The intimate papers of Colonel House arranged as a narrative by Charles Seymour.

PRIVATE AUDIENCE WITH THE KING 385

Colonel House to the President
LONDON, March 1, 1915
DEAR GOVERNOR:
The King's Private Secretary, the Lord Stamfordham,
called yesterday to bring an invitation to me from the King
to call at eleven o'clock for a private audience. I was curious
to know what he wanted.
I was with him for nearly an hour. He is the most bellicose
Englishman that I have so far met. I had hopes that he might
want to talk concerning peace plans, but he evidently wanted
to impress me with the fact that this was no time to talk
peace. His idea seemed to be that the best way to obtain
permanent peace was to knock all the fight out of the Germans, and stamp on them for a while until they wanted peace
and more of it than any other nation.
He spoke kindly of the Germans as a whole, but for his
dear cousin and his military entourage, he denounced them in
good sailor-like terms. He is the most pugnacious monarch
that is loose in these parts.
He told me a good deal about the navy and its operations
and also of what they hoped to do on land. He seemed more
certain than any one I have met that France and Russia
would stick to the last man. He said what would happen to
Germany when the French got in there, if they ever did,
would be a plenty; and he said his cousin, the Czar, had
written him that Russia was aflame from one end to the
other and was determined to win if they had to put in the
field twenty million men.
As for England, he said she was sending the flower of the
nation to the front and that the world would be forced to
acknowledge, before the spring and summer were over, that
her army was equal to her best tradition.
He spoke of our relations and expressed the greatest gratification that we were on such good terms. He said the hope
of the world lay in their continuance.