Here in New York and Washington I find just the same steady change of opinion about France that is going on in London. I want to write it down as plainly as I can. I want to get it over to my friends in France, because I have loved France greatly, and I do not think the French people realize what is going on among the English-speaking peoples. People here want to see Europe recuperating, and they are beginning to realize that the chief obstacle to a recuperating Europe is the obstinate French resolve to dominate the Continent, to revive and carry out the antiquated and impossible policy of Louis XIV., maintaining an ancient and intolerable quarrel, setting Pole against German and brewing mischief everywhere in order to divide and rule, instead of entering frankly into a European brotherhood. Feeling about Germany and Austria is changing here, even more rapidly than in England, to pity and indignation; feeling about Russia is drifting the same way. One detects these undercurrents in the minds of the most unlikely people. People are recalling the France of Napoleon III., that restless and mischievous France, which came so near to a conflict with America in Mexico and which kept Europe in a fever for a quarter of a century. It is an enormous loss to the Washington Conference, it is a misfortune to all the world, that the great qualities of the French people, their clear-headedness, their powerful and yet practical imaginations seem at present to be entirely subordinated to the merely rhetorical and emotional side of the French character. XII THUS FAR Washington, Nov. 22. How are we getting on in Washington? The general mood is hopefulness tempered by congestion, mental and physical, and by sheer fatigue. There is no rest in Washington, no cessation. Last winter I was a happy invalid at Amalfi, I sat in the Italian sunshine, the hours were vast globes of golden time, my mind and my soul were my own. Now I live to the tune of a telephone bell and the little feverish American hours slip through my hot, dry hands before I can turn my thoughts around. I wish I could attend to everything.