The stars are bright, the night is silent, the country quiet--as quiet as peace itself.

Millions of men are in camp and on warships.

Will they all have to fight and many of them die--to untangle this network of treaties and affiances and to blow off huge debts with gunpowder so that the world may start again?
A hurried picture of the events of the next seven days is given in the following letter to the President: _To the President_ London, Sunday, August 9, 1914.
DEAR MR.

PRESIDENT: God save us! What a week it has been! Last Sunday I was down here at the cottage I have taken for the summer--an hour out of London--uneasy because of the apparent danger and of what Sir Edward Grey had told me.

During the day people began to go to the Embassy, but not in great numbers--merely to ask what they should do in case of war.