2110-2-15-11

11th May 1916

10, DOWNING STREET, WHITEHALL, S.W.

Dear Mr Buchan

It was a pleasure to me to see you yesterday & to hear you praise Haldane - one of God's own - "If there be any praise - think on these things" To think that the Press sd. make money out of characters & corpses, sd. live like worms on manure & from spite

[in palimpsest from left margin:] Dalziel. The same men write in Times & D. Mail the same tosh & lies - to think what my great great grandfather who started the Times wd. think if he were alive passes my imagination! Come to tea next week please Yrs in sincerity

Margot Asquith

& hatred of Henry persistently help Germany makes one rub ones eyes & say after all we deserved the war. You say you like [ST: Geoffrey?] Robinson & can't blame him as he has no influence & is in earnest - You never said what he was in earnest about

Certainly not over the war or instead of intriguing to break the Gov. he wd. go & fight. He is not a real Englishman - he has no courage, grit or endurance. Panic & personalities of the meanest kind - he circulates & lives upon these - chill me to the bone. Three nights running a year ago I sat up thinking H. had had a stroke (he slept for 36 hours only woken up once by the Dr. - it was liver but I didn't know that - from over-work & hot rooms) & Robinson wrote

that he started being ill in the Cabinet when decisions had to be taken - this is the kind of thing no gentleman cd. write, only one of my sex "He was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust" (Macbeth) Can you say that of Robinson? I was so ill from sleepless -ness I broke down completely when H. got well - "The nation led by the coolest head will win this war" the Kaiser said -