with a friend in Switzerland; but this experience seems to have left no trace
in his work.


Then came the fateful year 1914. His "Juvenilia" having grown
to a passable bulk, he brought them in the early summer to London,
with a view to finding a publisher for them; but it does not appear
that he took any very active steps to that effect. His days were mainly spent
in the British Museum, and his evenings with a coterie of friends
at the Cafe Royal. In the middle of July, his father came to England
and spent a week with him. Of this meeting Mr. Seeger writes:

==
We passed three days at Canterbury -- three days of such intimacy
as we had hardly had since he was a boy in Mexico. For four or five years
I had only seen him a few days at a time, during my hurried visits
to the United States. We explored the old town together,
heard services in the Cathedral, and had long talks in the close.
After service in the Cathedral on a Monday morning,
the last of our stay at Canterbury, Alan was particularly enthusiastic
over the reading of the Psalms, and said "Was there ever such English written
as that of the Bible?" I said good-bye to Alan on July 25th.
==

Two days earlier, the Austrian Ultimatum had been presented to Serbia;
on that very day the time limit expired, the Serbian reply was rejected,
and the Austrian Minister left Belgrade. The wheels of fate
were already whirling.

As soon as it became evident that a European war was inevitable