I left Lord Kitchener with an impression of a man of sound business and political sense, powerful force of will, and an intense patriotism. When we bade farewell to Cairo, we passed again through the Khedivial Entrance, and again entered the Khedive’s private car, which sped us part of the way along the Suez Canal to Port Said. We spent an hour inspecting the Canal at its mouth and the DeLesseps monument, and then boarded the steamer which was to carry us to Jaffa on the coast of Palestine. It was on this steamer that we had the good fortune to meet Viscount Bryce and his wife. This meeting was the beginning of a friendship which I valued most highly. On this trip I first had occasion to observe his method of obtaining information, which doubtless accounts for a part of his remarkable equipment as an historian. He was quite the greatest living questioner that I have ever met. He had developed cross examination to a fine art of picking men’s brains. Most other men gather their information from books. It was a joy to be permitted to attend his séances with people who possessed information. He first put them completely at ease by ascertaining what subjects they were thoroughly posted on, and then, with a beneficent suavity, he made them willing contributors to his own unlimited store of knowledge. His thirst for facts was unquenchable. Question followed question almost like the report of shots fired from a machine gun. By this process, I have seen him rifle every recess of the minds of men like Schmavonian, who was a storehouse of Turkish history, custom, and tradition, and of Dr. Franklin E. Hoskins, who is a profound scholar in Bible history. His method was physically exhausting to his victims, and in the hands of a less delightful personality would have been intolerable. But Lord Bryce was as charming as he was inquisitive, and more than that, he gave out of his vast erudition as freely as he received. The morning after my first cross examination at his hands we arrived at Jaffa and proceeded on our tour through Palestine.