[1] Once when Charles II visited Westminster, Busby, the head master, conducted him into school without uncovering: it would never do, he explained, for the boys to think that there was any one greater than himself. When the present king attended the pancake greeze, Dr. Gow related this story; the king at once commanded him to resume his cap.

[2] Mon. Stat., for Monitor Stationis.

[3] A contraction for "Volsci", the enemies of the "Romans", i.e., the Westminsters of many generations ago.

[4] In such histories of intellectual development as I have read, too little attention is paid to the dates at which certain copyrights have expired and the other dates at which "popular editions" have been issued. Cheap printing, often aided by this new freedom to print, made available to the boys of my generation a vast literature of history, biology, politics, economics and theology. Darwin, Huxley, J. S. Mill and Carlyle were but a few of those who lay at our disposal.

[5] Until Irish and English cease to put their trust in allegorical caricatures, there can be no sympathetic understanding between them. Mr. Max Beerbohm has written of the disillusion which he sustained on finding that all bishops were not as Du Maurier had drawn them for Punch; and it seems to be a natural failing of the English to see themselves and others in the terms of a Tenniel cartoon. Until the war, every German was blonde, fat, mild and spectacled, with an equal love for sausages, beer, music, metaphysics and a long, china-bowled pipe; the Frenchman, in conical tall-hat, loose tie and peg-top trousers, was excitable and gesticulatory, but polite and—after the entente and before the arrival of Carpentier—a man of whom much might be made if he could be interested in field sports. The American, thin, tall and chin-bearded, with fob-pockets and straps to his trousers, was pregnantly deliberate in the artlessly blended dialect of an East-Side saloon-keeper and a Middle-West farmer, while the indolent but dogged John Bull was made the emblem of stupid honesty, good sportsmanship and love of fair play; he was represented as being charged, rather against his inclination, with an imperial mission and as being endowed with a special skill in administering an empire; he was credited with a marrow-deep love of liberty and a genius for self-government. Even the war has done little to disturb these complacent hallucinations.

[6] While this book was writing, I learned to my own regret and to the abiding loss of the House, that Dr. Strong, an Old Westminster, had been appointed to the bishopric of Ripon.

[7] From time to time the regular speakers went on strike. It was then usual for one to propose the motion "That something be now done" and to secure that it was not carried, thus holding up all public business indefinitely. At Univ., I believe, it was customary to open the proceedings of the "Shakespeare" with a resolution "That the Bard be not read."

[8] In these years Ronald Knox, Patrick Shaw-Stewart and Charles Lister occupied a place once filled by Raymond Asquith and, before him, shared by John Simon, F. E. Smith, Hilaire Belloc and E. G. Hemmerde.

[9] I am informed by my friend, Captain Stephen Holmes, M.C., to whom I am indebted for many valuable suggestions, that the use of the guest-table had to be suspended owing to the rush of new members to the House in 1919.

[10] One man became so much obsessed by the universality of a school in which all knowledge had a place, if he could but find it, that he was discovered on the morning of his examination committing to memory the statement of the Morning Post that Lady X had left Hill Street for Scotland; somehow, he felt, this had a bearing on modern history; and I have no doubt that he used the information to illustrate a point of manorial tenure or to differentiate between the life of the new nobility and that described by Tacitus in the Germania.

[11] I write of 1906-9, before women were admitted to degrees or accorded an academic position or costume.

[12] Once a year the Gilbert and Sullivan operas came to Oxford; the booking opened a week in advance, and a queue stretched the length of George Street and half-way down the Corn. For days before and afterwards every piano in the college was tinkling with "The Silver Church" or the "Peers' Chorus." And we, in 1909, were privileged to entertain at luncheon Fred Billington, a great comedian and the greatest of all Pooh Bahs; fifteen or twenty of us, of the true Gilbert and Sullivan faith, shyly fed him with roast turkey and plum pudding, and he too was a little shy, suspecting some practical joke.

The visitor is sometimes surprised that the New Theatre contains no boxes; the reason was supplied, in my day, by a famous living actor, who explained that he and his friends had attended a melodrama in the old theatre and had taken an uncontrollable dislike for the villain's trousers. As Æschylus undertook to finish any prologue of Euripides with the words "???????? ?p??ese?," so this undergraduate party qualified the villain's every boast and confession with the words: "Not in those trousers."

The dialogue ran roughly thus:

Villain. I will carry the girl off and make her my wife——

Interrupters.———————Not in those trousers.

Villain. I will be revenged——

Interrupters.———————Not in those trousers.

Villain. I will stick at nothing——

Interrupters.———————Not in those trousers.

As the curtain fell on the first act, the interrupters leapt from their box on the stage and pursued the villain down the Corn and the High until they captured him on Magdalen Bridge. They then returned to the theatre with the offending trousers but without the villain.

Jowett, as vice-chancellor, decreed that in the new theatre no boxes should be built.

[13] The late Sir Edward Cook once did me the honour to quote the words of one of my own characters: "I am tempted to wonder whether it much matters what a man be taught, so long as he meet enough men who have been taught something else." Therein lies the difference between university education and all other kinds.

[14] It is hardly possible to think of Oxford in those years without thinking of the second volume of Sinister Street and of the great picture in which Compton Mackenzie's observation, memory and delicate realization of atmosphere were so triumphantly blended. At the House we had, no doubt, a stereotyped conception of the "typical" New College man; Balliol, no doubt, had its conventional idea of the average St. John's man; it was left to Compton Mackenzie to shew, from the angle of Magdalen, the reaction of the Exeter "type" on the imagination of Univ. The book is confined within the limits which Oxford of necessity imposes on herself as the theme or background of a novel; Oxford is a phase through which youth passes, a kingdom wherein it tarries, a hive where it grows and works towards maturity; it is not generally a scene of romance, of spiritual crisis or emotional clash; and, because most novels on Oxford persist in forcing drama into the least dramatic lives, they stand condemned as psychological confusions. It is a kingdom of youth because youth is made comfortably secure from the material conflicts of conventional drama; and youth, however intensely interested in itself, does not regard its spiritual conflicts seriously, it no longer agonizes in doubt nor wrestles in prayer, and, if it fall in love, ecstacy will disturb its digestion as little as despair will derange its slumbers. And the novelist of Oxford who writes with perspective and a sense of the appropriate must treat his material as youth awakening but not yet awake and as youth snugly protected from reality.

For this reason and under these limitations, all women, all men who do not know Oxford and even the men who do will, in that order, be prudently advised to leave Oxford alone; after Sinister Street, with its analysis and atmosphere, its restraint and its consummate handling of countless figures on a giant canvas, there is no room for a book conceived on similar lines or scale; the novelist must force upon Oxford something which Oxford disowns or he may turn disgustedly away from a place where innumerable people talk and think endlessly about something that does not matter to any one else and where nothing ever happens.

[15] The House went head of the river in 1907 and remained there for the rest of my time, an achievement to be periodically celebrated with a triumphant bump-supper, fire-works and a bonfire which once afforded to some an opportunity of venting their displeasure on the Oxford Pageant stands.

[16] Mark Twain was the recipient of an honorary degree in these years, and the welcome accorded him was characteristic. By an unhappy coincidence certain news-bills had appeared with the words: "ARRIVAL OF MARK TWAIN IN ENGLAND. THEFT OF ASCOT GOLD CUP." Before he was allowed to take his degree, an untiring undergraduate chorus demanded to know: "Now, Mark, what did you do with the Gold Cup?" His reply I never heard; it was probably adequate, though occasionally he met his match in repartee. Once when he was staying in England as a young man, the income-tax authorities sent him an assessment form which he referred to Queen Victoria with the statement that he had not the honour to be one of her subjects; she must forgive his writing to her, because, though he did not know her, he had once had the pleasure of meeting her son. "He," said Mark Twain, "was driving in his coach of state to St. Paul's, and I was on the top of a 'bus." Many years later, when he returned to England in his glory, he was presented to King Edward who said that he was glad to meet him again. "Again, sir?" echoed Mark Twain. "Have you forgotten our first meeting?" asked the king. "I was in my coach of state, driving to St. Paul's, and you were on the top of a 'bus."

[17] Lord Wolmer, the late W. G. C. Gladstone and the late Francis McLaren are the only exceptions that I recall in my own time.

[18] The phrase is borrowed from my friend, Walter Roch.

[19] The parliament which ultimately conceded the vote was substantially the same that had refused it in 1913; its "mandate" was still primarily for the parliament bill and the bills covered by that; but the war changed, with other things, the responsibility of a member to his constituents and the new franchise was granted by men with no more authority to grant it than to abolish the monarchy or to make marriage compulsory.

[20] The name applied to themselves by members of a party which is Scottish in origin and which has, in the course of history, repudiated its allegiance to the Catholic Church and the Stuart dynasty and threatened to repudiate its allegiance to the Hanoverian dynasty.

[21] These quotations are taken from Mr. Hugh Martin's Ireland in Insurrection.

[22] This and the following quotations are taken from The Complete Grammar of Anarchy compiled by Mr. J. J. Horgan.

[23] But not Viscount Grey.

[24] Anatole France, in Les Dieux ont soif, which was written several years before the war of 1914, gives a few specimens of the portents and rumours which agitated Paris when the armies of the allies were marching against the revolutionary government. They were, almost without exception, reproduced in England in the first month of the war.

[25] W. G. C. Gladstone: A Memoir. By Viscount Gladstone.

[26] I am told that a similar herd-hallucination overtook Paris in the war of 1870. A rumour that the Crown Prince's army had been surrounded and that the news was posted at the HÔtel de Ville brought the inhabitants by thousands into the streets till those who were pressed against the HÔtel de Ville and those who were farthest away alike maintained that they had read the official report.

[27] Generosity and war seem incompatible!

Wellington.It's Marshal Ney himself who heads the charge.
The finest cavalry commander, he,
That wears a foreign plume; ay, probably
The whole world through!

Spirit Ironic.And when that matchless chief
Sentenced shall lie to ignominious death
But technically deserved, no finger he
Who speaks will lift to save him!

Spirit of the Pities.To his shame.
We must discount war's generous impulses
I sadly see.

Thomas Hardy: The Dynasts.

[28] I remained at Westminster a year, judging that period to be as long as I could support the daily risk of detection by pupils or colleagues. Sometimes—now that it is all over—I blush to think of the subjects that I essayed to teach; and sometimes I blush to recall the lessons that I actually taught. Since leaving, I have seen my year's work passed in more candid review than was possible at the time and have been honoured with a place in the repertory of imitations in which Westminsters love to indulge whenever two or three are gathered together. If one or two of my least promising pupils pay me the compliment of saying that I taught them at least something, one or two of the most promising now ask me how it was that I never discovered them cribbing in form or thrusting strange gifts down the necks of their neighbours. Our warfare was waged with good humour for the most part, though only a schoolmaster knows how highly his sense of justice may be tested in dealing with some one who is personally antagonistic to him. With many I am proud to say that I made lasting friendships: during the later years of the war I received letters from every front and my old pupils came to see me when they were on leave; since the war they write from Africa and America, I meet them in London and Oxford, we abandon ourselves to school "shop", and they embarrass me by occasionally addressing me as "sir". To my friends of the Modern Transitus from Play Term, 1914, to Election Term, 1915, to the Classical Transitus, the Modern Sixth, the Mathematical Sixth, the History Sixth and the Seventh, wherever you may be, I send greeting; my injustice was unintentional, my incompetence incurable; I should be well pleased to think that your memories of me are a hundredth part as kindly as my memories of you. For perhaps the first three cautious days you were a little awed by me: the cap and gown were imposing. I was taller than any of you, as an Old Westminster I knew too much about detention school and penal drill; above all, I also had lived in Arcady and had sat at those very desks not ten years before; does it comfort you to know that my awe of you continued for three terms? If ever the prayer-bell had not rung before I shewed that I could not solve some diabolical equation! If you had argued a little more confidently against my magisterial rulings! If you could have seen into my mind during the first week, when I took down your names, ranged you in alphabetical order and guided myself despairingly by the two red-heads in the form!

[29] I believe that the Education Office section, appropriately enough, threw into Latin elegiacs the general confession beginning: "My beat extends from (the sentry-box) to (the gate on Constitution Hill) and must be patrolled regularly ..."; I never saw a copy.

[30] When Lord Emmott, the Director of the War Trade Department, invited me to serve under him in the summer of 1915, I intended to come only for the school holidays; as, however, the work of the blockade increased steadily, I asked Dr. Gow to release me for as long as I might be wanted.

[31] As it had been in existence for five months before I entered it, I can only describe its early history from hearsay.

[32] Six years before, on the first night of The Blue Bird, I remember constructing from the name of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos a mental picture of some one very tall, very thin, very dark and saturnine, with a long amber cigarette-holder and a single eyeglass depending from a broad black ribbon. I had not then seen Max Beerbohm's caricature of him; and, at our first meeting, I murmured to myself, as hundreds have done before and since: "Of course! The old sheep in Alice Through the Looking-Glass." As hundreds have done before and since, I surrendered to his charm; and there is no friend to whom I owe more. For over three years we worked together, many hours a day for six days a week; our minds and moods found something always in common; in five years there cannot have been many days on which we did not meet or telephone or write. In the next five years may there be as few!

I am not alone in fashioning an imaginary figure to bear such a name. I am told that a distinguished black-and-white artist, meeting the name fortuitously, would walk pensively through the streets of London thereafter, searching the faces of the passers-by for one that would fit his ideal, Alexander-Teixeira-de-Mattos conception. And, when they met, I wonder if the artist was as much frightened as every newcomer to the department. On my second morning I looked up suddenly into a white impassive face; eyes unchanging in expression regarded me through the tortoise-shell spectacles which bestrid the impressive nose; the mouth was tightly-shut; neither word nor movement explained this paralysing figure which had glided to my table like some wandering sphinx. "I am not sure whether your minute intends to convey ..." he began at length and to my indescribable relief. Fear departed with that word, and we collaborated in redrawing the minute. Sometimes the Teixeira panic spread to distant committees which only knew his exquisite handwriting and his disabling knowledge of English; they hastened to do his bidding and to avert his wrath; no chairman likes to apologize twice for "the curiously pococurantist attitude of your committee", few care even to have the apology accepted with the words that consigned so many controversial files to oblivion: "Pray say no more. A.T."

[33] Sir Ian Hamilton's Gallipoli Diary is one of many military documents that shew that civilian morale at home cracked before the morale of the soldiers under fire. There was a fantastic legend that the English were unvaryingly calm and resolute, with a calmness and resolution that became calmer and more resolute with every demand. Nothing is farther from the truth. There was a panic when the Amiens despatch was published; and every outburst of popular violence or madness had panic as its origin and explanation. The spy-mania, the attack on Lord Haldane, the conscription campaign, the hunt for aliens and, finally, the Pemberton-Billing case were each in turn the result of a panic caused by accumulated despondency or by the violent despair induced by a sudden reverse. The east-end Jews who cowered in tube stations during air-raids had their own means of shewing fear; but it was not the only means.

[34] This is becoming a conventional aftermath of any war in which the vanquished is so heavily defeated that he has to make a superhuman effort to galvanize his country into new life. The same alarms were spread by the Germans about the French in 1875.

[35] "It is said," writes Mr. Walter Roch in Mr. Lloyd George and the War, "that as a result of this Conference ('the Constitutional Conference which sat in secret between the two General Elections in 1910, and tried to reach a settlement of the constitutional issue, by agreement'), in the course of which a wide range of topics must have been discussed, Mr. Lloyd George then proposed, and committed to writing, a scheme for a Coalition Government which would settle the question of the House of Lords and Home Rule, adopt some form of National Service, and finance the Navy by means of a loan. But the details of this scheme are only vaguely known and add to our confusion."

I am not aware, however, that the allegation has ever been denied.

[36] I have ventured to enumerate, twice within a few pages, the chief causes of despondency at the end of 1916: the same thought-wave, given off from the same psychological effervescence, convinced President Wilson and Mr. Lloyd George that the allies were beaten to their knees; the one was inspired to throw the resources of America into the struggle, the other to take personal charge of the war.

[37] 1920.

[38] Sir Ian Malcolm was inspired by this memorandum to write his "rhymed endeavour to convey the contents of a grave 'pronunciamento' on deportment: compiled (it is believed) by Lord Eustace Percy and issued to the Members of the Mission before landing in the New World." The poem appears among the "Mission Hymns" in Stuff—And Nonsense.

"Circular Notes"

To the Mission

In your hours of ease, I beg you
Missionaries, one and all,

Read, mark, learn, digest and pass on
This concise Encyclical.

You will find its interest chaining
—Sometimes even entertaining.

First of all you must remember
That you go to U.S.A.,

To a land of candid critics;
So be careful what you say.

I shan't mind the least if some

People think you're deaf and dumb.

If with questions you are pestered
By the Press for news athirst,

Do not risk replying till you've
Wired home for instructions first.

Heaven knows what might occur

If you answered "on the spur."

E.G.: "Why bring re-made soldiers
On your diplomatic stunt?"

Should the ready lie elude you
Give a non-committal grunt,

Or remark with pungent wit

"Miles nascitur non fit."

(Note: for General T. Bridges—
Please observe a strict disguise;

Don't appear in medalled khaki
Or regard their martial cries.

If they cap you, don't salute;

If they challenge you, don't shoot.)

Should they ask if England's starving,
You may answer, "Look at me,

Do I seem emaciated
Or in need of sympathy?"

If you have the indigestion,

Ask for notice of the question.

Very possibly they'll ask you
"What is happening in Greece?"

"What about the Spring Offensive?"
Or what day the war will cease.

You should say, "I've no idea,"

And manoeuvre for the rear.

There is just one other matter
Which diplomacy dictates

Should be handled with discretion
In non-alcoholic States;

'Twould be well received, I think,

If the Mission didn't drink.

That completes the list of topics
I would have you bear in mind;

To sum up: I urge my colleagues
To be deaf and dumb—not "blind."

Please observe punctiliously

These injunctions.

s.s. Olympic.————————————A. J. B.

[39] This was, of course, before the great explosion.

[40] It was, I believe, originally intended that no speeches should be delivered; but, when M. Viviani felt that he ought to say a few words on behalf of the French, Mr. Balfour could not do less than speak on behalf of his own mission. There was no time to prepare a formal oration, but the exquisite phrasing of his inscription was at least not less impressive than any speech. The original sheet of paper on which it was written has been, I understand, chemically treated against fading or decay and preserved among the historical records of the United States.

"M. Viviani," said Mr. Balfour, "has expressed in most eloquent words the feelings which grip us all here to-day. He has not only paid a fitting tribute to a great statesman, but he has brought our thoughts most vividly down to the present. The thousands who have given their lives, French, Russian, Italian, Belgian, Servian, Montenegrin, Roumanian, Japanese and British, were fighting for what they believed to be the cause of liberty.

"There is no place in the world where a speech for the cause of liberty would be better placed than here at the tomb of Washington. But as that work has been so adequately done by a master of oratory, perhaps you will permit me to read a few words prepared by the British mission for the wreath we are to leave here to-day:

"'Dedicated by the British mission to the immortal memory of George Washington, soldier, statesman, patriot, who would have rejoiced to see the country of which he was by birth a citizen and the country which his genius called into existence fighting side by side to save mankind from subjection to a military despotism.'"

[41] It is sad to record that the unwonted strain and exertion were too much for the advanced age of Mr. Choate, who died the following day; yet I doubt whether he could have chosen a happier moment for death than that which saw the great ambition of his life realised in the cordial friendship and whole-hearted cooperation of the United States and Great Britain.

[42] Sir William Peterson, then Principal of M'Gill University. While writing this book, I received by wireless, on my way to South America, the sad news of his death.

[43] In fact, General Pershing crossed independently.

[44] Judge Amos, now Judicial Adviser in Cairo, endorses the substantial truth of the report which circulated about his chess-playing at this time. A tall man with a folding pocket-chessboard and a coloured silk handkerchief containing an incomplete set of chessmen might have been observed at almost any hour of the day or night prowling the deck with a preoccupied air and seeking to lure any one into playing with him. Those who knew the moves promptly beat him; those who did not know the moves had them lucidly explained—and then beat him as promptly. He had, I believe, exhausted the 6,000 Canadian troops, the ship's company and the other members of the mission before approaching that corner of the smoking-room in which, according to the story, I was sitting with an expression of imbecility calculated to suggest that I could not play chess and would not learn. He persevered with his explanation and after five minutes challenged me to a game. I hate to record that he did not win it.

[45] The phrase is borrowed from Mr. Asquith.

[46] One of the last words, in a long list beginning with "Armageddon," to hypnotize the newspaper-reader.

[47] One evening I entered Covent Garden after the curtain had risen. "M. Kerenski?" enquired the sole occupant of the box, peering at me through the gloom. "I beg your pardon! I see that he landed in England this afternoon."

[48] At the risk of a prophecy I would suggest that Masefield's Gallipoli has a lasting place in the treasury of great English prose, so long, at least, as our present canons of perfection in prose-style are maintained.

[49] I am not limiting myself strictly to those war-books which had been published by the date of the armistice.

[50] "Honestly, I do not care about the clever people," confessed 'Lady Maybury'. "I find them bornÉ, self-centred, touchy, and embarrassing. They have no conversation, and they always ask me if I was at Ranelagh last Saturday. Have you ever observed that?"

[51] At Oxford I first heard the couplet which tells how

"From out their different tubs
Stubbs butters Freeman,
Freeman butters Stubbs,"

it was quoted by one member of a prolific triumvirate which then filled a considerable proportion of the critical journals. In those days it was hardly possible to read an article by A which did not contain a panegyric of B's latest book; it was no less difficult to read B's book without meeting a reference to what had been "most justly observed by C."

[52] The volume of hostile reviews, surely too great to be spontaneous and independent, which greeted The Autobiography of Margot Asquith, was only less remarkable than the success which the book achieved in spite of them.

[53] It will not have been forgotten that, in 1920, a cinematograph actress received a welcome to London which may have been equalled by crowned heads, but has, I should think, never been surpassed. Wherever she went, the streets were thronged; in its desire to see her, the crowd at a theatrical garden party nearly crushed her to death. Would Madame Curie, I wonder, have secured a single cheer? Would Miss Nightingale have been recognised?

[54] The temptation to make class-lists is almost irresistible: I have been taken to task for saying in an introduction to Couperus' Old People and the Things That Pass that it was one of the world's half-dozen greatest novels; but the temptation should be resisted, for the proof of our fallibility is ever before our eyes.

[55] On the first night of L'Heure espagnole a devil entered into one member of the audience and tempted him to murmur at any open door: "Is this not extraordinarily reminiscent of AÏda?" Complete and immediate agreement was his reward.

[56] Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret. It is natural for Balliol to gravitate to the cabinet; and distinction was lent to the business government by the presence of Lord Curzon.

[57]Memorandum

to the cabinet by lord milner on his visit to france,
including the conference at doullens, march 26th, 1918.

The Prime Minister having asked me to run over to France in order to report to the Cabinet personally on the position of affairs there, I left Charing Cross at 12.50 on Sunday, March 24th....

On arrival at Doullens I was at once seized by Clemenceau, who startled me by the announcement that Haig had just declared that he would be obliged to uncover Amiens and fall back on the Channel ports. I told him I felt sure there must be some misunderstanding about this, and that before the general Conference I thought it was desirable that I should have a short conversation with the Field-Marshal and the Army Commanders, whom I had not yet seen....

The views of the British Commanders having thus been cleared up, the Conference assembled.... I asked whether I might have a word with Clemenceau alone. I then told him quite frankly of the conviction which had been growing in my mind ever since the previous day, and had been confirmed by my conversations with Wilson and Haig, that Foch appeared to me to be the man who had the greatest grasp of the situation, and was most likely to deal with it with the intensest energy. Could not he be placed by both the Governments in a position of general control, and given the sort of authority which he (Foch) had himself suggested to Wilson? Clemenceau, whose own mind, I am sure, had been steadily moving in the same direction, at once agreed, but he asked for a few minutes to speak to PÉtain. While he took PÉtain aside, I did the same with Haig. While I explained to the latter what was contemplated, he seemed not only quite willing, but really pleased. Meanwhile, Clemenceau had spoken to PÉtain, and immediately wrote and handed me the following form of words, to embody what he and I had just agreed to:

Le gÉnÉral Foch est chargÉ par les gouvernements britanniques et franÇais de coordonner l'action des armÉes britanniques et franÇaises sur le front ouest. Il s'entendra À cet effet avec les deux gÉnÉraux en chef, qui sont invitÉs À lui fournir tous les renseignements nÉcessaires.

I showed this to Haig, who readily accepted it, but suggested that it should be extended to cover the other armies—Belgian, American and possibly Italian—that might be employed on the present Franco-British front. To this Clemenceau at once agreed. We then all went back to the table. The amended formula, which ran as follows:

Le gÉnÉral Foch est chargÉ par les gouvernements britanniques et franÇais de coordonner l'action des armÉes alliÉes sur le front ouest. Il s'entendra À cet effet avec les gÉnÉraux en chef, qui sont invitÉs À lui fournir tous les renseignements nÉcessaires.

Doullens,

le 26 mars, 1918.

was read out, and after a very short discussion, which amounted to nothing more than cordial approval of the principle by all the speakers, the document was signed by Clemenceau and myself, and the Conference immediately rose with every appearance of general satisfaction....

This quotation is taken from the special supplement to The New Statesman of 23 April, 1921.