I went home and Kipling and Carrie[83] were at lunch with us. Kipling said: "I'll tell you, your coming into the war made a new earth for me." He is on a committee to see that British graves are properly marked and he talked much about it. I could not help thinking that in the back of his mind there was all the time thought of his own dead boy, John.
Then in the afternoon Major Drain brought the copy of a contract between the United States Government and the British to build together 1500 tanks ($7,500,000). We took it to the Foreign Office and Mr. Balfour and I signed it. Drain thinks that the tanks are capable of much development and he wishes our army after the war to keep on studying and experimenting with and improving such machines of destruction. Nobody knows what may come of it.
Then I dined at W.W. Astor's (Jr.) There were Balfour, Lord Salisbury, General and Lady Robertson, Mrs. Lyttleton and Philip Kerr.
During the afternoon Captain Amundsen, Arctic explorer came in, on his way from Norway to France as the guest of our Government, whereafter he will go to the United States and talk to Scandinavian people there.
That's a pretty good kind of a full day.
April, 19, 1918.
Bell[84], and Mrs. Bell during the air raid took their little girl (Evangeline, aged three) to the cellar. They told her they went to the cellar to hear the big fire crackers. After a bomb fell that shook all Chelsea, Evangeline clapped her hands in glee. "Oh, mummy, what a big fire cracker!"
FOOTNOTES:
[79] Colonel (now Major General) George O. Squier, Military Attaché at the American Embassy.
[80] The wedding of Mr. Page's daughter at the Chapel Royal.