Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. An antarctic explorer once told me that while he was in the polar regions his dreams by night and his fancies by day were concerned almost exclusively with the dinner he would order at his club in London. His mind reached out lovingly for complicated meals, polished silverware, and fine linen, for large high-ceilinged rooms, thick soft carpets, and the shining shirt-fronts of perfectly ordered men. That for the time being had been his notion of paradise, and I dare say the vision was what all true visions are. They tell us what we should like to have but haven’t, what we should have liked to do but didn’t, what we intend to do but can’t.<br><br>In all the diplomatic dispatches which preceded the war, there is nothing more pathetic than Sir Edward Grey’s despairing effort at the very last moment to picture a better European system.