If this contention be just, the most successful phase of the campaign was reached one week when there were six raid nights in succession. London was, in consequence, fretful and neurotic. While no one had the honesty to admit that he was frightened by raids, a few would admit their effect on the nerves of others. With the approach of evening the anxious Londoner calculated from the age of the moon and the height of the wind that it was, perhaps, a "good night for the Gothas." "I wonder whether they'll come to-night," he would observe conversationally, as he went in to dinner; and, whether they came or not, the atmosphere was affected by vague, hardly perceptible uneasiness. When the attack was inopportunely timed, dinner would be interrupted while children were flushed from bed and littered down in hall or cellar. Every taxi disappeared from the streets, the tube stations were filled with highly scented aliens and the anxious Londoner walked home between the bombardments of the anti-aircraft guns, perhaps to find that he was homeless, roofless or windowless. After a broken night, he awoke with a headache; and, if government offices were representative of London as a whole, a proportion of the morning would be spent in exchanging anecdotes of the raid. IV At mid-day on the Wednesday in Easter week, after one or two false starts, the members of Mr. Balfour's mission entered a private bay at Euston, where the presence of a special train aroused among the porters mild speculation which died away in the opinion that the king was making an unadvertised journey. The Admiralty was represented by Rear-Admiral Sir Dudley de Chair and Fleet-Paymaster Lawford; the War Office by Major-General (Sir) Tom Bridges, Colonel Spender-Clay, Colonel Dansey and Major Rees; the Foreign Office by Lord Eustace Percy, Mr. Maurice Peterson, Mr. A. Paton and (Sir) Geoffrey Butler; the Board of Trade by Mr. F. P. Robinson; the Wheat Commission by (Sir) Alan Anderson; the Ministry of Munitions by Mr. W. P. Layton and Mr. M. L. Phillips; the Bank of England by its governor, Lord Cunliffe. Mr. Balfour's personal staff consisted of Sir Eric Drummond, (Sir) Ian Malcolm and Mr. Cecil Dormer. A later boat was to bring others who joined the mission in Washington. At two o'clock the special train left Euston for a port chosen by the Admiralty, but not disclosed. At a time chosen by the Admiralty, the mission was to embark on an unknown ship for an unknown destination on the western side of the Atlantic, there to escape for a few weeks from the imminence of war and to look upon a country which seemed own sister to the England which all had known before August 4, 1914. CHAPTER IX ON THE ROAD TO WASHINGTON--AND AFTER "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.