Shane Leslie to Lady Randolph Churchill

August 8, 1917            St. Johnsbury, Vermont

My dear Aunt Jane

We are equally glad and surprised at Winston's return to office. It shows that he was built for success that he should have declined to withdraw and sulk over a superficial failure. In America the conviction is that his big strategy over Antwerp and Gallipoli was right but that he was ill served. If either expeditions had succeeded the war would now be over.

The reappointment to office has pleased Americans who look on Winston as 7/8 Yankee and 1/8 Blenheim! It is a pledge that senility has not the last say in everything.

Meantime a good deal is happening here. Wilson is playing a strong silent game in which he is not to be bothered by peripatetic journalist or arbitrary ministers. Everything he says is weighed and weighted with due care of the very difficult circumstances of the United States. For instance when he says he is making war on the German Government and not on the German people, he means it, because a very considerable body of the German people live in America and propose to fight that Government. Bourke in his great speech last week welcoming the Belgian mission to Boston worked out the President's meaning with care. I enclose a copy of his speech which will interest Winston and I should like to be able to pass on Winston's comment. There is nobody in this whole country now, except the mute and inglorious Bryan, who can rouse the American crowd to a frenzy of tears and emotion like Bourke. He is the only orator in America who can pick up a mob of 10,000 people in the open air and sway them to and fro. He has been consistent too in his championship of small nations. His three great orations have been for the Americans, the Irish and the Belgians.

I enclose the draft list of New York marking the Irish and German names. It looks as though an Irish-German contingent will come to the rescue of England. I should like Winston to see a article of mine in the Dublin Review for July on the American question--

Ever yours affec

Shane Leslie