Though the mighty issues then overhanging the world were not ignored in the conversation the atmosphere hardly suggested that the existence of the British Empire, indeed that of civilization itself, was that very night hanging in the balance.

Possibly it was the general sombreness of events that caused these British statesmen to find a certain relief in jocular small talk and reminiscence.

For the larger part of the evening not a word was said about the progress of the German armies in France.

Mr.
Lloyd George and Mr.Balfour, seated on opposite sides of the table, apparently found relaxation in reviewing their political careers and especially their old-time political battles.

They would laughingly recall occasions when, in American parlance, they had put each other "in a hole"; the exigencies of war had now made these two men colleagues in the same government, but the twenty years preceding 1914 they had spent in political antagonism.