Guildhall was the scene of a famous flamboyancy by the Kaiser not so many years ago, when he had talked about the comparatively firmer consistency of blood compared to water and consecrated himself to the cause of Anglo-German peace and friendship. I was keenly anxious to hear what sort of sentiments would echo through the century-old sanctuary of the City to-night, with men like Asquith, Balfour, Kitchener, Churchill and Cambon, the French Ambassador, as the speakers. I looked forward to an evening sure to be crowded with imperishable memories. I was not disappointed. At midnight when it was all over, I sat down to write "an American’s impressions" for _The Daily Mail_, and as they were exuberant with the freshness of mental sensations just experienced and have not cooled in the sincerity of their utterance in the long interval which has supervened, I make no apology for repeating them herewith verbatim: "When I became the joyful recipient of an invitation to attend last night’s Guildhall banquet I reveled in the prospect of a feast of Bacchanalian pomp and pageantry. I expected to witness nothing much except a Lord Mayor’s ’show,’ translated into Lucullian environment, a riot of food, drink, cardinal robes, gold braid, gold chains, gold sticks, wigs and the other trappings of mayoral magnificence. I came away utterly disillusioned, for I had spent three hours in what will live in my recollection as the Temple of British Dignity. "Those stately Gothic walls, whose simple groups of statuary which tell of Wellington and Nelson and Beckford; those amazingly non-panicky war speeches of your Romanesque premier, your grim Kitchener, your--and our--Winston Spencer Churchill, and your polished Balfour, all made me feel that I was tarrying for the nonce within four walls which, if they did not envelop all the great qualities of the British race, at least typified and epitomized them. "Guildhall is dignified by itself beyond my feeble hours of description. I have never trod its historic floors before, but I have the unmistakable impression that it has taken on fresh dignity to-day for the words which were spoken in it yestereve. I was about to say, in the idiom which springs more naturally to the lips of an American, ’for the words which rang through it.’ Words were not made to ’ring’ through Guildhall. They would be ludicrously out of place. An American political spellbinder, no matter how silver-tongued, would pollute the atmosphere of London’s civic shrine. Its acoustic qualities, which I should think were not faultless, are intended for exclusively such oratory as put them to the test last night.