unless there is going to be special music there or a prince, and as for the country, my two Sundays there might have been week-days except for the extra food.  It is true on each of them I saw a pastor, but each time he came to the family I was with, they didn’t go to him, to his church.  Now there’s suddenly this immense recollection of God, turned on by Authority just as one turns on an electric light switch and says “Let there be light,” and there is light.  So I picture the Kaiser, running his finger down his list of available assets and coming to God.  Then he rings for an official, and says, “Let there be God”; and there is God.

I’m not really being profane.  It isn’t really God at all I’m talking about.  It’s what German Authority finds convenient to turn on and off, according as it suits what it wishes to obtain.  It isn’t God.  It’s just a tap.

  Later.

Bernd came to lunch, but also unfortunately so did his chief.  They both arrived together after we had begun,—­there’s a tremendous aller et venir all day in the house, and sometimes the traffic on the stairs to the drawingroom gets so congested that nothing but a London policeman could deal with it.  I could only say ordinary things to Bernd, and he went away, swept off by his Colonel, directly afterwards.  He did manage to whisper he would try to come in to dinner tonight and get here early, but he hasn’t come yet and it’s nearly half past seven.

The Graf was at lunch, and two other men who ate their food as if they had to catch a train, and they talked so breathlessly while they ate that I can’t think why they didn’t choke; and there was great triumph and excitement because the Germans crossed into Luxembourg this morning on their way to France, marching straight through the expostulations and entreaties of the Grand Duchess, blowing her aside, I gather, like so much rather amusing thistledown.  It seemed to tickle the Graf, whom I have not before seen tickled and hadn’t imagined ever could be; but this idea of a junges Madchen—­("Sie soll ganz niedlich sein_,” threw in one of the gobbling men. “Ja ganz appetitlich,” threw in the other; “Na, es geht,” said the Colonel with a shrug—­)—­motoring out to bar the passage of a mighty army, trying to stop thousands of bayonets by lifting up one little admonitory kitten’s paw, shook him out of his gravity into a weird, uncanny chuckling.

The Colonel, who was as genial and hilarious as ever, rather more so than ever, said all the Luxembourg railways would be in German hands by tonight.  “It works out as easily and inevitably as a simple arithmetical problem,” he laughed; and I heard him tell the Graf German cavalry was already in France at several points.

“Ja, ja” he said, apparently addressing me, for he looked at me and smiled, “when we Germans make war we do not wait till the next day.  Everything thought of; everything ready; plenty of oil in the machine; und dann los.”