fled by motor to Holland. The end, the dénouement, the triumph of justice in the last act, the villain sneaking off amid ruins---a cinema story couldn't have done it better. What more fitting end for this miserable William Hohenzollern after thirty years of cheap theatricalism, to run away, thus, this cheap hero of melodrama! There is something ridiculous, grotesque, in the spectacle, those three, running away, afraid to confront the people they have duped so long. One would laugh---were it not for those millions of dead whom their megalomania has sacrificed. And one has the sentiment, a hard implacable sentiment of justice, that they must not be permitted to escape thus; they must pay, they must pay!

And the German people must pay; they are not to escape either, they who acquiesced, who applauded, who assented so long as they thought they could win---they can not get off by having a revolution, by going into bankruptcy, by putting a saddler in power, and calling each other "Comrade."

There are two monstrous evils in this world, militarism and Socialism, both made in Germany, and both must be destroyed. We have destroyed one; now we must destroy the other ....

At a quarter to eleven I started with the dogs, in the motor, for the country to take a walk. Defenal came running up the hill of the rue Marie Talbot.

"It's true?" I called.

"It's true!" he replied. He said he had it from the Foreign Office, the last gun was to be fired at eleven o'clock. He rode to the edge of town with us; we talked of the vast drama unrolling before us. At the edge of town I got out with the dogs, sending him back in the motor.

We walked on, dear little Kinnie and Taï Taï and I, along the Etretât road. A peasant woman, large, strong, with red hair, no teeth, her dress open at a full throat, came out of the muddy road that leads to Bléville.

"The war is over, is it not?" she cried with that broad "pas!" of the Normans.

We walked along.

"It is the poor who have suffered, Monsieur, is it not?"

It was so with all the peasants I met.

"The war is over, is it not?" It was a dark man in a huge cart laden with manure drawn by two horses, in tandem---a little withered, gnarled, ancient man trotting along beside.

They talked of the war---then of my dogs.

I went off across the fields in the keen wind, the sun shining in the autumn haze; peasants everywhere gathering the great reddish roots and heaping them in mounds to be covered with earth for the winter.

Could it be?

Suddenly I heard, from the British Rest Camp, far across the fields, a mile or more, the sound of cheering, happy cheering, high shrill yells---no mistaking them---they were American cheers; the regiment that had arrived this morning to find the war over, the victory won. There came, too, the strains of a regimental band, and all the while, those cheers. Then from Havre, a tumult of sirens, whistles, and ringing bells.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow! Something deeply significant, and solemn, in those church bells. I thought of the soldiers at the front, those British, Belgian, French, American lads---the hideous sound of the cannon, not once silenced in fifty months, was still along that front at last. And over those sweet fields of Normandy where the cattle, tethered in rows at equal distances apart, were lying on the damp earth, chewing their cuds, those fields where the peasants toiled, a sense of peace seemed to steal. I felt near tears .... Yes, the old Doxology came back: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow!"

I unleashed the dogs, and they darted forward, racing, gamboling, full of life and spirits and joy, two little balls of heavenly yellowish light in the sun ....

The war over---at last!

At the Legation, just as I entered, there were Capt. Boyd, and his whole staff, and Lieutenant Jenks of the Army, come to call officially; and I in rough garments, an old greenish country coat, and muddy boots, all in perspiration from my walk. They were happy, and we laughed and joked.

Villiers had been here, highly excited, Nell said, to get my consent to send a telegram to the King. She gave it, of course. He had said that the best of the war was that it had drawn England and America more closely together. May they ever be more closely drawn together!

I had met Orts on my way home. He said that Brussels would be evacuated within nine days; we might be starting back in a week after that time.

After luncheon Nell and Swift and I drove to Etretât, I to have my throat treated. The little town was bright with flags; British soldiers wore American flags in their caps, and the Americans British flags, and they had organized a procession with horns and drums, making hideous noises, and cheering. And all the convalescents wore happy faces---no more going back to that hell at the front for them! Tonight they are to burn the Kaiser.

Along the road every one, peasants, French soldiers, British soldiers, waved at us in universal comradeship. And in Ste.-Adresse there were Belgians parading the streets, with the flags of all the Allies.

All afternoon and all this evening the town---Havre---has been in excitement---the streets crowded with happy people, the trams are not running; the employees having declared "a day of rejoicing.'

Tonight, over the calm, silent sea, where the lights of the ships gleam, the long ray of luminosity from the lighthouse at La Héve sweeps in a vast tranquil arc-the lighthouse lighted for the first time since the war began. Slowly, all around the horizon, round and round the great ray flashes, lighting the seas that are free and safe again, a beautiful sight; infinitely comforting, and a symbol, I hope, of a world at peace.

November 12, 1918.---Today the conditions of the armistice are published: they are as hard as one could imagine.

Boyd very kindly offered me a motor lorry to haul my things back to Brussels. It is a question now agitating the diplomatic corps, this of the return.

The King was opposed to holding the peace conference at Brussels and rightly so.

The town is all in flags---everybody celebrating.

Tonight there is a brilliant moon in the first quarter. How differently it impresses me now, in comparison with those days of agony in spring, when a bright moon made me shudder with apprehension! Those awful days with ... the Germans driving on Amiens and Ypres and Calais!

November 14, 1918.---Much talk of going back to Brussels---all excited; we have thought it better to go on the train though nobody knows whether the train can get to Brussels nor when it will leave. Some say the 21st. We shall probably not see the King enter after all, as he may go in any day.

November 15, 1918.---This is the King's fête, and at nine Nell and I drove to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Villa Louis XVI, to the salutation of the flag, the last held today under the impression of relief and joy that the end has brought. Everybody there; a brilliant sun, but very cold, and a keen cutting wind blowing, and we had to stand bareheaded while all the national airs were played. It was all very well for "la Brabançonne," "God Save the King," "la Marseillaise," and the "Star-Spangled Banner," but Barras Moreira had invited a platoon of Brazilian soldiers---this being the fête of Brazil also---in khaki, and light, little shoes, shivering in the cold, standing there with their flag, while the band played the Brazilian air, a kind of jig or dance tune, never ending. Then a long succession of unknown national airs. Nicholson standing at the salute, I beside him, kept saying, "What is that? What is that?" at each new South American air. The staff was behind him. "What is that?" Nicholson demanded.

"San Salvador, sir," said Bathhurst, gravely, winking at me.

November 16, 1918.---Villiers here this morning, we are to go the 23rd, according to the latest report. There are riots at Brussels, and the dispatches say that Rupprecht of Bavaria and von der Lancken have taken refuge with Villalobar.(26) What a change!

Cablegram from Hoover. He is coming and will be in Brussels December 10th, to arrange everything.

Sunday, November 17, 1918.---Clear and cold. Nell and I took a walk with the dogs. Out the Etretât road, and through the group of farms .... The newspapers now have every day a column headed "Abdications."

November 18, 1918.---Sir Francis Villiers here at 3:30; he is all excited over the departure, fixed now for Saturday; and all is bustle and confusion. Hymans gone to Bruges; no arrangements made by the Government, and everybody gone off his head. A charming telegram from Lemonnier and two from Villalobar at Brussels.

(Later.) I write this at Brussels. Strange to be here again in this room, dim and dingy and musty, where I spent so many harried, anxious hours! Strange to be in this house again! What days of rush and tumult---and how hard, how tiresome to bring up the long arrears of this journal! Well, to begin it.

November 19, 1918.---We were at Ste.-Adresse, returning from a walk the dogs and I had taken out near Les Rosiers, that lovely Norman countryside I was then all unwittingly beholding for the last time. I found Villiers---full of news. Hymans was not coming back, the ministers had all gone, the King was to enter Brussels on Friday, and "I shall go tomorrow in my motor," he concluded. The Belgian Government could not provide a train; there were only a few motors, barely enough for the chiefs of missions; the women could not go, and so on.

I decided: telephoned Coulter and Boyd; would they provide motors and motor lorries? Certainly. Then we finished packing; oh, what fatigue!

And dear old Nicholson had us there for dinner that night---the last time. He was the one person at Havre I could not bear to leave.

November 20, 1918.---At 11:45 we started, after much hurry and bustle and confusion and waiting for Marjorie Villiers .... I had asked Villiers to go in "my" car, and he had asked if Marjorie could go along. We finally got off.

Nell and Villiers and I were in Coulter's big grey military limousine, a beautiful smoothly rolling car, driven by a soldier lad of our army, George Statler, oddly enough of Cleveland, who said that he had driven me to the hospital the night that my dear father died. Mlle. Marie and Kin Kung and Taï Taï, and Mlle. Defenthal were in the car driven by Max, with Charles perched beside him on the box; there was another car, an open touring car, hood up of course, driven by Koebig, detailed by Boyd to accompany us, with a petty officer of our navy, and Swift, Cruger and de Lanse in the rear seat.

There were two great motor lorries, piled high with our luggage, our impedimenta of all sorts, one driven by a sailor, with Omer beside him, the other driven by a soldier, with Eugène on the box beside him.

Away along the familiar road to Etretât---sad to leave that anyway; sad in a way to leave the charming little house on the hillside with that exquisite view of the sea---but not sad to leave the vile hole of Havre, which peradventure may be saved only by the fact that that righteous man John Nicholson lives in it.

Thence on, in sunlight with silvery mists, to Dieppe, where we stopped for luncheon at two o'clock, thence to Eu, where at four a thick dense fog enveloped the world. Thence on to Abbeville, lugubrious and dark, thence to Montreuil, picking our way slowly along, and finally, worn out and weary, we reached, some five or six kilometres beyond Montreuil, the convent of La Chartreuse, turned into a Belgian hospital since the war. There the chaplain was awaiting us, and a charming woman, wife of a Liége physician, and they had an enormous dinner served, far more than we could eat---it was after nine. The convent had all the mystery of a place one sees for the first time in darkness .... We slept in an old room, barren, with a sheepskin on the floor, but good beds, and a fire in the fireplace and no way to unbar the massive shutters. But we were soon asleep.

November 21, 1918.---We were up and off at 8:30. Koebig and his party had spent the night at Abbeville. They overtook us at Boulogne, where we separated, not to see them again all that day, for we raced on to Calais, thence to Dunkirk, and so on to Adinkerke and were in Belgium. We began inquiring the way, went on to Fumes, thence on to Pervys, this on the Belgian front, which I had seen in May, 1917. From Pervys, a mass of rivers, went on into no man's land; the waters of the Yser had receded, or been drained or dyked or the inundation in some way brought to an end, and over an improvised road, through the mud, the abomination of desolation, carcasses of flying machines, aëroplanes on either hand, and so on, and so on, too depressing for any words, filling me with despair; and no sign of the others behind us! We came to the German defences, what remained of them; signs in German and all that sort of thing, and so finally emerged in peaceful, sweet Flanders---calm, lovely as ever; and about three, arrived in Bruges.

The old town was awake; crowded with motors---Belgian for the most part, but British too, and American, all bound for Brussels to see the King come in. The town was gay... still en fête, rejoicing in the liberation. We had luncheon there; still no sign of the others, of those others in whom I was most interested, Marie and Kin Kung and Taï Taï---though the driver had seen Koebig's car dashing through. We started on toward Ghent, and reached there in an hour. The city was dark as Erebus; not a light, or scarcely a light showing, and we had to stop, and ask our way, and finally go to the Belgian General Headquarters to get some petrol, which Major Hainaut arranged for me; then a tire to be inflated. Finally, on to Brussels.

It was after seven, considerably after, when the lights of the city, the lights that are not many, came into sight---after an interesting drive, along a road crowded with trains of lorries of the Belgian or French army, moving towards Brussels, with streams of military motors, and so on-and we entered this dear old city.

It was en fête too, and as we turned into the boulevard Anspach, there it was lighted and crowded as I had not seen it since those first August days in 1914. Some persons recognized me---and they lifted their hats.

Round by the Palace, and so finally to the rue Belliard and the Legation---the familiar clang of the door bell as it rang---and there were Gustave and Joseph in livery, and Colette and her husband, and Josephine! And the house warm and filled with flowers---from everybody, and heaps of cards and notes of welcome.

But no dinner. We sent Sir Francis home. Koebig had arrived-- -but not the car driven by Max. Nell and I drove to Allards'---they were at de Sinçays'. We went there-and there they all were, gay at a dinner party. May we come in? Delighted! And such greetings, such pleasure at seeing these good old friends again .... We were all very gay, and de Sinçay ordered the butler and footmen to bring in champagne for the first time since the war; and he made a speech and they all drank our health, and I responded. Then up to the familiar salon for coffee and cigarettes---just as if nothing had ever happened! And at 10:30 we came home---and a few minutes after there came the missing motor and Marie and the dogs, sniffing about awhile, then racing and barking through salons and halls---glad to be at home.

November 22, 1918.---At 10 A.M. Nell and I drove for Sir Francis, and thence to the Parliament Houses; vast crowds in the streets, and lines of Belgian soldiers, everywhere flags, Belgian and Allied, and the most brilliant sun---a miracle of weather for the homecoming of the King who slept the night, they say, at Laeken.

We went up the stairs and into the gallery of the President, reserved for the diplomatic corps. Villalobar was there in the loge reserved for us .... Nell got a front seat and Villalobar had the other, leaving Villiers and me to take back seats. Much greeting of friends, and colleagues; the Swedish Minister, pro boche, not seen here since 1914, very much in evidence, and a large corps of Chilean diplomatists emerged from their hole, with others long since hidden, in the light of this new day. On the stair below the deputies gathered, greeting one another; hum of voices, laughter, and so on, and crowds drifting behind us in the galleries.

After an hour or more, all ordered out into the balcony to witness the coming of the King(27) and the review.

More crowds and crowding near me. The square below, place de la Nation, empty---waiting, across the street along the Parc great crowds---waiting. After a long time, Max arrives, much cheering. Max in uniform, chapeau-bras with white plume, gets out of his motor, poses, strikes attitudes, very cinematographic. Max gives orders, waving white gloved hands, picturesque, graceful, theatrical, the idol of the populace.

Waiting; then flourish of trumpets, a stir, and---the King. He is in khaki, just as I saw him last; mounted on a white horse, with him the Queen, and their three children, mounted too, and on his right, a pretty boy in English uniform, Prince Albert, second son of King George. Many Belgian generals, Leman among them on his horse; and English generals, and French; one American and one Italian officer. They range themselves behind the royal family. There is cheering, but not such frantic cheering as I expected. All about us on the balcony, deep throated cries of "Vive le Roi! Vive le Roi!"

Then the review begins. From behind the corner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the head of a column---a band in khaki---American troops, the band playing Sousa's "Washington Post." Then a regiment of American infantry marching like guards, straight, big and fine and they created in me the one emotion I have felt today, Strange! This day toward which I have looked and longed for more than four years, this day that I have so long imagined, dramatising its scenes, has left me somehow unmoved; not indifferent to be sure, not uninterested, but untouched. It is the invariable rule of this our ironic life, with its eternally contrary spirit; perhaps it is because I have had too many emotions, and am tired, tired, tired, to the bone, and to the marrow of the bone.

The flag goes by; we all uncover. They are Ohio troops, I fancy ---learned indeed later in the day that they were Ohio troops, from Cincinnati and my own town of Toledo. American artillery follows.

Then Scotch Kilties and a band of pipers follow; the drummers twirling their drum sticks high above their heads. The kilts make a tremendous hit---nothing excites the continental populace like the kilt.

Afterwards, English troops and then French, each poilu having a little Belgian flag in the muzzle of his gun---always French humbug!

Then Belgian troops, and the people wild over them, naturally and properly.

After the review we go in and return to the gallery, more and more crowded. Daisy O'Neal comes up, begs me not to get up, says that under no circumstance would she dream of taking my chair---and this worn-out woman's trick having thus been worked once more in human history, I of course give her my chair-and am lost in the crowd of interlopers who have no right in that gallery.

The deputies are there; on the right of the throne, a President's high dais, is the scarlet figure of the Cardinal.

There are shouts of "La Reine!" and the Queen comes in; pale, evidently weary, all in grey, with a long grey coat that has a collar of grey fur; she curtsies and ascends the dais raised to the left of the tribune and takes the chair placed for her under the crimson canopy. With her are Prince Albert of England, the Duke of Brabant, the Count of Flanders---in the uniforms of a British naval cadet or midshipman---and the Princess Marie, now a tall thin girl, with hair no longer curled, but worn like any other flapper. The Grande Maîtresse and the Countess Elizabeth d'Oultremont are there too.

The King comes---there are many shouts of "Vive le Roi!" He looks older, more careworn now than when he stood last in that place; in his face the lines of a character that has been purged and hammered during these four years. He pauses to smile and shake hands first with the Cardinal, then with Max, and then ascends the steps to the throne. He stands there; tall, strong; on his left and a step or two to the rear, the young Prince Leopold, Duke of Brabant, takes his place; he is in the khaki uniform of a private in the Belgian army. At the foot of the stairs on the King's right stands the Count de Mérode, Grand Maréchal of the Court, in Court uniform.

The King made his address, with its brief review of the war and the campaigns of his army, the promises for democratic reform, universal suffrage, and so on; there was much applause, and every one of the deputies stood and joined in the demonstration save one Socialist, and he seemed to have palsy. There were demonstrations too in favour of each of the Allied nations as the King referred to them; a great demonstration when he especially referred to American generosity and the feeding of Belgium.

He finishes and goes out---and we go out---long after one o'clock.

At four there was a reception for the King at the Hôtel de Ville. Nell and I went for Sir Francis. The Grande Place in the early twilight was beautiful, all the great silken banners of the corporations were floating there, and the Grande Place was densely crowded with people---there was no room for motors, so we had to make infinitesimally slow progress, nosing our way along it at a snail's pace. The people recognized me, and began crying "Vive l'Amérique! Vive l'Amérique!" "Vive Brand Whitlock" (they pronounce it Brond Weetlock).

Inside, the familiar scene of a reception in the Salle Gothique -the last time I was there had been to see Jarotsky! What memories!---the Salle crowded; greeting old friends. Jacquemain among them, who took me in to see Max; and when Max saw me, he was for a moment silent, seemed unable to speak. He looked well, seemed quite unchanged. There was that odd sensation, seeing him then there, that it was again the spring of 1914, that nothing had happened, that it was all a dream. We waited long for the King, he came finally---with the children, but the Queen was not present; too weary, I suppose, poor thing. There were allocutions by Max and by Solvay---the latter like those he used to read at those meetings of the Comité National---and a response by the King. Then the customary tour of the Hôtel de Ville, and so on, and a collation. There I met a number of American officers from Ohio, some from Toledo, and they told me that they had participated in the review of the morning.

November 23, 1918.---Te Deum at Ste.-Gudule at 2 P.M.; the church hung with banners and the famous tapestries and filled with an immense throng.

The Cardinal looks old and very thin, a wisp of white hair escaping from under his red hat----what a picture he makes, there under his canopy, surrounded by scores of Jesuits, one holding a candle for him to see---and he fumbling for those steel-rimmed pince-nez! I can see his long bare visage, that wisp of white hair---until they mitre him---his broad mouth, the lips moving in prayer; his eyes through those cheap glasses searching the place in the great book held for him, the halo of the single candle borne for him, the calm elegant gesture with which an assistant, a fat handsome priest in a gold cape, indicates the place for him. The Cardinal cries:

"Domine vobiscum!"

And the King is looking surreptitiously at the watch on his wrist.

Villalobar beside me, and I recall that the last time we were there was when the mass was sung for the old Emperor of Austria. The Germans pollute even one's memories!

When the hour was over, the organ softly played "la Brabançonne," then repeated it, and gradually the great throng took it up and sang it---with what lusty shouts! And the King went out in the midst of a mighty ovation, and when the Cardinal, who. had escorted him to the door, came back with his long following of priests, he had a great ovation; and then the diplomats filed out, and all the way I had an ovation, or America had an ovation; it almost swept me off my feet.

I have not entered the fact that there is a new Government. The old one resigned at Bruges at once, and it is said that the King hastened his entry because of receipt of word from Villalobar that there was danger here of revolution. There are no signs of such a danger, though I should think there might be if any more such elaborate dinners are given as those we had this night and last night at Mme. Allard's---which I have forgotten to mention. Indeed, I forgot to mention many things; for instance, that the King stopped and spoke to me in the Hôtel de Ville, and that I had a long and delightful conversation with the Cardinal at Villalobar's before dinner .... The new Prime Minister is Delacroix, a lawyer, who is Minister of Finance. There are six Catholics, three Liberals and three Socialists ....

Another thing that I forgot is the presence of Pershing at the Chamber yesterday. He didn't appear in the review, but was in the chamber on the left of the King, with General Plumer of the British army and other officers.

Sunday, November 24, 1918.---Walk with the dogs around the Cinquantenaire, and along the familiar boulevards. The city is gay with flags everywhere, and the faces are happy. There are soldiers too, everywhere, Belgian, British, French, and American---far other than those heavy brutal Germans we used to see! And it all seems somehow unreal! Cards pour in and flowers.

Craven full of gossip. Says the Belgian General Headquarters were opposed to any other than Belgian troops participating in the review; they wanted only a representation of two hundred from each of the three countries. Great wrath and indignation among military mission. Then, this solved, no horse for Pershing, and his staff angry, urging him to leave at once. But his tact, or some one's---Craven says it was his---prevented an incident; Pershing saying that he would not participate in the review because he was the only commander-in-chief present. Then, according to Craven, the Belgian General Headquarters tried to do out the Americans, and provided no transport, so that our troops had to march thirty-five miles on foot all night to get here!