[inserted: Sagamore Hill Sept 25th 1911 For nobody's eyes but yours.] Dear Gray: Here goes for a painfully inadequate effort to meet the request which you so solemnly made [inserted: "] in the name of the [struck: g][inserted: G]ods of [strikeout] [inserted: Mi]rth and [struck: t][inserted: T]ruth. [inserted: "] I send you a copy of the letter I wrote Trevelyan, and I shall take up the story where I there[inserted: in] left it off, and tell you my experiences in England. Having been wired that I was appointed Special Ambassador, I felt of course that I [strikeout] [inserted: must serve.] Knowing the sweet reasonableness[inserted: ,] not merely of Congress but of the general public[inserted: ,] in such matters, I never accepted a dollar either directly or indirectly for my services, and declined to take advantage of the privilege proffered me of taking in my belongings free of duty. This did not make any difference, however, so far as Congress and the public [struck: is] [inserted: were] concerned [inserted: ;] for at intervals since then Congress has at times proposed to investigate me to find out how much of the public money I spent, and to this day I am occasionally reproached with having taken my belongings in free - you doubtless remember Lounsbu[strikeout][inserted: ry's] remark, of which I am so fond, about "the infinite capacity of the human [2] brain to withstand the introduction of knowledge." While I was special ambassador, that is, until after the king's funeral, I stayed at the Embassy, putting off until later my visit to a [strikeout] very old and valued friend, Arthur Lee, now a Member of Parliament, who had been the British Military Attache with our army in Cuba, and had then [struck: been] [inserted: gone] with us[inserted: ,] [struck: in] the Rough Riders[inserted: , and had afterwards been made an boundary member of the regiment.] All through Africa, but especially in the Sudan and in Egypt, the British military and civil officers had been pathetically anxious that I should say something for them in [struck: London] [inserted: London] because they felt that the situation in [struck: London] [inserted: Africa] was not understood at home, and that somebody who was not afraid of cricitism[inserted: ,] and other consequences[inserted: ,] ought to speak for them. I felt a very sincere desire to [strikeout] [inserted: help them out,] to lend a helping hand to Great Britain in its really admirable work in Africa[inserted: ;] but I wanted to be sure that I would go do good and not harm before I spoke. Accordingly I wished to find out just what the attitude of the responsible people in England would be if I made the kind of plea the officials and responsible people in Africa wished me to make. On my first interview with the king, [3] he himself broached the subject by thanking me for what I had said at Khartoum, and especially at Cairo, saying how earnestly he wished something of the same kind, but stronger, could be said in London. I told him that I had thought of speaking in such vein when I made my Guildhall address, but that I intended first of all to speak to Lord Cromer, the best authority on Egypt and to Sir Edward Grey, the Cabinet Minister under whom Egypt was, so as to be sure that what I said would do good and not harm. The king strongly acquiesced in this proposal, and grew so interested in the subject that [inserted: ,] although he had started to talk of my African hunt [strikeout] he being himself a great sportsman, he dropped this and for nearly an hour discussed the situation as I had seen it from the Governmental and economic standpoint in the different British Protectorates and possessions. [inserted: ] I saw Cromer at Whitelaw Reid's, and [inserted: again,] after making my speech, at the Stracheys. He very strongly urged me to make it, sending me a copy of his little book on "Modern Imperialism". He smiled quizzically [struck: and] [inserted: when he] said that he supposed I knew that I should be rabidly attacked for making it, but also supposed that I was hardened to such [4] attacks[inserted: ;] and I told him that I was. He then said very seriously that he thought it almost imperative that England should be told the truth by someone to whom England would listen, and at the moment England would listen to no other person as readily as to me, because the people of his way of thinking could only say what they had already often said, and the people of the other way of thinking simply refused to face the facts; and that what was needed was to have the facts brought to the attention of the public in some way that would force them to realize what was happening. I took the Ambassador with me to see Edward Grey, for at that time I did not know the latter, and did not wish to run any risk of difference of memory as to what occurred - Grey is one of the finest fellows I ever met, and now I should unhesitatingly see him and talk with him on any subject, knowing that I could trust his memory absolutely. I found that Grey was not merely acquiescent in delivering the speech, but very anxious that I should deliver it. Asquith and Morley would, I knew, and as Grey showed that he knew, disapprove, but this was evidently in Grey's mind merely another reason why I should make it. He was obviously very [strikeout] [5] uneasy at the course his party was taking about Egypt. He was in the [strikeout] unpleasant position of finding his party associates tending as a whole to refuse to do what was necessary[inserted: ;] and he wanted his hand forced. I told him that I should never tell anyone that I had seen him, and that he could absolutely disavow responsibility for all that I said, but he answered at once that if any debate arose upon it in the House of Commons he would state that he had seen me and talked the matter over, and that he not only approved of what I intended to say but believed that I was rendering a real service to Great Britain by saying it, and that I was strengthening his hands. I also spoke to Balfour, the leader of the Opposition[inserted: ;] but I [struck: know] [inserted: was sure] in advance that Balfour [struck: was sure to] [inserted: would] approve of my attitude. The speech itself I went carefully over word by word with Arthur Lee and Cecil Spring Rice. When I was attacked in the House of Commons for having made the speech, Edward Grey stood straight to his guns and so did Balfour and they spoke as follows: [inserted: (I quote the official report)] [6] Mr. A. J. Balfour: The Hon Gentleman the Member from Tyneside Division (Mr. J. M. Robertson) talked as if the recent speech of Mr. Roosevelt was an insult to the policy of this country, and in particular to the policy of the party of which the hon. Gentleman is himself a Member. I was an auditor of that speech, and I hope I am not less sensitive than others, but I hope, though a party politician, I can put myself in the position of those who differ from me and look at myself with their eyes. [struck: V][inserted: C]ertainly I never heard a speech which dealt undoubtedly, I admit, with a British problem, and in that sense no doubt compelled the speaker dealing with it to skate over thin ice - I never heard a speech which less deserved the charge of being an insult to the country whose hospitality he was for the moment enjoying. Sir, we do notalways have justice doneto us by foreign critics or by critics belonging to other nations. I do not like to use the word "foreign" in this connection. We do not always have justice from critics belonging to other nations, we do not always have our actions looked upon with a sympathetic eye and with a true knowledge of the problems that have to be faced by the officials of a country like our own when they are dealing with races very differently situated from our own. That [7] knowledge and that sympathy so often wanting in the spirit of critics that come from abroad, was conspicuous by its presence in the speech of Mr. Roosevelt, and no man acquainted with the difficulties with which we have got to deal, whether it be in Egypt, or other parts of Africa, or whether it be in India, no man acquainted with those difficulties could ask from anybody, not himself a member of our own nation, a kindlier, more appreciative and more sympathetic treatment of the problem with which we have had long to deal and of which America in her turn is now feeling the pinch. Mr. Roosevelt siad nothing, in my judgment, at all events, to which the most sensitive Briton could take the smallest objection. He realized what I do not think the Member for the Tyneside Division or the Member for Darlington realized; that you cannot treat the problems with which we have to deal in Egypt or elsewhere as if they were problems affecting the Isle of Wight, or the West Riding of Yorkshire. [8] Sir Edward Grey: I pass to the question of the government of Egypt, I must deal with one or two points of criticism that have been made upon the speech of Mr. Roosevelt. The hon Member for Rugby (Mr. Baird) placed an aspect upon the criticism in Mr. Roosevelt's speech which, until he spoke, had not occurred to me. He said he could not have believed that that speech would have been made unless there had been some previous communication of Mr. Roosevelt's views to His Majesty's Government, and that if there had been any such communication it would be unfair to the public to withhold the knowledge of it, from which I infer that the impression produced on him was this: that in his mind and in the mind of others, if Mr. Roosevelt had made that speech without some previous communication of his views to His Majesty's Government, he would have been guilty of an act of grave discourtesy to a country offering him hospitality. If that is the view, based upon the criticism in Mr. Roosevelt's speech, I say frankly he communicated to m e his views and his experience during his travels through British territory in Africa. He communicated to me his views with regard to what he had seen in East Africa, Uganda, the Soudan, and in Egypt. I seldom listen to anything with greater pleasure. If I had said that a public statement of his [9] experience, which I knew he wished to make, was in any degree likely to be embarrassing to me, I am quite certain he would have withheld them, but I did not think them in the least likely to be embarrassing to me. I made no suggestion [inserted: to him] whatever that he should make them public. I heard them repeated at the Guildhall substantially as they were repeated to me, and I listened to that speech with the greatest enjoyment. First of all I should have thought that to everybody the friendly intention of that speech would be obvious. In the next place, I should have thought that everybody would have felt that it was, taken as a whole, the greatest compliment to the work of one country in the world every paid by a citizen of another. Of East Africa, Uganda, and the Soudan there has been no mention tonight, thought there was mention of them in the speech. Why that part should have been omitted I cannot understand, I knew when I heard the speech there would be some attempts to make use of some of the parts of it for party purposes, I did not think that that mattered, provided that the substance of the speech was true. And in regard to Egypt itself, what was the substance of this speech! First of all, a statement that we have done the best work which has been done in Egypt in historical memory. In the next place, the [10] opinion expressed that excessive complacency or weakness towards those opposing British occupation in Egypt had endangered that work. In the third place, the statement that we were in Egypt as tr[struck: a][inserted:u]stees both for the Egyptian people and for foreign countries who had an interest in Egypt, and that, as trustees, the duty upon us lay of preserving order and it would be futile for us to remain if we did not do so. In the fourth place, the statement that Egypt would fall into a welter of chaos if not governed from outside, and that we were the people Mr. Roosevelt hoped and believed would undertake that duty. With the exception I should say of excessive complacency, there is not a single one of those statements which I am not prepared to endorse. [11] Curzon, Kitchener, Roberts, Beresford, Wingate, Rudyard Kipling and many others wrote me [strikeout] enthusiastic letters of thanks after I had made the speech. I think I showed you Kipling's and Lord Roberts' letters when you were out here last Fall. Most of the time we were in England we were guests of Arthur Lee, sometimes at his London House, and sometimes at his country place, Chequers Court, - a delightful place. I am exceedingly fond of Arthur Lee, almost as fond as I am of Spring Rice, who was my best man when I was married, and I am equally fond of the wives of both of them. Arthur Lee had the most delightful parties [inserted: imaginable] at Chequers to meet us, just the right people - Balfour, Alfred Lyttleton, Oliver - who wrote "The Life of Hamilton" [strikeout] Kitchener, Roberts and Lady Roberts, and a number of others. The only man I did not like was Kitchener. He is a strong man, but exceedingly bumptious, and everlastingly posing as a strong man[inserted: ;] whereas Roberts is a particularly gentle, modest and considerate little fellow. Kitchener is a very powerful fellow, just about as powerful as Leonard Wood, but nothing like as attractive personally, and nothing like as [12] modest. He suddenly attacked me on the subject of the Panama Canal, saying that it was a great mistake not to have made it a sea-level canal. I at first answered in a non-committal way, but he kept the subject up and in a very loud voice repeated what it was a great mistake[inserted: ,] that it was very foolish on our part[inserted: ,] not to have had it a sea-level canal, and he could not understand why we did not build one. I said that our enginners on the ground reported that there were [inserted: altogether too many] difficulties [struck: in the way of] [inserted: and too few advantages in] a sea-level canal, to which he responded: "I never regard difficulties, or pay heed to protests like that; all I would do in such a case would be to say 'I order that a sea-level canal be dug, and I wish to hear nothing more about it.'" I answered, "if you say so, I have no doubt you would have given such an order[inserted: ;] but I wonder if you remember the conversation between Glendower and Hotspur[inserted: ,] when [strikeout] [inserted: Glendower] says, 'I can call spirits from the vasty deep', an Hotspur answers, 'So can I, and so can any man; but will they come?'" I think he did not entirely understand the quotation, and he reiterated that he would have ordered it to be a sea-level canal, and [struck: it was a great mistake not to make it, ] [inserted: would has listened to no protests from the engineers. By this time I thought I might as well end the [illegible, and I [struck: then] told him that Colonel Goethals who [13] was actually digging the canal was in my judgment the very best man in the world for the job, and the man whose opinion was best worth taking, that Goethals had never seen the Soudan, just as [inserted: he,] Kitchener[inserted: ,] had never seen Panama, and that I would trust the opinion of Goethals rather than Kitchner as to Goethals' job in Panama just as I would trust the opinion of Kitchner rather than Goethals if Goethals should criticize Kitchner's job in the Soudan. Balfour, Lyttleton and Oliver were three of the most charming men [strikeout] whom I ever met. At first Balfour talked merely on general subjects[inserted: ;] but I happened to make the remark that I had [inserted: "]never demanded of knowledge anything except that it should be valueless[inserted: ,"] which for some reason or another proved the key to unlock his intimate thoughts, and from that time he spoke of everything of the closest possible nature. I dislike Winston Churchill and would not meet him, but I was anxious to meet both Lloyd-George and John Burns, and I took a very great fancy to both. John Burns struck me as having a saner judgment, Lloyd-George being very emotional; but of course Lloyd-George was [struck: a] [inserted: the] man of power[inserted: ; the most powerful Statesman I met.] As regards internal politics, I was much more in sympathy with than with [14] Balfour and Lyttleton[inserted: ;] but[inserted: ,] taking internal and external politics together, Edward Grey was the man to whom I was really drawn. I was really too much driven while in England to enjoy things as I otherwise would have done, but I [strikeout] liked my visits to Oxford and particularly to Cambridge. At Oxford, although my reason for visiting England was primarily to deliver the Romanes lecture, I hardly got as much enjoyment as at Cambridge, just because I had to be officially received. It was an interesting ceremony, and Curzon who made the address of welcome and introduction performed a feat of some interest therein because he actually made his [strikeout] Latin speech light and amusing. Moreover, being himself in the profession, as it were, he to my considerable amusement thoroughly understood that in making the speech I had sacrificed my audience of the moment to my larger audience. At its close he said to me with a grin that he had wondered whether I would have the self-denial to do this, because the tempta[struck:ion][inserted: tion] always is to excite the applause and amusement of the moment in the audience, which [struck: can] [inserted: in this case could] only be done by sacrificing everything that would make the address of real weight and real consequence in the future. But the pageant was [15] interesting. Moreover, in Oxford, as in Cambridge, I had taken advantage of my position by [struck: asking] [inserted: having] all kinds of people [inserted: asked] to meet me - Kenneth Graham, the author of "Golden Days", for instance, who proved simply charming; Oman, the "Art of War" man; Andrew Lang, and a number of other men whom I was anxious to see for some reason, literary or scientific. In Oxford I of course enjoyed visiting four or five of the colleges. The whole life was charming, with an old-world flavor very attractive to me as an onlooker - I cannot understand any American failing to find it attractive as an onlooker, and on the other hand I cannot understand any American caring to be educated there rather than in one of his own universities. In one of the colleges the head, who was called "Provost" or "Dean", or something of the kind, at first blush seemed a learned, precise, rather dry and anything but humorous little fellow. However, in looking at the pictures of former members of the college, I commented upon the unattractive aspect of some dead man of note, whereupon he remarked: "Yes, he certain looks as if he were mimsey." This opened a window into his character, and I at once responded that he had established much the same kind of bond with me that the Literary Ladies sought to establish [16] with Senator Elijah Pogram by sending the message that they were both transcendental; and that the man in question certainly looked altogether as if he were a borogrove. He then showed me the picture of Lewis Carrol himself, who it appeared had been a member of the college, and we got on famously for some minutes[inserted: ,] until another incident occurred which showed that I had been altogether too rash in assuming that because we had the same sense of humor on certain subject that therefore our minds would meet on all subjects. In a room where we w[struck: a][inserted: e]nt for tea, after showing me pictures of various very very ancient members of the college, he suddenly showed me the plaque of an Assyrian king, a plaque which no child of six could have failed to recognize as an Assyrian king. I looked solemnly at it, and said: "Ah! This graduate was obviously very early English". To my intense amusement, my good host became [strikeout] [inserted: much] embarrassed, and hastily changed the subject, [struck: his] [inserted: obviously under the] impression [strikeout] that I really did think that the [struck: a][inserted: A]ssyrian king was some Anglo-Saxon or other personage who had been connected with the college! In Cambridge everything was more informal, , and it was largely a reception by the students themselves. They greeted me just as the [17] students of our own colleges would have greeted me. On my arrival they had formed in two long ranks, leaving a pathway for me to walk [struck: down] between them and at the final turn in this pathway they had a Teddy Bear seated on the pavement with outstretched paw to greet me[inserted: ;] and when I was given my degree in the chapel the students had rigged a kind of pulley arrangement by which they tried to let down a very large Teddy Bear upon me as I took the degree - I was told that when Kitchener was given his degree they let down a Mahdi upon him, and a monkey on Darwin under similar circumstances. I spoke in the Union to the students, and it was exactly and precisely as if I had been speaking to the Harvard students in the Harvard Union. They understood everything I said and every allusion with exactly the same quickness that the Harvard boys would have shown, and responded to precisely the same appeals. Indeed I was interested to find that there was such exact similarity. And how beautiful Cambridge is! Moreover, as I have a taste for ghost stories, I enjoyed meeting the head of one of the colleges - King - whose [inserted: "Short] [struck: s][inserted: S]tories of an [struck: a][inserted: A]ntiquary [inserted: "]make, I think, the best volume of ghost stories I have [18] ever read. Moreover, at lunch I was much interested in meeting Mrs Sidgwick, Balfour's sister, the head of Girton, and also Butcher, the Greek scholar. My failure to establish a common basis of humor with my Oxford friend reminds me of an experience I had with "Punch". I like "Punch". It is almost the only humorous paper I know where the humor does not leave a bad taste in one's mouth[inserted: ; almost the only comic paper that is a gentleman's paper.] They had a number of most amusing cartoons about me. Their letter-press was less successful. Once Mrs Roosevelt and I got three or four hours to ourselves, and visited the National Gallery. The London newspapers, while not as vicious and degraded as ours, are at least as fatuous, and within an hour of my reaching the gallery they had three or four poor, seedy, foolish reporters following me around and trying to hear what I said. One of them, a reporter I think of the "Daily Chronicle", wrote among other things that, after looking at the picture of Derby Day, I remarked, "Tempora mutantur". Now I had never even seen the picture in question, and whatever I might have said I would not have said anything as inconceivably flat. However, "Punch" accepted it as true, and wrote a rather dreary would-be funny article upon it as a text. They were [19] then told that it was not true, and while I was at Arthur Lee's country place, I received a telegram from Owen Seaman asking me if the statement [struck: a] that I had made such a remark was incorrect. It never occurred to me that he was serious, so I telegraphed back, "Statement incorrect. In commenting on pictures I never use any language as modern as Latin. On the occasion in question my quotations were from cuniform script, and the particular sentence referred to was the pre-Ninevite phrase 'hully gee'." Seaman was immensely puzzled by the telegram, and finally concluded to accept it as a denial couched in queer language! I had another funny experience, on this occasion with the editor of "The Times". A number of editors were invited to meet me at lunch. The first five or six spoke to me with the utmost solemnity, and by the time the editor of "The Times" had come up, I felt that the occasion had grown too funereal, and so I said to him, "It does not seem to me that you and I ought to waste our time in talking of merely frivolous subjects, and I should like to discuss with you the [struck: possibility] possible outcome of the controversy between Mr Johnson and Mr Jeffries. He looked at me perfectly solemnly, muttered something, and went on. Some months afterwards S[struck: u][inserted: y]dney [20] Brooks wrote me that this same editor had remarked to him after the Nevada prize ring fiasco that he had always been much puzzled by my remark, and thought I must have been laboring under some delusion because he did not know whether I referred to Dr. Johnson, or Ben Johnson and to Lord Jeffreys or the editor of the "Quarterly", and anyhow they were not any of them contemporaries, but he was now much struck by the coincidence that a negro and a white man who possessed the names I had mentioned had been engaged in a prize fight in America, and it was such [strikeout] [inserted: an odd] coincidence that he really thought he would have to write to me about it ! There was much that was both amusing and interesting in connection with my being special ambassador to the funeral of poor King Edward. All the special ambassadors were, of course, treated with [struck: special] much ceremony and pomp, and I was given a special carriage of State and a guard of six magnificent grenadiers in bear skins, who lined up and saluted me whenever I left or entered the Embassy, while the bugler sounded off - or whatever the technical expression is. Whitelaw Reid is thoroughly at home in all such matters, and was both dignified and efficient, and Harry White and my two special aides [inserted: Lord Cochrane and Captain Cunningbane R.N.] accompanied me on all my formal calls. Not only [21] all the kings I had met, but the two or three I had not, were more then courteous, and the Kaiser made a point of showing his intimacy with me and of discriminating in my favor over all his fellow sovereigns. The only man among the royalties who obviously did not like me was the Archduke Ferdinand, who is ultra-montane, and at bottom a furious reactionary in every way, political and ecclesiastical both. All of the special ambassadors were either sovereigns or princes of the blood royal, excepting Pichon, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, and myself. The night before the funeral there was a veritable wake - I hardly know what else to call it. King George gave a dinner to the special ambassadors in Buckingham Palace, the palace in which the dead king his father was lying in state. There were some seventy of us all told, Each man as he arrived said some word of perfunctory condolence to the king our host, and then on with the revel ! It was not possible to keep up an artificial pretence of grief any longer, and nobody tried, and it was precisely like any other entertainment. The king sat in the middle of one side of the table, and the Emperor opposite him, and the rest of us were [22] arranged elsewhere without as far as I could judge much attention being paid to rank. I sat with Prince Henry of Prussia on my right hand, and on my left a tall, shambling young man in a light blue uniform, whose card proclaimed him to be the Prince of Cumberland, or Prince Somebody of Cumberland, I forget which. For lack of other subjects of conversation, I said to him that [inserted: altho] his title was English, [struck: and] [inserted: yet] that he himself seemed to be German[inserted: ;] and with a melancholy glance at the very vivacious Emperor[inserted: ,] who was diagonally opposite us, he [strikeout] [inserted: answered] that he ought to be Prince of Brunswick and King of Hanover, and would be "if it were not for him", nodding his head to indicate the Emperor. I felt like suggesting to him to relieve his feelings by throwing a carafe at the usurper. As soon as I entered the room the Bulgarian Czar came up to speak to me, and to thank me for various things I had done for the Bulgarians, a people who have always interested me and in whom I have always believed. He is a very competent fellow, but [inserted: with some unattractive traits, and] at the moment all the other sovereigns were angry with him because he had suddenly christened himself czar instead of king, which they regarded as bumptious. Moreover he had had an intricate row about precedence with the Archduke Ferdinand on the way [23] to the funeral. The Archduke Ferdinand does not like Bulgaria or its czar, and insisted that as the heir-apparent to a real and big empire he was entitled to precedence, which the czar of course flatly denied. [struck: Unfortunately they came to London by the same express train. The czar's] [inserted: and they had a [illegible] the delightful row over the matter, as complicated and involved and as utterly childish as the rows in Washington, when it used to be a matter of no small engineering skill to have Dewey, Cannon, Irye, [struck: (the President of the Senate)] and the Chief Justice, all dine at the White House and yet never meet - the Speaker of the House, the President of the Senate, and the Chief Justice each triumphantly pointing to the construction as giving him precedence, while my beloved Dewey triumphantly based his own claims on the number of guns fired for him when he went aboard ship. With a fine sense of military subordination, by the way, the good Admiral insisted that he would [struck: talk] [inserted: walk] behind the Secretary of the Navy, but ahead of all the other cabinet officers; and as several of the latter went ahead of the Naval Secretary, this meant that [struck: the] Dewey would have been sandwiched in to a kind of Dodo race. Well, the Czar and the Archduke came to London on the same express train. The Czar's] private carriage was already on it, and the archduke had his put on at Vienna. Each wished to have his carriage ahead of the other, but the archduke triumphed and had his placed near[inserted: est] the engine, the czar's carriage [strikeout] [inserted: coming] next, and then the dining carriage. The archduke was much pleased at his success, [inserted: and rode next the engine in purple splendor;] and all went well until dinner time, when he sent word to the czar saying that he should like to walk through his carriage to the dining saloon, [struck: but] [inserted: and] the czar sent back word that he could not ! Accordingly, breathing stertorously, he had to wait until a station came, get out and get into the dining saloon, and after eating his dinner [strikeout] wait until another station was reached, get out again, and pop back into his own carriage. This struck all his brother royalties as a most serious matter and the German Emperor had heatedly sided with the Austrians. Accordingly, while I was talking to the Czar, the Emperor suddenly walked up to us, thrust himself in ahead of the Czar, turned his [24] back square to him and said to me: "Roosevelt, my friend, I want to introduce you to the King of Spain[struck: .][inserted: ;] "[inserted: (][struck: T][inserted: t]hen with a sudden ferocious glance over his shoulder at the Czar, [inserted: )] "[struck: It] [inserted: he] is worth your while talking to!" The King of Spain, by the way, was worth while talking to. I was much impressed by him. He at first thanked me for having behaved with such courtesy and consideration to Spain while I was President, and I told him of course that I had simply done my duty, for which I deserved no thanks [inserted: and] that [inserted: anyhow] it was a real pleasure for me [struck: anyhow] to do anything I could for Spain. He then said, looking me straight in the face, "I am glad to meet you, Mr Roosevelt, I have admired your public career, and I have also admired your military career, though I am sorry that [struck: it] [inserted: your honors] should have been [inserted: won] at the expense of my countrymen." I bowed and said: "Your Majesty, I have always borne testimony[inserted: , and I always shall bear testimony,] to the [inserted: strikeout gallantry and courage your countrymen showed in battle; although frankly I cannot speak as highly of their leadership." To which he responded: "I should think not[inserted: !] I should think not[inserted: !] but I am glad to have you speak thus of the courage of the soldiers," to which I answered that I could not speak too highly of the courage that the Spanish soldiers had shown under very depressing circumstances. He then [25] went on to say that he wished personally to thank me for what I had done at the Vatican, because it had rendered his task in Spain much easier, as the attempted encroachments of the Vatican had become intolerable. He continued: "You will readily unde