We left the town at about ten o’clock in the evening. At last we are actually _en route_ for Angora. “I cannot even yet quite believe,” said I, “that I am really starting, that I shall really arrive.” I heard that some American women (more enterprising, or less expensive, than their confrères) have reached Ismidt, but can get no further. It was, indeed, “hard-going,” and I believe that the colonel’s “salon” only just came in time. I was told, four years ago, by the eminent Jean Louis Faure, that _if_ I survived at all it would be as a permanent and complete invalid. Yet I have faced more since then than most “strong” people would care to attempt. The Turks, remember, who could not obtain or afford a yaili (the native carriage) were driven to “walk” the eight hundred miles to Angora in a climate that more than doubles the strain on one’s physique. * * * * * As soon as we meet new faces, the questions about Lloyd George all begin over again. I told the story of _Les Misérables_. How the ambitious Welsh lad and his uncle, the village cobbler, “worked at the French” together in the old days, one looking out “what a word meant” in the dictionary, the other discovering how to pronounce it. Mr. Lloyd George had often declared that the policy of his whole career came straight from his first study of that immortal classic—“to devote his life to helping the ‘under dog.’” Perhaps he has lost the copy of _Les Misérables_ he used always to carry with him, and so missed the road to that magnificent goal; so, at least, it seemed to my Turkish audience. “That is the man, a democrat who could understand and appreciate our fight for freedom; what has driven him to hate us?” I could only repeat such “explanation” as I had been able to offer before to their compatriots of the mountains. The colonel was kind enough to suggest how much I might have saved England had I been here a year ago. “It is very doubtful,” I answered, “whether I could have done much, even then. Our Government makes up its own mind without listening to outside information. As a matter of fact, Colonel Aubrey Herbert, a _recognised_ authority on the Near East, called twice at 10, Downing Street, to urge that very scheme upon the Premier’s private secretary, Mr. Philip Kerr, but they preferred to keep me in England.” “But why is your ‘intelligence’ so badly managed?” he asked. “What evidence can you produce for such an assumption?” was my retort. “There could surely be no other explanation of your leaving the Greeks without support ... unless, indeed, they are right who whisper that Mr. Lloyd George actually wanted the opposing armies to exterminate each other. His conduct, certainly, lent colour to the charge.” But I refused to be drawn.... “‘Intelligence’ is not my province,” I answered, “although I _can_ say that the Turks were not served much better in that respect.... They won by ‘faith’; what we of the West call ‘superstition.’”