During the ten days he was there I received about three cables a day from various relations, containing every variety of excuse for the children remaining over there. I was denying them “their British birthright” was the grandiose statement. I felt none too happy and secure until a few days before Xmas a wireless from the _Celtic_ announced their triumphant return. It was a triumph indeed, after six years work, the realisation of this dream, that we should have a home together. As the ship came gliding alongside the quay I saw the pink radiant face, the luminously bright eyes of the little daughter I had not seen for a year. L. and she shouted to me across the narrow water space: “Mummie! Am I ever to leave you again?” I was struck by the strangeness of her English accent. “It will soon go!” she said when I commented on it (and it surely is fading fast!). Dick meanwhile, according to the letters that accompanied him, scandalised the already overstrained English relations by saying that “God save the King” was quite “dreadfully awful,” and preferring America to England when asked his opinion. They do not understand that we do not love England less, nor America more; we regard the world as ours and our right is to take the best wherever we find it. Why should one be confined to one country? Italy is my garden, Russia is my church, England is my sleeping-chamber, the United States my work-shop. In my mother’s country there is an atmosphere of hope, a vitality and a work incentive that does not exist any more in the old world. This is called “the land of promise” and people come as to no other country--in thousand and thousands, of all races, creeds and classes. There is no disloyalty implied to the land of one’s birth in seeking fortune beyond its shores. The blood in the veins of some of us may belong to varying countries and conflicting races, and as the only hope for the future peace of the world is in internationalism this spirit should be encouraged--not deplored. JANUARY 9, 1922. I had settled down in my studio, with the desire that overcomes one after awhile to atone for infidelity. I had firmly resolved never more to write nor speak, and to cleave only to the one art that is in my heart. My mind was full of new creative work, dancing figures, fantasies and portraits, when suddenly I was asked to go to Boston and address a meeting for Russian relief. I accepted the offer, not because I presumed that any effort of mine could help much towards the starving Russian babies, but I wanted to see Boston.