The worst of it is that the job won’t be done for a very long time.  I’ve been making a sort of systematic round of the Cabinet to see what these fellows think about things in general at this stage of the game.  Bonar Law (the Colonies) tells me that the news from the Balkans is worse than the public or the newspapers know, and that still worse news will come.  Germany will have it all her own way in that quarter.

     “And take Egypt and the canal?”

     “I didn’t say that,” he replied.  But he showed that he fears even
     that.

     [Illustration:  Herbert C. Hoover, in 1914]

     [Illustration:  A facsimile page from the Ambassador’s letter of
     November 24. 1916, resigning his Ambassadorship]

I could go on with a dozen of ’em; but I sat down to write you a Christmas letter, and nothing else.  The best news I have for you is not news at all, but I conceive it to be one of the best hopes of the future.  In spite of Irishmen past, present, and to come; in spite of Germans, whose fuss will soon be over; in spite of lawyers, who (if left alone) would bankrupt empires as their clients and think they’d won a victory; I’m going to leave things here in a year and a half so that, if wise men wish to lay a plan for keeping the peace of the world, all they need to do will be to say first to Uncle Sam:  “This fellow or that must understand that he can’t break loose like a wild beast.”  If Uncle Sam agrees (and has a real navy himself), he’ll wink at John Bull, and John will follow after.  You see our blackleg tail-twisters have the whole thing backward.  They say we truckle to the British.  My plan is to lead the British—­not for us to go to them but to have them come to us.  We have three white men to every two white men in their whole Empire; and, when peace comes, we’ll be fairly started on the road to become as rich as the war will leave them.  There are four clubs in London which have no other purpose than this; and the best review[24] in the world exists chiefly for this purpose.  All we need to do is to be courteous (we can do what we like if we do it courteously).  Our manners, our politicians, and our newspapers are all that keep the English-speaking white man, under our lead, from ruling the world, without any treaty or entangling alliance whatsoever.  If, when you went to Berlin to talk to your gentle and timid friend, the Emperor, about disarmament before the war—­if about 200 American dreadnaughts and cruisers, with real grog on ’em, had come over to make a friendly call, in the North Sea, on the 300 English dreadnaughts and cruisers—­just a friendly call, admirals on admirals—­the “Star-Spangled Banner” and “God Save the King”—­and if General Bell, from the Philippines, had happened in London just when Kitchener happened to be home from Egypt—­then, there wouldn’t have been this war now.  Nothing need have been said—­no treaty, no alliance, nothing.  For then 100 or more British