I did not go to the front at the Hauptquartier as reported. I had enough to do in Charleville, but did witness the splendid relief work being done by the Americans who are feeding 2,200,000 of the population of Northern France. Twenty thousand of the inhabitants of Lille, Roubaix-Tourcoing, are being sent under circumstances of great barbarity to work in the fields in small villages. I spoke to the Chancellor and he promised to remedy this.
Germans say they will take Verdun. A military treaty with Sweden is reported; a large Swedish Military Commission is now here, receiving much attention.
While at Charleville, in connection with American work, I asked, at one village, to see the German Army stores so as to convince myself that the German Army was not using the stores from America. I saw that one-half the stores came from Holland.
I think the psychological moment is approaching when Colonel House should appear as the President's White Emissary of Peace.
While the food question here is pressing, the harvest will be good, if present indications continue. Rye is the principal crop and this is harvested about July 12th. I think, however, Germany can last, and in very desperation may try a great offensive which may break the French lines and change the whole position. The people here, although tired of war, are well disciplined and will see this thing through without revolution.
We are rather in calm after the last crisis. The Chancellor sent for me and said he hoped we would do something to England or propose a general peace, otherwise his position here will become, he thinks, rather hard. Delbrück, vice-chancellor, very hostile to America, is out—failure as Minister of Interior to organise food supply is the real reason.
Yesterday I had a talk with the Chancellor. The occasion was the Polish Relief question which I shall now take up direct with Helfferich, who, as I predicted, is the new Minister of the Interior and Vice-Chancellor. He is a very business-like man and did much for the favourable settlement of our last crisis.
The Chancellor seemed rather downcast yesterday, without apparent cause. He says that Germany from now on will have two months of hardship on the food question, but that after that things will be all right. The crops, as I have seen on my shooting place, are magnificent and the rye harvest will probably begin even before July 15th.
Mrs. Gerard has just returned from a week in Budapest with her sister. The Hungarians are once more gay and confident. The Italians, their hereditary foes, are being driven back, and on the Russian front there seems to be a sort of tacit truce—no fighting and visiting in trenches, etc.—terms of great friendliness.
(This was the beginning of the fraternisation which led, a year later, to the collapse of Russia.)