While the war cloud was breaking, I was close to my birthplace at Dorking with my father, whom I was not to see again. Though eighty-one years old he was in his full vigour of heart, mind and body, and we were motoring every day among the beautiful Surrey hills. He had had a great life of work for others, born just after the first Reform Bill which his own father had helped to carry through the House of Commons, and stamped with the robust faith and vigour of the great generation of the Old Liberals. Like every other interest of his children, he had always followed with the fullest participation my own work in Russia, and I had everything packed for my yearly visit there. In London I had had short visits from Mr. Protopopov, a liberal Russian publicist, and later from the eminent leader of Polish public life, Mr. Dmowski, than whom I know no better political head in Europe. Both had expected war for years past, but neither had any idea how close it was. Mr. Protopopov was absorbed in a study of English town planning and Mr. Dmowski was correcting the proofs of his last article for my _Russian Review_, which he ended with the words, "The time is not yet." He came down and motored with us through what he called "the paradise of trees"--and Poland itself has some of the finest trees in Europe; and my father was keenly interested in his hopes for the future of Poland. He was going to the English seaside when events called him back to an adventurous journey across Europe, in the course of which he was twice arrested in Germany, the second time in company of his old political opponent, the reactionary Russian Minister of Education, the late Mr. Kasso. To them a German Polish sentry said that as a Pole he wished for the victory of Russia, for "though the Russian made himself unpleasant, the _Schwab_ (Swabian or German) was far more dangerous." When I read Austria's demands on Serbia, I felt that it must mean a European war, and that we should have to take part in it. I remember the ordinary traveller in a London hotel explaining to me how infinitely more important the Ulster question was than the Serbian. It was clear that the really mischievous factor was the simultaneous official and public support of Germany, who claimed to draw an imaginary line around the Austro-Serbian conflict and threatened war to any one who interfered in the war. I had long realised the humbug of pretending that Austria was anything distinct from or independent of Germany; and the claim of the two to settle in their own favour one of the most thorny questions in Europe could never be tolerated by Russia. The Bosnian withdrawal of 1909 would, I knew, never be repeated, least of all by the Russian Emperor. The line had been crossed; it was "mailed fist" once too often.