Those were happy days in my life, though I had not yet found my two great sources of happiness, of which you shall hear later. I suppose I must have had my good looks, for I was filmed among the Society beauties of the day, but only, I think, when they were getting rather hard up for material! My business was prospering, and I had no cause to regret, as I have never since had cause to regret, my purchase of Greylands. And if at times the ambition to write or to come before the world as a public figure visited me in my dreams, it was only to be put on one side. Some women, they say, lose their ambitions with matrimony; for myself, I think it has always been quite otherwise, and it was chiefly the desire to show my husband that I was worthy of his love, and to give him a name and an importance in Society, that later made me look to a political career as the proper sphere for the exercise of my poor capacities. CHAPTER VII WHAT I FOUND IN AMERICA Oh, the wide plains, and the bustling films, that are America, This, this is life, and Europe a _forma cadaverica_. —SPINSHOTT. It was early in 1944 that business claims made it necessary for me to undertake a journey to the United States. I could not have chosen a better moment for my visit, for the Anglo-American entente was just then at its zenith. After the Five Years’ War, it is well-known, there was a period at which relations were somewhat strained, chiefly owing to our indebtedness. It is a common experience in ordinary life that, however friendly be your feelings towards A., you tend to avoid A. in the club or crowd to the other end of the Tube-lift at her approach when she has become your creditor. Such was the constraint in our relations with the United States, and for a time it seemed (I am speaking of my own memories of my geographical training at Oxford) as if the two countries were bound to remain on distant terms and finally drift into hostility. It was only in 1935 that the ill-starred political genius, James Tremayne, brought forward his scheme for a _rapprochement_, which was still laughed at as chimerical at the time of his early death in 1936. It is true that his proposals had erred on the side of generosity, offering as they did four dukedoms, eight marquisates, thirtytwo peerages, and a hundred and eight baronetcies to American citizens on condition of a full discharge of our War Debt. There was also a good deal of doctrinaire objection on the part of the labour Government which was then in power: “the sons of George Washington,” as Mr. Ropes oratorically put it, “are not to be bribed with sugar-plums.” The sons of George Washington could not very well make any advances while the market was still so doubtful, and it was only on the accession to power of the Tories (under Lord Hopedale) in 1941 that negotiations were begun in earnest.