That spider is there. It is the old spider of French foreign policy that has lived on through revolutions and empires since the days of the Grand Monarch, but within its limbs it holds so great a literary man as Anatole France, so modern and bold an adventurer in statecraft as Joseph Caillaux, so gentle and sincere a liberalism as that of the gatherings of the Abbaye de Pontigny, and, indeed, a whole inarticulate France of thought, doubt, and righteous intention. It is a France that may at any time thrust Poincaré aside and break through to speech and action and become _the_ France. It is an essential and leading part of that world-wide republic of reasonable men which may yet save the world. I wanted very much to look at and talk to M. Joseph Caillaux. He has always interested me deeply. I had to make a four-hour automobile journey to see him. I went past Chartres Cathedral, and the roads were gay with blue flowers. He is living in his pleasant house and garden in a little brown and white and green provincial town, and there he is stifled and silenced. He may not go within a hundred kilometres of Paris, nor may he go abroad. What he has got to say is not reported in the Press. Only by way of the bookshop can he get anything through to the public. Imagine our British Foreign Office sending my Lord Rothermere into exile and original authorship at Llandrindod Wells or Matlock on account of his interference with its policy! Imagine Mr. Lloyd George or Lord Birkenhead restrained from excursions to America, and deprived altogether of reverberation! I lunched with M. and Madame Caillaux and some pleasant neighbours, and we talked of books and flowers and such-like agreeable topics. We exchanged telegraphic greetings with M. Anatole France, whom I had hoped to meet there. M. Caillaux, I learnt incidentally, can take walks and play tennis, but he may not go shooting. He is far too dangerous a man, the French Government thinks, to be entrusted with a shot-gun.