There were four of us at lunch—he sat at my right and we talked like a river in flood. He’s just back from America, thrilled by the Americans’ unimpassioned, lawful thoroughness. He had found something akin to his own temperament in the nation’s genius—the same capacity to brush aside facetiousness in a crisis, and to attain a Hebrew prophet’s faculty for hatred. One doesn’t want to laugh when women lie dead in the ash-pits of Belgium. I have been with him many hours and have scarcely seen him smile, and yet his face is kindly. As you know, the Kaiser had set a price upon his head. His death would mean more to the Hun than the destruction of many British Divisions. He has pilloried the Kaiser’s beastliness for all time. When future ages want to know what the Kaiser said to Christ, they will find it all in the thousand Raemaekers’ sketches. Traps have been laid for his capture from time to time. Submarines have been dispatched with orders to take him alive. He knows what awaits him if such plans should meet with success—a lingering, tortured death; consequently he travels armed, and has promised his wife to blow his brains out the moment he is captured. We talked of many things—of the Hague and H. among other things. He knew the P.’., and drew a sketch of Mr. P. on the tablecloth with his pencil. I tried to purchase the tablecloth that I might send it to America, but the club secretary was before me. In the afternoon I went to the railway-station and spoke with a porter who was pushing a barrow—Henry Chappell, who wrote “The Day”—the first war-poet of 1914. As luck would have it, it was Saturday, the day upon which John Lane had brought out his volume of poems; it was rather pathetic to find him carrying on with his humble task on the proudest afternoon of his life. I told him how I had seen his poem pasted up in prominent places all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He smiled in a patient fashion, and said that he had heard about it. I understand that he made one hundred pounds out of this poem and gave it all to the Red Cross. A gentleman, if you want to find one! I asked him if he didn’t look forward to promotion now. He shook his head gravely—he liked portering. At parting I shook his hand, but, when I had dropped it, he touched his cap—and touched my heart in the doing of it. On Sunday I was back in town. Eric turned up this morning, looking gallant and smiling, with an exceedingly glad eye. He’s just the same as he always was, discontented with his job because he thinks it’s too safe and trying to find one more dangerous. We’re going to have a great time together, unless I get my marching orders from the Foreign Office.