“The Greatest Power on ’Airth,’” as Mr. Champ Clarke would say! (You ought to meet Champ Clarke.) He is likely to succeed Taft as President, _but I put my money on Woodrow Wilson_. He is Bismarck and Moltke rolled into one!... I need not say that I remain in the closest bonds with the Admiralty. I never did a wiser thing than coming abroad and remaining abroad and working like a mole. _I shall not return till July, 1912._ Most damnable efforts against me continue in full swing: nevertheless like Gideon--“Faint yet pursuing” is my motto.... And yet because in 1909 at the Guildhall when our Naval supremacy had been arranged for in the Navy Estimates of the year I said to my countrymen “Sleep quiet in your beds!” I was vehemently vilified with malignant truculence, and only yesterday I got a letter from an Aristocrat of the Aristocrats, saying he had heard it stated by a Man of Eminence the day before that I was in the pay of Germany! It is curious that I can’t get over the personal great blank I feel in the death of our late blessed Friend King Edward! There was something in the charm of his heart that still chains one to his memory--some magnetic touch! * * * * * 1911. _Sept. 20th._ LUCERNE. Through dancing with a sweet American (and indeed they are truly delightful, especially if you have the same partner all the evening!) I hear via a Bremen multi-millionaire that though the most optimistic official assurances of peace emanate from Berlin yet there is the most extreme nervousness amongst the German business men because of the revelation to them of the French power both financially and fightingly, so unexpected by them. I suppose if a Pitt or a Palmerston had now been guiding our destinies we should have war. They would say any Peace would be a bad Peace because of the latent damnable feeling in Germany against England. It won’t be France any more, it will be England that will be the red rag for the German Bull! And as we _never_ were so strong as at present, then Pitt & Co. would say the present is the time to fight. Personally I am confident of Peace. I happen to know in a curious way (but quite certainly) that the Germans are in a blue funk of the British Navy and are quite assured that 942 German merchant steamers would be “gobbled up” in the first 48 hours of war, and also the d--d uncertainty of _when_ and _where_ a hundred thousand troops embarked in transports and kept “in the air” might land! N.B.--There’s a lovely spot only 90 miles from Berlin! Anyhow they would demobilize about a million German soldiers! But I am getting “off the line” now! I really sat down to write and tell you of a two days’ visit paid to me here by the new American Ambassador to Berlin. _He is a faithful friend._ He is _very, very_ PRO-English (he has such a lovely daughter whom I have been