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[Page 209]

Sunday November 29th

All day in London. Gina lunched with me. We dined at Ciro's and there I met F. E. Smith and Max Aitken The former was furious with me on account of theletter I had written about Winston. He accused me of every conceivable evil, motive in doing so, but I shut him up and told him he couldn't speak to me like that, which ended him and he became very sulky. Caught train at 11 p.m. for Aberdeen.

Monday November 29th
Arrived Aberdeen 11 a.m. lectured at 8 p.m. Good audience.

Tuesday November 30th
Visited Military hospital where I met Colonel Johnstone who commanded the 11th Australian Infantry, who were disembarked from the "London" at the first landing. Also a very big raw boned Australian soldier, who wanted to know why, having come from the extreme South from "down under" that he should now be in the most northerly hospital and the coldest in the British Isles. I told him that the military authorities had probably made a mistake and imagined that Australia was near the North Pole instead of the South. Visited the submarines and went all over them, after ards taking the naval officers to lunch. Caught 3.30 trainto Dundee, arrived 5-30, and lectured in the evening to fair audience.

There is no getting away from the fact that lecturing in England and Scotland has been ruined by the Belloc and Fred James and others. They all tell the same tale. These people have nothing to say but will insist upon saying it, which naturally makes the audience suspicious of everyone who comes afterwards. Dundee has been especially hard hit because Belloc arrived an hour late having got drunk in Edinburgh and Fred James came on the platform in a worse state than usual, and in the middle of his graphic description of the sinking of the "Scharnorst" at the Falkland Island battle, he himself fell off the platform and sunk slowly amongst the stalls, from which position all the efforts of salvage parties

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