At 4.30 I went to see Mr. Hughes in the Department of State. He is remarkably handsome and has not only a striking intelligence, but charming manners. We said nothing worth recording. I told him what, alas! he must have heard a thousand times: the profound impression that his opening speech on Disarmament at the Washington Conference had created in my country, if not all over the world; and what perhaps he did not know so well, that there never was a closer feeling than that which exists between England and America to-day.
When I say this with all the eloquence I can command at every lecture, though it is always cheered, it is seldom reported, and I read in one of the papers:
"What Mrs. Margot Asquith said about the hand-clasp of Great Britain and the United States is doubtful if not conventional," I am glad to be called conventional, but what I say is not doubtful; it is true.
I see that in one of Byron's recently published letters, he writes to Lady Melbourne:
"I wish that ... would not speak his speech at the Durham meeting above once a week after its first delivery.
"Ever yours most nepotically,
"B."
But in spite of Byron's wise warning I repeat the same thing in every lecture, because I feel passionately that it is not only important that the English-speaking nations should stand side by side, but vital to the Peace of Europe, and I am far from original in thinking it.
XI: SYRACUSE AND BUFFALO
XI.
SYRACUSE AND BUFFALO