But when one government writes to another it ought to write (as men do) with some reference to the personality of the other and to their previous relations, since governments are more human than men.

Of course I don't know who wrote the Note.

Hence I can talk about it freely to you without implying criticism of anybody in particular.
But the man who wrote it never saw the British Government and wouldn't know it if he met it in the road.

To him it is a mere legal entity, a wicked, impersonal institution against which he has the task of drawing an indictment--not the task of trying to persuade it to confess the propriety of a certain course of conduct.

In his view, it is a wicked enemy to start with--like the Louisiana lottery of a previous generation or the Standard Oil Company of our time.
One would have thought, since we were six months in preparing it, that a draft of the Note would have been sent to the man on the ground whom our Government keeps in London to study the situation at first hand and to make the best judgment he can about the most effective methods of approach on delicate and difficult matters.