Calgary, Alberta 11th July, 1916

Here there was a luncheon at 11:30! (by true time, daylight-saving being in force) attended by some 300 people. It really was a great success. I made some play with the Alp, Mount Sir Rider, which has been named after me (that is if the geographical Board of Canada consents), saying it would make the best and most enduring of tombstones - and exciting laughter by speculations on the possibility of its being taxed as an ‘improved lot’ with the result that my descendants would be ruined etc - and then turned to the serious subjects. I never had a better audience, but oh! What a bore is this water drinking by compulsion, and how dreary! The luncheon ended with rousing cheers for myself followed by ‘God Save the King’. It is a curious world. Here they give my name to a towering Alp; in Norfolk they would not bestow it on a ‘pightle’! (a small meadow)

Ditchingham 8th June, 1917

Yesterday I received the bill for the rent of the telephone at 26 Ashley Gardens. I have already paid a £4 fine for the installation of this telephone and now, in addition to this and to ordinary rent, I am charged an entire pound for contingencies and expenses. I wonder if it is all legal.

No rain yet, the drought is becoming serious but the weather is beautiful for every purpose except farming.

10th November, 1918

The Kaiser and his son, the Crown Prince, have abdicated. The ‘All-Highest’ is in the dust, and the ‘glittering armour’ rusts upon Time ‘s mulch-heap; the mailed fist smites no more, the ‘destructive sword’ ceases to rattle in its Imperial scabbard, the ‘good old German God’ is no longer exhibited to the world ventrilgquising and nodding his head like an ancient Egyptian deity in a temple! In short, the curtain has rung down upon the Imperial Cinema Show, and all the tinsel and pinchbeck trappings, filled-gold sceptres, gilded crowns, and the rest are cast to moulder in the bin of discarded footlight properties. Never more will the ex-Kaiser, never more will any monarch, as I believe, be able to arrogate to himself a flesh different to that of the herd of men, or to flaunt the banner of a Right Divine in the faces of the struggling peoples.