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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/17017-8.txt b/17017-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..109b12a --- /dev/null +++ b/17017-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,14179 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, +Volume I, by Burton J. Hendrick + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I + +Author: Burton J. Hendrick + +Release Date: November 6, 2005 [EBook #17017] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF *** + + + + +Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +[Illustration: Walter H. Page] + + + + +THE +LIFE AND LETTERS OF +WALTER H. PAGE + + +BY +BURTON J. HENDRICK + + +VOLUME +I + + +GARDEN CITY NEW YORK +DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY +1922 + + + + +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES +AT +THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y. + +_First Edition +after the printing of 377 de luxe copies_ + + + + +_PREFATORY NOTE_ + + +_Among the many who have assisted in the preparation of this Biography +especial acknowledgment is made to Mr. Irwin Laughlin, First Secretary +and Counsellor of the London Embassy under Mr. Page. Mr. Page's papers +show the high regard which he entertained for Mr. Laughlin's abilities +and character, and the author similarly has found Mr. Laughlin's +assistance indispensable. Mr. Laughlin has had the goodness to read the +manuscript and make numerous suggestions, all for the purpose of +reënforcing the accuracy of the narrative. The author gratefully +remembers many long conversations with Viscount Grey of Fallodon, in +which Anglo-American relations from 1913 to 1916 were exhaustively +canvassed and many side-lights thrown upon Mr. Page's conduct of his +difficult and delicate duties. The British Foreign Office most +courteously gave the writer permission to examine a large number of +documents in its archives bearing upon Mr. Page's ambassadorship and +consented to the publication of several of the most important._ + +B.J.H. + + + + +CONTENTS + +VOLUME I + +CHAPTER PAGE + I. A RECONSTRUCTION BOYHOOD 1 + II. JOURNALISM 32 + III. "THE FORGOTTEN MAN" 64 + IV. THE WILSONIAN ERA BEGINS 102 + V. ENGLAND BEFORE THE WAR 132 + VI. "POLICY" AND "PRINCIPLE" IN MEXICO 175 + VII. PERSONALITIES OF THE MEXICAN PROBLEM 215 +VIII. HONOUR AND DISHONOUR IN PANAMA 232 + IX. AMERICA TRIES TO PREVENT THE EUROPEAN WAR 270 + X. THE GRAND SMASH 301 + XI. ENGLAND UNDER THE STRESS OF WAR 327 + XII. "WAGING NEUTRALITY" 357 +XIII. GERMANY'S FIRST PEACE DRIVES 398 + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + + Walter H. Page _Frontispiece_ + + Allison Francis Page (1824-1899), father of Walter H. Page 20 + + Catherine Raboteau Page (1831-1897), mother of Walter H. Page 21 + + Walter H. Page in 1876, when he was a Fellow of Johns Hopkins + University, Baltimore, Md. 36 + + Basil L. Gildersleeve, Professor of Greek, Johns Hopkins + University, 1876-1915 37 + + Walter H. Page (1899) from a photograph taken when he was + editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_ 100 + + Dr. Wallace Buttrick, President of the General Education Board 101 + + Charles D. McIver, of Greensboro, North Carolina, a leader in + the cause of Southern Education 116 + + Woodrow Wilson in 1912 117 + + Walter H. Page, from a photograph taken a few years before he + became American Ambassador to Great Britain 292 + + The British Foreign Office, Downing Street 293 + + No. 6 Grosvenor Square, the American Embassy under Mr. Page 308 + + Irwin Laughlin, Secretary of the American Embassy at London, + 1912-1917, Counsellor 1916-1919 309 + + + + +THE + +LIFE AND LETTERS + +OF + +WALTER H. PAGE + + + + +THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +A RECONSTRUCTION BOYHOOD + +I + + +The earliest recollections of any man have great biographical interest, +and this is especially the case with Walter Page, for not the least +dramatic aspect of his life was that it spanned the two greatest wars in +history. Page spent his last weeks in England, at Sandwich, on the coast +of Kent; every day and every night he could hear the pounding of the +great guns in France, as the Germans were making their last desperate +attempt to reach Paris or the Channel ports. His memories of his +childhood days in America were similarly the sights and sounds of war. +Page was a North Carolina boy; he has himself recorded the impression +that the Civil War left upon his mind. + +"One day," he writes, "when the cotton fields were white and the elm +leaves were falling, in the soft autumn of the Southern climate wherein +the sky is fathomlessly clear, the locomotive's whistle blew a much +longer time than usual as the train approached Millworth. It did not +stop at so small a station except when there was somebody to get off or +to get on, and so long a blast meant that someone was coming. Sam and I +ran down the avenue of elms to see who it was. Sam was my Negro +companion, philosopher, and friend. I was ten years old and Sam said +that he was fourteen. There was constant talk about the war. Many men of +the neighbourhood had gone away somewhere--that was certain; but Sam and +I had a theory that the war was only a story. We had been fooled about +old granny Thomas's bringing the baby and long ago we had been fooled +also about Santa Claus. The war might be another such invention, and we +sometimes suspected that it was. But we found out the truth that day, +and for this reason it is among my clearest early recollections. + +"For, when the train stopped, they put off a big box and gently laid it +in the shade of the fence. The only man at the station was the man who +had come to change the mail-bags; and he said that this was Billy +Morris's coffin and that he had been killed in a battle. He asked us to +stay with it till he could send word to Mr. Morris, who lived two miles +away. The man came back presently and leaned against the fence till old +Mr. Morris arrived, an hour or more later. The lint of cotton was on his +wagon, for he was hauling his crop to the gin when the sad news reached +him; and he came in his shirt sleeves, his wife on the wagon seat with +him. + +"All the neighbourhood gathered at the church, a funeral was preached +and there was a long prayer for our success against the invaders, and +Billy Morris was buried. I remember that I wept the more because it now +seemed to me that my doubt about the war had somehow done Billy Morris +an injustice. Old Mrs. Gregory wept more loudly than anybody else; and +she kept saying, while the service was going on, 'It'll be my John +next.' In a little while, sure enough, John Gregory's coffin was put off +the train, as Billy Morris's had been, and I regarded her as a woman +gifted with prophecy. Other coffins, too, were put off from time to +time. About the war there could no longer be a doubt. And, a little +later, its realities and horrors came nearer home to us, with swift, +deep experiences. + +"One day my father took me to the camp and parade ground ten miles away, +near the capital. The General and the Governor sat on horses and the +soldiers marched by them and the band played. They were going to the +front. There surely must be a war at the front, I told Sam that night. +Still more coffins were brought home, too, as the months and the years +passed; and the women of the neighbourhood used to come and spend whole +days with my mother, sewing for the soldiers. So precious became woollen +cloth that every rag was saved and the threads were unravelled to be +spun and woven into new fabrics. And they baked bread and roasted +chickens and sheep and pigs and made cakes, all to go to the soldiers at +the front[1]." + +The quality that is uppermost in the Page stock, both in the past and in +the present generation, is that of the builder and the pioneer. The +ancestor of the North Carolina Pages was a Lewis Page, who, in the +latter part of the eighteenth century, left the original American home +in Virginia, and started life anew in what was then regarded as the less +civilized country to the south. Several explanations have survived as to +the cause of his departure, one being that his interest in the rising +tide of Methodism had made him uncongenial to his Church of England +relatives; in the absence of definite knowledge, however, it may safely +be assumed that the impelling motive was that love of seeking out new +things, of constructing a new home in the wilderness, which has never +forsaken his descendants. His son, Anderson Page, manifesting this same +love of change, went farther south into Wake County, and acquired a +plantation of a thousand acres about twelve miles north of Raleigh. He +cultivated this estate with slaves, sending his abundant crops of cotton +and tobacco to Petersburg, Virginia, a traffic that made him +sufficiently prosperous to give several of his sons a college education. +The son who is chiefly interesting at the present time, Allison Francis +Page, the father of the future Ambassador, did not enjoy this +opportunity. This fact in itself gives an insight into his character. +While his brothers were grappling with Latin and Greek and theology--one +of them became a Methodist preacher of the hortatory type for which the +South is famous--we catch glimpses of the older man battling with the +logs in the Cape Fear River, or penetrating the virgin pine forest, +felling trees and converting its raw material to the uses of a growing +civilization. Like many of the Page breed, this Page was a giant in size +and in strength, as sound morally and physically as the mighty forests +in which a considerable part of his life was spent, brave, determined, +aggressive, domineering almost to the point of intolerance, deeply +religious and abstemious--a mixture of the frontiersman and the Old +Testament prophet. Walter Page dedicated one of his books[2] to his +father, in words that accurately sum up his character and career. "To +the honoured memory of my father, whose work was work that built up the +commonwealth." Indeed, Frank Page--for this is the name by which he was +generally known--spent his whole life in these constructive labours. He +founded two towns in North Carolina, Cary and Aberdeen; in the City of +Raleigh he constructed hotels and other buildings; his enterprising and +restless spirit opened up Moore County--which includes the Pinehurst +region; he scattered his logging camps and his sawmills all over the +face of the earth; and he constructed a railroad through the pine woods +that made him a rich man. + +Though he was not especially versed in the learning of the schools, +Walter Page's father had a mind that was keen and far-reaching. He was a +pioneer in politics as he was in the practical concerns of life. Though +he was the son of slave-holding progenitors and even owned slaves +himself, he was not a believer in slavery. The country that he primarily +loved was not Moore County or North Carolina, but the United States of +America. In politics he was a Whig, which meant that, in the years +preceding the Civil War, he was opposed to the extension of slavery and +did not regard the election of Abraham Lincoln as a sufficient +provocation for the secession of the Southern States. It is therefore +not surprising that Walter Page, in the midst of the London turmoil of +1916, should have found his thoughts reverting to his father as he +remembered him in Civil War days. That gaunt figure of America's time of +agony proved an inspiration and hope in the anxieties that assailed the +Ambassador. "When our Civil War began," wrote Page to Col. Edward M. +House--the date was November 24, 1916, one of the darkest days for the +Allied cause--"every man who had a large and firm grip on economic facts +foresaw how it would end--not when but how. Young as I was, I recall a +conversation between my father and the most distinguished judge of his +day in North Carolina. They put down on one side the number of men in +the Confederate States, the number of ships, the number of manufactures, +as nearly as they knew, the number of skilled workmen, the number of +guns, the aggregate of wealth and of possible production. On the other +side they put down the best estimate they could make of all these +things in the Northern States. The Northern States made two (or I +shouldn't wonder if it were three) times as good a showing in men and +resources as the Confederacy had. 'Judge,' said my father, 'this is the +most foolhardy enterprise that man ever undertook.' But Yancey of +Alabama was about that time making five-hour speeches to thousands of +people all over the South, declaring that one Southerner could whip five +Yankees, and the awful slaughter began and darkened our childhood and +put all our best men where they would see the sun no more. Our people +had at last to accept worse terms than they could have got at the +beginning. This World War, even more than our Civil War, is an economic +struggle. Put down on either side the same items that my father and the +judge put down and add the items up. You will see the inevitable +result." + +If we are seeking an ancestral explanation for that moral ruggedness, +that quick perception of the difference between right and wrong, that +unobscured vision into men and events, and that deep devotion to America +and to democracy which formed the fibre of Walter Page's being, we +evidently need look no further than his father. But the son had +qualities which the older man did not possess--an enthusiasm for +literature and learning, a love of the beautiful in Nature and in art, +above all a gentleness of temperament and of manner. These qualities he +held in common with his mother. On his father's side Page was undiluted +English; on his mother's he was French and English. Her father was John +Samuel Raboteau, the descendant of Huguenot refugees who had fled from +France on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; her mother was Esther +Barclay, a member of a family which gave the name of Barclaysville to a +small town half way between Raleigh and Fayetteville, North Carolina. +It is a member of this tribe to whom Page once referred as the "vigorous +Barclay who held her receptions to notable men in her bedroom during the +years of her bedridden condition." She was the proprietor of the "Half +Way House," a tavern located between Fayetteville and Raleigh; and in +her old age she kept royal state, in the fashion which Page describes, +for such as were socially entitled to this consideration. The most vivid +impression which her present-day descendants retain is that of her +fervent devotion to the Southern cause. She carried the spirit of +secession to such an extreme that she had the gate to her yard painted +to give a complete presentment of the Confederate Flag. Walter Page's +mother, the granddaughter of this determined and rebellious lady, had +also her positive quality, but in a somewhat more subdued form. She did +not die until 1897, and so the recollection of her is fresh and vivid. +As a mature woman she was undemonstrative and soft spoken; a Methodist +of old-fashioned Wesleyan type, she dressed with a Quaker-like +simplicity, her brown hair brushed flatly down upon a finely shaped head +and her garments destitute of ruffles or ornamentation. The home which +she directed was a home without playing cards or dancing or smoking or +wine-bibbing or other worldly frivolities, yet the memories of her +presence which Catherine Page has left are not at all austere. Duty was +with her the prime consideration of life, and fundamental morals the +first conceptions which she instilled in her children's growing minds, +yet she had a quiet sense of humour and a real love of fun. + +She had also strong likes and dislikes, and was not especially +hospitable to men and women who fell under her disapproval. A small +North Carolina town, in the years preceding and following the Civil +War, was not a fruitful soil for cultivating an interest in things +intellectual, yet those who remember Walter Page's mother remember her +always with a book in her hand. She would read at her knitting and at +her miscellaneous household duties, which were rather arduous in the +straitened days that followed the war, and the books she read were +always substantial ones. Perhaps because her son Walter was in delicate +health, perhaps because his early tastes and temperament were not unlike +her own, perhaps because he was her oldest surviving child, the fact +remains that, of a family of eight, he was generally regarded as the +child with whom she was especially sympathetic. The picture of mother +and son in those early days is an altogether charming one. Page's mother +was only twenty-four when he was born; she retained her youth for many +years after that event, and during his early childhood, in appearance +and manner, she was little more than a girl. When Walter was a small +boy, he and his mother used to take long walks in the woods, sometimes +spending the entire day, fishing along the brooks, hunting wild flowers, +now and then pausing while the mother read pages of Dickens or of Scott. +These experiences Page never forgot. Nearly all his letters to his +mother--to whom, even in his busiest days in New York, he wrote +constantly--have been accidentally destroyed, but a few scraps indicate +the close spiritual bond that existed between the two. Always he seemed +to think of his mother as young. Through his entire life, in whatever +part of the world he might be, and however important was the work in +which he might be engaged, Page never failed to write her a long and +affectionate letter at Christmas. + +"Well, I've gossiped a night or two"--such is the conclusion of his +Christmas letter of 1893, when Page was thirty-eight, with a growing +family of his own--"till I've filled the paper--all such little news and +less nonsense as most gossip and most letters are made of. But it is for +you to read between the lines. That's where the love lies, dear mother. +I wish you were here Christmas; we should welcome you as nobody else in +the world can be welcomed. But wherever you are and though all the rest +have the joy of seeing you, which is denied to me, never a Christmas +comes but I feel as near you as I did years and years ago when we were +young. (In those years _big_ fish bit in old Wiley Bancom's pond by the +railroad: they must have been two inches long!)--I would give a year's +growth to have the pleasure of having you here. You may be sure that +every one of my children along with me will look with an added reverence +toward the picture on the wall that greets me every morning, when we +have our little Christmas frolics--the picture that little Katharine +points to and says 'That's my grandmudder.'--The years, as they come, +every one, deepen my gratitude to you, as I better and better understand +the significance of life and every one adds to an affection that was +never small. God bless you. + + "WALTER." + + * * * * * + +Such were the father and mother of Walter Hines Page; they were married +at Fayetteville, North Carolina, July 5, 1849; two children who preceded +Walter died in infancy. The latter was born at Cary, August 15, 1855. +Cary was a small village which Frank Page had created; in honour of the +founder it was for several years known as Page's Station; the father +himself changed the name to Cary, as a tribute to a temperance orator +who caused something of a commotion in the neighbourhood in the early +seventies. Cary was not then much of a town and has not since become +one; but it was placed amid the scene of important historical events. +Page's home was almost the last stopping place of Sherman's army on its +march through Georgia and the Carolinas, and the Confederacy came to an +end, with Johnston's surrender of the last Confederate Army, at Durham, +only fifteen miles from Page's home. Walter, a boy of ten, his brother +Robert, aged six, and the negro "companion" Tance--who figures as Sam in +the extract quoted above--stood at the second-story window and watched +Sherman's soldiers pass their house, in hot pursuit of General "Joe" +Wheeler's cavalry. The thing that most astonished the children was the +vast size of the army, which took all day to file by their home. They +had never realized that either of the fighting forces could embrace such +great numbers of men. Nor did the behaviour of the invading troops +especially endear them to their unwilling hosts. Part of the cavalry +encamped in the Page yard; their horses ate the bark off the mimosa +trees; an army corps built its campfires under the great oaks, and cut +their emblems on the trunks; the officers took possession of the house, +a colonel making his headquarters in the parlour. Several looting +cavalrymen ran their swords through the beds, probably looking for +hidden silver; the hearth was torn up in the same feverish quest; angry +at their failure, they emptied sacks of flour and scattered their +contents in the bedrooms and on the stairs; for days the flour, +intermingled with feathers from the bayonetted beds, formed a carpet all +over the house. It is therefore perhaps not strange that the feelings +which Walter entertained for Sherman's "bummers," despite his father's +Whig principles, were those of most Southern communities. One day a +kindly Northern soldier, sympathizing with the boy because of the small +rations left for the local population, invited him to join the +officers' mess at dinner. Walter drew proudly back. + +"I'll starve before I'll eat with the Yankees," he said. + + * * * * * + +"I slept that night on a trundle bed by my mother's," Page wrote years +afterward, describing these early scenes, "for her room was the only +room left for the family, and we had all lived there since the day +before. The dining room and the kitchen were now superfluous, because +there was nothing more to cook or to eat. . . . A week or more after the +army corps had gone, I drove with my father to the capital one day, and +almost every mile of the journey we saw a blue coat or a gray coat lying +by the road, with bones or hair protruding--the unburied and the +forgotten of either army. Thus I had come to know what war was, and +death by violence was among the first deep impressions made on my mind. +My emotions must have been violently dealt with and my sensibilities +blunted--or sharpened? Who shall say? The wounded and the starved +straggled home from hospitals and from prisons. There was old Mr. +Sanford, the shoemaker, come back again, with a body so thin and a step +so uncertain that I expected to see him fall to pieces. Mr. Larkin and +Joe Tatum went on crutches; and I saw a man at the post-office one day +whose cheek and ear had been torn away by a shell. Even when Sam and I +sat on the river-bank fishing, and ought to have been silent lest the +fish swim away, we told over in low tones the stories that we had heard +of wounds and of deaths and of battles. + +"But there was the cheerful gentleness of my mother to draw my thoughts +to different things. I can even now recall many special little plans +that she made to keep my mind from battles. She hid the military cap +that I had worn. She bought from me my military buttons and put them +away. She would call me in and tell me pleasant stories of her own +childhood. She would put down her work to make puzzles with me, and she +read gentle books to me and kept away from me all the stories of the war +and of death that she could. Whatever hardships befell her (and they +must have been many) she kept a tender manner of resignation and of +cheerful patience. + +"After a while the neighbourhood came to life again. There were more +widows, more sonless mothers, more empty sleeves and wooden legs than +anybody there had ever seen before. But the mimosa bloomed, the cotton +was planted again, and the peach trees blossomed; and the barnyard and +the stable again became full of life. For, when the army marched away, +they, too, were as silent as an old battlefield. The last hen had been +caught under the corn-crib by a 'Yankee' soldier, who had torn his coat +in this brave raid. Aunt Maria told Sam that all Yankees were chicken +thieves whether they 'brung freedom or no.' + +"Every year the cotton bloomed and ripened and opened white to the sun; +for the ripening of the cotton and the running of the river and the +turning of the mills make the thread not of my story only but of the +story of our Southern land--of its institutions, of its misfortunes and +of its place in the economy of the world; and they will make the main +threads of its story, I am sure, so long as the sun shines on our white +fields and the rivers run--a story that is now rushing swiftly into a +happier narrative of a broader day. The same women who had guided the +spindles in war-time were again at their tasks--they at least were left; +but the machinery was now old and worked ill. Negro men, who had +wandered a while looking for an invisible 'freedom,' came back and went +to work on the farm from force of habit. They now received wages and +bought their own food. That was the only apparent difference that +freedom had brought them. + +"My Aunt Katharine came from the city for a visit, my Cousin Margaret +with her. Through the orchard, out into the newly ploughed ground +beyond, back over the lawn which was itself bravely repairing the hurt +done by horses' hoofs and tent-poles, and under the oaks, which bore the +scars of camp-fires, we two romped and played gentler games than camp +and battle. One afternoon, as our mothers sat on the piazza and saw us +come loaded with apple-blossoms, they said something (so I afterward +learned) about the eternal blooming of childhood and of Nature--how +sweet the early summer was in spite of the harrying of the land by war; +for our gorgeous pageant of the seasons came on as if the earth had been +the home of unbroken peace[3]." + + +II + +And so it was a tragic world into which this boy Page had been born. He +was ten years old when the Civil War came to an end, and his early life +was therefore cast in a desolate country. Like all of his neighbours, +Frank Page had been ruined by the war. Both the Southern and Northern +armies had passed over the Page territory; compared with the military +depredations with which Page became familiar in the last years of his +life, the Federal troops did not particularly misbehave, the attacks on +hen roosts and the destruction of feather beds representing the extreme +of their "atrocities"; but no country can entertain two great fighting +forces without feeling the effects for a prolonged period. Life in this +part of North Carolina again became reduced to its fundamentals. The +old homesteads and the Negro huts were still left standing, and their +interiors were for the most part unharmed, but nearly everything else +had disappeared. Horses, cattle, hogs, livestock of all kinds had +vanished before the advancing hosts of hungry soldiers; and there was +one thing which was even more a rarity than these. That was money. +Confederate veterans went around in their faded gray uniforms, not only +because they loved them, but because they did not have the wherewithal +to buy new wardrobes. Judges, planters, and other dignified members of +the community became hack drivers from the necessity of picking up a few +small coins. Page's father was more fortunate than the rest, for he had +one asset with which to accumulate a little liquid capital; he possessed +a fine peach orchard, which was particularly productive in the summer of +1865, and the Northern soldiers, who drew their pay in money that had +real value, developed a weakness for the fruit. Walter Page, a boy of +ten, used to take his peaches to Raleigh, and sell them to the +"invader"; although he still disdained having companionable relations +with the enemy, he was not above meeting them on a business footing; and +the greenbacks and silver coin obtained in this way laid a new basis for +the family fortunes. + +Despite this happy windfall, life for the next few years proved an +arduous affair. The horrors of reconstruction which followed the war +were more agonizing than the war itself. Page's keenest enthusiasm in +after life was democracy, in its several manifestations; but the form in +which democracy first unrolled before his astonished eyes was a phase +that could hardly inspire much enthusiasm. Misguided sentimentalists and +more malicious politicians in the North had suddenly endowed the Negro +with the ballot. In practically all Southern States that meant +government by Negroes--or what was even worse, government by a +combination of Negroes and the most vicious white elements, including +that which was native to the soil and that which had imported itself +from the North for this particular purpose. Thus the political +vocabulary of Page's formative years consisted chiefly of such words as +"scalawag," "carpet bagger," "regulator," "Union League," "Ku Klux +Klan," and the like. The resulting confusion, political, social, and +economic, did not completely amount to the destruction of a +civilization, for underneath it all the old sleepy ante-bellum South +still maintained its existence almost unchanged. The two most +conspicuous and contrasting figures were the Confederate veteran walking +around in a sleeveless coat and the sharp-featured New England school +mar'm, armed with that spelling book which was overnight to change the +African from a genial barbarian into an intelligent and conscientious +social unit; but more persistent than these forces was that old dreamy, +"unprogressive" Southland--the same country that Page himself described +in an article on "An Old Southern Borough" which, as a young man, he +contributed to the _Atlantic Monthly_. It was still the country where +the "old-fashioned gentleman" was the controlling social influence, +where a knowledge of Latin and Greek still made its possessor a person +of consideration, where Emerson was a "Yankee philosopher" and therefore +not important, where Shakespeare and Milton were looked upon almost as +contemporary authors, where the Church and politics and the matrimonial +history of friends and relatives formed the staple of conversation, and +where a strong prejudice still existed against anything that resembled +popular education. In the absence of more substantial employment, stump +speaking, especially eloquent in praise of the South and its +achievements in war, had become the leading industry. + +"Wat" Page--he is still known by this name in his old home--was a tall, +rangy, curly-headed boy, with brown hair and brown eyes, fond of fishing +and hunting, not especially robust, but conspicuously alert and vital. +Such of his old playmates as survive recall chiefly his keenness of +observation, his contagious laughter, his devotion to reading and to +talk. He was also given to taking long walks in the woods, frequently +with the solitary companionship of a book. Indeed, his extremely +efficient family regarded him as a dreamer and were not entirely clear +as to what purpose he was destined to serve in a community which, above +all, demanded practical men. Such elementary schools as North Carolina +possessed had vanished in the war; the prevailing custom was for the +better-conditioned families to join forces and engage a teacher for +their assembled children. It was in such a primary school in Cary that +Page learned the elementary branches, though his mother herself taught +him to read and write. The boy showed such aptitude in his studies that +his mother began to hope, though in no aggressive fashion, that he might +some day become a Methodist clergyman; she had given him his middle +name, "Hines," in honour of her favourite preacher--a kinsman. At the +age of twelve Page was transferred to the Bingham School, then located +at Mcbane. This was the Eton of North Carolina, from both a social and +an educational standpoint. It was a military school; the boys all +dressed in gray uniforms built on the plan of the Confederate army; the +hero constantly paraded before their imaginations was Robert E. Lee; +discipline was rigidly military; more important, a high standard of +honour was insisted upon. There was one thing a boy could not do at +Bingham and remain in the school; that was to cheat in class-rooms or at +examinations. For this offence no second chance was given. "I cannot +argue the subject," Page quotes Colonel Bingham saying to the distracted +parent whose son had been dismissed on this charge, and who was begging +for his reinstatement. "In fact, I have no power to reinstate your boy. +I could not keep the honour of the school--I could not even keep the +boys, if he were to return. They would appeal to their parents and most +of them would be called home. They are the flower of the South, Sir!" +And the social standards that controlled the thinking of the South for +so many years after the war were strongly entrenched. "The son of a +Confederate general," Page writes, "if he were at all a decent fellow, +had, of course, a higher social rank at the Bingham School than the son +of a colonel. There was some difficulty in deciding the exact rank of a +judge or a governor, as a father; but the son of a preacher had a fair +chance of a good social rating, especially of an Episcopalian clergyman. +A Presbyterian preacher came next in rank. I at first was at a social +disadvantage. My father had been a Methodist--that was bad enough; but +he had had no military title at all. If it had become known among the +boys that he had been a 'Union man'--I used to shudder at the suspicion +in which I should be held. And the fact that my father had held no +military title did at last become known!" + +A single episode discloses that Page maintained his respect for the +Bingham School to the end. In March, 1918, as American Ambassador, he +went up to Harrow and gave an informal talk to the boys on the United +States. His hosts were so pleased that two prizes were established to +commemorate his visit. One was for an essay by Harrow boys on the +subject: "The Drawing Together of America and Great Britain by Common +Devotion to a Great Cause." A similar prize on the same subject was +offered to the boys of some American school, and Page was asked to +select the recipient. He promptly named his old Bingham School in North +Carolina. + +It was at Bingham that Page gained his first knowledge of Greek, Latin, +and mathematics, and he was an outstanding student in all three +subjects. He had no particular liking for mathematics, but he could +never understand why any one should find this branch of learning +difficult; he mastered it with the utmost ease and always stood high. In +two or three years he had absorbed everything that Bingham could offer +and was ready for the next step. But political conditions in North +Carolina now had their influence upon Page's educational plans. Under +ordinary conditions he would have entered the State University at Chapel +Hill; it had been a great headquarters in ante-bellum days for the +prosperous families of the South. But by the time that Page was ready to +go to college the University had fallen upon evil days. The forces which +then ruled the state, acting in accordance with the new principles of +racial equality, had opened the doors of this, one of the most +aristocratic of Southern institutions, to Negroes. The consequences may +be easily imagined. The newly enfranchised blacks showed no inclination +for the groves of Academe, and not a single representative of the race +applied for matriculation. The outraged white population turned its back +upon this new type of coeducation; in the autumn of 1872 not a solitary +white boy made his appearance. The old university therefore closed its +doors for lack of students and for the next few years it became a +pitiable victim to the worst vices of the reconstruction era. +Politicians were awarded the presidency and the professorships as +political pap, and the resources of the place, in money and books, were +scattered to the wind. Page had therefore to find his education +elsewhere. The deep religious feelings of his family quickly settled +this point. The young man promptly betook himself to the backwoods of +North Carolina and knocked at the doors of Trinity College, a Methodist +Institution then located in Randolph County. Trinity has since changed +its abiding place to Durham and has been transformed into one of the +largest and most successful colleges of the new South; but in those days +a famous Methodist divine and journalist described it as "a college with +a few buildings that look like tobacco barns and a few teachers that +look as though they ought to be worming tobacco." Page spent something +more than a year at Trinity, entering in the autumn of 1871, and leaving +in December, 1872. A few letters, written from this place, are scarcely +more complimentary than the judgment passed above. They show that the +young man was very unhappy. One long letter to his mother is nothing but +a boyish diatribe against the place. "I do not care a horse apple for +Trinity's distinction," he writes, and then he gives the reasons for +this juvenile contempt. His first report, he says, will soon reach home; +he warns his mother that it will be unfavourable, and he explains that +this bad showing is the result of a deliberate plot. The boys who obtain +high marks, Page declares, secure them usually by cheating or through +the partisanship of the professors; a high grade therefore really means +that the recipient is either a humbug or a bootlicker. Page had +therefore attempted to keep his reputation unsullied by aiming at a low +academic record! The report on that three months' work, which still +survives, discloses that Page's conspiracy against himself did not +succeed, for his marks are all high. "Be sure to send him back" is the +annotation on this document, indicating that Page had made a better +impression on Trinity than Trinity had made on Page. + +But the rebellious young man did not return. After Christmas, 1872, his +schoolboy letters reveal him at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va. +Here again the atmosphere is Methodistical, but of a somewhat more +genial type. "It was at Ashland that I first began to unfold," said Page +afterward. "Dear old Ashland!" Dr. Duncan, the President, was a +clergyman whose pulpit oratory is still a tradition in the South, but, +in addition to his religious exaltation, he was an exceedingly lovable, +companionable, and stimulating human being. Certainly there was no lack +of the religious impulse. "We have a preacher president," Page writes +his mother, "a preacher secretary, a preacher chaplain, and a dozen +preacher students and three or more preachers are living here and +twenty-five or thirty yet-to-be preachers in college!" In this latter +class Page evidently places himself; at least he gravely writes his +mother--he was now eighteen--that he had definitely made up his mind to +enter the Methodist ministry. He had a close friend--Wilbur Fisk +Tillett--who cherished similar ambitions, and Page one day surprised +Tillett by suggesting that, at the approaching Methodist Conference, +they apply for licensing as "local preachers" for the next summer. His +friend dissuaded him, however, and henceforth Page concentrated on more +worldly studies. In many ways he was the life of the undergraduate body. +His desire for an immediate theological campaign was merely that passion +for doing things and for self-expression which were always conspicuous +traits. His intense ambition as a boy is still remembered in this sleepy +little village. He read every book in the sparse college library; he +talked to his college mates and his professors on every imaginable +subject; he led his associates in the miniature parliament--the Franklin +Debating Society--to which he belonged; he wrote prose and verse at an +astonishing rate; he explored the country for miles around, making +frequent pilgrimages to the birthplace of Henry Clay, which is the chief +historical glory of Ashland, and to that Hanover Court House which was +the scene of the oratorical triumph of Patrick Henry; he flirted with +the pretty girls in the village, and even had two half-serious love +affairs in rapid succession; he slept upon a hard mattress at night and +imbibed more than the usual allotment of Greek, Latin, and mathematics +in the daytime. One year he captured the Greek prize and the next the +Sutherlin medal for oratory. With a fellow classicist he entered into a +solemn compact to hold all their conversation, even on the most trivial +topics, in Latin, with heavy penalties for careless lapses into English. +Probably the linguistic result would have astonished Quintilian, but the +experiment at least had a certain influence in improving the young man's +Latinity. Another favourite dissipation was that of translating English +masterpieces into the ancient tongue; there still survives among Page's +early papers a copy of Bryant's "Waterfowl" done into Latin iambics. As +to Page's personal appearance, a designation coined by a fellow student +who afterward became a famous editor gives the suggestion of a portrait. +He called him one of the "seven slabs" of the college. And, as always, +the adjectives which his contemporaries chiefly use in describing Page +are "alert" and "positive." + +[Illustration: Allison Francis Page (1824-1899), father of Walter H. +Page] + +[Illustration: Catherine Raboteau Page (1831-1897), mother of Walter H. +Page] + +But Randolph-Macon did one great thing for Page. Like many small +struggling Southern, colleges it managed to assemble several instructors +of real mental distinction. And at the time of Page's undergraduate life +it possessed at least one great teacher. This was Thomas R. Price, +afterward Professor of Greek at the University of Virginia and Professor +of English at Columbia University in New York. Professor Price took one +forward step that has given him a permanent fame in the history of +Southern education. He found that the greatest stumbling block to +teaching Greek was not the conditional mood, but the fact that his +hopeful charges were not sufficiently familiar with their mother tongue. +The prayer that was always on Price's lips, and the one with which he +made his boys most familiar, was that of a wise old Greek: "O Great +Apollo, send down the reviving rain upon our fields; preserve our +flocks; ward off our enemies; and--build up our speech!" "It is +irrational," he said, "absurd, almost criminal, to expect a young man, +whose knowledge of English words and construction is scant and inexact, +to put into English a difficult thought of Plato or an involved period +of Cicero." Above all, it will be observed, Price's intellectual +enthusiasm was the ancient tongue. A present-day argument for learning +Greek and Latin is that thereby we improve our English; but Thomas H. +Price advocated the teaching of English so that we might better +understand the dead languages. To-day every great American educational +institution has vast resources for teaching English literature; even in +1876, most American universities had their professors of English; but +Price insisted on placing English on exactly the same footing as Greek +and Latin. He himself became head of the new English school at +Randolph-Macon; and Page himself at once became the favourite pupil. +This distinguished scholar--a fine figure with an imperial beard that +suggested the Confederate officer--used to have Page to tea at least +twice a week and at these meetings the young man was first introduced in +an understanding way to Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and +the other writers who became the literary passions of his maturer life. +And Price did even more for Page; he passed him on to another place and +to another teacher who extended his horizon. Up to the autumn of 1876 +Page had never gone farther North than Ashland; he was still a Southern +boy, speaking with the Southern drawl, living exclusively the thoughts +and even the prejudices of the South. His family's broad-minded attitude +had prevented him from acquiring a too restricted view of certain +problems that were then vexing both sections of the country; however, +his outlook was still a limited one, as his youthful correspondence +shows. But in October of the centennial year a great prospect opened +before him. + + +III + +Two or three years previously an eccentric merchant named Johns Hopkins +had died, leaving the larger part of his fortune to found a college or +university in Baltimore. Johns Hopkins was not an educated man himself +and his conception of a new college did not extend beyond creating +something in the nature of a Yale or Harvard in Maryland. By a lucky +chance, however, a Yale graduate who was then the President of the +University of California, Daniel Coit Gilman, was invited to come to +Baltimore and discuss with the trustees his availability for the +headship of the new institution. Dr. Gilman promptly informed his +prospective employers that he would have no interest in associating +himself with a new American college built upon the lines of those which +then existed. Such a foundation would merely be a duplication of work +already well done elsewhere and therefore a waste of money and effort. +He proposed that this large endowment should be used, not for the +erection of expensive architecture, but primarily for seeking out, in +all parts of the world, the best professorial brains in certain approved +branches of learning. In the same spirit he suggested that a similarly +selective process be adopted in the choice of students: that only those +American boys who had displayed exceptional promise should be admitted +and that part of the university funds should be used to pay the expenses +of twenty young men who, in undergraduate work at other colleges, stood +head and shoulders above their contemporaries. The bringing together of +these two sets of brains for graduate study would constitute the new +university. A few rooms in the nearest dwelling house would suffice for +headquarters. Dr. Gilman's scheme was approved; he became President on +these terms; he gathered his faculty not only in the United States but +in England, and he collected his first body of students, especially his +first twenty fellows, with the same minute care. + +It seems almost a miracle that an inexperienced youth in a little +Methodist college in Virginia should have been chosen as one of these +first twenty fellows, and it is a sufficient tribute to the impression +that Page must have made upon all who met him that he should have won +this great academic distinction. He was only twenty-one at the time--the +youngest of a group nearly every member of which became distinguished in +after life. He won a Fellowship in Greek. This in itself was a great +good fortune; even greater was the fact that his new life brought him +into immediate contact with a scholar of great genius and lovableness. +Someone has said that America has produced four scholars of the very +first rank--Agassiz in natural science, Whitney in philology, Willard +Gibbs in physics, and Gildersleeve in Greek. It was the last of these +who now took Walter Page in charge. The atmosphere of Johns Hopkins was +quite different from anything which the young man had previously known. +The university gave a great shock to that part of the American community +with which Page had spent his life by beginning its first session in +October, 1876, without an opening prayer. Instead Thomas H. Huxley was +invited from England to deliver a scientific address--an address which +now has an honoured place in his collected works. The absence of prayer +and the presence of so audacious a Darwinian as Huxley caused a +tremendous excitement in the public prints, the religious press, and the +evangelical pulpit. In the minds of Gilman and his abettors, however, +all this was intended to emphasize the fact that Johns Hopkins was a +real university, in which the unbiased truth was to be the only aim. And +certainly this was the spirit of the institution. "Gentlemen, you must +light your own torch," was the admonition of President Gilman, in his +welcoming address to his twenty fellows; intellectual independence, +freedom from the trammels of tradition, were thus to be the directing +ideas. One of Page's associates was Josiah Royce, who afterward had a +distinguished career in philosophy at Harvard. "The beginnings of Johns +Hopkins," he afterward wrote, "was a dawn wherein it was bliss to be +alive. The air was full of noteworthy work done by the older men of the +place and of hopes that one might find a way to get a little working +power one's self. One longed to be a doer of the word, not a hearer +only, a creator of his own infinitesimal fraction of the product, bound +in God's name to produce when the time came." + +A choice group of five aspiring Grecians, of whom Page was one, +periodically gathered around a long pine table in a second-story room of +an old dwelling house on Howard Street, with Professor Gildersleeve at +the head. The process of teaching was thus the intimate contact of mind +with mind. Here in the course of nearly two years' residence, Page was +led by Professor Gildersleeve into the closest communion with the great +minds of the ancient world and gained that intimate knowledge of their +written word which was the basis of his mental equipment. "Professor +Gildersleeve, splendid scholar that he is!" he wrote to a friend in +North Carolina. "He makes me grow wonderfully. When I have a chance to +enjoy Æschylus as I have now, I go to work on those immortal pieces with +a pleasure that swallows up everything." To the extent that Gildersleeve +opened up the literary treasures of the past--and no man had a greater +appreciation of his favourite authors than this fine humanist--Page's +life was one of unalloyed delight. But there was another side to the +picture. This little company of scholars was composed of men who aspired +to no ordinary knowledge of Greek; they expected to devote their entire +lives to the subject, to edit Greek texts, and to hold Greek chairs at +the leading American universities. Such, indeed, has been the career of +nearly all members of the group. The Greek tragedies were therefore read +for other things than their stylistic and dramatic values. The sons of +Germania then exercised a profound influence on American education; +Professor Gildersleeve himself was a graduate of Göttingen, and the +necessity of "settling hoti's business" was strong in his seminar. +Gildersleeve was a writer of English who developed real style; as a +Greek scholar, his fame rests chiefly upon his work in the field of +historical syntax. He assumed that his students could read Greek as +easily as they could read French, and the really important tasks he set +them had to do with the most abstruse fields of philology. For work of +this kind Page had little interest and less inclination. When Professor +Gildersleeve would assign him the adverb [Greek: prin], and direct him +to study the peculiarities of its use from Homer down to the Byzantine +writers, he really found himself in pretty deep waters. Was it +conceivable that a man could spend a lifetime in an occupation of this +kind? By pursuing such studies Gildersleeve and his most advanced pupils +uncovered many new facts about the language and even found hitherto +unsuspected beauties; but Page's letters show that this sort of effort +was extremely uncongenial. He fulminates against the "grammarians" and +begins to think that perhaps, after all, a career of erudite scholarship +is not the ideal existence. "Learn to look on me as a Greek drudge," he +writes, "somewhere pounding into men and boys a faint hint of the beauty +of old Greekdom. That's most probably what I shall come to before many +years. I am sure that I have mistaken my lifework, if I consider Greek +my lifework. In truth at times I am tempted to throw the whole thing +away. . . . But without a home feeling in Greek literature no man can lay +claim to high culture." So he would keep at it for three or four years +and "then leave it as a man's work." Despite these despairing words Page +acquired a living knowledge of Greek that was one of his choicest +possessions through life. That he made a greater success than his +self-depreciation would imply is evident from the fact that his +Fellowship was renewed for the next year. + +But the truth is that the world was tugging at Page more insistently +than the cloister. "Speaking grammatically," writes Prof. E.G. Sihler, +one of Page's fellow students of that time, in his "Confessions and +Convictions of a Classicist," "Page was interested in that one of the +main tenses which we call the Present." In his after life, amid all the +excitements of journalism, Page could take a brief vacation and spend +it with Ulysses by the sea; but actuality and human activity charmed him +even more than did the heroes of the ancient world. He went somewhat +into Baltimore society, but not extensively; he joined a club whose +membership comprised the leading intellectual men of the town; probably +his most congenial associations, however, came of the Saturday night +meetings of the fellows in Hopkins Hall, where, over pipes and steins of +beer, they passed in review all the questions of the day. Page was still +the Southern boy, with the strange notions about the North and Northern +people which were the inheritance of many years' misunderstandings. He +writes of one fellow student to whom he had taken a liking. "He is that +rare thing," he says, "a Yankee Christian gentleman." He particularly +dislikes one of his instructors, but, as he explains, he is "a native of +Connecticut, and Connecticut, I suppose, is capable of producing any +unholy human phenomenon." Speaking of a beautiful and well mannered +Greek girl whom he had met, he says: "The little creature might be taken +for a Southern girl, but never for a Yankee. She has an easy manner and +even an air of gentility about her that doesn't appear north of Mason +and Dixon's Line. Indeed, however much the Southern race (I say race +intentionally: Yankeedom is the home of another race from us) however +much the Southern race owes its strength to Anglo-Saxon blood, it owes +its beauty and gracefulness to the Southern climate and culture. Who +says that we are not an improvement on the English? An improvement in a +happy combination of mental graces and Saxon force?" This sort of thing +is especially entertaining in the youthful Page, for it is precisely +against this kind of complacency that, as a mature man, he directed his +choicest ridicule. As an editor and writer his energies were devoted to +reconciling North and South, and Johns Hopkins itself had much to do +with opening his eyes. Its young men and its professors were gathered +from all parts of the country; a student, if his mind was awake, learned +more than Greek and mathematics; he learned much about that far-flung +nation known as the United States. + +And Page did not confine his work exclusively to the curriculum. He +writes that he is regularly attending a German Sunday School, not, +however, from religious motives, but from a desire to improve his +colloquial German. "Is this courting the Devil for knowledge?" he asks. +And all this time he was engaging in a delightful correspondence--from +which these quotations are taken--with a young woman in North Carolina, +his cousin. About this time this cousin began spending her summers in +the Page home at Cary; her great interest in books made the two young +people good friends and companions. It was she who first introduced Page +to certain Southern writers, especially Timrod and Sidney Lanier, and, +when Page left for Johns Hopkins, the two entered into a compact for a +systematic reading and study of the English poets. According to this +plan, certain parts of Tennyson or Chaucer would be set aside for a +particular week's reading; then both would write the impressions gained +and the criticisms which they assumed to make, and send the product to +the other. The plan was carried out more faithfully than is usually the +case in such arrangements; a large number of Page's letters survive and +give a complete history of his mental progress. There are lengthy +disquisitions on Wordsworth, Browning, Byron, Shelley, Matthew Arnold, +and the like. These letters also show that Page, as a relaxation from +Greek roots and syntax, was indulging in poetic flights of his own; his +efforts, which he encloses in his letters, are mainly imitations of the +particular poet in whom he was at the moment interested. This +correspondence also takes Page to Germany, in which country he spent the +larger part of the summer of 1877. This choice of the Fatherland as a +place of pilgrimage was probably merely a reflection of the enthusiasm +for German educational methods which then prevailed in the United +States, especially at Johns Hopkins. Page's letters are the usual +traveller's descriptions of unfamiliar customs, museums, libraries, and +the like; so far as enlarging his outlook was concerned the experience +does not seem to have been especially profitable. + +He returned to Baltimore in the autumn of 1877, but only for a few +months. He had pretty definitely abandoned his plan of devoting his life +to Greek scholarship. As a mental stimulus, as a recreation from the +cares of life, his Greek authors would always be a first love, as they +proved to be; but he had abandoned his early ambition of making them his +everyday occupation and means of livelihood. Of course there was only +one career for a man of his leanings, and, more and more, his mind was +turning to journalism. For only one brief period did he again listen to +the temptations of a scholar's existence. The university of his native +state invited him to lecture in the summer school of 1878; he took +Shakespeare for his subject, and made so great a success that there was +some discussion of his settling down permanently at Chapel Hill in the +chair of Greek. Had the offer definitely been made Page would probably +have accepted, but difficulties arose. Page was no longer orthodox in +his religious views; he had long outgrown dogma and could only smile at +the recollection that he had once thought of becoming a clergyman. But a +rationalist at the University of North Carolina in 1878 could hardly be +endured. The offer, therefore, fortunately was not made. Afterward Page +was much criticized for having left his native state at a time when it +especially needed young men of his type. It may therefore be recorded +that, if there were any blame at all, it rested upon North Carolina. He +refers to his disappointment in a letter in February, 1879--a letter +that proved to be a prophecy. "I shall some day buy a home," he says, +"where I was not allowed to work for one, and be laid away in the soil +that I love. I wanted to work for the old state; it had no need for it, +it seems." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: From "The Southerner," Chapter I. The first chapter in this +novel is practically autobiographical, though fictitious names have been +used.] + +[Footnote 2: "The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths." (1902.)] + +[Footnote 3: "The Southerner," Chapter I.] + + + + +CHAPTER II + +JOURNALISM + +I + + +The five years from 1878 to 1883 Page spent in various places, engaged, +for the larger part of the time, in several kinds of journalistic work. +It was his period of struggle and of preparation. Like many American +public men he served a brief apprenticeship--in his case, a very brief +one--as a pedagogue. In the autumn of 1878 he went to Louisville, +Kentucky, and taught English for a year at the Boys' High School. But he +presently found an occupation in this progressive city which proved far +more absorbing. A few months before his arrival certain energetic +spirits had founded a weekly paper, the _Age_, a journal which, they +hoped, would fill the place in the Southern States which the very +successful New York _Nation_, under the editorship of Godkin, was then +occupying in the North. Page at once began contributing leading articles +on literary and political topics to this publication; the work proved so +congenial that he purchased--on notes--a controlling interest in the new +venture and became its directing spirit. The _Age_ was in every way a +worthy enterprise; in the dignity of its make-up and the high literary +standards at which it aimed it imitated the London _Spectator_. Perhaps +Page obtained a thousand dollars' worth of fun out of his investment; if +so, that represented his entire profit. He now learned a lesson which +was emphasized in his after career as editor and publisher, and that was +that the Southern States provided a poor market for books or +periodicals. The net result of the proceeding was that, at the age of +twenty-three, he found himself out of a job and considerably in debt. + +He has himself rapidly sketched his varied activities of the next five +years: + +"After trying in vain," he writes, "to get work to do on any newspaper +in North Carolina, I advertised for a job in journalism--any sort of a +job. By a queer accident--a fortunate one for me--the owner of the St. +Joseph, Missouri, _Gazette_, answered the advertisement. Why he did it, +I never found out. He was in the same sort of desperate need of a +newspaper man as I was in desperate need of a job. I knew nothing about +him: he knew nothing about me. I knew nothing about newspaper work. I +had done nothing since I left the University but teach English in the +Louisville, Kentucky, High School for boys one winter and lecture at the +summer school at Chapel Hill one summer. I made up my mind to go into +journalism. But journalism didn't seem in any hurry to make up its mind +to admit me. Not only did all the papers in North Carolina decline my +requests for work, but such of them in Baltimore and Louisville as I +tried said 'No.' So I borrowed $50 and set out to St. Joe, Missouri, +where I didn't know a human being. I became a reporter. At first I +reported the price of cattle--went to the stockyards, etc. My salary +came near to paying my board and lodging, but it didn't quite do it. But +I had a good time in St. Joe for somewhat more than a year. There were +interesting people there. I came to know something about Western life. +Kansas was across the river. I often went there. I came to know Kansas +City, St. Louis--a good deal of the West. After a while I was made +editor of the paper. What a rousing political campaign or two we had! +Then--I had done that kind of a job as long as I cared to. Every +swashbuckling campaign is like every other one. Why do two? Besides, I +knew my trade. I had done everything on a daily paper from stockyard +reports to political editorials and heavy literary articles. In the +meantime I had written several magazine articles and done other such +jobs. I got leave of absence for a month or two. I wrote to several of +the principal papers in Chicago, New York, and Boston and told them that +I was going down South to make political and social studies and that I +was going to send them my letters. I hoped they'd publish them. + +"That's all I could say. I could make no engagement; they didn't know +me. I didn't even ask for an engagement. I told them simply this: that +I'd write letters and send them; and I prayed heaven that they'd print +them and pay for them. Then off I went with my little money in my +pocket--about enough to get to New Orleans. I travelled and I wrote. I +went all over the South. I sent letters and letters and letters. All the +papers published all that I sent them and I was rolling in wealth! I had +money in my pocket for the first time in my life. Then I went back to +St. Joe and resigned; for the (old) New York _World_ had asked me to go +to the Atlanta Exposition as a correspondent. I went. I wrote and kept +writing. How kind Henry Grady was to me! But at last the Exposition +ended. I was out of a job. I applied to the _Constitution_. No, they +wouldn't have me. I never got a job in my life that I asked for! But all +my life better jobs have been given me than I dared ask for. Well--I was +at the end of my rope in Atlanta and I was trying to make a living in +any honest way I could when one day a telegram came from the New York +_World_ (it was the old _World_, which was one of the best of the +dailies in its literary quality) asking me to come to New York. I had +never seen a man on the paper--had never been in New York except for a +day when I landed there on a return voyage from a European trip that I +took during one vacation when I was in the University. Then I went to +New York straight and quickly. I had an interesting experience on the +old _World_, writing literary matter chiefly, an editorial now and then, +and I was frequently sent as a correspondent on interesting errands. I +travelled all over the country with the Tariff Commission. I spent one +winter in Washington as a sort of editorial correspondent while the +tariff bill was going through Congress. Then, one day, the _World_ was +sold to Mr. Pulitzer and all the staff resigned. The character of the +paper changed." + +What better training could a journalist ask for than this? Page was only +twenty-eight when these five years came to an end; but his life had been +a comprehensive education in human contact, in the course of which he +had picked up many things that were not included in the routine of Johns +Hopkins University. From Athens to St. Joe, from the comedies of +Aristophanes to the stockyards and political conventions of Kansas +City--the transition may possibly have been an abrupt one, but it is not +likely that Page so regarded it. For books and the personal relation +both appealed to him, in almost equal proportions, as essentials to the +fully rounded man. Merely from the standpoint of geography, Page's +achievement had been an important one; how many Americans, at the age of +twenty-eight, have such an extensive mileage to their credit? Page had +spent his childhood--and his childhood only--in North Carolina; he had +passed his youth in Virginia and Maryland; before he was twenty-three he +had lived several months in Germany, and, on his return voyage, he had +sailed by the white cliffs of England, and, from the deck of his +steamer, had caught glimpses of that Isle of Wight which then held his +youthful favourite Tennyson. He had added to these experiences a winter +in Kentucky and a sojourn of nearly two years in Missouri. His Southern +trip, to which Page refers in the above, had taken him through +Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana; he had visited +the West again in 1882, spending a considerable time in all the large +cities, Chicago, Omaha, Denver, Leadville, Salt Lake, and from the +latter point he had travelled extensively through Mormondom. The several +months spent in Atlanta had given the young correspondent a glimpse into +the new South, for this energetic city embodied a Southern spirit that +was several decades removed from the Civil War. After this came nearly +two years in New York and Washington, where Page gained his first +insight into Federal politics; in particular, as a correspondent +attached to the Tariff Commission--an assignment that again started him +on his travels to industrial centres--he came into contact, for the +first time, with the mechanism of framing the great American tariff. And +during this period Page was not only forming a first-hand acquaintance +with the passing scene, but also with important actors in it. The mere +fact that, on the St. Joseph _Gazette_, he succeeded Eugene Field--"a +good fellow named Page is going to take my desk," said the careless +poet, "I hope he will succeed to my debts too"--always remained a +pleasant memory. He entered zealously into the life of this active +community; his love of talk and disputation, his interest in politics, +his hearty laugh, his vigorous handclasp, his animation of body and of +spirit, and his sunny outlook on men and events--these are the traits +that his old friends in this town, some of whom still survive, +associate with the juvenile editor. In his Southern trip Page +called--self-invited--upon Jefferson Davis and was cordially +received. At Atlanta, as he records above, he made friends with that +chivalric champion of a resurrected South, Henry Grady; here also he +obtained fugitive glimpses of a struggling and briefless lawyer, who, +like Page, was interested more in books and writing than in the humdrum +of professional life, and who was then engaged in putting together a +brochure on _Congressional Government_ which immediately gave him a +national standing. The name of this sympathetic acquaintance was Woodrow +Wilson. + +[Illustration: Walter H. Page in 1876, when he was a Fellow of Johns +Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.] + +[Illustration: Basil L. Gildersleeve, Professor of Greek, Johns Hopkins +University, 1876-1915] + +Another important event had taken place, for, at St. Louis, on November +15, 1880, Page had married Miss Willia Alice Wilson. Miss Wilson was the +daughter of a Scotch physician, Dr. William Wilson, who had settled in +Michigan, near Detroit, in 1832. When she was a small child she went +with her sister's family--her father had died seven years before--to +North Carolina, near Cary; and she and Page had been childhood friends +and schoolmates. At the time of the wedding, Page was editor of the St. +Joseph _Gazette_; the fact that he had attained this position, five +months after starting at the bottom, sufficiently discloses his aptitude +for journalistic work. + +Page had now outgrown any Southern particularism with which he may have +started life. He no longer found his country exclusively in the area +south of the Potomac; he had made his own the West, the North--New York, +Chicago, Denver, as well as Atlanta and Raleigh. It is worth while +insisting on this fact, for the cultivation of a wide-sweeping +Americanism and a profound faith in democracy became the qualities that +will loom most largely in his career from this time forward. It is +necessary only to read the newspaper letters which he wrote on his +Southern trip in 1881 to understand how early his mind seized this new +point of view. Many things which now fell under his observant eye in the +Southern States greatly irritated him and with his characteristic +impulsiveness he pictured these traits in pungent phrase. The atmosphere +of shiftlessness that too generally prevailed in some localities; the +gangs of tobacco-chewing loafers assembled around railway stations; the +listless Negroes that seemed to overhang the whole country like a black +cloud; the plantation mansions in a sad state of disrepair; the old +unoccupied slave huts overgrown with weeds; the unpainted and +broken-down fences; the rich soil that was crudely and wastefully +cultivated with a single crop--the youthful social philosopher found +himself comparing these vestigia of a half-moribund civilization with +the vibrant cities of the North, the beautiful white and green villages +of New England, and the fertile prairie farms of the West. "Even the +dogs," he said, "look old-fashioned." Oh, for a change in his beloved +South--a change of almost any kind! "Even a heresy, if it be bright and +fresh, would be a relief. You feel as if you wished to see some kind of +an effort put forth, a discussion, a fight, a runaway, anything to make +the blood go faster." Wherever Page saw signs of a new spirit--and he +saw many--he recorded them with an eagerness which showed his loyalty to +the section of his birth. The splitting up of great plantations into +small farms he put down as one of the indications of a new day. A +growing tendency to educate, not only the white child, but the Negro, +inspired a similar tribute. But he rejoiced most over the decreasing +bitterness of the masses over the memories of the Civil War, and +discovered, with satisfaction, that any remaining ill-feeling was a +heritage left not by the Union soldier, but by the carpetbagger. + +And one scene is worth preserving, for it illustrates not only the zeal +of Page himself for the common country, but the changing attitude of the +Southern people. It was enacted at Martin, Tennessee, on the evening of +July 2, 1881. Page was spending a few hours in the village grocery, +discussing things in general with the local yeomanry, when the telegraph +operator came from the post office with rather more than his usual +expedition and excitement. He was frantically waving a yellow slip which +bore the news that President Garfield had been shot. Garfield had been +an energetic and a successful general in the war and his subsequent +course in Congress, where he had joined the radical Republicans, had not +caused the South to look upon him as a friend. But these farmers +responded to this shock, not like sectionalists, but like Americans. +"Every man of them," Page records, "expressed almost a personal sorrow. +Little was said of politics or of parties. Mr. Garfield was President of +the United States--that was enough. A dozen voices spoke the great +gratification that the assassin was not a Southern man. It was an +affecting scene to see weather-beaten old countrymen so profoundly +agitated--men who yesterday I should have supposed hardly knew and +certainly did not seem to care who was President. The great centres of +population, of politicians, and of thought may be profoundly agitated +to-night, but no more patriotic sorrow and humiliation is felt anywhere +by any men than by these old backwoods ex-Confederates." + +Page himself was so stirred by the news that he ascended a cracker +barrel, and made a speech to the assembled countrymen, preaching to +responsive ears the theme of North and South, now reunited in a common +sorrow. Thus, by the time he was twenty-six, Page, at any rate in +respect to his Americanism, was a full-grown man. + + +II + +A few years afterward Page had an opportunity of discussing this, his +favourite topic, with the American whom he most admired. Perhaps the +finest thing in the career of Grover Cleveland was the influence which +he exerted upon young men. After the sordid political transactions of +the reconstruction period and after the orgy of partisanship which had +followed the Civil War, this new figure, acceding to the Presidency in +1885, came as an inspiration to millions of zealous and intelligent +young college-bred Americans. One of the first to feel the new spell was +Walter Page; Mr. Cleveland was perhaps the most important influence in +forming his public ideals. Of everything that Cleveland +represented--civil service reform; the cleansing of politics, state and +national; the reduction in the tariff; a foreign policy which, without +degenerating into truculence, manfully upheld the rights of American +citizens; a determination to curb the growing pension evil; the doctrine +that the Government was something to be served and not something to be +plundered--Page became an active and brilliant journalistic advocate. It +was therefore a great day in his life when, on a trip to Washington in +the autumn of 1885, he had an hour's private conversation with President +Cleveland, and it was entirely characteristic of Page that he should +make the conversation take the turn of a discussion of the so-called +Southern question. + +"In the White House at Washington," Page wrote about this visit, "is an +honest, plain, strong man, a man of wonderfully broad information and of +most uncommon industry. He has always been a Democrat. He is a +distinguished lawyer and a scholar on all public questions. He is as +frank and patriotic and sincere as any man that ever won the high place +he holds. Within less than a year he has done so well and so wisely that +he has disappointed his enemies and won their admiration. He is as +unselfish as he is great. He is one of the most industrious men in the +world. He rises early and works late and does not waste his time--all +because his time is now not his own but the Republic's, whose most +honoured servant he is. I count it among the most inspiring experiences +in my life that I had the privilege, at the suggestion of one of his +personal friends, of talking with him one morning about the complete +reuniting of the two great sections of our Republic by his election. I +told him, and I know I told him the truth, when I said that every young +man in the Southern States who, without an opportunity to share either +the glory or the defeat of the late Confederacy, had in spite of himself +suffered the disadvantages of the poverty and oppression that followed +war, took new hope for the full and speedy realization of a complete +union, of unparalleled prosperity and of broad thinking and noble living +from his elevation to the Presidency. I told him that the men of North +Carolina were not only patriotic but ambitious as well; and that they +were Democrats and proud citizens of the State and the Republic not +because they wanted offices or favours, but because they loved freedom +and wished the land that had been impoverished by war to regain more +than it had lost. 'I have not called, Mr. President, to ask for an +office for myself or for anybody else,' I remarked; 'but to have the +pleasure of expressing my gratification, as a citizen of North Carolina, +at the complete change in political methods and morals that I believe +will date from your Administration.' He answered that he was glad to +see all men who came in such a spirit and did not come to +beg--especially young men of the South of to-day; and he talked and +encouraged me to talk freely as if he had been as small a man as I am, +or I as great a man as he is. + +"From that day to this it has been my business to watch every public act +that he does, to read every public word he speaks, and it has been a +pleasure and a benefit to me (like the benefit that a man gets from +reading a great history--for he is making a great history) to study the +progress of his Administration; and at every step he seems to me to +warrant the trust that the great Democratic party put in him." + +The period to which Page refers in this letter represented the time when +he was making a serious and harassing attempt to establish himself in +his chosen profession in his native state. He went south for a short +visit after resigning his place on the New York _World_, and several +admirers in Raleigh persuaded him to found a new paper, which should +devote itself to preaching the Cleveland ideals, and, above all, to +exerting an influence on the development of a new Southern spirit. No +task could have been more grateful to Page and there was no place in +which he would have better liked to undertake it than in the old state +which he loved so well. The result was the _State Chronicle_ of Raleigh, +practically a new paper, which for a year and a half proved to be the +most unconventional and refreshing influence that North Carolina had +known in many a year. Necessarily Page found himself in conflict with +his environment. He had little interest in the things that then chiefly +interested the state, and North Carolina apparently had little interest +in the things that chiefly occupied the mind of the youthful journalist. +Page was interested in Cleveland, in the reform of the civil service; +the Democrats of North Carolina little appreciated their great national +leader and were especially hostile to his belief that service to a party +did not in itself establish a qualification for public office. Page was +interested in uplifting the common people, in helping every farmer to +own his own acres, and in teaching the most modern and scientific way of +cultivating them; he was interested in giving every boy and girl at +least an elementary education, and in giving a university training to +such as had the aptitude and the ambition to obtain it; he believed in +industrial training--and in these things the North Carolina of those +days had little concern. Page even went so far as to take an open stand +for the pitiably neglected black man: he insisted that he should be +taught to read and write, and instructed in agriculture and the manual +trades. A man who advocated such revolutionary things in those days was +accused--and Page was so accused--of attempting to promote the "social +equality" of the two races. Page also declaimed in favour of developing +the state industrially; he called attention to the absurdity of sending +Southern cotton to New England spinning mills, and he pointed out the +boundless but unworked natural resources of the state, in minerals, +forests, waterpower, and lands. + +North Carolina, he informed his astonished compatriots, had once been a +great manufacturing colony; why could the state not become one again? +But the matter in which the buoyant editor and his constituents found +themselves most at variance was the spirit that controlled North +Carolina life. It was a spirit that found comfort for its present +poverty and lack of progress in a backward look at the greatness of the +state in the past and the achievements of its sons in the Civil War. +Though Page believed that the Confederacy had been a ghastly error, and +though he abhorred the institution of slavery and attributed to it all +the woes, economic and social, from which his section suffered, he +rendered that homage to the soldiers of the South which is the due of +brave, self-sacrificing and conscientious men; yet he taught that +progress lay in regarding the four dreadful years of the Civil War as +the closed chapter of an unhappy and mistaken history and in hastening +the day when the South should resume its place as a living part of the +great American democracy. All manifestations of a contrary spirit he +ridiculed in language which was extremely readable but which at times +outraged the good conservative people whom he was attempting to convert. +He did not even spare the one figure which was almost a part of the +Southerner's religion, the Confederate general, especially that +particular type who used his war record as a stepping stone to public +office, and whose oratory, colourful and turgid in its celebrations of +the past, Page regarded as somewhat unrelated, in style and matter, to +the realities of the present. The image-breaking editor even asserted +that the Daughters of the Confederacy were not entirely a helpful +influence in Southern regeneration; for they, too, were harping always +upon the old times and keeping alive sectional antagonisms and hatreds. +This he regarded as an unworthy occupation for high-minded Southern +women, and he said so, sometimes in language that made him very +unpopular in certain circles. + +Altogether it was a piquant period in Page's life. He found that he had +suddenly become a "traitor" to his country and that his experiences in +the North had completely "Yankeeized" him. Even in more mature days, +Page's pen had its javelin-like quality; and in 1884, possessed as he +was of all the fury of youth, he never hesitated to return every blow +that was rained upon his head. As a matter of fact he had a highly +enjoyable time. The _State Chronicle_ during his editorship is one of +the most cherished recollections of older North Carolinians to-day. Even +those who hurled the liveliest epithets in his direction have long since +accepted the ideas for which Page was then contending; "the only trouble +with him," they now ruefully admit, "was that he was forty years ahead +of his time." They recall with satisfaction the satiric accounts which +Page used to publish of Democratic Conventions--solemn, long-winded, +frock-coated, white-neck-tied affairs that displayed little concern for +the reform of the tariff or of the civil service, but an energetic +interest in pensioning Confederate veterans and erecting monuments to +the Southern heroes of the Civil War. One editorial is joyfully +recalled, in which Page referred to a public officer who was +distinguished for his dignity and his family tree, but not noted for any +animated administration of his duties, as "Thothmes II." When this +bewildered functionary searched the Encyclopædia and learned that +"Thothmes II" was an Egyptian king of the XVIIIth dynasty, whose +dessicated mummy had recently been disinterred from the hot sands of the +desert, he naturally stopped his subscription to the paper. The metaphor +apparently tickled Page, for he used it in a series of articles which +have become immortal in the political annals of North Carolina. These +have always been known as the "Mummy letters." They furnished a vivid +but rather aggravating explanation for the existing backwardness and +chauvinism of the commonwealth. All the trouble, it seems, was caused by +the "mummies." "It is an awfully discouraging business," Page wrote, "to +undertake to prove to a mummy that it is a mummy. You go up to it and +say, 'Old fellow, the Egyptian dynasties crumbled several thousand years +ago: you are a fish out of water. You have by accident or the +Providence of God got a long way out of your time. This is America.' The +old thing grins that grin which death set on its solemn features when +the world was young; and your task is so pitiful that even the humour of +it is gone. Give it up." + +Everything great in North Carolina, Page declared, belonged to a +vanished generation. "Our great lawyers, great judges, great editors, +are all of the past. . . . In the general intelligence of the people, in +intellectual force and in cultivation, we are doing nothing. We are not +doing or getting more liberal ideas, a broader view of this world. . . . +The presumptuous powers of ignorance, heredity, decayed respectability +and stagnation that control public action and public expression are +absolutely leading us back intellectually." + +But Page did more than berate the mummified aristocracy which, he +declared, was driving the best talent and initiative from the state; he +was not the only man in Raleigh who expressed these unpopular views; at +that time, indeed, he was the centre and inspiration of a group of young +progressive spirits who held frequent meetings to devise ways of +starting the state on the road to a new existence. Page then, as always, +exercised a great fascination over young men. The apparently merciless +character of his ridicule might at first convey the idea of intolerance; +the fact remains, however, that he was the most tolerant of men; he was +almost deferential to the opinions of others, even the shallow and the +inexperienced; and nothing delighted him more than an animated +discussion. His liveliness of spirits, his mental and physical vitality, +the constant sparkle of his talk, the sharp edge of his humour, +naturally drew the younger men to his side. The result was the +organization of the Wautauga Club, a gathering which held monthly +meetings for the discussion of ways and means of improving social and +educational conditions in North Carolina. The very name gives the key to +its mental outlook. The Wautauga colony was one of the last founded in +North Carolina--in the extreme west, on a plateau of the Great Smoky +Mountains; it was always famous for the energy and independence of its +people. The word "Wautauga" therefore suggested the breaker of +tradition; and it provided a stimulating name for Page's group of young +spiritual and economic pathfinders. The Wautauga Club had a brief +existence of a little more than two years, the period practically +covering Page's residence in the state; but its influence is an +important fact at the present time. It gave the state ideas that +afterward caused something like a revolution in its economic and +educational status. The noblest monument to its labours is the State +College in Raleigh, an institution which now has more than a thousand +students, for the most part studying the mechanic arts and scientific +agriculture. To this one college most North Carolinians to-day attribute +the fact that their state in appreciable measure is realizing its great +economic and industrial opportunities. From it in the last thirty years +thousands of young men have gone: in all sections of the commonwealth +they have caused the almost barren acres to yield fertile and +diversified crops; they have planted everywhere new industries; they +have unfolded unsuspected resources and everywhere created wealth and +spread enlightenment. This institution is a direct outcome of Page's +brief sojourn in his native state nearly forty years ago. The idea +originated in his brain; the files of the _State Chronicle_ tell the +story of his struggle in its behalf; the activities of the Wautauga Club +were largely concentrated upon securing its establishment. + +The State College was a great victory for Page, but final success did +not come until three years after he had left the state. For a year and a +half of hard newspaper work convinced Page that North Carolina really +had no permanent place for him. The _Chronicle_ was editorially a +success: Page's articles were widely quoted, not only in his own state +but in New England and other parts of the Union. He succeeded in +stirring up North Carolina and the South generally, but popular support +for the _Chronicle_ was not forthcoming in sufficient amount to make the +paper a commercial possibility. Reluctantly and sadly Page had to forego +his hope of playing an active part in rescuing his state from the +disasters of the Civil War. Late in the summer of 1885, he again left +for the North, which now became his permanent home. + + +III + +And with this second sojourn in New York Page's opportunity came. The +first two years he spent in newspaper work, for the most part with the +_Evening Post_, but, one day in November, 1887, a man whom he had never +seen came into his office and unfolded a new opportunity. Two years +before a rather miscellaneous group had launched an ambitious literary +undertaking. This was a monthly periodical, which, it was hoped, would +do for the United States what such publications as the _Fortnightly_ and +the _Contemporary_ were doing for England. The magazine was to have the +highest literary quality and to be sufficiently dignified to attract the +finest minds in America as contributors; its purpose was to exercise a +profound influence in politics, literature, science, and art. The +projectors had selected for this publication a title that was almost +perfection--the _Forum_--but which, after nearly two years' +experimentation, represented about the limit of their achievement. The +_Forum_ had hardly made an impression on public thought and had +attracted very few readers, although it had lost large sums of money for +its progenitors. These public-spirited gentlemen now turned to Page as +the man who might rescue them from their dilemma and achieve their +purpose. He accepted the engagement, first as manager and presently as +editor, and remained the guiding spirit of the _Forum_ for eight years, +until the summer of 1895. + +That the success of a publication is the success of its editors, and not +of its business managers and its "backers," is a truth that ought to be +generally apparent; never has this fact been so eloquently illustrated +as in the case of the _Forum_ under Page. Before his accession it had +had not the slightest importance; for the period of his editorship it is +doubtful if any review published in English exercised so great an +influence, and certainly none ever obtained so large a circulation. From +almost nothing the _Forum_, in two or three years, attracted 30,000 +subscribers--something without precedent for a publication of this +character. It had accomplished this great result simply because of the +vitality and interest of its contents. The period covered was an +important one, in the United States and Europe; it was the time of +Cleveland's second administration in this country, and of Gladstone's +fourth administration in England; it was a time of great controversy and +of a growing interest in science, education, social reform and a better +political order. All these great matters were reflected in the pages of +the _Forum_, whose list of contributors contained the most distinguished +names in all countries. Its purpose, as Page explained it, was "to +provoke discussion about subjects of contemporary interest, in which the +magazine is not a partisan, but merely the instrument." In the highest +sense, that is, its purpose was journalistic; practically everything +that it printed was related to the thought and the action of the time. +So insistent was Page on this programme that his pages were not "closed" +until a week before the day of issue. Though the _Forum_ dealt +constantly in controversial subjects it never did so in a narrow-minded +spirit; it was always ready to hear both sides of a question and the +magazine "debate," in which opposing writers handled vigorously the same +theme, was a constant feature. + +Page, indeed, represented a new type of editor. Up to that time this +functionary had been a rather solemn, inaccessible high priest; he sat +secluded in his sanctuary, and weeded out from the mass of manuscripts +dumped upon his desk the particular selections which seemed to be most +suited to his purpose. To solicit contributions would have seemed an +entirely undignified proceeding; in all cases contributors must come to +him. According to Page, however, "an editor must know men and be out +among men." His system of "making up" the magazine at first somewhat +astounded his associates. A month or two in advance of publication day +he would draw up his table of contents. This, in its preliminary stage, +amounted to nothing except a list of the main subjects which he aspired +to handle in that number. It was a hope, not a performance. The subjects +were commonly suggested by the happenings of the time--an especially +outrageous lynching, the trial of a clergyman for heresy, a new attack +upon the Monroe Doctrine, the discovery of a new substance such as +radium, the publication of an epoch-making book. Page would then fix +upon the inevitable men who could write most readably and most +authoritatively upon these topics, and "go after" them. Sometimes he +would write one of his matchless editorial letters; at other times he +would make a personal visit; if necessary, he would use any available +friends in a wire-pulling campaign. At all odds he must "get" his man; +once he had fixed upon a certain contributor nothing could divert him +from the chase. Nor did the negotiations cease after he had "landed" his +quarry. He had his way of discussing the subject with his proposed +writer, and he discussed it from every possible point of view. He would +take him to lunch or to dinner; in his quiet way he would draw him out, +find whether he really knew much about the subject, learn the attitude +that he was likely to take, and delicately slip in suggestions of his +own. Not infrequently this preliminary interview would disclose that the +much sought writer, despite appearances, was not the one who was +destined for that particular job; in this case Page would find some way +of shunting him in favour of a more promising candidate. But Page was no +mere chaser of names; there was nothing of the literary tuft-hunter +about his editorial methods. He liked to see such men as Theodore +Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, William Graham Sumner, Charles W. Eliot, +Frederic Harrison, Paul Bourget, and the like upon his title page--and +here these and many other similarly distinguished authors appeared--but +the greatest name could not attain a place there if the letter press +that followed were unworthy. Indeed Page's habit of throwing out the +contributions of the great, after paying a stiff price for them, caused +much perturbation in his counting room. One day he called in one of his +associates. + +"Do you see that waste basket?" he asked, pointing to a large receptacle +filled to overflowing with manuscripts. "All our Cleveland articles are +there!" + +He had gone to great trouble and expense to obtain a series of six +articles from the most prominent publicists and political leaders of +the country on the first year of Mr. Cleveland's second administration. +It was to be the "feature" of the number then in preparation. + +"There isn't one of them," he declared, "who has got the point. I have +thrown them all away and I am going to try to write something myself." + +And he spent a couple of days turning out an article which aroused great +public interest. When Page commissioned an article, he meant simply that +he would pay full price for it; whether he would publish it depended +entirely upon the quality of the material itself. But Page was just as +severe upon his own writings as upon those of other men. He wrote +occasionally--always under a nom-de-plume; but he had great difficulty +in satisfying his own editorial standards. After finishing an article he +would commonly send for one of his friends and read the result. + +"That is superb!" this admiring associate would sometimes say. + +In response Page would take the manuscript and, holding it aloft in two +hands, tear it into several bits, and throw the scraps into the waste +basket. + +"Oh, I can do better than that," he would laugh and in another minute he +was busy rewriting the article, from beginning to end. + +Page retired from the editorship of the _Forum_ in 1895. The severance +of relations was half a comedy, half a tragedy. The proprietors had only +the remotest relation to literature; they had lost much money in the +enterprise before Page became editor and only the fortunate accident of +securing his services had changed their losing venture into a financial +success. In a moment of despair, before the happier period had arrived, +they offered to sell the property to Page and his friends. Page quickly +assembled a new group to purchase control, when, much to the amazement +of the old owners, the _Forum_ began to make money. Instead of having a +burden on their hands, the proprietors suddenly discovered that they had +a gold mine. They therefore refused to deliver their holdings and an +inevitable struggle ensued for control. Page could edit a magazine and +turn a shipwrecked enterprise into a profitable one; but, in a tussle of +this kind, he was no match for the shrewd business men who owned the +property. When the time came for counting noses Page and his friends +found themselves in a minority. Of course his resignation as editor +necessarily followed this little unpleasantness. And just as inevitably +the _Forum_ again began to lose money, and soon sank into an obscurity +from which it has never emerged. + +The _Forum_ had established Page's reputation as an editor, and the +competition for his services was lively. The distinguished Boston +publishing house of Houghton, Mifflin & Company immediately invited him +to become a part of their organization. When Horace E. Scudder, in 1898, +resigned the editorship of the _Atlantic Monthly_, Page succeeded him. +Thus Page became the successor of James Russell Lowell, James T. Fields, +William D. Howells, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich as the head of this famous +periodical. This meant that he had reached the top of his profession. He +was now forty-three years old. + +No American publication had ever had so brilliant a history. Founded in +1857, in the most flourishing period of the New England writers, its +pages had first published many of the best essays of Emerson, the second +series of the Biglow papers as well as many other of Lowell's writings, +poems of Longfellow and Whittier, such great successes as Holmes's +"Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," Mrs. Howe's "Battle Hymn of the +Republic," and the early novels of Henry James. If America had a +literature, the _Atlantic_ was certainly its most successful periodical +exponent. Yet, in a sense, the _Atlantic_, by the time Page succeeded to +the editorship, had become the victim of its dazzling past. Its recent +editors had lived too exclusively in their back numbers. They had +conducted the magazine too much for the restricted audience of Boston +and New England. There was a time, indeed, when the business office +arranged the subscribers in two classes--"Boston" and "foreign"; +"Boston" representing their local adherents, and "foreign" the loyal +readers who lived in the more benighted parts of the United States. One +of its editors had been heard to boast that he never solicited a +contribution; it was not his business to be a literary drummer! Let the +truth be fairly spoken: when Page made his first appearance in the +_Atlantic_ office, the magazine was unquestionably on the decline. Its +literary quality was still high; the momentum that its great +contributors had given it was still keeping the publication alive; +entrance into its columns still represented the ultimate ambition of the +aspiring American writer; but it needed a new spirit to insure its +future. What it required was the kind of editing that had suddenly made +the _Forum_ one of the greatest of English-written reviews. This is the +reason why the canny Yankee proprietors had reached over to New York and +grasped Page as quickly as the capitalists of the _Forum_ let him slip +between their fingers. + +Page's sense of humour discovered a certain ironic aspect in his +position as the dictator of this famous New England magazine. The fact +that his manner was impatiently energetic and somewhat startling to the +placid atmosphere of Park Street was not the thing that really signified +its break with its past. But here was a Southerner firmly entrenched in +a headquarters that had long been sacred to the New England +abolitionists. One of the first sights that greeted Page, as he came +into the office, was the angular and spectacled countenance of William +Lloyd Garrison, gazing down from a steel engraving on the wall. One of +Garrison's sons was a colleague, and the anterooms were frequently +cluttered with dusky gentlemen patiently waiting for interviews with +this benefactor of their race. Page once was careless enough to inform +Mr. Garrison that "one of your niggers" was waiting outside for an +audience. "I very much regret, Mr. Page," came the answer, "that you +should insist on spelling 'Negro' with two 'g's'." Despite the mock +solemnity of this rebuke, perennial good-nature and raillery prevailed +between the son of Garrison and his disrespectful but ever sympathetic +Southern friend. Indeed, one of Page's earliest performances was to +introduce a spirit of laughter and genial coöperation into a rather +solemn and self-satisfied environment. Mr. Mifflin, the head of the +house, even formally thanked Page "for the hearty human way in which you +take hold of life." Mr. Ellery Sedgwick, the present editor of the +_Atlantic_, has described the somewhat disconcerting descent of Page +upon the editorial sanctuary of James Russell Lowell: + + "Were a visitant from another sphere to ask me for the incarnation + of those qualities we love to call American, I should turn to a + familiar gallery of my memory and point to the living portrait that + hangs there of Walter Page. A sort of foursquareness, bluntness, it + seemed to some; an uneasy, often explosive energy; a disposition to + underrate fine drawn nicenesses of all sorts; ingrained Yankee + common sense, checking his vaulting enthusiasm; enormous + self-confidence, impatience of failure--all of these were in him; + and he was besides affectionate to a fault, devoted to his country, + his family, his craft--a strong, bluff, tender man. + + "Those were the decorous days of the old tradition, and Page's + entrance into the 'atmosphere' of Park Street has taken on the + dignity of legend. There were all kinds of signs and portents, as + the older denizens will tell you. Strange breezes floated through + the office, electric emanations, and a pervasive scent of tobacco, + which--so the local historian says--had been unknown in the + vicinity since the days of Walter Raleigh, except for the literary + aroma of Aldrich's quarantined sanctum upstairs. Page's coming + marked the end of small ways. His first requirement was, in lieu of + a desk, a table that might have served a family of twelve for + Thanksgiving dinner. No one could imagine what that vast, polished + tableland could serve for until they watched the editor at work. + Then they saw. Order vanished and chaos reigned. Huge piles of + papers, letters, articles, reports, books, pamphlets, magazines, + congregated themselves as if by magic. To work in such confusion + seemed hopeless, but Page eluded the congestion by the simple + expedient of moving on. He would light a fresh cigar, give the + editorial chair a hitch, and begin his work in front of a fresh + expanse of table, with no clutter of the past to disturb the new + day's litter. + + "The motive power of his work was enthusiasm. Never was more + generous welcome given to a newcomer than Page held out to the + successful manuscript of an unknown. I remember, though I heard the + news second hand at the time, what a day it was in the office when + the first manuscript from the future author of 'To Have and To + Hold,' came in from an untried Southern girl. He walked up and + down, reading paragraphs aloud and slapping the crisp manuscript + to enforce his commendation. To take a humbler instance, I recall + the words of over generous praise with which he greeted the first + paper I ever sent to an editor quite as clearly as I remember the + monstrous effort which had brought it into being. Sometimes he + would do a favoured manuscript the honour of taking it out to lunch + in his coat-pocket, and an associate vividly recalls eggs, coffee, + and pie in a near-by restaurant, while, in a voice that could be + heard by the remotest lunchers, Page read passages which many of + them were too startled to appreciate. He was not given to + overrating, but it was not in his nature to understate. 'I tell + you,' said he, grumbling over some unfortunate proof-sheets from + Manhattan, 'there isn't one man in New York who can write + English--not from the Battery to Harlem Heights.' And if the faults + were moral rather than literary, his disapproval grew in emphasis. + There is more than tradition in the tale of the Negro who, + presuming on Page's deep interest in his race, brought to his desk + a manuscript copied word for word from a published source. Page + recognized the deception, and seizing the rascal's collar with a + firm editorial grip, rejected the poem, and ejected the poet, with + an energy very invigorating to the ancient serenities of the + office. + + "Page was always effervescent with ideas. Like an editor who would + have made a good fisherman, he used to say that you had to cast a + dozen times before you could get a strike. He was forever in those + days sending out ideas and suggestions and invitations to write. + The result was electric, and the magazine became with a suddenness + (of which only an editor can appreciate the wonder) a storehouse of + animating thoughts. He avoided the mistake common to our craft of + editing a magazine for the immediate satisfaction of his + colleagues. 'Don't write for the office,' he would say. 'Write for + outside,' and so his magazine became a living thing. His phrase + suggests one special gift that Page had, for which his profession + should do him especial honour. He was able, quite beyond the powers + of any man of my acquaintance, to put compendiously into words the + secrets of successful editing. It was capital training just to hear + him talk. 'Never save a feature,' he used to say. 'Always work for + the next number. Forget the others. Spend everything just on that.' + And to those who know, there is divination in the principle. Again + he understood instinctively that to write well a man must not only + have something to say, but must long to say it. A highly + intelligent representative of the coloured race came to him with a + philosophic essay. Page would have none of it. 'I know what you are + thinking of,' said Page. 'You are thinking of the barriers we set + up against you, and the handicap of your lot. If you will write + what it feels like to be a Negro, I will print that.' The result + was a paper which has seemed to me the most moving expression of + the hopeless hope of the race I know of. + + "Page was generous in his coöperation. He never drew a rigid line + about his share in any enterprise, but gave and took help with each + and all. A lover of good English, with an honest passion for things + tersely said, Page esteemed good journalism far above any + second-rate manifestation of more pretentious forms; but many of us + will regret that he was not privileged to find some outlet for his + energies in which aspiration for real literature might have played + an ampler part. For the literature of the past Page had great + respect, but his interest was ever in the present and the future. + He was forever fulminating against bad writing, and hated the + ignorant and slipshod work of the hack almost as much as he + despised the sham of the man who affected letters, the dabbler and + the poetaster. His taste was for the roast beef of literature, not + for the side dishes and the trimmings, and his appreciation of the + substantial work of others was no surer than his instinct for his + own performance. He was an admirable writer of exposition, + argument, and narrative--solid and thoughtful, but never dull. . . . + I came into close relations with him and from him I learned more of + my profession than from any one I have ever known. Scores of other + men would say the same." + +But the fact that a new hand had seized the _Atlantic_ was apparent in +other places than in the _Atlantic_ office itself. One of Page's +contributors of the _Forum_ days, Mr. Courtney DeKalb, happened to be in +St. Louis when the first number of the magazine under its new editor +made its appearance. Mr. DeKalb had been out of the country for some +time and knew nothing of the change. Happening accidentally to pick up +the _Atlantic_, the table of contents caught his eye. It bore the traces +of an unmistakable hand. Only one man, he said to himself, could +assemble such a group as that, and above all, only Page could give such +an enticing turn of the titles. He therefore sat down and wrote his old +friend congratulating him on his accession to the _Atlantic Monthly_. +The change that now took place was indeed a conspicuous, almost a +startling one. The _Atlantic_ retained all its old literary flavour, for +to its traditions Page was as much devoted as the highest caste +Bostonian; it still gave up much of its space to a high type of fiction, +poetry, and reviews of contemporary literature, but every number +contained also an assortment of articles which celebrated the prevailing +activities of men and women in all worth-while fields of effort. There +were discussions of present-day politics, and these even became +personal dissections of presidential candidates; there were articles on +the racial characters of the American population: Theodore Roosevelt was +permitted to discuss the New York police; Woodrow Wilson to pass in +review the several elements that made the Nation; Booker T. Washington +to picture the awakening of the Negro; John Muir to enlighten Americans +upon a national beauty and wealth of which they had been woefully +ignorant, their forests; William Allen White to describe certain aspects +of his favourite Kansas; E.L. Godkin to review the dangers and the hopes +of American democracy; Jacob Rüs to tell about the Battle with the Slum; +and W.G. Frost to reveal for the first time the archaic civilization of +the Kentucky mountaineers. The latter article illustrated Page's genius +at rewriting titles. Mr. Frost's theme was that these Kentucky +mountaineers were really Elizabethan survivals; that their dialect, +their ballads, their habits were really a case of arrested development; +that by studying them present-day Americans could get a picture of their +distant forbears. Page gave vitality to the presentation by changing a +commonplace title to this one: "Our Contemporary Ancestors." + +There were those who were offended by Page's willingness to seek +inspiration on the highways and byways and even in newspapers, for not +infrequently he would find hidden away in a corner an idea that would +result in valuable magazine matter. On one occasion at least this +practice had important literary consequences. One day he happened to +read that a Mrs. Robert Hanning had died in Toronto, the account +casually mentioning the fact that Mrs. Hanning was the youngest sister +of Thomas Carlyle. Page handed this clipping to a young assistant, and +told him to take the first train to Canada. The editor could easily +divine that a sister of Carlyle, expatriated for forty-six years on +this side of the Atlantic, must have received a large number of letters +from her brother, and it was safe to assume that they had been carefully +preserved. Such proved to be the fact; and a new volume of Carlyle +letters, of somewhat more genial character than the other collections, +was the outcome of this visit[4]. And another fruit of this journalistic +habit was "The Memoirs of a Revolutionist," by Prince Peter Kropotkin. +In 1897 the great Russian nihilist was lecturing in Boston. Page met +him, learned from his own lips his story, and persuaded him to put it in +permanent form. This willingness of Page to admit such a revolutionary +person into the pages of the _Atlantic_ caused some excitement in +conventional circles. In fact, it did take some courage, but Page never +hesitated; the man was of heroic mould, he had a great story to tell, he +wielded an engaging pen, and his purposes were high-minded. A great book +of memoirs was the result. + +Mr. Sedgwick refers above to Page's editorial fervour when Miss Mary +Johnston's "Prisoners of Hope" first fell out of the blue sky into his +Boston office. Page's joy was not less keen because the young author was +a Virginia girl, and because she had discovered that the early period of +Virginia history was a field for romance. When, a few months afterward, +Page was casting about for an _Atlantic_ serial, Miss Johnston and this +Virginia field seemed to be an especially favourable prospect. +"Prisoners of Hope" had been published as a book and had made a good +success, but Miss Johnston's future still lay ahead of her. With Page to +think meant to act, and so, instead of writing a formal letter, he at +once jumped on a train for Birmingham, Alabama, where Miss Johnston was +then living. "I remember quite distinctly that first meeting," writes +Miss Johnston. "The day was rainy. Standing at my window I watched Mr. +Page--a characteristic figure, air and walk--approach the house. When a +few minutes later I met him he was simplicity and kindliness itself. +This was my first personal contact with publishers (my publishers) or +with editors of anything so great as the _Atlantic_. My heart beat! But +he was friendly and Southern. I told him what I had done upon a new +story. He was going on that night. Might he take the manuscript with him +and read it upon the train? It might--he couldn't say positively, of +course--but it might have serial possibilities. I was only too glad for +him to have the manuscript. I forget just how many chapters I had +completed. But it was not quite in order. Could I get it so in a few +hours? In that case he would send a messenger for it from the hotel. +Yes, I could. Very good! A little further talk and he left with a strong +handshake. Three or four hours later he had the manuscript and took it +with him from Birmingham that night." + +Page's enterprising visit had put into his hands the half-finished +manuscript of a story, "To Have and to Hold," which, when printed in the +_Atlantic_, more than doubled its circulation, and which, when made into +a book, proved one of the biggest successes since "Uncle Tom's Cabin." + +Page's most independent stroke in his _Atlantic_ days came with the +outbreak of the Spanish-American War. Boston was then the headquarters +of a national mood which has almost passed out of popular remembrance. +Its spokesmen called themselves anti-imperialists. The theory back of +their protest was that the American declaration of war on Spain was not +only the wanton attack of a great bully upon a feeble little country: it +was something that was bound to have deplorable consequences. The +United States was breaking with its past and engaging in European +quarrels; as a consequence of the war it would acquire territories and +embark on a career of "imperialism." Page was impatient at this kind of +twaddle. He declared that the Spanish War was a "necessary act of +surgery for the health of civilization." He did not believe that a +nation, simply because it was small, should be permitted to maintain +indefinitely a human slaughter house at the door of the United States. +The _Atlantic_ for June, 1898, gave the so-called anti-imperialists a +thrill of horror. On the cover appeared the defiantly flying American +flag; the first article was a vigorous and approving presentation of the +American case against Spain; though this was unsigned, its incisive +style at once betrayed the author. The _Atlantic_ had printed the +American flag on its cover during the Civil War; but certain New +Englanders thought that this latest struggle, in its motives and its +proportions, was hardly entitled to the distinction. Page declared, +however, that the Spanish War marked a new period in history; and he +endorsed the McKinley Administration, not only in the war itself, but in +its consequences, particularly the annexation of the Philippine Islands. + +Page greatly enjoyed life in Boston and Cambridge. The _Atlantic_ was +rapidly growing in circulation and in influence, and the new friends +that its editor was making were especially to his taste. He now had a +family of four children, three boys and one girl--and their bringing up +and education, as he said at this time, constituted his real occupation. +So far as he could see, in the summer of 1899, he was permanently +established in life. But larger events in the publishing world now again +pulled him back to New York. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 4: "Letters of Thomas Carlyle to his Youngest Sister." Edited +by Charles Townsend Copeland. Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1899.] + + + + +CHAPTER III + +"THE FORGOTTEN MAN" + +I + + +In July, 1899, the publishing community learned that financial +difficulties were seriously embarrassing the great house of Harper. For +nearly a century this establishment had maintained a position almost of +preëminence among American publishers. Three generations of Harpers had +successively presided over its destinies; its magazines and books had +become almost a household necessity in all parts of the United States, +and its authors included many of the names most celebrated in American +letters. The average American could no more associate the idea of +bankruptcy with this great business than with the federal Treasury +itself. Yet this incredible disaster had virtually taken place. At this +time the public knew nothing of the impending ruin; the fact was, +however, that, in July, 1899, the banking house of J.P. Morgan & Company +practically controlled this property. This was the situation which again +called Page to New York. + +In the preceding year Mr. S.S. McClure, whose recent success as editor +and publisher had been little less than a sensation, had joined forces +with Mr. Frank N. Doubleday, and organized the new firm of Doubleday & +McClure. This business was making rapid progress; and that it would soon +become one of the leading American publishing houses was already +apparent. It was perhaps not unnatural, therefore, that Mr. J. Pierpont +Morgan, scanning the horizon for the men who might rescue the Harper +concern from approaching disaster, should have had his attention drawn +to Mr. McClure and Mr. Doubleday. "The failure of Harper & Brothers," +Mr. Morgan said in a published statement, "would be a national +calamity." One morning, therefore, a member of the Harper firm called +upon Mr. McClure. Without the slightest hesitation he unfolded the +Harper situation to his astonished contemporary. The solution proposed +was more astonishing still. This was that Mr. Doubleday and Mr. McClure +should amalgamate their young and vigorous business with the Harper +enterprise and become the active managers of the new corporation. Both +Mr. McClure and Mr. Doubleday were comparatively young men, and the +magnitude of the proposed undertaking at first rather staggered them. It +was as though a small independent steel maker should suddenly be invited +to take over the United States Steel Corporation. Mr. McClure, +characteristically impetuous and daring, wished to accept the invitation +outright; Mr. Doubleday, however, suggested a period of probation. The +outcome was that the two men offered to take charge of Harper & Brothers +for a few months, and then decide whether they wished to make the +association a permanent one. One thing was immediately apparent; Messrs. +Doubleday and McClure, able as they were, would need the help of the +best talent available in the work that lay ahead. The first man to whom +they turned was Page, who presently left Boston and took up his business +abode at Franklin Square. The rumble of the elevated road was somewhat +distracting after the four quiet years in Park Street, but the new daily +routine was not lacking in interest. The Harper experiment, however, did +not end as Mr. Morgan had hoped. After a few months Messrs. Doubleday, +Page and McClure withdrew, and left the work of rescue to be performed +by Mr. George Harvey, who, curiously enough, succeeded Page, twenty-one +years afterward, in an even more important post--that of ambassador to +the Court of St. James's. The one important outcome of the Harper +episode, so far as Page was concerned, was the forming of a close +business and personal association with Mr. Frank N. Doubleday. As soon +as the two men definitely decided not to assume the Harper +responsibility, therefore, they joined forces and founded the firm of +Doubleday, Page & Company. Page now had the opportunity which he had +long wished for; the mere editing of magazines, even magazines of such +an eminent character as the _Forum_ and the _Atlantic Monthly_, could +hardly satisfy his ambition; he yearned to possess something which he +could call his own, at least in part. + +The life of an editor has its unsatisfactory aspect, unless the editor +himself has an influential ownership in his periodical. Page now found +his opportunity to establish a monthly magazine which he could regard as +his own in both senses. He was its untrammelled editor, and also, in +part, its proprietor. All editors and writers will sympathize with the +ideas expressed in a letter written about this time to Page's friend, +Mr. William Roscoe Thayer, already distinguished as the historian of +Italian unity and afterward to win fame as the biographer of Cavour and +John Hay. When the first number of the _World's Work_ appeared Mr. +Thayer wrote, expressing a slight disappointment that its leading +tendency was journalistic rather than literary and intellectual. "When +you edited the _Forum_," wrote Mr. Thayer, "I perceived that no such +talent for editing had been seen in America before, and when, a little +later, you rejuvenated the _Atlantic_, making it for a couple of years +the best periodical printed in English, I felt that you had a great +mission before you as evoker and editor of the best literary work and +weightiest thought on important topics of our foremost men." He had +hoped to see a magnified _Atlantic_, and the new publication, splendid +as it was, seemed to be of rather more popular character than the +publications with which Page had previously been associated. Page met +this challenge in his usual hearty fashion. + + _To William Roscoe Thayer_ + 34 Union Square East, New York, + December 5, 1900. + + My Dear Thayer: + + The _World's Work_ has brought me nothing so good as your letter of + yesterday. When Mrs. Page read it, she shouted "Now that's it!" For + "it" read "truth," and you will have her meaning and mine. My + thanks you may be sure you have, in great and earnest abundance. + + You surprise me in two ways--(1) that you think as well of the + magazine as you do. If it have half the force and earnestness that + you say it has, how happy I shall be, for then it will surely bring + something to pass. The other way in which you surprise me is by the + flattering things that you say about my conduct of the _Atlantic_. + Alas! it was not what you in your kind way say--no, no. + + Of course the _World's Work_ is not yet by any means what I hope to + make it. But it has this incalculable advantage (to me) over every + other magazine in existence: it is mine (mine and my partners', + i.e., partly mine), and I shall not work to build up a good piece + of machinery and then be turned out to graze as an old horse is. + This of course, is selfish and personal--not wholly selfish either, + I think. I threw down the _Atlantic_ for this reason: (Consider the + history of its editors) Lowell[5] complained bitterly that he was + never rewarded properly for the time and work he did; Fields was + (in a way) one of its owners; it was sold out from under Howells, + etc., etc. I might (probably should) have been at the mercy + completely of owners some day who would have dismissed me for a + younger man. Nearly all hired editors suffer this fate. My good + friends in Boston were sincere in thinking that my day of doom + would never come; but they didn't offer me any guarantee--part + ownership, for instance; and the years go swiftly. I could afford, + of my own volition, to leave the _Atlantic_. I couldn't afford to + take permanently the risks that a hired editor must take. Nor + should I ever again have turned my hand to such a task except on a + magazine of my own. I should have sought other employment. There + are many easier and better and more influential things to do--yet; + ten years hence I might have been too old. Harry Houghton[6] has an + old horse thirty years old. I used to see him grazing sometimes and + hear his master's self-congratulatory explanation of his own + kindness to that faithful beast. In the office of Houghton, Mifflin + & Company there is an old man whom I used to see every + day--pensioned, grazing. Then I would go home and see four bright + children. Three of them are now away from home at school; and the + four cost a pretty penny to educate. My income had been the same + for ten years-or very nearly the same. If I was a "magic" editor, I + confess I didn't see the magic; and there is no power under Heaven + or in it that can prove to me that I ought to keep on making + magazines as a hired man--without the common security of permanent + service for lack of which nearly all my predecessors lost their + chance. + + But this is not all, nor half. A man ought to express himself, + ought to live his own life, say his own little say, before silence + comes. The "say" may be bad--a mere yawp, and silence might be more + becoming. But the same argument would make a man dissatisfied with + his own nose if it happened to be ugly. It's _his_ nose, and he + must content himself. So it's _his_ yawp and he must let it go. + + I'm not going to make the new magazine my own megaphone--you may be + sure of that. It will nevertheless contain my general + interpretation of things, in which I swear I do believe! The first + thing, of course, is to establish it. Then it can be shaped more + nearly into what I wish it to become. If it seem unmannerly, + aggressive, I know no other way to make it heard. If it died, then + the game would be up. Well, we seem to have established it at once. + It promises not to cost us a penny of investment. + + Now, the magazines need new topics. They have all threshed over old + straw for many years. There is _one_ new subject, to my thinking + worth all the old ones: the new impulse in American life, the new + feeling of nationality, our coming to realize ourselves. To my mind + there is greater promise in democracy than men of any preceding + period ever dared dream of--aggressive democracy--growth by action. + Our writers (the few we have) are yet in the pre-democratic era. + When men's imaginations lay hold on the things that already begin + to appear above the horizon, we shall have something worth reading. + At present I can do no more than bawl out, "See! here are new + subjects." One of these days somebody will come along who can write + about them. I have started out without a writer. Fiske is under + contract, James would give nothing more to the _Atlantic_, you were + ill (I thank Heaven you are no longer so) the second-and third-rate + essayists have been bought by mere Wall Street publishers. Beyond + these are the company of story tellers and beyond them only a + dreary waste of dead-level unimaginative men and women. I can + (soon) get all that I could ever have got in the _Atlantic_ and new + ones (I know they'll come) whom I could never have got there. + + You'll see--within a year or two--by far a better magazine than I + have ever made; and you and I will differ in nothing unless you + feel despair about the breakdown of certain democratic theories, + which I think were always mere theories. Let 'em go! The real + thing, which is life and action, is better. + + Heartily and always your grateful friend, + Walter H. Page + +Thus the fact that Page's new magazine was intended for a popular +audience was not the result of accident, but of design. It represented a +periodical plan which had long been taking shape in Page's mind. The +things that he had been doing for the _Forum_ and the _Atlantic_ he +aspired to do for a larger audience than that to which publications of +this character could appeal. Scholar though Page was, and lover of the +finest things in literature that he had always been, yet this sympathy +and interest had always lain with the masses. Perhaps it is impossible +to make literature democratic, but Page believed that he would be +genuinely serving the great cause that was nearest his heart if he could +spread wide the facts of the modern world, especially the facts of +America, and if he could clothe the expression in language which, while +always dignified and even "literary," would still be sufficiently +touched with the vital, the picturesque, and the "human," to make his +new publication appeal to a wide audience of intelligent, everyday +Americans. It was thus part of his general programme of improving the +status of the average man, and it formed a logical part of his +philosophy of human advancement. For the only acceptable measure of any +civilization, Page believed, was the extent to which it improved the +condition of the common citizen. A few cultured and university-trained +men at the top; a few ancient families living in luxury; a few painters +and poets and statesmen and generals; these things, in Page's view, did +not constitute a satisfactory state of society; the real test was the +extent to which the masses participated in education, in the necessities +and comforts of existence, in the right of self-evolution and +self-expression, in that "equality of opportunity," which, Page never +wearied of repeating, "was the basis of social progress." The mere right +to vote and to hold office was not democracy; parliamentary majorities +and political caucuses were not democracy--at the best these things were +only details and not the most important ones; democracy was the right of +every man to enjoy, in accordance with his aptitudes of character and +mentality, the material and spiritual opportunities that nature and +science had placed at the disposition of mankind. This democratic creed +had now become the dominating interest of Page's life. From this time on +it consumed all his activities. His new magazine set itself first of all +to interpret the American panorama from this point of view; to describe +the progress that the several parts of the country were making in the +several manifestations of democracy--education, agriculture, industry, +social life, politics--and the importance that Page attached to them was +practically in the order named. Above all it concerned itself with the +men and women who were accomplishing most in the definite realization of +this great end. + +And now also Page began to carry his activities far beyond mere print. +In his early residence in New York, from 1885 to 1895, he had always +taken his part in public movements; he had been a vital spirit in the +New York Reform Club, which was engaged mainly in advocating the +Cleveland tariff; he had always shown a willingness to experiment with +new ideas; at one time he had mingled with Socialists and he had been +quite captivated by the personal and literary charm of Henry George. +After 1900, however, Page became essentially a public man, though not in +the political sense. His work as editor and writer was merely one +expression of the enthusiasms that occupied his mind. From 1900 until +1913, when he left for England, life meant for him mainly an effort to +spread the democratic ideal, as he conceived it; concretely it +represented a constant campaign for improving the fundamental +opportunities and the everyday social advantages of the masses. + + +II + +Inevitably the condition of the people in his own homeland enlisted +Page's sympathy, for he had learned of their necessities at first hand. +The need of education had powerfully impressed him even as a boy. At +twenty-three he began writing articles for the Raleigh _Observer_, and +practically all of them were pleas for the education of the Southern +child. His subsequent activities of this kind, as editor of the _State +Chronicle_, have already been described. The American from other parts +of the country is rather shocked when he first learns of the +backwardness of education in the South a generation ago. In any real +sense there was no publicly supported system for training the child. A +few wretched hovels, scattered through a sparsely settled country, +served as school houses; a few uninspiring and neglected women, earning +perhaps $50 or $75 a year, did weary duty as teachers; a few groups of +anemic and listless children, attending school for only forty days a +year--such was the preparation for life which most Southern states gave +the less fortunate of their citizens. The glaring fact that emphasized +the outcome of this official carelessness was an illiteracy, among white +men and women, of 26 per cent. Among the Negroes it was vastly larger. + +The first exhortation to reform came from the Wautauga Club, which Page +had organized in Raleigh in 1884. After Page had left his native state, +other men began preaching the same crusade. Perhaps the greatest of +those advocates whom the South loves to refer to as "educational +statesmen" was Dr. Charles D. McIver, of Greensboro, N.C. McIver's +personality and career had an heroic quality all their own. Back in the +'eighties McIver and Edwin A. Alderman, now President of the University +of Virginia, endured all kinds of hardships and buffetings in the cause +of popular education; they stumped the state, much like political +campaigners, preaching the strange new gospel in mountain cabin, in +village church, at the cart's tail--all in an attempt to arouse their +lethargic countrymen to the duty of laying a small tax to save their +children from illiteracy. Some day the story of McIver and Alderman will +find its historian; when it does, he will learn that, in those dark +ages, one of their greatest sources of inspiration was Walter Page. +McIver, a great burly boy, physically and intellectually, so full of +energy that existence for him was little less than an unending tornado, +so full of zeal that any other occupation than that of training the +neglected seemed a trifling with life, so sleepless in his efforts that, +at the age of forty-five, he one day dropped dead while travelling on a +railroad train; Alderman, a man of finer culture, quieter in his +methods, an orator of polish and restraint, but an advocate vigorous in +the prosecution of the great end; and Page, living faraway in the North, +but pumping his associates full of courage and enthusiasm--these were +the three guardsmen of this new battle for the elevation of the white +and black men of the South. McIver's great work was the State Normal +College for Women, which, amid unparalleled difficulties, he founded +for teaching the teachers of the new Southern generation. It was at this +institution that Page, in 1897, delivered the address which gave the +cause of Southern education that one thing which is worth armies to any +struggling reform--a phrase; and it was a phrase that lived in the +popular mind and heart and summed up, in a way that a thousand speeches +could never have done, the great purpose for which the best people in +the state were striving. + +His editorial gift for title-making now served Page in good stead. "The +Forgotten Man," which was the heading of his address, immediately passed +into the common speech of the South and even at this day inevitably +appears in all discussions of social progress. It was again Page's +familiar message of democracy, of improving the condition of the +everyday man, woman, and child; and the message, as is usually the case +in all incitements to change, involved many unpleasant facts. Page had +first of all to inform his fellow Southerners that it was only in the +South that "The Forgotten Man" was really an outstanding feature. He did +not exist in New England, in the Middle States, in the Mississippi +Valley, or in the West, or existed in these regions to so slight an +extent that he was not a grave menace to society. But in the South the +situation was quite different. And for this fact the explanation was +found in history. The South certainly could not fix the blame upon +Nature. In natural wealth--in forests, mines, quarries, rich soil, in +the unlimited power supplied by water courses--the Southern States +formed perhaps the richest region in the country. These things North +Carolina and her sister communities had not developed; more startling +still, they had not developed a source of wealth that was infinitely +greater than all these combined; they had not developed their men and +their women. The Southern States represented the purest "Anglo-Saxon" +strain in the United States; to-day in North Carolina only one person in +four hundred is of "foreign stock," and a voting list of almost any town +contains practically nothing except the English and Scotch names that +were borne by the original settlers. Yet here democracy, in any real +sense, had scarcely obtained a footing. The region which had given +Thomas Jefferson and George Washington to the world was still, in the +year 1897, organized upon an essentially aristocratic basis. The +conception of education which prevailed in the most hide-bound +aristocracies of Europe still ruled south of the Potomac. There was no +acceptance of that fundamental American doctrine that education was the +function of the state. It was generally regarded as the luxury of the +rich and the socially high placed; it was certainly not for the poor; +and it was a generally accepted view that those who enjoyed this +privilege must pay for it out of their own pockets. Again Page returned +to the "mummy" theme--the fact that North Carolina, and the South +generally, were too much ruled by "dead men's" hands. The state was +ruled by a "little aristocracy, which, in its social and economic +character, made a failure and left a stubborn crop of wrong social +notions behind it--especially about education." The chief backward +influences were the stump and the pulpit. "From the days of King George +to this day, the politicians of North Carolina have declaimed against +taxes, thus laying the foundation of our poverty. It was a misfortune +for us that the quarrel with King George happened to turn upon the +question of taxation--so great was the dread of taxation that was +instilled into us." What had the upper classes done for the education of +the average man? The statistics of illiteracy, the deplorable economic +and social conditions of the rural population--and most of the +population of North Carolina was rural--furnished the answer. + +Thus the North Carolina aristocracy had failed in education and the +failure of the Church had been as complete and deplorable. The preachers +had established preparatory schools for boys and girls, but these were +under the control of sects; and so education was either a class or an +ecclesiastical concern. "The forgotten man remained forgotten. The +aristocratic scheme of education had passed him by. To a less extent, +but still to the extent of hundreds of thousands, the ecclesiastical +scheme had passed him by." But even the education which these +institutions gave was inferior. Page told his North Carolina audience +that the University of which they were so proud did not rank with +Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other universities of the North. The state +had not produced great scholars nor established great libraries. In the +estimation of publishers North Carolina was unimportant as a book +market. "By any test that may be made, both these systems have failed +even with the classes that they appealed to." The net result was that +"One in every four was wholly forgotten"--that is, was unable to read +and write. And the worst of it all was that the victim of this neglect +was not disturbed over his situation. "The forgotten man was content to +be forgotten. He became not only a dead weight, but a definite opponent +of social progress. He faithfully heard the politician on the stump +praise him for virtues that he did not have. The politicians told him +that he lived in the best state in the Union; told him that the other +politicians had some hare-brained plan to increase his taxes, told him +as a consolation for his ignorance how many of his kinsmen had been +killed in the war, told him to distrust any one who wished to change +anything. What was good enough for his fathers was good enough for him. +Thus the 'forgotten man' became a dupe, became thankful for being +neglected. And the preacher told him that the ills and misfortunes of +this life were blessings in disguise, that God meant his poverty as a +means of grace, and that if he accepted the right creed all would be +well with him. These influences encouraged inertia. There could not have +been a better means to prevent the development of the people." + +Even more tragic than these "forgotten men" were the "forgotten women." +"Thin and wrinkled in youth from ill-prepared food, clad without warmth +or grace, living in untidy houses, working from daylight till bedtime at +the dull round of weary duties, the slaves of men of equal slovenliness, +the mothers of joyless children--all uneducated if not illiterate." +"This sight," Page told his hearers, "every one of you has seen, not in +the countries whither we send missionaries, but in the borders of the +State of North Carolina, in this year of grace." + +"Our civilization," he declared, "has been a failure." Both the +politicians and the preacher had failed to lift the masses. "It is a +time for a wiser statesmanship and a more certain means of grace." He +admitted that there had been recent progress in North Carolina, owing +largely to the work of McIver and Alderman, but taxes for educational +purposes were still low. What was the solution? "A public school system +generously supported by public sentiment and generously maintained by +both state and local taxation, is the only effective means to develop +the forgotten man and even more surely the only means to develop the +forgotten woman. . . ." "If any beggar for a church school oppose a local +tax for schools or a higher school tax, take him to the huts of the +forgotten women and children, and in their hopeless presence remind him +that the church system of education has not touched tens of thousands of +these lives and ask him whether he thinks it wrong that the commonwealth +should educate them. If he think it wrong ask him and ask the people +plainly, whether he be a worthy preacher of the gospel that declares one +man equal to another in the sight of God? . . . The most sacred thing in +the commonwealth and to the commonwealth is the child, whether it be +your child or the child of the dull-faced mother of the hovel. The child +of the dull-faced mother may, as you know, be the most capable child in +the state. . . . Several of the strongest personalities that were ever born +in North Carolina were men whose very fathers were unknown. We have all +known two such, who held high places in Church and State. President +Eliot said a little while ago that the ablest man that he had known in +his many years' connection with Harvard University was the son of a +brick mason." + +In place of the ecclesiastical creed that had guided North Carolina for +so many generations Page proposed his creed of democracy. He advised +that North Carolina commit this to memory and teach it to its children. +It was as follows: + + "I believe in the free public training of both the hands and the + mind of every child born of woman. + + "I believe that by the right training of men we add to the wealth + of the world. All wealth is the creation of man, and he creates it + only in proportion to the trained uses of the community; and the + more men we train the more wealth everyone may create. + + "I believe in the perpetual regeneration of society, and in the + immortality of democracy and in growth everlasting." + +Thus Page nailed his theses upon the door of his native state, and +mighty was the reverberation. In a few weeks Page's Greensboro address +had made its way all over the Southern States, and his melancholy +figure, "the forgotten man" had become part of the indelible imagery of +the Southern people. The portrait etched itself deeply into the popular +consciousness for the very good reason that its truth was pretty +generally recognized. The higher type of newspaper, though it winced +somewhat at Page's strictures, manfully recognized that the best way of +meeting his charge was by setting to work and improving conditions. The +fact is that the better conscience of North Carolina welcomed this +eloquent description of unquestioned evils; but the gentlemen whom Page +used to stigmatize as "professional Southerners"--the men who +commercialized class and sectional prejudice to their own political and +financial or ecclesiastical profit--fell foul of this "renegade," this +"Southern Yankee" this sacrilegious "intruder" who had dared to visit +his old home and desecrate its traditions and its religion. This +clerical wrath was kindled into fresh flame when Page, in an editorial +in his magazine, declared that these same preachers, ignoring their real +duties, were content "to herd their women and children around the +stagnant pools of theology." For real religion Page had the deepest +reverence, and he had great respect also for the robust evangelical +preachers whose efforts had contributed so much to the opening up of the +frontier. In his Greensboro address Page had given these men high +praise. But for the assiduous idolaters of stratified dogma he +entertained a contempt which he was seldom at pains to conceal. North +Carolina had many clergymen of the more progressive type; these men +chuckled at Page's vigorous characterization of the brethren, but those +against whom it had been aimed raged with a fervour that was almost +unchristian. This clerical excitement, however, did not greatly disturb +the philosophic Page. The hubbub lasted for several years--for Page's +Greensboro speech was only the first of many pronouncements of the same +kind--but he never publicly referred to the attacks upon him. +Occasionally in letters to his friends he would good-naturedly discuss +them. "I have had several letters," he wrote to Professor Edwin Mims, of +Trinity College, North Carolina, "about an 'excoriation' (Great Heavens! +What a word!) that somebody in North Carolina has been giving me. I +never read these things and I don't know what it's all about--nor do I +care. But perhaps you'll be interested in a letter that I wrote an old +friend (a lady) who is concerned about it. I enclose a copy of it. I +shall never notice any 'excoriator.' But if you wish to add to the +gaiety of nations, give this copy to some newspaper and let it loose in +the state--if you care to do so. We must have patience with these puny +and peevish brethren. They've been trained to a false view of life. +Heaven knows I bear them no ill-will." + +The letter to which Page referred follows: + + MY DEAR FRIEND: + + I have your letter saying that some of the papers in North Carolina + are again "jumping on" me. I do not know which they are, and I am + glad that you did not tell me. I had heard of it before. A preacher + wrote me the other day that he approved of every word of an + "excoriation" that some religious editor had given me. A kindly + Christian act--wasn't it, to send a stranger word that you were + glad that he had been abused by a religious editor? I wrote him a + gentle letter, telling him that I hoped he'd have a long and happy + life preaching a gospel of friendliness and neighbourliness and + good-will, and that I cared nothing about "excoriations." Why + should he, then, forsake his calling and take delight in + disseminating personal abuse? + + And why do you not write me about things that I really care for in + the good old country--the budding trees, the pleasant weather, news + of old friends, gossip of good people--cheerful things? I pray you, + don't be concerned about what any poor whining soul may write about + me. I don't care for myself: I care only for him; for the writer of + personal abuse always suffers from it--never the man abused. + + I haven't read what my kindly clerical correspondent calls an + "excoriation" for ten years, and I never shall read one if I know + what it is beforehand. Why should I or anybody read such stuff? I + can't find time to do half the positive things that I should like + to do for the broadening of my own character and for the + encouragement of others. Why should I waste a single minute in such + a negative and cheerless way as reading anybody's personal abuse of + anybody else--least of all myself? + + These silly outbursts never reach me and they never can; and they, + therefore, utterly fail, and always will fail, of their aim; yet, + my dear friend, there is nevertheless a serious side to such folly. + For it shows the need of education, education, education. The + religious editor and the preacher who took joy in his abuse of me + have such a starved view of life that they cannot themselves, + perhaps, ever be educated into kindliness and dignity of thought. + But their children may be--must be. Think of beautiful children + growing up in a home where "excoriating" people who differ with you + is regarded as a manly Christian exercise! It is pitiful beyond + words. There is no way to lift up life that is on so low a level + except by the free education of all the people. Let us work for + that and, when the growlers are done growling and forgotten, better + men will remember us with gratitude. + + I felt greatly complimented and pleased to receive an invitation + the other day to attend the North Carolina Teachers' Assembly in + June. I have many things to do in June, but I am going--going with + great pleasure. I hope to see you there. I know of no other company + of people that I should be so glad to meet. They are doing noble + work--the most devoted and useful work in this whole wide world. + They are the true leaders of the people. I often wish that I were + one of them. They inspire me as nobody else does. They are the army + of our salvation. + + Write me what they are doing. Write me about the wonderful + educational progress. And write me about the peach trees and the + budding imminence of spring; and about the children who now live + all day outdoors and grow brown and plump. And never mind that + queer sect, "The Excoriators." They and their stage thunder will be + forgotten to-morrow. Meantime let us live and work for things + nobler than any controversies, for things that are larger than the + poor mission of any sect; and let us have charity and a patient + pity for those that think they serve God by abusing their + fellow-men. I wish I saw some way to help them to a broader and a + higher life. + + Faithfully yours, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + + +III + +That Page should have little interest in "excoriators" at the time this +letter was written--in April, 1902--was not surprising, for his +educational campaign and that of his friends was now bearing fruit. +"Write me about the wonderful educational progress," he says to this +correspondent; and, indeed, the change that was coming over North +Carolina and the South generally seemed to be tinged with the +miraculous. The "Forgotten Man" and the "Forgotten Woman" were rapidly +coming into their own. Two years after the delivery of Page's Greensboro +address, a small group of educational enthusiasts met at Capon Springs, +West Virginia, to discuss the general situation in the South. The leader +of this little gathering was Robert C. Ogden, a great New York merchant +who for many years had been President of the Board of Hampton Institute. +Out of this meeting grew the Southern Educational Conference, which was +little more than an annual meeting for advertising broadcast the +educational needs of the South. Each year Mr. Ogden chartered a railroad +train; a hundred or so of the leading editors, lawyers, bankers, and the +like became his guests; the train moved through the Southern States, +pausing now and then to investigate some particular institution or +locality; and at some Southern city, such as Birmingham or Atlanta or +Winston-Salem, a stop of several days would be made, a public building +engaged, and long meetings held. In all these proceedings Page was an +active figure, as he became in the Southern Education Board, which +directly resulted from Mr. Ogden's public spirited excursions. Like the +Conference, the Southern Education Board was a purely missionary +organization, and its most active worker was Page himself. He was +constantly speaking and writing on his favourite subject; he printed +article after article, not only in his own magazine, but in the +_Atlantic_, in the _Outlook_, and in a multitude of newspapers, such as +the Boston _Transcript_, the New York _Times_, and the Kansas City +_Star_. And always through his writings, and, indeed, through his life, +there ran, like the motif of an opera, that same perpetual plea for "the +forgotten man"--the need of uplifting the backward masses through +training, both of the mind and of the hand. + +The day came when this loyal group had other things to work with than +their voices and their pens; their efforts had attracted the attention +of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, who brought assistance of an extremely +substantial character. In 1902 Mr. Rockefeller organized the General +Education Board. Of the ten members six were taken from the Southern +Education Board; other members represented general educational interests +and especially the Baptist interests to which Mr. Rockefeller had been +contributing for years. In a large sense, therefore, especially in its +membership, the General Education Board was a development of the Ogden +organization; but it was much broader in its sweep, taking under its +view the entire nation and all forms of educational effort. It +immediately began to interest itself in the needs of the South. In 1902 +Mr. Rockefeller gave this new corporation $1,000,000; in 1905 he gave it +$10,000,000; in 1907 he astonished the Nation by giving $32,000,000, +and, in 1909, another $10,000,000; the whole making a total of +$53,000,000, the largest sum ever given by a single man, up to that +time, for social or philanthropic purposes. The General Education Board +now became the chief outside interest of Page's life. He was made a +member of the Executive Committee, faithfully attended all its sessions, +and participated intimately in every important plan. All such bodies +have their decorative members and their working members; Page belonged +emphatically in the latter class. Not only was he fertile in +suggestions, but his ready mind could give almost any proposal its +proper emphasis and clearly set forth its essential details. Between +Page and Dr. Buttrick, Secretary and now President of the Board, a close +personal intimacy grew up. Dr. Buttrick moved to Teaneck Road, +Englewood, where Page had his home, and many a long evening did the two +men spend together, many a long walk did they take in the surrounding +country, always discussing education, especially Southern education. A +letter to the present writer from Dr. Abraham Flexner, the present +Secretary of the Board, perhaps sums up the matter. "Page was one of the +real educational statesmen of this country," says Dr. Flexner, "probably +the greatest that we have had since the Civil War." + +And this Rockefeller support came at a time when that movement known as +the "educational awakening" had started in the South. In 1900 North +Carolina elected its greatest governor since the Civil War--Charles B. +Aycock. A much repeated anecdote attributes Lincoln's detestation of +slavery to a slave auction that he witnessed as a small boy; Aycock's +first zeal as an educational reformer had an origin that was even more +pathetic, for he always carried in his mind his recollection of his own +mother signing an important legal document with a cross. As a young man +fresh from the university Aycock also came under the influence of Page. +An old letter, preserved among Page's papers, dated February 26, 1886, +discloses that he was a sympathizing reader of the "mummy" controversy; +when the brickbats began flying in Page's direction Aycock wrote, +telling Page that "fully three fourths of the people are with you and +wish you Godspeed in your effort to awaken better work, greater +activity, and freer opinion in the state." And now under Aycock's +governorship North Carolina began to tackle the educational problem with +a purpose. School houses started up all over the state at the rate of +one a day--many of them beautiful, commodious, modern structures, in +every way the equals of any in the North or West; high schools, normal +schools, trade schools made their appearance wherever the need was +greatest; and in other parts of the South the response was similarly +energetic. The reform is not yet complete, but the description that Page +gave of Southern education in 1897, accurate in all its details as it +was then, has now become ancient history. + + +IV + +And in occupations of this kind Page passed his years of maturity. His +was not a spectacular life; his family for the most part still remained +his most immediate interest; the daily round of an editor has its +imaginative quality, but in the main it was for Page a quiet, even a +cloistered existence; the work that an editor does, the achievements +that he can put to his credit, are usually anonymous; and the American +public little understood the extent to which Page was influencing many +of the most vital forces of his time. The business association that he +had formed with Mr. Doubleday turned out most happily. Their publishing +house, in a short time, attained a position of great influence and +prosperity. The two men, on both the personal and the business side, +were congenial and complementary; and the love that both felt for +country life led to the establishment of a publishing and printing plant +of unusual beauty. In Garden City, Long Island, a great brick structure +was built, somewhat suggestive in its architecture of Hampton Court, +surrounded by pools and fountains, Italian gardens, green walks and +pergolas, gardens blooming in appropriate seasons with roses, peonies, +rhododendrons, chrysanthemums, and the like, and parks of evergreen, +fir, cedar, and more exotic trees and shrubs. Certainly fate could have +designed no more fitting setting for Page's favourite activities than +this. In assembling authors, in instigating the writing of books, in +watching the achievements and the tendencies of American life, in the +routine of editing his magazine--all this in association with partners +whose daily companionship was a delight and a stimulation--Page spent +his last years in America. + +Page's independence as an editor, sufficiently indicated in the days of +his vivacious youth, became even more emphatic in his maturer years. In +his eyes, merely inking over so many pages of good white paper was not +journalism; conviction, zeal, honesty--these were the important points. +Almost on the very day that his appointment as Ambassador to Great +Britain was announced his magazine published an editorial from his pen, +which contained not especially complimentary references to his new +chief, Mr. Bryan, the Secretary of State; naturally the newspapers found +much amusement in these few sentences; but the thing was typical of +Page's whole career as an editor. He held to the creed that an editor +should divorce himself entirely from prejudices, animosities, and +predilections; this seems an obvious, even a trite thing to say, yet +there are so few men who can leave personal considerations aside in +writing of men and events that it is worth while pointing out that Page +was such a man. When his firm was planning to establish its magazine, +his partner, Mr. Doubleday, was approached by a New York politician of +large influence but shady reputation who wished to be assured that it +would reflect correct political principles. "You should see Mr. Page +about that," was the response. "No, this is a business matter," the +insinuating gentleman went on, and then he proceeded to show that about +twenty-five thousand subscribers could be obtained if the publication +preached orthodox standpat doctrine. "I don't think you had better see +Mr. Page," said Mr. Doubleday, dismissing his caller. + +Many incidents which illustrate this independence could be given; one +will suffice. In 1907 and 1908, Page's magazine published the "Random +Reminiscences of John D. Rockefeller." While the articles were +appearing, the Hearst newspapers obtained a large number of letters +that, some years before, had passed between Mr. John D. Archbold, +President of the Standard Oil Company and one of Mr. Rockefeller's +business associates from the earliest days, and Senator Joseph B. +Foraker, of Ohio. These letters uncovered one of the gravest scandals +that had ever involved an American public man; they instantaneously +destroyed Senator Foraker's political career and hastened his death. +They showed that this brilliant man had been obtaining large sums of +money from the Standard Oil Company while he was filling the post of +United States Senator and that at the same time he was receiving +suggestions from Mr. Archbold about pending legislation. Mr. Rockefeller +was not personally involved, for he had retired from active business +many years before these things had been done; but the Standard Oil +Company, with which his name was intimately associated, was involved and +in a way that seemed to substantiate the worst charges that had been +made against it. At this time Page, as a member of the General Education +Board, was doing his part in helping to disperse the Rockefeller +millions for public purposes; his magazine was publishing Mr. +Rockefeller's reminiscences; there are editors who would have felt a +certain embarrassment in commenting on the Archbold transaction. Page, +however, did not hesitate. Mr. Archbold, hearing that he intended to +treat the subject fully, asked him to come and see him. Page replied +that he would be glad to have Mr. Archbold call upon him. The two men +were brought together by friendly intermediaries in a neutral place; but +the great oil magnate's explanation of his iniquities did not satisfy +Page. The November, 1908, issue of the magazine contained, in one +section, an interesting chapter by Mr. Rockefeller, describing the early +days of the Standard Oil Company, and, in another, ten columns by Page, +discussing the Archbold disclosures in language that was discriminating +and well tempered, but not at all complimentary to Mr. Archbold or to +the Standard Oil Company. + +Occasionally Page was summoned for services of a public character. Thus +President Roosevelt, whose friendship he had enjoyed for many years, +asked him to serve upon his Country Life Commission--a group of men +called by the President to study ways of improving the surroundings and +extending the opportunities of American farmers. Page's interest in +Negro education led to his appointment to the Jeanes Board. He early +became an admirer of Booker Washington, and especially approved his plan +for uplifting the Negro by industrial training. One of the great +services that Page rendered literature was his persuasion of Washington +to write that really great autobiography, "Up from Slavery," and another +biography in a different field, for which he was responsible, was Miss +Helen Keller's "Story of My Life." And only once, amid these fine but +not showy activities, did Page's life assume anything in the nature of +the sensational. This was in 1909, when he published his one effort at +novel writing, "The Southerner." To write novels had been an early +ambition with Page; indeed his papers disclose that he had meditated +several plans of this kind; but he never seriously settled himself to +the task until the year 1906. In July of that year the _Atlantic +Monthly_ began publishing a serial entitled "The Autobiography of a +Southerner Since the Civil War," by Nicholas Worth. The literary matter +that appeared under this title most readers accepted as veracious though +anonymous autobiography. It related the life adventures of a young man, +born in the South, of parents who had had little sympathy with the +Confederate cause, attempting to carve out his career in the section of +his birth and meeting opposition and defeat from the prejudices with +which he constantly found himself in conflict. The story found its main +theme and background in the fact that the Southern States were so +exclusively living in the memories of the Civil War that it was +impossible for modern ideas to obtain a foothold. "I have sometimes +thought," said the author, and this passage may be taken as embodying +the leading point of the narrative, "that many of the men who survived +that unnatural war unwittingly did us a greater hurt than the war +itself. It gave everyone of them the intensest experience of his life +and ever afterward he referred every other experience to this. Thus it +stopped the thought of most of them as an earthquake stops a clock. The +fierce blow of battle paralyzed the mind. Their speech was a vocabulary +of war, their loyalties were loyalties, not to living ideas or duties, +but to old commanders and to distorted traditions. They were dead men, +most of them, moving among the living as ghosts; and yet, as ghosts in a +play, they held the stage." In another passage the writer names the +"ghosts" which are chiefly responsible for preventing Southern progress. +They are three: "The Ghost of the Confederate dead, the Ghost of +religious orthodoxy, the Ghost of Negro domination." Everywhere the hero +finds his progress blocked by these obstructive wraiths of the past. He +seeks a livelihood in educational work--becomes a local superintendent +of Public Instruction, and loses his place because his religious views +are unorthodox, because he refuses to accept the popular estimate of +Confederate statesmen, and because he hopes to educate the black child +as well as the white one. He enters politics and runs for public office +on the platform of the new day, is elected, and then finds himself +counted out by political ringsters. Still he does not lose faith, and +finally settles down in the management of a cotton mill, convinced that +the real path of salvation lies in economic effort. This mere skeleton +of a story furnishes an excuse for rehearsing again the ideas that Page +had already made familiar in his writings and in his public addresses. +This time the lesson is enlivened by the portrayal of certain typical +characters of the post-bellum South. They are all there--the several +types of Negro, ranging all the way from the faithful and philosophic +plantation retainer to the lazy "Publican" office-seeker; the political +colonel, to whom the Confederate veterans and the "fair daughters of the +South (God bless 'em)" are the mainstays of "civerlerzation" and +indispensable instrumentalities in the game of partisan politics; the +evangelical clergymen who cared more for old-fashioned creeds than for +the education of the masses; the disreputable editor who specialized in +Negro crime and constantly preached the doctrine of the "white man's +country"; the Southern woman who, innocently and sincerely and even +charmingly, upheld the ancient tradition and the ancient feud. On the +other hand, Page's book portrays the buoyant enthusiast of the new day, +the reformer who was seeking to establish a public school system and to +strengthen the position of woman; and, above all, the quiet, +hard-working industrialist who cared nothing for stump speaking but much +for cotton mills, improved methods of farming, the introduction of +diversified crops, the tidying up of cities and the country. + +These chapters, extensively rewritten, were published as a book in 1909. +Probably Page was under no illusion that he had created a real romance +when he described his completed work as a "novel." The _Atlantic_ +autobiography had attracted wide attention, and the identification of +the author had been immediate and accurate. Page's friends began calling +his house on the telephone and asking for "Nicholas" and certain genial +spirits addressed him in letters as "Marse Little Nick"--the name under +which the hero was known to the old Negro family servant, Uncle +Ephraim--perhaps the best drawn character in the book. Page's real +purpose in calling the book a "novel" therefore, was to inform the +public that the story, so far as its incidents and most of its +characters were concerned, was pure fiction. Certain episodes, such as +those describing the hero's early days, were, in the main, veracious +transcripts from Page's own life, but the rest of the book bears +practically no relation to his career. The fact that he spent his +mature years in the North, editing magazines and publishing, whereas +Nicholas Worth spends his in the South, engaged in educational work and +in politics and industry, settles this point. The characters, too, are +rather types than specific individuals, though one or two of them, +particularly Professor Billy Bain, who is clearly Charles D. McIver, may +be accepted as fairly accurate portraits. But as a work of fiction "The +Southerner" can hardly be considered a success; the love story is too +slight, the women not well done, most of the characters rather +personified qualities than flesh and blood people. Its strength consists +in the picture that it gives of the so-called "Southern problem," and +especially of the devastating influence of slavery. From this standpoint +the book is an autobiography, for the ideas and convictions it presents +had formed the mental life of Page from his earliest days. + +And these were the things that hurt. Yet the stories of the anger caused +by "The Southerner" have been much exaggerated. It is said that a +certain distinguished Southern senator declared that, had he known that +Page was the author of "The Southerner," he would have blocked his +nomination as Ambassador to Great Britain; certain Southern newspapers +also severely denounced the volume; even some of Page's friends thought +that it was a little unkind in spots; yet as a whole the Southern people +accepted it as a fair, and certainly as an honest, treatment of a very +difficult subject. Possibly Page was a little hard upon the Confederate +veteran, and did not sufficiently portray the really pathetic aspects of +his character; any shortcomings of this sort are due, not to any failing +in sympathy, but to the fact that Page's zeal was absorbingly +concentrated upon certain glaring abuses. And as to the accuracy of his +vision in these respects there could be no question. The volume was a +welcome antidote to the sentimental Southern novels that had contented +themselves with glorifying a vanished society which, when the veil is +stripped, was not heroic in all its phases, for it was based upon an +institution so squalid as human slavery, and to those even more +pernicious books which, by luridly portraying the unquestioned vices of +reconstruction and the frightful consequences which resulted from giving +the Negro the ballot, simply aroused useless passions and made the way +out of the existing wilderness still more difficult. So the best public +opinion, North and South, regarded "The Southerner," and decided that +Page had performed a service to the section of his birth in writing it. +Indeed the fair-minded and intelligent spirit with which the best +elements in the South received "The Southerner" in itself demonstrated +that this great region had entered upon a new day. + + +V + +Nor was Page's work for the South yet ended. In the important five years +from 1905 to 1910 he performed two services of an extremely practical +kind. In 1906 the problem of Southern education assumed a new phase. Dr. +Wallace Buttrick, the Secretary of the General Education Board, had now +decided that the fundamental difficulty was economic. By that time the +Southern people had revised their original conception that education was +a private and not a public concern; there was now a general acceptance +of the doctrine that the mental and physical training of every child, +white and black, was the responsibility of the state; Aycock's campaign +had worked such a popular revolution on this subject that no politician +who aspired to public office would dare to take a contrary view. Yet the +economic difficulty still remained. The South was poor; whatever might +be the general desire, the taxable resources were not sufficient to +support such a comprehensive system of popular instruction as existed in +the North and West. Any permanent improvement must therefore be based +upon the strengthening of the South's economic position. Essentially the +task was to build up Southern agriculture, which for generations had +been wasteful, unintelligent and consequently unproductive. Such a +far-reaching programme might well appall the most energetic reformer, +but Dr. Buttrick set to work. He saw little light until his attention +was drawn to a quaint and philosophic gentleman--a kind of bucolic Ben +Franklin--who was then obscurely working in the cotton lands of +Louisiana, making warfare on the boll weevil in a way of his own. At +that time Dr. Seaman A. Knapp had made no national reputation; yet he +had evolved a plan for redeeming country life and making American farms +more fruitful that has since worked marvellous results. There was +nothing especially sensational about its details. Dr. Knapp had made the +discovery in relation to farms that the utilitarians had long since made +with reference to other human activities: that the only way to improve +agriculture was not to talk about it, but to go and do it. During the +preceding fifty years agricultural colleges had sprung up all over the +United States--Dr. Knapp had been president of one himself; practically +every Southern state had one or more; agricultural lecturers covered +thousands of miles annually telling their yawning audiences how to farm; +these efforts had scattered broadcast much valuable information about +the subject, but the difficulty lay in inducing the farmers to apply it. +Dr. Knapp had a new method. He selected a particular farmer and +persuaded him to work his fields for a period according to methods +which he prescribed. He told his pupil how to plough, what seed to +plant, how to space his rows, what fertilizers to use, and the like. If +a selected acreage yielded a profitable crop which the farmer could sell +at an increased price Dr. Knapp had sufficient faith in human nature to +believe that that particular farmer would continue to operate his farm +on the new method and that his neighbours, having this practical example +of growing prosperity, would imitate him. + +Such was the famous "Demonstration Work" of Dr. Seaman A. Knapp; this +activity is now a regular branch of the Department of Agriculture, +employing thousands of agents and spending not far from $18,000,000 a +year. Its application to the South has made practically a new and rich +country, and it has long since been extended to other regions. When Dr. +Buttrick first met Knapp, however, there were few indications of this +splendid future. He brought Dr. Knapp North and exhibited him to Page. +This was precisely the kind of man who appealed to Page's sympathies. +His mind was always keenly on the scent for the new man--the original +thinker who had some practical plan for uplifting humankind and making +life more worth while. And Dr. Knapp's mission was one that had filled +most of his thoughts for many years; its real purpose was the enrichment +of country life. Page therefore took to Dr. Knapp with a mighty zest. He +supported him on all occasions; he pled his cause with great eloquence +before the General Education Board, whose purse strings were liberally +unloosed in behalf of the Knapp work; in his writings, in speeches, in +letters, in all forms of public advocacy, he insisted that Dr. Knapp had +found the solution of the agricultural problem. The fact is that Page +regarded Knapp as one of the greatest men of the time. His feeling came +out with characteristic intensity on the occasion of the homely +reformer's funeral. "The exercises," Page once told a friend, "were held +in a rather dismal little church on the outskirts of Washington. The day +was bleak and chill, the attendants were few--chiefly officials of the +Department of Agriculture. The clergyman read the service in the most +perfunctory way. Then James Wilson, the Secretary of Agriculture, spoke +formally of Dr. Knapp as a faithful servant of the Department who always +did well what he was told to do, commending his life in an altogether +commonplace fashion. By that time my heart was pretty hot. No one seemed +to divine that in the coffin before them was the body of a really great +man, one who had hit upon a fruitful idea in American agriculture--an +idea that was destined to cover the nation and enrich rural life +immeasurably." Page was so moved by this lack of appreciation, so full +of sorrow at the loss of one of his dearest friends, that, when he rose +to speak, his appraisment took on a certain indignation. Their dead +associate, Page declared, would outrank the generals and the politicians +who received the world's plaudits, for he had devoted his life to a +really great purpose; his inspiration had been the love of the common +people, his faith, his sympathy had all been expended in an effort to +brighten the life of the too frequently neglected masses. Page's address +on this occasion was entirely extemporaneous; no record of it was ever +made, but those who heard it still carry the memory of an eloquent and +fiery outburst that placed Knapp's work in its proper relation to +American history and gave an unforgettable picture of a patient, +idealistic, achieving man whose name will loom large in the future. + +During this same period Page, always on the outlook for the exceptional +man, made another discovery which has had world-wide consequences. As a +member of President Roosevelt's Country Life Commission Page became one +of the committee assigned to investigate conditions in the Southern +States. The sanitarian of this commission was Dr. Charles W. Stiles, a +man who held high rank as a zoölogist, and who, as such, had for many +years done important work with the Department of Agriculture. Page had +hardly formed Dr. Stiles's acquaintance before he discovered that, at +that time, he was a man of one idea. And this one idea had for years +brought upon his head much good-natured ridicule. For Dr. Stiles had his +own explanation for much of the mental and physical sluggishness that +prevailed in the rural sections of the Southern States. Yet he could not +mention this without exciting uproarious laughter--even in the presence +of scientific men. Several years previously Dr. Stiles had discovered +that a hitherto unclassified species of a parasite popularly known as +the hookworm prevailed to an astonishing extent in all the Southern +States. The pathological effects of this creature had long been known; +it localized in the intestines, there secreted a poison that destroyed +the red blood corpuscles, and reduced its victims to a deplorable state +of anæmia, making them constantly ill, listless, mentally dull--in every +sense of the word useless units of society. The encouraging part of this +discovery was that the patients could quickly be cured and the hookworm +eradicated by a few simple improvements in sanitation. Dr. Stiles had +long been advocating such a campaign as an indispensable preliminary to +improving Southern life. But the humorous aspect of the hookworm always +interfered with his cause; the microbe of laziness had at last been +found! + +It was not until Dr. Stiles, in the course of this Southern trip, +cornered Page in a Pullman car, that he finally found an attentive +listener. Page, of course, had his preliminary laugh, but then the +hookworm began to work on his imagination. He quickly discovered that +Dr. Stiles was no fool; and before the expedition was finished, he had +become a convert and, like most converts, an extremely zealous one. The +hookworm now filled his thoughts as completely as it did those of his +friend; he studied it, he talked about it; and characteristically he set +to work to see what could be done. How much Southern history did the +thing explain? Was it not forces like this, and not statesmen and +generals, that really controlled the destinies of mankind? Page's North +Carolina country people had for generations been denounced as +"crackers," and as "hill-billies," but here was the discovery that the +great mass of them were ill--as ill as the tuberculosis patients in the +Adirondacks. Free these masses from the enervating parasite that +consumed all their energies--for Dr. Stiles had discovered that the +disease afflicted the great majority of the rural classes--and a new +generation would result. Naturally the cause strongly touched Page's +sympathies. He laid the case before the ever sympathetic Dr. Buttrick, +but here again progress was slow. By hard hammering, however, he half +converted Dr. Buttrick, who, in turn, took the case of the hookworm to +his old associate, Dr. Frederick T. Gates. What Page was determined to +obtain was a million dollars or so from Mr. John D. Rockefeller, for the +purpose of engaging in deadly warfare upon this pest. This was the +proper way to produce results: first persuade Dr. Buttrick, then induce +him to persuade Dr. Gates, who, if convinced, had ready access to the +great treasure house. But Dr. Gates also began to smile; even the +combined eloquence of Page and Dr. Buttrick could not move him. So the +reform marked time until one day Dr. Buttrick, Dr. Gates, and Dr. Simon +Flexner, the Director of the Rockefeller institute, happened to be +fellow travellers--again on a Pullman car. + +"Dr. Flexner," said Dr. Buttrick--this for the benefit of his +incredulous friend--"what is the scientific standing of Dr. Charles W. +Stiles?" + +"Very, very high," came the immediate response, and at this Dr. Gates +pricked up his ears. Yet the subsequent conversation disclosed that Dr. +Flexner was unfamiliar with the Stiles hookworm work. He, too, smiled at +the idea, but, like Page his smile was not one of ridicule. + +"If Dr. Stiles believes this," was his dictum, "it is something to be +taken most seriously." + +As Dr. Flexner is probably the leading medical scientist in the United +States, his judgment at once lifted the hookworm issue to a new plane. +Dr. Gates ceased laughing and events now moved rapidly. Mr. Rockefeller +gave a million dollars to a sanitary commission for the eradication of +the hookworm in the Southern States, and of this Page became a charter +member. In this way an enterprise that is the greatest sanitary and +health reform of modern times had its beginnings. So great was the +success of the Hookworm Commission in the South, so many thousands were +almost daily restored to health and usefulness, that Mr. Rockefeller +extended its work all over the world--to India, Egypt, China, Australia, +to all sections that fall within the now accurately located "hookworm +belt." Out of it grew the great International Health Commission, also +endowed with unlimited millions of Rockefeller money, which is engaged +in stamping out disease and promoting medical education in all quarters +of the globe. Dr. Stiles and Page's associates on the General Education +Board attribute the origin of this work to the simple fact that Page, +great humourist that he was, could temper his humour with +intelligence, and could therefore perceive the point at which a joke +ceased to be a joke and actually concealed a truth of the most +far-reaching importance to mankind. + +[Illustration: Walter H. Page (1899), from a photograph taken when he +was editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_] + +[Illustration: Dr. Wallace Buttrick, President of the General Education +Board] + +Page enjoyed the full results of this labour one night in the autumn of +1913, when Dr. Wickliffe Rose, the head of the International Health +Board, came to London to discuss the possibility of beginning hookworm +work in the British Empire, especially in Egypt and India. Page, as +Ambassador, arranged a dinner at the Marlborough Club, attended by the +leading medical scientists of the kingdom and several members of the +Cabinet. Dr. Rose's description of his work made a deep impression. He +was informed that the British Government was only too ready to coöperate +with the Health Board. When the discussion was ended the Right +Honourable Lewis Harcourt, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, +concluded an eloquent address with these words: + +"The time will come when we shall look back on this evening as the +beginning of a new era in British colonial administration." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 5: A memorandum of an old _Atlantic_ balance sheet discloses +that James Russell Lowell's salary as editor was $1,500 a year.] + +[Footnote 6: A member of the firm of Houghton, Mifflin & Company.] + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE WILSONIAN ERA BEGINS + +I + + +It was Page's interest in the material and spiritual elevation of the +masses that first directed his attention to the Presidential aspirations +of Woodrow Wilson. So much history has been made since 1912 that the +public questions which then stirred the popular mind have largely passed +out of recollection. Yet the great rallying cry of that era was +democracy, spelled with a small "d." In the fifty years since the Civil +War only one Democratic President had occupied the White House. The +Republicans' long lease of power had produced certain symptoms which +their political foes now proceeded to describe as great public abuses. +The truth of the matter, of course, is that neither political virtue nor +political depravity was the exclusive possession of either of the great +national organizations. The Republican party, especially under the +enlightened autocracy of Roosevelt, had started such reforms as +conservation, the improvement of country life, the regulation of the +railroads, and the warfare on the trusts, and had shown successful +interest in such evidences of the new day as child labour laws, +employer's liability laws, corrupt practice acts, direct primaries and +the popular election of United States Senators--not all perhaps wise as +methods, but all certainly inspired with a new conception of democratic +government. Roosevelt also had led in the onslaught on that corporation +influence which, after all, constituted the great problem of American +politics. But Mr. Taft's administration had impressed many men, and +especially Page, as a discouraging slump back into the ancient system. +Page was never blind to the inadequacies of his own party; the three +campaigns of Bryan and his extensive influence with the Democratic +masses at times caused him deep despair; that even the corporations had +extended their tentacles into the ranks of Jefferson was all too obvious +a fact; yet the Democratic party at that time Page regarded as the most +available instrument for embodying in legislation and practice the new +things in which he most believed. Above all, the Democratic party in +1912 possessed one asset to which the Republicans could lay no claim--a +new man, a new leader, the first statesman who had crossed its threshold +since Grover Cleveland. + +Like many scholarly Americans, Page had been charmed by the intellectual +brilliancy of Woodrow Wilson. The utter commonplaceness of much of what +passes for political thinking in this country had for years discouraged +him. American political life may have possessed energy, character, even +greatness; but it was certainly lacking in distinction. It was this new +quality that Wilson brought, and it was this that attracted thousands of +cultivated Americans to his standard, irrespective of party. The man was +an original thinker; he exercised the priceless possession of literary +style. He entertained; he did not weary; even his temperamental +deficiencies, which were apparent to many observers in 1912, had at +least the advantage that attaches to the interesting and the unusual. + +What Page and thousands of other public-spirited men saw in Wilson was a +leader of fine intellectual gifts who was prepared to devote his +splendid energies to making life more attractive and profitable to the +"Forgotten Man." Here was the opportunity then, to embody in one +imaginative statesman all the interest which for a generation had been +accumulating in favour of the democratic revival. At any rate, after +thirty years of Republican half-success and half-failure, here was the +chance for a new deal. Amid a mob of shopworn public men, here was one +who had at least the charm of novelty. + +Page had known Mr. Wilson for thirty years, and all this time the +Princeton scholar had seemed to him to be one of the most helpful +influences at work in the United States. As already noted Page had met +the future President when he was serving a journalistic apprenticeship +in Atlanta, Georgia. Wilson was then spending his days in a dingy law +office and was putting to good use the time consumed in waiting for the +clients who never came by writing that famous book on "Congressional +Government" which first lifted his name out of obscurity. This work, the +product of a man of twenty-nine, was perhaps the first searching +examination to which the American Congressional system had ever been +subjected. It brought Wilson a professorship at the newly established +Bryn Mawr College and drew to him other growing minds like Page's. +"Watch that man!" was Page's admonition to his friends. Wilson then went +into academic work and Page plunged into the exactions of daily and +periodical journalism, but Page's papers show that the two men had kept +in touch with each other during the succeeding thirty years. These +papers include a collection of letters from Woodrow Wilson, the earliest +of which is dated October 30, 1885, when the future President was +beginning his career at Bryn Mawr. He was eager to come to New York, +Wilson said, and discuss with Page "half a hundred topics" suggested by +"Congressional Government." The atmosphere at Bryn Mawr was evidently +not stimulating. "Such a talk would give me a chance to let off some of +the enthusiasm I am just now painfully stirring up in enforced silence." +The _Forum_ and the _Atlantic Monthly_, when Page was editor, showed +many traces of his interest in Wilson, who was one of his most frequent +contributors. When Wilson became President of Princeton, he occasionally +called upon his old _Atlantic_ friend for advice. He writes to Page on +various matters--to ask for suggestions about filling a professorship or +a lectureship; and there are also references to the difficulties Wilson +is having with the Princeton trustees. + +Page's letters also portray the new hopes with which Wilson inspired +him. One of his best loved correspondents was Henry Wallace, editor of +_Wallace's Farmer_, a homely and genial Rooseveltian. Page was one of +those who immensely admired Roosevelt's career; but he regarded him as a +man who had finished his work, at least in domestic affairs, and whose +great claim upon posterity would be as the stimulator of the American +conscience. "I see you are coming around to Wilson," Page writes, "and +in pretty rapid fashion. I assure you that that is the solution of the +problem. I have known him since we were boys, and I have been studying +him lately with a great deal of care. I haven't any doubt but that is +the way out. The old labels 'Democrat' and 'Republican' have ceased to +have any meaning, not only in my mind and in yours, but I think in the +minds of nearly all the people. Don't you feel that way?" + +The campaign of 1912 was approaching its end when this letter was +written; and no proceeding in American politics had so aroused Page's +energies. He had himself played a part in Wilson's nomination. He was +one of the first to urge the Princeton President to seize the great +opportunity that was rising before him. These suggestions were coming +from many sources in the summer of 1910; Mr. Wilson was about to retire +from the Presidency of Princeton; the movement had started to make him +Governor of New Jersey, and it was well understood that this was merely +intended as the first step to the White House. But Mr. Wilson was +himself undecided; to escape the excitement of the moment he had retired +to a country house at Lyme, Connecticut. In this place, in response to a +letter, Page now sought him out. His visit was a plea that Mr. Wilson +should accept his proffered fate; the Governorship of New Jersey, then +the Presidency, and the opportunity to promote the causes in which both +men believed. + +"But do you think I can do it, Page?" asked the hesitating Wilson. + +"I am sure you can": and then Page again, with his customary gusto, +launched into his persuasive argument. His host at one moment would +assent; at another present the difficulties; it was apparent that he was +having trouble in reaching a decision. To what extent Page's +conversation converted him the record does not disclose; it is apparent, +however, that when, in the next two years, difficulties came, his mind +seemed naturally to turn in Page's direction. Especially noticeable is +it that he appeals to Page for help against his fool friends. An +indiscreet person in New Jersey is booming Mr. Wilson for the +Presidency; the activity of such a man inevitably brings ridicule upon +the object of his attention; cannot Page find some kindly way of calling +him off? Mr. Wilson asks Page's advice about a campaign manager, and +incidentally expresses his own aversion to a man of "large calibre" for +this engagement. There were occasional conferences with Mr. Wilson on +his Presidential prospects, one of which took place at Page's New York +apartment. Page was also the man who brought Mr. Wilson and Colonel +House together; this had the immediate result of placing the important +state of Texas on the Wilson side, and, as its ultimate consequence, +brought about one of the most important associations in the history of +American politics. Page had known Colonel House for many years and was +the advocate who convinced the sagacious Texan that Woodrow Wilson was +the man. Wilson also acquired the habit of referring to Page men who +offered themselves to him as volunteer workers in his cause. "Go and see +Walter Page" was his usual answer to this kind of an approach. But Page +was not a collector of delegates to nominating conventions; not his the +art of manipulating these assemblages in the interest of a favoured man; +yet his services to the Wilson cause, while less demonstrative, were +almost as practical. His talent lay in exposition; and he now took upon +himself the task of spreading Wilson's fame. In his own magazine and in +books published by his firm, in letters to friends, in personal +conferences, he set forth Wilson's achievements. Page also persuaded +Wilson to make his famous speechmaking trip through the Western States +in 1911 and this was perhaps his largest definite contribution to the +Wilson campaign. It was in the course of this historic pilgrimage that +the American masses obtained their first view of a previously too-much +hidden figure. + +On election day Page wrote the President-elect a letter of +congratulation which contains one item of the greatest interest. When +the time came for the new President to deliver his first message to +Congress, he surprised the country by abandoning the usual practice of +sending a long written communication to be droned out by a reading +clerk to a yawning company of legislators. He appeared in person and +read the document himself. As President Harding has followed his example +it seems likely that this innovation, which certainly represents a great +improvement over the old routine, has become the established custom. The +origin of the idea therefore has historic value. + + _To Woodrow Wilson_ + Garden City, N.Y. + Election Day, 1912. [Nov. 5] + + MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT-ELECT: + + Before going into town to hear the returns, I write you my + congratulations. Even if you were defeated, I should still + congratulate you on putting a Presidential campaign on a higher + level than it has ever before reached since Washington's time. Your + grip became firmer and your sweep wider every week. It was + inspiring to watch the unfolding of the deep meaning of it and to + see the people's grasp of the main idea. It was fairly, highly, + freely, won, and now we enter the Era of Great Opportunity. It is + hard to measure the extent or the thrill of the new interest in + public affairs and the new hope that you have aroused in thousands + of men who were becoming hopeless under the long-drawn-out reign of + privilege. + + To the big burden of suggestions that you are receiving, may I add + these small ones? + + 1. Call Congress in extra session mainly to revise the tariff and + incidentally to prepare the way for rural credit societies. + + Mr. Taft set the stage admirably in 1909 when he promptly called an + extra session; but then he let the villain run the play. To get the + main job in hand at once will be both dramatic and effective and it + will save time. Moreover, it will give you this great tactical + advantage--you can the better keep in line those who have debts or + doubts before you have answered their importunities for offices and + for favours. + + The time is come when the land must be developed by the new + agriculture and farming made a business. This calls for money. + Every acre will repay a reasonable loan on long time at a fair + interest rate, and group-borrowing develops the men quite as much + as the men will develop the soil. It saved the German Empire and is + remaking Italy. And this is the proper use of much of the money + that now flows into the reach of the credit barons. This building + up of farm life will restore the equilibrium of our civilization + and, besides, will prove to be one half the solution of our + currency and credit problem. . . . + + 2. Set your trusted friends immediately to work, every man in the + field he knows best, to prepare briefs for you on such great + subjects and departments as the Currency, the Post Office, + Conservation, Rural Credit, the Agricultural Department, which has + the most direct power for good to the most people--to make our + farmers as independent as Denmark's and to give our best country + folk the dignity of the old-time English gentleman--this expert, + independent information to compare with your own knowledge and with + official reports. + + 3. The President reads (or speaks) his Inaugural to the people. Why + not go back to the old custom of himself delivering his Messages to + Congress? Would that not restore a feeling of comradeship in + responsibility and make the Legislative branch feel nearer to the + Executive? Every President of our time has sooner or later got away + with Congress. + + I cannot keep from saying what a new thrill of hope and tingle of + expectancy I feel--as of a great event about to happen for our + country and for the restoration of popular government; for you will + keep your rudder true. + + Most heartily yours, + WALTER H. PAGE. + + To Governor Wilson, + Princeton, N.J. + +Page was one of the first of Mr. Wilson's friends to discuss with the +President-elect the new legislative programme. The memorandum which he +made of this interview shows how little any one, in 1912, appreciated +the tremendous problems that Mr. Wilson would have to face. Only +domestic matters then seemed to have the slightest importance. +Especially significant is the fact that even at this early date, Page +was chiefly impressed by Mr. Wilson's "loneliness." + + +_Memorandum dated November 15, 1912_ + +To use the Government, especially the Department of Agriculture and the +Bureau of Education, to help actively in the restoration of country +life--that's the great chance for Woodrow Wilson, ten days ago elected +President. Precisely how well he understands this chance, how well, for +example, he understands the grave difference between the Knapp +Demonstration method of teaching farmers and the usual Agricultural +College method of lecturing to them, and what he knows about the rising +movement for country schools of the right sort, and agricultural credit +societies--how all this great constructive problem of Country Life lies +in his mind, who knows? I do not. If I do not know, who does know? The +political managers who have surrounded him these six months have now +done their task. _They_ know nothing of this Big Chance and Great +Outlook. And for the moment they have left him alone. In two days he +will go to Bermuda for a month to rest and to meditate. He ought to +meditate on this Constructive programme. It seemed my duty to go and +tell him about it. I asked for an interview and he telegraphed to go +to-day at five o'clock. + +Arthur and I drove in the car and reached Princeton just before five--a +beautiful drive of something less than four hours from New York. +Presently we arrived at the Wilson house. + +"The Governor is engaged," I was informed by the man who opened the +door. "He can see nobody. He is going away to-morrow." + +"I have an appointment with him," said I, and I gave him my card. + +"I know he can't see anybody." + +"Will you send my card in?" + +We waited at the door till the maid took it in and returned to say the +Governor would presently come down. + +The reception room had a desk in the corner, and on a row of chairs +across the whole side of the room were piles of unopened letters. It is +a plain, modestly but decently furnished room, such as you would expect +to find in the modest house of a professor at Princeton. During his +presidency of the college, he had lived in the President's house in the +college yard. This was his own house of his professorial days. + +"Hello, Page, come out here: I am glad to see you." There he stood in a +door at the back of the room, which led to his library and work room. +"Come back here." + +"In the best of all possible worlds, the right thing does sometimes +happen," said I. + +"Yes." + +"And a great opportunity." + +He smiled and was cordial and said some pleasant words. But he was +weary. "I have cobwebs in my head." He was not depressed but +oppressed--rather shy, I thought, and I should say rather lonely. The +campaign noise and the little campaigners were hushed and gone. There +were no men of companionable size about him, and the Great Task lay +before him. The Democratic party has not brought forward large men in +public life during its long term of exclusion from the Government; and +the newly elected President has had few opportunities and a very short +time to make acquaintances of a continental kind. This little college +town, this little hitherto corrupt state, are both small. + +I went at my business without delay. The big country-life idea, the +working of great economic forces to put its vitalization within sight, +the coming equilibrium by the restoration of country life--all +coincident with his coming into the Presidency. His Administration must +fall in with it, guide it, further it. The chief instruments are the +Agricultural Department, the Bureau of Education, and the power of the +President himself to bring about Rural Credit Societies and similar +organized helps. He quickly saw the difference between Demonstration +Work by the Agricultural Department and the plan to vote large sums to +agricultural colleges and to the states to build up schools. + +"Who is the best man for Secretary of Agriculture?" + +I ought to have known, but I didn't. For who is? + +"May I look about and answer your question later?" + +"Yes, I will thank you." + +"I wish to find the very best men for my Cabinet, regardless of +consequences. I do not forget the party as an instrument of government, +and I do not wish to do violence to it. But I must have the best men in +the Nation"--with a very solemn tone as he sat bolt upright, with a +stern look on his face, and a lonely look. + +I told him my idea of the country school that must be and talked of the +Bureau of Education. He saw quickly and assented to all my propositions. + +And then we talked somewhat more conservatively of Conservation, about +which he knows less. + +I asked if he would care to have me make briefs about the Agricultural +Department, the Bureau of Education, the Rural Credit Societies, and +Conservation. "I shall be very grateful, if it be not too great a +sacrifice." + +I had gained that permission, which (if he respect my opinion) ought to +guide him somewhat toward a real understanding of how the Government may +help toward our Great Constructive Problem. + +I gained also the impression that he has no sympathy with the idea of +giving government grants to schools and agricultural colleges--a very +distinct impression. + +I had been with him an hour and had talked (I fear) too much. But he +seemed hearty in his thanks. He came to the front door with me, insisted +on helping me on with my coat, envied me the motor-car drive in the +night back to New York, spoke to eight or ten reporters who had crowded +into the hall for their interview--a most undignified method, it seemed +to me, for a President-elect to reach the public; I stepped out on the +muddy street, and, as I walked to the Inn, I had the feeling of the +man's oppressive loneliness as he faced his great task. There is no pomp +of circumstance, nor hardly dignity in this setting, except the dignity +of his seriousness and his loneliness. + + * * * * * + +There was a general expectation that Page would become a member of +President Wilson's Cabinet, and the place for which he seemed +particularly suited was the Secretaryship of Agriculture. The smoke of +battle had hardly passed away, therefore, when Page's admirers began +bringing pressure to bear upon the President-elect. There was probably +no man in the United States who had such completely developed views +about this Department as Page; and it is not improbable that, had +circumstances combined to offer him this position, he would have +accepted it. But fate in matters of this sort is sometimes kinder than a +man's friends. Page had a great horror of anything which suggested +office-seeking, and the campaign which now was started in his interest +greatly embarrassed him. He wrote Mr. Wilson, disclaiming all +responsibility and begging him to ignore these misguided efforts. As the +best way of checking the movement, Page now definitely answered Mr. +Wilson's question: Who was the best man for the Agricultural Department? +It is interesting to note that the candidate whom Page nominated in this +letter--a man who had been his friend for many years and an associate on +the Southern Education Board--was the man whom Mr. Wilson chose. + + +_To Woodrow Wilson_ + + Garden City, N.Y. + November 27, 1912. + + MY DEAR WILSON: + + I send you (wrongly, perhaps, when you are trying to rest) the + shortest statement that I could make about the demonstration + field-work of the Department of Agriculture. This is the best tool + yet invented to shape country life. Other (and shorter) briefs will + be ready in a little while. + + You asked me who I thought was the best man for Secretary of + Agriculture. Houston[7], I should say, of the men that I know. You + will find my estimate of him in the little packet of memoranda. Van + Hise[8] may be as good or even better if he be young in mind and + adaptable enough. But he seems to me a man who may already have + done his big job. + + I answer the other questions you asked at Princeton and I have + taken the liberty to send some memoranda about a few other men--on + the theory that every friend of yours ought now to tell you with + the utmost frankness about the men he knows, of whom you may be + thinking. + + The building up of the countryman is the big constructive job of + our time. When the countryman comes to his own, the town man will + no longer be able to tax, and to concentrate power, and to bully + the world. + + Very heartily yours, + WALTER H. PAGE. + + +_To Henry Wallace_ + + Garden City, N.Y. + 11 March, 1913. + + MY DEAR UNCLE HENRY: + + What a letter yours is! By George! we must get on the job, you and + I, of steering the world--get on it a little more actively. Else it + may run amuck. We have frightful responsibilities in this matter. + The subject weighs the more deeply and heavily on me because I am + just back from a month's vacation in North Carolina, where I am + going to build me a winter and old-age bungalow. No; you would be + disappointed if you went out of your way to see my boys. Moreover, + they are now merely clearing land. They sold out the farm they put + in shape, after two years' work, for just ten times what it had + cost, and they are now starting another one _de novo_. About a year + hence, they'll have something to show. And next winter, when my + house is built down there, I want you to come and see me and see + that country. I'll show you one of the most remarkable farmers' + clubs you ever saw and many other interesting things as well--many, + very many. I'm getting into this farm business in dead earnest. + That's the dickens of it: how can I do my share in our partnership + to run the universe if I give my time to cotton-growing problems? + It's a tangled world. + + Well, bless your soul! You and the younger Wallaces (my regards to + every one of them) and Poe[9]--you are all very kind to think of me + for that difficult place--too difficult by far, for me. Besides, it + would have cost me my life. If I were to go into public life, I + should have had to sell my whole interest here. This would have + meant that I could never make another dollar. More than that, I'd + have thrown away a trade that I've learned and gone at another one + that I know little about--a bad change, surely. So, you see, there + never was anything serious in this either in my mind or in the + President's. Arthur hit it off right one day when somebody asked + him: + + "Is your father going to take the Secretaryship of Agriculture?" + + He replied: "Not seriously." + + Besides, the President didn't ask me! He knew too much for that. + + [Illustration: Charles D. McIver of Greensboro, North Caroline, a + leader in the cause of Southern Education] + + [Illustration: Woodrow Wilson in 1912] + + But he did ask me who would be a good man and I said "Houston." You + are not quite fair to him in your editorial. He does know--knows + much and well and is the strongest man in the Cabinet--in promise. + The farmers don't yet know him: that's the only trouble. Give him a + chance. + + I've "put it up" to the new President and to the new Secretary to + get on the job immediately of _organizing country life_. I've drawn + up a scheme (a darned good one, too) which they have. I have good + hope that they'll get to it soon and to the thing that we have all + been working toward. I'm very hopeful about this. I told them both + last week to get their minds on this before the wolves devour them. + Don't you think it better to work with the Government and to try to + steer it right than to go off organizing other agencies? + + God pity our new masters! The President is all right. He's sound, + earnest, courageous. But his party! I still have some muscular + strength. In certain remote regions they still break stones in the + road by hand. Now I'll break stones before I'd have a job at + Washington now. I spent four days with them last week--the new + crowd. They'll try their best. I think they'll succeed. But, if + they do succeed and survive, they'll come out of the scrimmage + bleeding and torn. We've got to stand off and run 'em, Uncle Henry. + That's the only hope I see for the country. Don't damn Houston, + then, beforehand. He's a real man. Let's get on the job and tell + 'em how. + + Now, when you come East, come before you need to get any of your + meetings and strike a bee-line for Garden City; and don't be in a + hurry when you get here. If a Presbyterian meeting be necessary for + your happiness, I'll drum up one on the Island for you. And, of + course, you must come to my house and pack up right and get your + legs steady sometime before you sail--you and Mrs. Wallace: will + she not go with you? + + In the meantime, don't be disgruntled. We can steer the old world + right, if you'll just keep your shoulder to the wheel. We'll work + it all out here in the summer and verify it all (including your job + of setting the effete kingdoms of Europe all right)--we'll verify + it all next winter down in North Carolina. I think things have got + such a start that they'll keep going in some fashion, till we check + up the several items, political, ethical, agricultural, + journalistic, and international. God bless us all! + + Most heartily always yours, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + +Though Mr. Wilson did not offer Page the Agricultural Department, he +much desired to have him in his Cabinet, and had already decided upon +him for a post which the new President probably regarded as more +important--the Interior. The narrow margin with which Page escaped this +responsibility illustrates again the slender threads upon which history +is constructed. The episode is also not without its humorous side. For +there was only one reason why Page did not enter the Cabinet as +Secretary of the Interior; and that is revealed in the above letter to +"Uncle Henry"; he was so busy planning his new house in the sandhills of +North Carolina that, while cabinets were being formed and great +decisions taken, he was absent from New York. A short time before the +inauguration, Mr. Wilson asked Colonel House to arrange a meeting with +Page in the latter's apartment. Mr. Wilson wished to see him on a +Saturday; the purpose was to offer him the Secretaryship of the +Interior. Colonel House called up Page's office at Garden City and was +informed that he was in North Carolina. Colonel House then telegraphed +asking Page to start north immediately, and suggesting the succeeding +Monday as a good time for the interview. A reply was at once received +from Page that he was on his way. + +Meanwhile certain of Mr. Wilson's advisers had heard of the plan and +were raising objections. Page was a Southerner; the Interior Department +has supervision over the pension bureau, with its hundreds of thousands +of Civil War veterans as pensioners; moreover, Page was an outspoken +enemy of the whole pension system and had led several "campaigns" +against it. The appointment would never do! Mr. Wilson himself was +persuaded that it would be a mistake. + +"But what are we going to do about Page?" asked Colonel House. "I have +summoned him from North Carolina on important business. What excuse +shall I give for bringing him way up here?" + +But the President-elect was equal to the emergency. + +"Here's the cabinet list," he drily replied. "Show it to Page. Tell him +these are the people I have about decided to appoint and ask him what he +thinks of them. Then he will assume that we summoned him to get his +advice." + +When Page made his appearance, therefore, Colonel House gave him the +list of names and solemnly asked him what he thought of them. The first +name that attracted Page's attention was that of Josephus Daniels, as +Secretary of the Navy. Page at once expressed his energetic dissent. + +"Why, don't you think he is Cabinet timber?" asked Colonel House. + +"Timber!" Page fairly shouted. "He isn't a splinter! Have you got a time +table? When does the next train leave for Princeton?" + +In a couple of hours Page was sitting with Mr. Wilson, earnestly +protesting against Mr. Daniels's appointment. But Mr. Wilson said that +he had already offered Mr. Daniels the place. + + +II + +About the time of Wilson's election a great calamity befell one of +Page's dearest friends. Dr. Edwin A. Alderman, the President of the +University of Virginia, one of the pioneer educational forces in the +Southern States, and for years an associate of Page on the General +Education Board, was stricken with tuberculosis. He was taken to +Saranac, and here a patient course of treatment happily restored him to +health. One of the dreariest aspects of such an experience is its +tediousness and loneliness. Yet the maintenance of one's good spirits +and optimism is an essential part of the treatment. And it was in this +work that Page now proved an indispensable aid to the medical men. As +soon as Dr. Alderman found himself stretched out, a weak and isolated +figure, cut off from those activities and interests which had been his +inspiration for forty years, with no companions except his own thoughts +and a few sufferers like himself, letters began to arrive with weekly +regularity from the man whom he always refers to as "dear old Page." The +gayety and optimism of these letters, the lively comments which they +passed upon men and things, and their wholesome and genial philosophy, +were largely instrumental, Dr. Alderman has always believed, in his +recovery. Their effect was so instant and beneficial that the physicians +asked to have them read to the other patients, who also derived +abounding comfort and joy from them. The whole episode was one of the +most beautiful in Page's life, and brings out again that gift for +friendship which was perhaps his finest quality. For this reason it is +a calamity that most of these letters have not been preserved. The few +that have survived are interesting not only in themselves; they reveal +Page's innermost thoughts on the subject of Woodrow Wilson. That he +admired the new President is evident, yet these letters make it clear +that, even in 1912 and 1913, there was something about Mr. Wilson that +caused him to hesitate, to entertain doubts, to wonder how, after all, +the experiment was to end. + + To Edwin A. Alderman + + Garden City, L.I. + December 31, 1912. + + MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN: + + I have a new amusement, a new excitement, a new study, as you have + and as we all have who really believe in democracy--a new study, a + new hope, and sometimes a new fear; and its name is Wilson. I have + for many years regarded myself as an interested, but always a + somewhat detached, outsider, believing that the democratic idea was + real and safe and lifting, if we could ever get it put into action, + contenting myself ever with such patches of it as time and accident + and occasion now and then sewed on our gilded or tattered garments. + But now it is come--the real thing; at any rate a man somewhat like + us, whose thought and aim and dream are our thought and aim and + dream. That's enormously exciting! I didn't suppose I'd ever become + so interested in a general proposition or in a governmental hope. + + Will he do it? Can he do it? Can anybody do it? How can we help him + do it? Now that the task is on him, does he really understand? Do I + understand him and he me? There's a certain unreality about it. + + The man himself--I find that nobody quite knows him now. Alas! I + wonder if he quite knows himself. Temperamentally very shy, having + lived too much alone and far too much with women (how I wish two of + his daughters were sons!) this Big Thing having descended on him + before he knew or was quite prepared for it, thrust into a whirl of + self-seeking men even while he is trying to think out the theory of + the duties that press, knowing the necessity of silence, surrounded + by small people--well, I made up my mind that his real friends owed + it to him and to what we all hope for, to break over his reserve + and to volunteer help. He asks for conferences with official + folk--only, I think. So I began to write memoranda about those + subjects of government about which I know something and have + opinions and about men who are or who may be related to them. It + has been great sport to set down in words without any reserve + precisely what you think. It is imprudent, of course, as most + things worth doing are. But what have I to lose, I who have my life + now planned and laid out and have got far beyond the reach of + gratitude or hatred or praise or blame or fear of any man? I sent + him some such memoranda. Here came forthwith a note of almost + abject thanks. I sent more. Again, such a note--written in his own + hand. Yet not a word of what he thinks. The Sphinx was garrulous in + comparison. Then here comes a mob of my good friends crying for + office for me. So I sent a ten-line note, by the hand of my + secretary, saying that this should not disturb my perfect frankness + nor (I knew it would not) his confidence. Again, a note in his own + hand, of perfect understanding and with the very glow of gratitude. + And he talks--generalities to the public. Perhaps that's all he can + talk now. Wise? Yes. But does he know the men about him? Does he + really know men? Nobody knows. Thus 'twixt fear and hope I + see--suspense. I'll swear I can't doubt, I can't believe. Whether + it is going to work out or not--whether he or anybody can work it + out of the haze of theory--nobody knows; and nobody's speculation + is better than mine and mine is worthless. + + This is the game, this is the excitement, this is the doubthope and + the hopedoubt. I send this word about it to you (I could and would + to nobody else: you're snowbound, you see, and don't write much and + don't see many people: restrain your natural loquacity!) But for + the love of heaven tell me if you see any way _very clearly_. It's + a kind of misty dream to me. + + I ask myself why should I concern myself about it? Of course the + answer's easy and I think creditable: I do profoundly hold this + democratic faith and believe that it can be worked into action + among men; and it may be I shall yet see it done. That's the secret + of my interest. But when this awful office descends on a man, it + oppresses him, changes him, you are not quite so sure of him, you + doubt whether he knows himself or you in the old way. + + And I find among men the very crudest ideas of government or of + democracy. They have not thought the thing out. They hold no + ordered creed of human organization or advancement. They leave all + to chance and think, when they think at all, that chance determines + it. And yet the Great Hope persists, and I think I have grown an + inch by it. + + I wonder how it seems, looked at from the cold mountains of Lake + Saranac? + + It's the end of the year. Mrs. Page and I (alone!) have been + talking of democracy, of these very things I've written. The + bell-ringing and the dancing and the feasting are not, on this + particular year, to our liking. We see all our children gone--half + of them to nests of their own building, the rest on errands of + their own pleasure, and we are left, young yet, but the main job of + life behind us! We're going down to a cottage in southern North + Carolina (with our own cook and motor car, praise God!) for + February, still further to think this thing out and incidentally to + build us a library, in which we'll live when we can. That, for + convention's sake, we call a Vacation. + + Your brave note came to-day. Of course, you'll "get" 'em--those + small enemies. The gain of twelve pounds tells the story. The + danger is, your season of philosophy and reverie will be too soon + ended. Don't fret; the work and the friends will be here when you + come down. There's many a long day ahead; and there may not be so + many seasons of rest and meditation. You are the only man I know + who has time enough to think out a clear answer to this: "What + ought to be done with Bryan?" What _can_ be done with Bryan? When + you find the answer, telegraph it to me. + + I've a book or two more to send you. If they interest you, praise + the gods. If they bore you, fling 'em in the snow and think no + worse of me. You can't tell what a given book may be worth to a + given man in an unknown mood. They've become such a commodity to me + that I thank my stars for a month away from them when I may come at + 'em at a different angle and really need a few old + ones--Wordsworth, for instance. When you get old enough, you'll + wake up some day with the feeling that the world is much more + beautiful than it was when you were young, that a landscape has a + closer meaning, that the sky is more companionable, that outdoor + colour and motion are more splendidly audacious and beautifully + rhythmical than you had ever thought. That's true. The gently + snow-clad little pines out my window are more to me than the whole + Taft Administration. They'll soon be better than the year's + dividends. And the few great craftsmen in words who can confirm + this feeling--they are the masters you become grateful for. Then + the sordidness of the world lies far beneath you and your great + democracy is truly come--the democracy of Nature. To be akin to a + tree, in this sense, is as good as to be akin to a man. I have a + grove of little long-leaf pines down in the old country and I know + they'll have some consciousness of me after all men have forgotten + me: I've saved 'em, and they'll sing a century of gratitude if I + can keep 'em saved. Joe Holmes gave me a dissertation on them the + other day. He was down there "on a little Sunday jaunt" of forty + miles--the best legs and the best brain that ever worked together + in one anatomy. + + A conquering New Year--that's what you'll find, begun before this + reaches you, carrying all good wishes from + + Yours affectionately, + + W.H.P. + + To Edwin A. Alderman + + Garden City, New York, + + January 26, 1913. + + MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN: + + This has been "Board" [10] week, as you know. The men came from all + quarters of the land, and we had a good time. New work is opening; + old work is going well; the fellowship ran in good tide--except + that everybody asked everybody else: "What do you know about + Alderman?" Everybody who had late news of you gave a good report. + The Southern Board formally passed a resolution to send + affectionate greetings to you and high hope and expectation, and I + was commissioned to frame the message. This is it. I shall write no + formal resolution, for that wasn't the spirit of it. The fellows + all asked me, singly and collectively, to send their love. And we + don't put that sort of a message under _whereases_ and + _wherefores_. There they were, every one of them, except Peabody + and Bowie. Mr. Ogden in particular was anxious for his emphatic + remembrance and good wishes to go. The dear old man is fast passing + into the last stage of his illness and he knows it and he soon + expects the end, in a mood as brave and as game as he ever was. I + am sorry to tell you he suffers a good deal of pain. + + What a fine thing to look back over--this Southern Board's work! + Here was a fine, zealous merchant twenty years ago, then + fifty-seven years old, who saw this big job as a modest layman. If + he had known more about "Education" or more about "the South, + bygawd, sir!" he'd never have had the courage to tackle the job. + But with the bravery of ignorance, he turned out to be the wisest + man on that task in our generation. He has united every real, good + force, and he showed what can be done in a democracy even by one + zealous man. I've sometimes thought that this is possibly the + wisest single piece of work that I have ever seen done--_wisest_, + not smartest. I don't know what can be done when he's gone. His + phase of it is really done. But, if another real leader arise, + there will doubtless be another phase. + + The General Board doesn't find much more college-endowing to do. We + made only one or two gifts. But we are trying to get the country + school task rightly focussed. We haven't done it yet; but we will. + Buttrick and Rose will work it out. I wish to God I could throw + down my practical job and go at it with 'em. Darned if I couldn't + get it going! though _I_ say it, as shouldn't. And we are going + pretty soon to begin with the medical colleges; that, I think, is + good--very. + + But the most efficient workmanlike piece of organization that my + mortal eyes have ever seen is Rose's hookworm worm work. We're + going soon to organize country life in a sanitary way, the county + health officer being the biggest man on the horizon. Stiles has + moved his marine hospital and his staff to Wilmington, North + Carolina, and he and the local health men are quietly going to make + New Hanover the model county for sanitary condition and efficiency. + You'll know what a vast revolution that denotes!--And Congress + seems likely to charter the big Rockefeller Foundation, which will + at once make five millions available for chasing the hookworm off + the face of the earth. Rose will spread himself over Honduras, + etc., etc., and China, and India! This does literally beat the + devil; for, if the hookworm isn't the devil, what is? + + I'm going to farming. I've two brothers and two sons, all young and + strong, who believe in the game. We have land without end, + thousands of acres; engines to pull stumps, to plough, to plant, to + reap. The nigger go hang! A white boy with an engine can outdo a + dozen of 'em. Cotton and corn for staple crops; peaches, figs, + scuppernongs, vegetables, melons for incidental crops; God's good + air in North Carolina; good roads, too--why, man, Moore County has + authorized the laying out of a strip of land along all highways to + be planted in shrubbery and fruit trees and kept as a park, so that + you will motor for 100 miles through odorous bloom in spring!--I + mean I am going down there to-morrow for a month, one day for golf + at Pinehurst, the next day for clearing land with an oil + locomotive, ripping up stumps! Every day for life out-of-doors and + every night, too. I'm going to grow dasheens. You know what a + dasheen is? It's a Trinidad potato, which keeps and tastes like a + sweet potato stuffed with chestnuts. There are lots of things to + learn in this world. + + God bless us all, old man. It's a pretty good world, whether seen + from the petty excitements of reforming the world and dreaming of a + diseaseless earth in New York, or from the stump-pulling recreation + of a North Carolina wilderness. + + Health be with you! + + W.H.P. + + To Edwin A. Alderman + + Garden City, L.I. + + March 10, 1913. + + MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN: + + I'm home from a month of perfect climate in the sandhills of North + Carolina, where I am preparing a farm and building a home at least + for winter use; and I had the most instructive and interesting + month of my life there. I believe I see, even in my life-time, the + coming of a kind of man and a kind of life that shall come pretty + near to being the model American citizen and the model American way + to live. Half of it is climate; a fourth of it occupation; the + other fourth, companionship. And the climate (with what it does) is + three fourths companionship. + + Then I came to Washington and saw Wilson made President--a very + impressive experience indeed. The future--God knows; but I believe + in Wilson very thoroughly. Men fool him yet. Men fool us all. He + has already made some mistakes. But he's sound. And, if we have + moral courage enough to beat back the grafters, little and big--I + mean if we, the people, will vote two years and four years hence, + to keep them back, I think that we shall now really work toward a + democratic government. I have a stronger confidence in government + now as an instrument of human progress than I have ever had before. + And I find it an exhilarating and exciting experience. + + I have seen many of your good friends in North Carolina, Virginia, + and Washington. How we all do love you, old man! Don't forget that, + in your successful fight. And, with my affectionate greetings to + Mrs. Alderman, ask her to send me the news of your progress. + + Always affectionately yours, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + + _To Edwin A. Alderman_ + + On the _Baltic_, New York to Liverpool, + + May 19, 1913. + + MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN: + + It was the best kind of news I heard of you during my last weeks at + home--every day of which I wished to go to Briarcliff to see you. + At a distance, it seems absurd to say that it was impossible to go. + But it was. I set down five different days in my calendar for this + use; and somehow every one of them was taken. Two were taken by + unexpected calls to Washington. Another was taken by my partners + who arranged a little good-bye dinner. Another was taken by the + British Ambassador--and so on. Absurd--of course it was absurd, and + I feel now as if it approached the criminal. But every stolen day I + said, "Well, I'll find another." But another never came. + + But good news of you came by many hands and mouths. My + congratulations, my cheers, my love, old man. Now when you do take + up work again, don't take up all the work. Show the fine virtue + called self-restraint. We work too much and too hard and do too + many things even when we are well. There are three titled + Englishmen who sit at the table with me on this ship--one a former + Lord Mayor of London, another a peer, and the third an M.P. Damn + their self-sufficiencies! They do excite my envy. _They_ don't + shoulder the work of the world: they shoulder the world and leave + the work to be done by somebody else. Three days' stories and + political discussion with them have made me wonder why the devil + I've been so industrious all my life. They know more than I know; + they are richer than I am; they have been about the world more than + I have; they are far more influential than I am; and yet one of + them asked me to-day if George Washington was a born American! I + said to him, "Where the devil do you suppose he came from--Hades?" + And he laughed at himself as heartily as the rest of us laughed at + him, and didn't care a hang! + + If that's British, I've a mind to become British; and, the point + is, you must, too. Work is a curse. There was some truth in that + old doctrine. At any rate a little of it must henceforth go a long + way with you. + + A sermon? Yes. But, since it's a good one, I know you'll forgive + me; for it is preached in love, my dear boy, and accompanied with + the hearty and insistent hope that you'll write to me. + + Affectionately, + WALTER PAGE. + +This last letter apparently anticipates the story. A few weeks before it +was written President Wilson had succeeded in carrying out his +determination to make Page an important part of his Administration. One +morning Page's telephone rang and Colonel House's well-known and +well-modulated voice came over the wire. + +"Good morning, Your Excellency," was his greeting. + +"What the devil are you talking about?" asked Page. + +Then Colonel House explained himself. The night before, he said, he had +dined at the White House. In a pause of the conversation the President +had quietly remarked: + +"I've about made up my mind to send Walter Page to England. What do you +think of that?" + +Colonel House thought very well of it indeed and the result of his +conversation was this telephone call, in which he was authorized to +offer Page the Ambassadorship to Great Britain. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 7: Mr. David F. Houston, ex-President of the University of +Texas, and in 1912 Chancellor of the Washington University of St. +Louis.] + +[Footnote 8: Charles R. Van Hise, President of the University of +Wisconsin.] + +[Footnote 9: Clarence Poe, editor of _The Progressive Farmer_.] + +[Footnote 10: The reference is to the meeting of the Southern and the +General Education Boards.] + + + + +CHAPTER V + +ENGLAND BEFORE THE WAR + + +The London Embassy is the greatest diplomatic gift at the disposal of +the President, and, in the minds of the American people, it possesses a +glamour and an historic importance all its own. Page came to the +position, as his predecessors had come, with a sense of awe; the great +traditions of the office; the long line of distinguished men, from +Thomas Pinckney to Whitelaw Reid, who had filled it; the peculiar +delicacy of the problems that then existed between the two countries; +the reverent respect which Page had always entertained for English +history, English literature, and English public men--all these +considerations naturally quickened the new ambassador's imagination and, +at the same time, made his arrival in England a rather solemn event. Yet +his first days in London had their grotesque side as well. He himself +has recorded his impressions, and, since they contain an important +lesson for the citizens of the world's richest and most powerful +Republic, they should be preserved. When the ambassador of practically +any other country reaches London, he finds waiting for him a spacious +and beautiful embassy, filled with a large corps of secretaries and +servants--everything ready, to the minutest detail, for the beginning of +his labours. He simply enters these elaborate state-owned and +state-supported quarters and starts work. How differently the mighty +United States welcomes its ambassadors let Page's memorandum tell: + +The boat touched at Queenstown, and a mass of Irish reporters came +aboard and wished to know what I thought of Ireland. Some of them +printed the important announcement that I was quite friendly to Ireland! +At Liverpool was Mr. Laughlin[11], Chargé d'Affaires in London since Mr. +Reid's death, to meet me, and of course the consul, Mr. Washington. . . . +On our arrival in London, Laughlin explained that he had taken quarters +for me at the Coburg Hotel, whither we drove, after having fought my way +through a mob of reporters at the station. One fellow told me that since +I left New York the papers had published a declaration by me that I +meant to be very "democratic" and would under no conditions wear "knee +breeches"; and he asked me about that report. I was foolish enough to +reply that the existence of an ass in the United States ought not +necessarily to require the existence of a corresponding ass in London. +He printed that! I never knew the origin of this "knee breeches" story. + +That residence at the Coburg Hotel for three months was a crowded and +uncomfortable nightmare. The indignity and inconvenience--even the +humiliation--of an ambassador beginning his career in an hotel, +especially during the Court season, and a green ambassador at that! I +hope I may not die before our Government does the conventional duty to +provide ambassadors' residences. + +The next morning I went to the Chancery (123, Victoria Street) and my +heart sank. I had never in my life been in an American Embassy. I had +had no business with them in Paris or in London on my previous visits. +In fact I had never been in any embassy except the British Embassy at +Washington. But the moment I entered that dark and dingy hall at 123, +Victoria Street, between two cheap stores--the same entrance that the +dwellers in the cheap flats above used--I knew that Uncle Sam had no fit +dwelling there. And the Ambassador's room greatly depressed me--dingy +with twenty-nine years of dirt and darkness, and utterly undignified. +And the rooms for the secretaries and attachés were the little bedrooms, +kitchen, etc., of that cheap flat; that's all it was. For the place we +paid $1,500 a year. I did not understand then and I do not understand +yet how Lowell, Bayard, Phelps, Hay, Choate, and Reid endured that cheap +hole. Of course they stayed there only about an hour a day; but they +sometimes saw important people there. And, whether they ever saw anybody +there or not, the offices of the United States Government in London +ought at least to be as good as a common lawyer's office in a country +town in a rural state of our Union. Nobody asked for anything for an +embassy: nobody got anything for an embassy. I made up my mind in ten +minutes that I'd get out of this place[12]. + +At the Coburg Hotel, we were very well situated; but the hotel became +intolerably tiresome. Harold Fowler and Frank and I were there until +W.A.W.P.[13] and Kitty[14] came (and Frances Clark came with them). Then +we were just a little too big a hotel party. Every morning I drove down +to the old hole of a Chancery and remained about two hours. There wasn't +very much work to do; and my main business was to become acquainted with +the work and with people--to find myself with reference to this task, +with reference to official life and to London life in general. + +Every afternoon people came to the hotel to see me--some to pay their +respects and to make life pleasant, some out of mere curiosity, and many +for ends of their own. I confess that on many days nightfall found me +completely worn out. But the evenings seldom brought a chance to rest. +The social season was going at its full gait; and the new ambassador +(any new ambassador) would have been invited to many functions. A very +few days after my arrival, the Duchess of X invited Frank and me to +dinner. The powdered footmen were the chief novelty of the occasion for +us. But I was much confused because nobody introduced anybody to anybody +else. If a juxtaposition, as at the dinner table, made an introduction +imperative, the name of the lady next you was so slurred that you +couldn't possibly understand it. + +Party succeeded party. I went to them because they gave me a chance to +become acquainted with people. + +But very early after my arrival, I was of course summoned by the King. I +had presented a copy of my credentials to the Foreign Secretary (Sir +Edward Grey) and the real credentials--the original in a sealed +envelope--I must present to His Majesty. One morning the King's Master +of the Ceremonies, Sir Arthur Walsh, came to the hotel with the royal +coaches, four or five of them, and the richly caparisoned grooms. The +whole staff of the Embassy must go with me. We drove to Buckingham +Palace, and, after waiting a few moments, I was ushered into the King's +presence. He stood in one of the drawing rooms on the ground floor +looking out on the garden. There stood with him in uniform Sir Edward +Grey. I entered and bowed. He shook my hand, and I spoke my little piece +of three or four sentences. + +He replied, welcoming me and immediately proceeded to express his +surprise and regret that a great and rich country like the United States +had not provided a residence for its ambassadors. "It is not fair to an +ambassador," said he; and he spoke most earnestly. + +I reminded him that, although the lack of a home was an inconvenience, +the trouble or discomfort that fell on an ambassador was not so bad as +the wrong impression which I feared was produced about the United States +and its Government, and I explained that we had had so many absorbing +domestic tasks and, in general, so few absorbing foreign relations, that +we had only begun to develop what might be called an international +consciousness. + +Sir Edward was kind enough the next time I saw him to remark that I did +that very well and made a good impression on the King. + +I could now begin my ambassadorial career proper--call on the other +ambassadors and accept invitations to dinners and the like. + +I was told after I came from the King's presence that the Queen would +receive me in a few minutes. I was shown upstairs, the door opened, and +there in a small drawing room, stood the Queen alone--a pleasant woman, +very royal in appearance. The one thing that sticks in my memory out of +this first conversation with her Majesty was her remark that she had +seen only one man who had been President of the United States--Mr. +Roosevelt. She hoped he was well. I felt moved to remark that she was +not likely to see many former Presidents because the office was so hard +a task that most of them did not long survive. + +"I'm hoping that office will not soon kill the King," she said. + +In time Page obtained an entirely adequate and dignified house at 6 +Grosvenor Square, and soon found that the American Ambassadorship had +compensations which were hardly suggested by his first glimpse of the +lugubrious Chancery. He brought to this new existence his plastic and +inquisitive mind, and his mighty gusto for the interesting and the +unusual; he immensely enjoyed his meetings with the most important +representatives of all types of British life. The period of his arrival +marked a crisis in British history; Mr. Lloyd George was supposed to be +taxing the aristocracy out of existence; Mr. Asquith was accused of +plotting the destruction of the House of Lords; the tide of liberalism, +even of radicalism, was running high, and, in the judgment of the +conservative forces, England was tottering to its fall; the gathering +mob was about to submerge everything that had made it great. And the +Irish question had reached another crisis with the passage of the Home +Rule Bill, which Sir Edward Carson was preparing to resist with his +Irish "volunteers." + +All these matters formed the staple of talk at dinner tables, at country +houses and at the clubs; and Page found constant entertainment in the +variegated pageant. There were important American matters to discuss +with the Foreign Office--more important than any that had arisen in +recent years--particularly Mexico and the Panama Tolls. Before these +questions are considered, however, it may be profitable to print a +selection from the many letters which Page wrote during his first year, +giving his impressions of this England which he had always loved and +which a closer view made him love and admire still more. These letters +have the advantage of presenting a frank and yet sympathetic picture of +British society and British life as it was just before the war. + + _To Frank N Doubleday_ + + The Coburg Hotel, + Carlos Place, Grosvenor Square, + London, W. + + DEAR EFFENDI:[15] + + You can't imagine the intensity of the party feeling here. I dined + to-night in an old Tory family. They had just had a "division" an + hour or two before in the House of Lords on the Home Rule Bill. Six + Lords were at the dinner and their wives. One was a Duke, two were + Bishops, and the other three were Earls. They expect a general + "bust-up." If the King does so and so, off with the King! That's + what they fear the Liberals will do. It sounds very silly to me; + but you can't exaggerate their fear. The Great Lady, who was our + hostess, told me, with tears in her voice, that she had suspended + all social relations with the Liberal leaders. + + At lunch--just five or six hours before--we were at the Prime + Minister's, where the talk was precisely on the other side. + Gladstone's granddaughter was there and several members of the + Cabinet. + + Somehow it reminds me of the tense days of the slavery controversy + just before the Civil War. + + Yet in the everyday life of the people, you hear nothing about it. + It is impossible to believe that the ordinary man cares a fig! + + Good-night. You don't care a fig for this. But I'll get time to + write you something interesting in a little while. + + Yours, + W.H.P. + + _To Herbert S. Houston_ + + American Embassy + London + Sunday, 24 Aug., 1913. + + DEAR H.S.H.: + + . . . You know there's been much discussion of the decadence of the + English people. I don't believe a word of it. They have an awful + slum, I hear, as everybody knows, and they have an idle class. + Worse, from an equal-opportunity point-of-view, they have a very + large servant-class, and a large class that depends on the nobility + and the rich. All these are economic and social drawbacks. But they + have always had all these--except that the slum has become larger + in modern years. And I don't see or find any reason to believe in + the theory of decadence. The world never saw a finer lot of men + than the best of their ruling class. You may search the world and + you may search history for finer men than Lord Morley, Sir Edward + Grey, Mr. Harcourt, and other members of the present Cabinet. And I + meet such men everywhere--gently bred, high-minded, physically fit, + intellectually cultivated, patriotic. If the devotion to old forms + and the inertia which makes any change almost impossible strike an + American as out-of-date, you must remember that in the grand old + times of England, they had all these things and had them worse than + they are now. I can't see that the race is breaking down or giving + out. Consider how their political morals have been pulled up since + the days of the rotten boroughs; consider how their court-life is + now high and decent, and think what it once was. British trade is + larger this year than it ever was, Englishmen are richer then they + ever were and more of them are rich. They write and speak and play + cricket, and govern, and fight as well as they have ever + done--excepting, of course, the writing of Shakespeare. + + Another conclusion that is confirmed the more you see of English + life is their high art of living. When they make their money, they + stop money-making and cultivate their minds and their gardens and + entertain their friends and do all the high arts of living--to + perfection. Three days ago a retired soldier gave a garden-party in + my honour, twenty-five miles out of London. There was his historic + house, a part of it 500 years old; there were his ten acres of + garden, his lawn, his trees; and they walk with you over it all; + they sit out-of-doors; they serve tea; they take life rationally; + they talk pleasantly (not jocularly, nor story-telling); they abhor + the smart in talk or in conduct; they have gentleness, cultivation, + the best manners in the world; and they are genuine. The hostess + has me take a basket and go with her while she cuts it full of + flowers for us to bring home; and, as we walk, she tells the story + of the place. She is a tenant-for-life; it is entailed. Her husband + was wounded in South Africa. Her heir is her nephew. The home, of + course, will remain in the family forever. No, they don't go to + London much in recent years: why should they? But they travel a + month or more. They give three big tea-parties--one when the + rhododendrons bloom and the others at stated times. They have + friends to stay with them half the time, perhaps--sometimes parties + of a dozen. England never had a finer lot of folk than these. And + you see them everywhere. The art of living sanely they have + developed to as high a level, I think, as you will find at any time + in any land. + + The present political battle is fiercer than you would ever guess. + The Lords feel that they are sure to be robbed: they see the end + of the ordered world. Chaos and confiscation lie before them. Yet + that, too, has nearly always been so. It was so in the Reform Bill + days. Lord Morley said to me the other day that when all the + abolitions had been done, there would be fewer things abolished + than anybody hopes or fears, and that there would be the same + problems in some form for many generations. I'm beginning to + believe that the Englishman has always been afraid of the + future--that's what's keeps him so alert. They say to me: "You have + frightful things happen in the United States--your Governor of New + York[16], your Thaw case, your corruption, etc., etc.; and yet you + seem sure and tell us that your countrymen feel sure of the safety + of your government." In the newspaper comments on my + Southampton[17] speech the other day, this same feeling cropped up; + the American Ambassador assures us that the note of hope is the + dominant note of the Republic--etc., etc. Yes, they are dull, _in a + way_--not dull, so much as steady; and yet they have more solid + sense than any other people. + + It's an interesting study--the most interesting in the world. The + genuineness of the courtesy, the real kindness and the hospitality + of the English are beyond praise and without limit. In this they + show a strange contradiction to their dickering habits in trade and + their "unctuous rectitude" in stealing continents. I know a place + in the world now where they are steadily moving their boundary line + into other people's territory. I guess they really believe that the + earth belongs to them. + + Sincerely, + W.H.P. + + To Arthur W. Page[18] + + Gordon Arms Hotel, Elgin, Scotland. + September 6, 1913. + + Dear Arthur: + + Your mother and Kitty[19] and I are on our way to see Andy[20]. Had + you any idea that to motor from London to Skibo means driving more + than eight hundred miles? Our speedometer now shows more than seven + hundred and we've another day to go--at least one hundred and + thirty miles. And we haven't even had a tire accident. We're having + a delightful journey--only this country yields neither vegetables + nor fruits, and I have to live on oatmeal. They spell it + p-o-r-r-i-d-g-e, and they call it puruge. But they beat all + creation as carnivorous folk. We stayed last night at a beautiful + mountain hotel at Braemar (the same town whereat Stevenson wrote + "Treasure Island") and they had nine kinds of meat for dinner and + eggs in three ways, and no vegetables but potatoes. But this + morning we struck the same thin oatbread that you ate at + Grandfather Mountain. + + I've never understood the Scotch. I think they are, without doubt, + the most capable race in the world--away from home. But how they + came to be so and how they keep up their character and supremacy + and keep breeding true needs explanation. As you come through the + country, you see the most monotonous and dingy little houses and + thousands of robust children, all dirtier than niggers. In the + fertile parts of the country, the fields are beautifully + cultivated--for Lord This-and-T'Other who lives in London and comes + up here in summer to collect his rents and to shoot. The country + people seem desperately poor. But they don't lose their robustness. + In the solid cities--the solidest you ever saw, all being of + granite--such as Edinburgh and Aberdeen, where you see the + prosperous class, they look the sturdiest and most independent + fellows you ever saw. As they grow old they all look like + blue-bellied Presbyterian elders. Scotch to the marrow--everybody + and everything seem--bare knees alike on the street and in the + hotel with dress coats on, bagpipes--there's no sense in these + things, yet being Scotch they live forever. The first men I saw + early this morning on the street in front of the hotel were two + weather-beaten old chaps, with gray beards under their chins. + "Guddddd Murrrrninggggg, Andy," said one. "Guddddd murrninggggg, + Sandy," said the other; and they trudged on. They'd dethrone kings + before they'd shave differently or drop their burrs and gutturals + or cover their knees or cease lying about the bagpipe. And you + can't get it out of the blood. Your mother[21] becomes provoked + when I say these things, and I shouldn't wonder if you yourself + resent them and break out quoting Burns. Now the Highlands can't + support a population larger than the mountain counties of Kentucky. + Now your Kentucky feud is a mere disgrace to civilization. But your + Highland feud is celebrated in song and story. Every clan keeps + itself together to this day by its history and by its plaid. At a + turn in the road in the mountains yesterday, there stood a statue + of Rob Roy painted every stripe to life. We saw his sword and purse + in Sir Walter's house at Abbotsford. The King himself wore the kilt + and one of the plaids at the last court ball at Buckingham Palace, + and there is a man who writes his name and is called "The + Macintosh of Macintosh," and that's a prouder title than the + King's. A little handful of sheep-stealing bandits got themselves + immortalized and heroized, and they are now all Presbyterian + elders. They got _their_ church "established" in Scotland, and when + the King comes to Scotland, by Jehoshaphat! he is obliged to become + a Presbyterian. Yet your Kentucky feudist--poor devil--he comes too + late. The Scotchman has pre-empted that particular field of glory. + And all such comparisons make your mother fighting mad. . . . + + Affectionately, + W.H.P. + + _To the President_ + + American Embassy, London. + October 25, 1913. + + Dear Mr. President: + + I am moved once in a while to write you privately, not about any + specific piece of public business, but only, if I can, to transmit + something of the atmosphere of the work here. And, since this is + meant quite as much for your amusement as for any information it + may carry, don't read it "in office hours." + + The future of the world belongs to us. A man needs to live here, + with two economic eyes in his head, a very little time to become + very sure of this. Everybody will see it presently. These English + are spending their capital, and it is their capital that continues + to give them their vast power. Now what are we going to do with the + leadership of the world presently when it clearly falls into our + hands[22]? And how can we use the English for the highest uses of + democracy? + + You see their fear of an on-sweeping democracy in their social + treatment of party opponents. A Tory lady told me with tears that + she could no longer invite her Liberal friends to her house: "I + have lost them--they are robbing us, you know." I made the mistake + of saying a word in praise of Sir Edward Grey to a duke. "Yes, yes, + no doubt an able man; but you must understand, sir, that I don't + train with that gang." A bishop explained to me at elaborate length + why the very monarchy is doomed unless something befalls Lloyd + George and his programme. Every dinner party is made up with strict + reference to the party politics of the guests. Sometimes you + imagine you see something like civil war; and money is flowing out + of the Kingdom into Canada in the greatest volume ever known and I + am told that a number of old families are investing their fortunes + in African lands. + + These and such things are, of course, mere chips which show the + direction the slow stream runs. The great economic tide of the + century flows our way. _We_ shall have the big world questions to + decide presently. Then we shall need world policies; and it will be + these old-time world leaders that we shall then have to work with, + more closely than now. + + The English make a sharp distinction between the American people + and the American Government--a distinction that they are conscious + of and that they themselves talk about. They do not think of our + _people_ as foreigners. I have a club book on my table wherein the + members are classified as British, Colonial, American, and + Foreign--quite unconsciously. But they do think of our Government + as foreign, and as a frontier sort of thing without good manners or + good faith. This distinction presents the big task of implanting + here a real respect for our Government. People often think to + compliment the American Ambassador by assuming that he is better + than his Government and must at times be ashamed of it. Of course + the Government never does this--never--but persons in unofficial + life; and I have sometimes hit some hard blows under this + condescending provocation. This is the one experience that I have + found irritating. They commiserate me on having a Government that + will not provide an Ambassador's residence--from the King to my + servants. They talk about American lynchings. Even the _Spectator,_ + in an early editorial about you, said that we should now see what + stuff there is in the new President by watching whether you would + stop lynchings. They forever quote Bryce on the badness of our + municipal government. They pretend to think that the impeachment of + governors is common and ought to be commoner. One delicious M.P. + asked me: "Now, since the Governor of New York is impeached, who + becomes Vice-President[23]?" Ignorance, unfathomable ignorance, is + at the bottom of much of it; if the Town Treasurer of Yuba Dam gets + a $100 "rake off" on a paving contract, our city government is a + failure. + + I am about to conclude that our yellow press does us more harm + abroad than at home, and many of the American correspondents of the + English papers send exactly the wrong news. The whole governing + class of England has a possibly exaggerated admiration for the + American people and something very like contempt for the American + Government. + + If I make it out right two causes (in addition to their ignorance) + of their dislike of our Government are (1) its lack of manners in + the past, and (2) its indiscretions of publicity about foreign + affairs. We ostentatiously stand aloof from their polite ways and + courteous manners in many of the every-day, ordinary, unimportant + dealings with them--aloof from the common amenities of + long-organized political life. . . . + + Not one of these things is worth mentioning or remembering. But + generations of them have caused our Government to be regarded as + thoughtless of the fine little acts of life--as rude. The more I + find out about diplomatic customs and the more I hear of the + little-big troubles of others, the more need I find to be careful + about details of courtesy. + + Thus we are making as brave a show as becomes us. I no longer + dismiss a princess after supper or keep the whole diplomatic corps + waiting while I talk to an interesting man till the Master of + Ceremonies comes up and whispers: "Your Excellency, I think they + are waiting for you to move." But I am both young and green, and + even these folk forgive much to green youth, if it show a + willingness to learn. + + But our Government, though green, isn't young enough to plead its + youth. It is time that it, too, were learning Old World manners in + dealing with Old World peoples. I do not know whether we need a + Bureau, or a Major-Domo, or a Master of Ceremonies at Washington, + but we need somebody to prompt us to act as polite as we really + are, somebody to think of those gentler touches that we naturally + forget. Some other governments have such officers--perhaps all. The + Japanese, for instance, are newcomers in world politics. But this + Japanese Ambassador and his wife here never miss a trick; and they + come across the square and ask us how to do it! All the other + governments, too, play the game of small courtesies to + perfection--the French, of course, and the Spanish and--even the + old Turk. + + Another reason for the English distrust of our Government is its + indiscretions in the past of this sort: one of our Ministers to + Germany, you will recall, was obliged to resign because the + Government at Washington inadvertently published one of his + confidential despatches; Griscom saved his neck only by the skin, + when he was in Japan, for a similar reason. These things travel all + round the world from one chancery to another and all governments + know them. Yesterday somebody in Washington talked about my + despatch summarizing my talk with Sir Edward Grey about Mexico, and + it appeared in the papers here this morning that Sir Edward had + told me that the big business interests were pushing him hard. This + I sent as only _my_ inference. I had at once to disclaim it. This + leaves in his mind a doubt about our care for secrecy. They have + monstrous big doors and silent men in Downing Street; and, I am + told, a stenographer sits behind a big screen in Sir Edward's room + while an Ambassador talks[24]! I wonder if my comments on certain + poets, which I have poured forth there to provoke his, are + preserved in the archives of the British Empire. The British Empire + is surely very welcome to them. I have twice found it useful, by + the way, to bring up Wordsworth when he has begun to talk about + Panama tolls. Then your friend Canon Rawnsley[25] has, without + suspecting it, done good service in diplomacy. + + The newspaper men here, by the way, both English and American, are + disposed to treat us fairly and to be helpful. The London _Times_, + on most subjects, is very friendly, and I find its editors worth + cultivating for their own sakes and because of their position. It + is still the greatest English newspaper. Its general friendliness + to the United States, by the way, has started a rumour that I hear + once in a while--that it is really owned by Americans--nonsense yet + awhile. To the fairness and helpfulness of the newspaper men there + are one or two exceptions, for instance, a certain sneaking whelp + who writes for several papers. He went to the Navy League dinner + last night at which I made a little speech. When I sat down, he + remarked to his neighbour, with a yawn, "Well, nothing in it for + me. The Ambassador, I am afraid, said nothing for which I can + demand his recall." They, of course, don't care thrippence about + me; it's you they hope to annoy. + + Then after beating them at their own game of daily little + courtesies, we want a fight with them--a good stiff fight about + something wherein we are dead right, to remind them sharply that we + have sand in our craw[26]. I pray every night for such a fight; for + they like fighting men. Then they'll respect our Government as they + already respect us--if we are dead right. + + But I've little hope for a fight of the right kind with Sir Edward + Grey. He is the very reverse of insolent--fair, frank, + sympathetic, and he has so clear an understanding of our real + character that he'd yield anything that his party and Parliament + would permit. He'd make a good American with the use of very little + sandpaper. Of course I know him better than I know any other member + of the Cabinet, but he seems to me the best-balanced man of them + all. + + I can assure you emphatically that the tariff act[27] does command + their respect and is already having an amazing influence on their + opinion of our Government. Lord Mersey, a distinguished law lord + and a fine old fellow of the very best type of Englishman, said to + me last Sunday, "I wish to thank you for stopping half-way in + reducing your tariff; that will only half ruin us." A lady of a + political family (Liberal) next whom I sat at dinner the other + night (and these women know their politics as no class of women + among us do) said: "Tell me something about your great President. + We hadn't heard much about him nor felt his hand till your tariff + bill passed. He seems to have real power in the Government. You + know we do not always know who has power in your Government." Lord + Grey, the one-time Governor-General of Canada, stopped looking at + the royal wedding presents the other evening long enough to say: + "The United States Government is waking up--waking up." + + I sum up these atmospheric conditions--I do not presume to call + them by so definite a name as recommendations: + + We are in the international game--not in its Old World intrigues + and burdens and sorrows and melancholy, but in the inevitable way + to leadership and to cheerful mastery in the future; and everybody + knows that we are in it but us. It is a sheer blind habit that + causes us to continue to try to think of ourselves as aloof. They + think in terms of races here, and we are of their race, and we + shall become the strongest and the happiest branch of it. + + While we play the game with them, we shall play it better by + playing it under their long-wrought-out rules of courtesy in + everyday affairs. + + We shall play it better, too, if our Government play it + quietly--except when the subject demands publicity. I have heard + that in past years the foreign representatives of our Government + have reported too few things and much too meagrely. I have heard + since I have been here that these representatives become timid + because Washington has for many a year conducted its foreign + business too much in the newspapers; and the foreign governments + themselves are always afraid of this. + + Meantime I hardly need tell you of my appreciation of such a chance + to make so interesting a study and to enjoy so greatly the most + interesting experience, I really believe, in the whole world. I + only hope that in time I may see how to shape the constant + progression of incidents into a constructive course of events; for + we are soon coming into a time of big changes. + + Most heartily yours, + WALTER H. PAGE. + + _To David F. Houston_[28] + American Embassy, London [undated]. + + DEAR HOUSTON: + + You're doing the bigger job: as the world now is, there is no other + job so big as yours or so well worth doing; but I'm having more + fun. I'm having more fun than anybody else anywhere. It's a large + window you look through on the big world--here in London; and, + while I am for the moment missing many of the things that I've most + cared about hitherto (such as working for the countryman, guessing + at American public opinion, coffee that's fit to drink, corn bread, + sunshine, and old faces) big new things come on the horizon. Yet a + man's personal experiences are nothing in comparison with the large + job that our Government has to do in its Foreign Relations. I'm + beginning to begin to see what it is. The American people are taken + most seriously here. I'm sometimes almost afraid of the respect and + even awe in which they hold us. But the American Government is a + mere joke to them. They don't even believe that we ourselves + believe in it. We've had no foreign policy, no continuity of plan, + no matured scheme, no settled way of doing things and we seem + afraid of Irishmen or Germans or some "element" when a chance for + real action comes. I'm writing to the President about this and + telling him stories to show how it works. + + We needn't talk any longer about keeping aloof. If Cecil Spring + Rice would tell you the complaints he has already presented and if + you saw the work that goes on here--more than in all the other + posts in Europe--you'd see that all the old talk about keeping + aloof is Missouri buncombe. We're very much "in," but not frankly + in. + + I wish you'd keep your eye on these things in cabinet meetings. The + English and the whole English world are ours, if we have the + courtesy to take them--fleet and trade and all; and we go on + pretending we are afraid of "entangling alliances." What about + disentangling alliances? + + We're in the game. There's no use in letting a few wild Irish or + cocky Germans scare us. We need courtesy and frankness, and the + destinies of the world will be in our hands. They'll fall there + anyhow after we are dead; but I wish to see them come, while my own + eyes last. Don't you? + + Heartily yours, + + W.H.P. + + _To Robert N. Page_[29] + + London, December 22, 1913. + + MY DEAR BOB: + + . . . We have a splendid, big old house--not in any way + pretentious--a commonplace house in fact for fashionable London and + the least showy and costly of the Embassies. But it does very + well--it's big and elegantly plain and dignified. We have fifteen + servants in the house. They do just about what seven good ones + would do in the United States, but they do it a great deal better. + They pretty nearly run themselves and the place. The servant + question is admirably solved here. They divide the work according + to a fixed and unchangeable system and they do it remarkably + well--in their own slow English way. We simply let them alone, + unless something important happens to go wrong. Katharine simply + tells the butler that we'll have twenty-four people to dinner + to-morrow night and gives him a list of them. As they come in, the + men at the door address every one correctly--Your Lordship or Your + Grace, or what not. When they are all in, the butler comes to the + reception room and announces dinner. We do the rest. As every man + goes out, the butler asks him if he'll have a glass of water or of + grog or a cigar; he calls his car, puts him in it, and that's the + end of it. Bully good plan. But in the United States that butler, + whose wages are less than the ramshackle nigger I had at Garden + City to keep the place neat, would have a business of his own. But + here he is a sort of duke downstairs. He sits at the head of the + servants' table and orders them around and that's worth more than + money to an Old World servile mind. + + The "season" doesn't begin till the King comes back and Parliament + opens, in February. But every kind of club and patriotic and + educational organization is giving its annual dinner now. I've been + going to them and making after-dinner speeches to get acquainted + and also to preach into them some little knowledge of American ways + and ideals. They are very nice--very. You could not suggest or + imagine any improvement in their kindness and courtesy. They do all + these things in some ways better than we. They have more courtesy. + They make far shorter speeches. But they do them all too much + alike. Still they do get much pleasure out of them and much + instruction too. + + Then we are invited to twice as many private dinners and luncheons + as we can attend. At these, these people are at their best. But it + is yet quite confusing. A sea of friendly faces greets you--you + can't remember the names. Nobody ever introduces anybody to + anybody; and if by accident anybody ever tries, he simply says + "Uh-o-oh-Lord Xzwwxkmpt." You couldn't understand it if you had to + be hanged. + + But we are untangling some of this confusion and coming to make + very real and very charming friends. + + About December 20, everybody who is anybody leaves London. They go + to their country places for about a fortnight or they go to the + continent. Almost everything stops. It has been the only dull time + at the Embassy that I've had. Nothing is going on now. But up to + two days ago, it kept a furious gait. I'm glad of a little rest. + + Dealing with the Government doesn't present the difficulties that + I feared. Sir Edward Grey is in the main responsible for the ease + with which it is done. He is a frank and fair and truthful man. You + will find him the day after to-morrow precisely where you left him + the day before yesterday. We get along very well indeed. I think we + should get along if we had harder tasks one with the other. And the + English people are even more friendly than the Government. You have + no idea of their respect for the American Nation. Of course there + is much ignorance, sometimes of a surprising sort. Very many + people, for instance, think that all the Americans are rich. A lady + told me the other night how poor she is--she is worth only + $1,250,000--"nothing like all you Americans." She was quite + sincere. In fact the wealth of the world (and the poverty, too) is + centred here in an amazing way. You can't easily take it in--how + rich or how many rich English families there are. They have had + wealth for generation after generation, and the surprising thing + is, they take care of it. They spend enormously--seldom + ostentatiously--but they are more than likely to add some of their + income every year to their principal. They have better houses in + town and in the country than I had imagined. They spend vast + fortunes in making homes in which they expect to live + forever--generation after generation. + + To an American democrat the sad thing is the servile class. Before + the law the chimney sweep and the peer have exactly the same + standing. They have worked that out with absolute justice. But + there it stops. The serving class is what we should call abject. It + does not occur to them that they might ever become--or that their + descendants might ever become--ladies and gentlemen. + + The "courts" are a very fine sight. The diplomatic ladies sit on a + row of seats on one side the throne room, the Duchesses on a row + opposite. The King and Queen sit on a raised platform with the + royal family. The Ambassadors come in first and bow and the King + shakes hands with them. Then come the forty or more Ministers--no + shake for them. In front of the King are a few officers in gaudy + uniform, some Indians of high rank (from India) and the court + officials are all round about, with pages who hold up the Queen's + train. Whenever the Queen and King move, two court officials back + before them, one carrying a gold stick and the other a silver + stick. + + The ladies to be presented come along. They curtsy to the King, + then to the Queen, and disappear in the rooms farther on. The + Ambassadors (all in gaudy uniforms but me) stand near the + throne--stand through the whole performance. One night after an + hour or two of ladies coming along and curtsying and disappearing, + I whispered to the Spanish Ambassador, "There must be five hundred + of these ladies." "U-m," said he, as he shifted his weight to the + other foot, "I'm sure there are five thousand!" When they've all + been presented, the King and Queen go into a room where a stand-up + supper is served. The royalty and the diplomatic folks go into that + room, too; and their Majesties walk around and talk with whom they + please. Into another and bigger room everybody else goes and gets + supper. Then we all flock back to the throne room; and preceded by + the backing courtiers, their Majesties come out into the floor and + bow to the Ambassadors, then to the Duchesses, then to the general + diplomatic group and they go out. The show is ended. We come + downstairs and wait an hour for our car and come home about + midnight. The uniforms on the men and the jewels on the ladies (by + the ton) and their trains--all this makes a very brilliant + spectacle. The American Ambassador and his Secretaries and the + Swiss and the Portuguese are the only ones dressed in citizens' + clothes. + + At a levee, the King receives only gentlemen. Here they come in all + kinds of uniforms. If you are not entitled to wear a uniform, you + have a dark suit, knee breeches, and a funny little tin sword. I'm + going to adopt the knee breeches part of it for good when I go + home--golf breeches in the day time and knee breeches at night. + You've no idea how nice and comfortable they are--though it is a + devil of a lot of trouble to put 'em on. Of course every sort of + man here but the Americans wears some sort of decorations around + his neck or on his stomach, at these functions. For my part, I like + it--here. The women sparkle with diamonds, the men strut; the King + is a fine man with a big bass voice and he talks very well and is + most agreeable; the Queen is very gracious; the royal ladies (Queen + Victoria's daughters, chiefly) are nice; you see all the big + Generals and all the big Admirals and the great folk of every + sort--fine show. + + You've no idea how much time and money they spend on shooting. The + King has been shooting most of the time for three months. He's said + to be a very good shot. He has sent me, on different occasions, + grouse, a haunch of venison, and pheasants. + + But except on these occasions, you never think about the King. The + people go about their business as if he didn't exist, of course. + They begin work much later than we do. You'll not find any of the + shops open till about ten o'clock. The sun doesn't shine except + once in a while and you don't know it's daylight till about ten. + You know the House of Commons has night sessions always. Nobody is + in the Government offices, except clerks and secretaries, till the + afternoon. We dine at eight, and, when we have a big dinner, at + eight thirty. + + I like these people (most of 'em) immensely. They are very genuine + and frank, good fighters and folk of our own sort--after you come + to know them. At first they have no manners and don't know what to + do. But they warm up to you later. They have abundant wit, but much + less humour than we. And they know how to live. + + Except that part of life which is ministered to in mechanical ways, + they resist conveniences. They don't really like bathrooms yet. + They prefer great tin tubs, and they use bowls and pitchers when a + bathroom is next door. The telephone--Lord deliver us!--I've given + it up. They know nothing about it. (It is a government concern, but + so is the telegraph and the post-office, and they are remarkably + good and swift.) You can't buy a newspaper on the street, except in + the afternoon. Cigar-stores are as scarce as hen's teeth. + Barber-shops are all "hairdressers"--dirty and wretched beyond + description. You can't get a decent pen; their newspapers are as + big as tablecloths. In this aquarium in which we live (it rains + every day) they have only three vegetables and two of them are + cabbages. They grow all kinds of fruit in hothouses, and (I can't + explain this) good land in admirable cultivation thirty miles from + London sells for about half what good corn land in Iowa brings. + Lloyd George has scared the land-owners to death. + + Party politics runs so high that many Tories will not invite + Liberals to dinner. They are almost at the point of civil war. I + asked the Prime Minister the other day how he was going to prevent + war. He didn't give any clear answer. During this recess of + Parliament, though there's no election pending, all the Cabinet are + all the time going about making speeches on Ireland. They talk to + me about it. + + "What would you do?" + + "Send 'em all to the United States," say I. + + "No, no." + + They have had the Irish question three hundred years and they + wouldn't be happy without it. One old Tory talked me deaf abusing + the Liberal Government. + + "You do this way in the United States--hate one another, don't + you?" + + "No," said I, "we live like angels in perfect harmony except a few + weeks before election." + + "The devil you do! You don't hate one another? What do you do for + enemies? I couldn't get along without enemies to swear at." + + If you think it's all play, you fool yourself; I mean this job. + There's no end of the work. It consists of these parts: Receiving + people for two hours every day, some on some sort of business, some + merely "to pay respects," attending to a large (and exceedingly + miscellaneous) mail; going to the Foreign Office on all sorts of + errands; looking up the oddest assortment of information that you + ever heard of; making reports to Washington on all sorts of things; + then the so-called social duties--giving dinners, receptions, etc., + and attending them. I hear the most important news I get at + so-called social functions. Then the court functions; and the + meetings and speeches! The American Ambassador must go all over + England and explain every American thing. You'd never recover from + the shock if you could hear me speaking about Education, + Agriculture, the observance of Christmas, the Navy, the + Anglo-Saxon, Mexico, the Monroe Doctrine, Co-education, Woman + Suffrage, Medicine, Law, Radio-Activity, Flying, the Supreme Court, + the President as a Man of letters, Hookworm, the Negro--just get + down the Encyclopædia and continue the list. I've done this every + week-night for a month, hand running, with a few afternoon + performances thrown in! I have missed only one engagement in these + seven months; and that was merely a private luncheon. I have been + late only once. I have the best chauffeur in the world--he deserves + credit for much of that. Of course, I don't get time to read a + book. In fact, I can't keep up with what goes on at home. To read a + newspaper eight or ten days old, when they come in bundles of three + or four--is impossible. What isn't telegraphed here, I miss; and + that means I miss most things. + + I forgot, there are a dozen other kinds of activities, such as + American marriages, which they always want the Ambassador to + attend; getting them out of jail, when they are jugged (I have an + American woman on my hands now, whose four children come to see me + every day); looking after the American insane; helping Americans + move the bones of their ancestors; interpreting the income-tax law; + receiving medals for Americans; hearing American fiddlers, + pianists, players; sitting for American sculptors and + photographers; sending telegrams for property owners in Mexico; + reading letters from thousands of people who have shares in estates + here; writing letters of introduction; getting tickets to the House + Gallery; getting seats in the Abbey; going with people to this and + that and t'other; getting tickets to the races, the art-galleries, + the House of Lords; answering fool questions about the United + States put by Englishmen. With a military attaché, a naval attaché, + three secretaries, a private secretary, two automobiles, Alice's + private secretary, a veterinarian, an immigration agent, consuls + everywhere, a despatch agent, lawyers, doctors, messengers--they + keep us all busy. A woman turned up dying the other day. I sent + for a big doctor. She got well. As if that wasn't enough, both the + woman and the doctor had to come and thank me (fifteen minutes + each). Then each wrote a letter! Then there are people who are + going to have a Fair here; others who have a Fair coming on at San + Francisco; others at San Diego; secretaries and returning and + outgoing diplomats come and go (lunch for 'em all); niggers come up + from Liberia; Rhodes Scholars from Oxford; Presidential candidates + to succeed Huerta; people who present books; women who wish to go + to court; Jews who are excited about Rumania; passports, passports + to sign; peace committees about the hundred years of peace; opera + singers going to the United States; artists who have painted some + American's portrait--don't you see? I haven't said a word about + reporters and editors: the city's full of them. + + A Happy New Year. + + Affectionately, + WAT. + + _To Ralph W. Page_[30] + London, December 23, 1913. + + DEAR RALPH: + + . . . The game is pretty much as it has been. I can't think of any + new kinds of things to write you. The old kinds simply multiply and + repeat themselves. But we are beginning now really to become + acquainted, and some life friendships will grow out of our + experience. And there's no doubt about its being instructive. I get + glimpses of the way in which great governments deal with one + another, in ways that our isolated, and, therefore, safe government + seldom has any experience of. For instance, one of the Lords of the + Admiralty told me the other night that he never gets out of + telephone reach of the office--not even half an hour. "The + Admiralty," said he, "never sleeps." He has a telephone by his bed + which he can hear at any moment in the night. I don't believe that + they really expect the German fleet to attack them any day or + night. But they would not be at all surprised if it did so + to-night. They talk all the time of the danger and of the + probability of war; they don't expect it; but most wars have come + without warning, and they are all the time prepared to begin a + fight in an hour. + + They talk about how much Germany must do to strengthen her frontier + against Russia and her new frontier on the Balkan States. They now + have these problems in hand and therefore they are for the moment + not likely to provoke a fight. But they might. + + It is all pitiful to see them thinking forever about danger and + defense. The controversy about training boys for the army never + ends. We don't know in the United States what we owe to the + Atlantic Ocean--safe separation from all these troubles. . . . + + But I've often asked both Englishmen and Americans in a dining room + where there were many men of each country, whether they could look + over the company and say which were English and which were + Americans. Nobody can tell till--they begin to talk. + + The ignorance of the two countries, each of the other, is beyond + all belief. A friend of Kitty's--an American--received a letter + from the United States yesterday. The maid noticed the stamp, which + had the head of George Washington on it. Every stamp in this + kingdom bears the image of King George. She asked if the American + stamp had on it the head of the American Ambassador! I've known far + wiser people to ask far more foolish questions. + + Affectionately, + W.H.P. + + _To Mrs. Ralph W. Page_ + + London, Christmas-is-coming, 1913. + + MY DEAR LEILA: + + . . . Her work [Mrs. Walter H. Page's] is all the work of going and + receiving and--of reading. She reads incessantly and enormously; + and, when she gets tired, she goes to bed. That's all there is + about it. Lord! I wish I could. But, when I get tired, I have to go + and make another speech. They think the American Ambassador has + omniscience for a foible and oratory as a pastime. + + In some ways my duties are very instructive. We get different + points of view on many things, some better than we had before had, + some worse. For instance, life is pretty well laid out here in + water-tight compartments; and you can't let a stream in from one to + another without danger of sinking the ship. Four reporters have + been here to-day because Mr. and Mrs. Sayre[31] arrived this + morning. Every one of 'em asked the same question, "Who met them at + the station?" That's the chief thing they wished to know. When I + said "I did"--that fixed the whole thing on the highest peg of + dignity. They could classify the whole proceeding properly, and + they went off happy. Again: You've got to go in to dinner in the + exact order prescribed by the constitution; and, if you avoid that + or confuse that, you'll never be able to live it down. And so about + Government, Literature, Art--everything. Don't you forget your + water-tight compartments. If you do, you are gone! They have the + same toasts at every public dinner. One is to "the guests." Now you + needn't say a word about the guests when you respond. But they've + been having toasts to the guests since the time of James I and they + can't change it. They had me speak to "the guests" at a club last + night, when they wanted me to talk about Mexico! The winter has + come--the winter months at least. But they have had no cold + weather--not so cold as you have in Pinehurst. But the sun has gone + out to sea--clean gone. We never see it. A damp darkness + (semi-darkness at least) hangs over us all the time. But we manage + to feel our way about. + + A poor photograph goes to you for Xmas--a poor thing enough surely. + But you get Uncle Bob[32] busy on the job of paying for an + Ambassador's house. Then we'll bring Christmas presents home for + you. What a game we are playing, we poor folks here, along with + Ambassadors whose governments pay them four times what ours pays. + But we don't give the game away, you bet! We throw the bluff with a + fine, straight poker face. + + Affectionately, + W.H.P. + + _To Frank N. Doubleday and Others_ + + London, Sunday, December 28, 1913. + + MY DEAR COMRADES: + + I was never one of those abnormal creatures who got Christmas all + ready by the Fourth of July. The true spirit of the celebration has + just now begun to work on me--three days late. In this respect the + spirit is very like Christmas plum-pudding. Moreover, we've just + got the patriotic fervour flowing at high tide this morning. This + is the President's birthday. We've put up the Stars and Stripes on + the roof; and half an hour ago the King's Master of Ceremonies + drove up in a huge motor car and, being shown into my presence in + the state drawing room, held his hat in his hand and (said he): + + "Your Excellency: I am commanded by the King to express to you His + Majesty's congratulations on the birthday of the President, to wish + him a successful administration and good health and long life and + to convey His Majesty's greetings to Your Excellency: and His + Majesty commands me to express the hope that you will acquaint the + President with His Majesty's good wishes." + + Whereto I made just as pretty a little speech as your 'umble + sarvant could. Then we sat down, I called in Mrs. Page and my + secretary and we talked like human beings. + + Having worked like the devil, upon whom, I imagine, at this + bibulous season many heavy duties fall--having thus toiled for two + months--the international docket is clean, I've got done a round of + twenty-five speeches (O Lord!) I've slept three whole nights, I've + made my dinner-calls--you see I'm feeling pretty well, in this + first period of quiet life I've yet found in this Babylon. Praise + Heaven! they go off for Christmas. Everything's shut up tight. The + streets of London are as lonely and as quiet as the road to Oyster + Bay while the Oyster is in South America. It's about as mild here + as with you in October and as damp as Sheepshead's Bay in an autumn + storm. But such people as you meet complain of the c-o-l-d--the + c-o-l-d; and they run into their heatless houses and put on extra + waistcoats and furs and throw shawls over their knees and curse + Lloyd George and enjoy themselves. They are a great people--even + without mint juleps in summer or eggnog in winter; and I like them. + The old gouty Lords curse the Americans for the decline of + drinking. And you can't live among them without laughing yourself + to death and admiring them, too. It's a fine race to be sprung + from. + + All this field of international relations--you fellows regard it as + a bore. So it used to be before my entrance into the game! But it's + everlastingly interesting. Just to give him a shock, I asked the + Foreign Secretary the other day what difference it would make if + the Foreign Offices were all to go out of business and all the + Ambassadors were to be hanged. He thought a minute and said: + "Suppose war kept on in the Balkans, the Russians killed all their + Jews, Germany took Holland and sent an air-fleet over London, the + Japanese landed in California, the English took all the oil-wells + in Central and South America and--" + + "Good Lord!" said I, "do you and I prevent all these calamities? If + so, we don't get half the credit that is due us--do we?" + + You could ask the same question about any group or profession of + men in the world; and on a scratch, I imagine that any of them + would be missed less than they think. But the realness and the + bigness of the job here in London is simply oppressive. We don't + even know what it is in the United States and, of course, we don't + go about doing it right. If we did, we shouldn't pick up a green + fellow on the plain of Long Island and send him here: we'd train + the most capable male babies we have from the cradle. But this + leads a long way. + + As I look back over these six or seven months, from the pause that + has come this week, I'm bound to say (being frank, not to say vain) + that I had the good fortune to do one piece of work that was worth + the effort and worth coming to do--about that infernal Mexican + situation. An abler man would have done it better; but, as it was, + I did it; and I have a most appreciative letter about it from the + President. + + By thunder, he's doing _his_ job, isn't he? Whether you like the + job or not, you've got to grant that. When I first came over here, + I found a mild curiosity about Wilson--only mild. But now they sit + up and listen and ask most eager questions. He has pressed his + personality most strongly on the governing class here. + + Yours heartily, + W.H.P. + + _To the President_ + + American Embassy, London + [May 11, 1914.] + + DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: + + The King of Denmark (I always think of Hamlet) having come to make + his royal kinsman of these Isles a visit, his royal kinsman + to-night gave a state dinner at the palace whereto the Ambassadors + of the eight Great Powers were, of course, invited. Now I don't + know how other kings do, but I'm willing to swear by King George + for a job of this sort. The splendour of the thing is truly regal + and the friendliness of it very real and human; and the company + most uncommon. Of course the Ambassadors and their wives were + there, the chief rulers of the Empire and men and women of + distinction and most of the royal family. The dinner and the music + and the plate and the decorations and the jewels and the + uniforms--all these were regal; but there is a human touch about it + that seems almost democratic. + + All for His Majesty of Denmark, a country with fewer people and + less wealth than New Jersey. This whole royal game is most + interesting. Lloyd George and H.H. Asquith and John Morley were + there, all in white knee breeches of silk, and swords and most + gaudy coats--these that are the radicals of the Kingdom, in + literature and in action. Veterans of Indian and South African wars + stood on either side of every door and of every stairway, dressed + as Sir Walter Raleigh dressed, like so many statues, never blinking + an eye. Every person in the company is printed, in all the papers, + with every title he bears. Crowds lined the streets in front of the + palace to see the carriages go in and to guess who was in each. + To-morrow the Diplomatic Corps calls on King Christian and + to-morrow night King George commands us to attend the opera as his + guests. + + Whether it's the court, or the honours and the orders and all the + social and imperial spoils, that keep the illusion up, or whether + it is the Old World inability to change anything, you can't ever + quite decide. In Defoe's time they put pots of herbs on the desks + of every court in London to keep the plague off. The pots of herbs + are yet put on every desk in every court room in London. Several + centuries ago somebody tried to break into the Bank of England. A + special guard was detached--a little company of soldiers--to stand + watch at night. The bank has twice been moved and is now housed in + a building that would stand a siege; but that guard, in the same + uniform goes on duty every night. Nothing is ever abolished, + nothing ever changed. On the anniversary of King Charles's + execution, his statue in Trafalgar Square is covered with flowers. + Every month, too, new books appear about the mistresses of old + kings--as if they, too, were of more than usual interest: I mean + serious, historical books. From the King's palace to the humblest + house I've been in, there are pictures of kings and queens. In + every house, too (to show how nothing ever changes), the towels are + folded in the same peculiar way. In every grate in the kingdom the + coal fire is laid in precisely the same way. There is not a + salesman in any shop on Piccadilly who does not, in the season, + wear a long-tail coat. Everywhere they say a second grace at + dinner--not at the end--but before the dessert, because two hundred + years ago they dared not wait longer lest the parson be under the + table: the grace is said to-day _before_ dessert! I tried three + months to persuade my "Boots" to leave off blacking the soles of my + shoes under the instep. He simply couldn't do it. Every "Boots" in + the Kingdom does it. A man of learning had an article in an + afternoon paper a few weeks ago which began thus: "It is now + universally conceded by the French and the Americans that the + decimal system is a failure," and he went on to concoct a scheme + for our money that would be more "rational" and "historical." In + this hot debate about Ulster a frequent phrase used is, "Let us see + if we can't find the right formula to solve the difficulty"; their + whole lives are formulas. Now may not all the honours and garters + and thistles and O.M.'s and K.C.B.'s and all manner of gaudy + sinecures be secure, only because they can't abolish anything? My + servants sit at table in a certain order, and Mrs. Page's maid + wouldn't yield her precedence to a mere housemaid for any mortal + consideration--any more than a royal person of a certain rank would + yield to one of a lower rank. A real democracy is as far off as + doomsday. So you argue, till you remember that it is these same + people who made human liberty possible--to a degree--and till you + sit day after day and hear them in the House of Commons, + mercilessly pounding one another. Then you are puzzled. Do they + keep all these outworn things because they are incapable of + changing anything, or do these outworn burdens keep them from + becoming able to change anything? I daresay it works both ways. + Every venerable ruin, every outworn custom, makes the King more + secure; and the King gives veneration to every ruin and keeps + respect for every outworn custom. + + Praise God for the Atlantic Ocean! It is the geographical + foundation of our liberties. Yet, as I've often written, there are + men here, real men, ruling men, mighty men, and a vigorous stock. + + A civilization, especially an old civilization, isn't an easy nut + to crack. But I notice that the men of vision keep their thought on + us. They never forget that we are 100 million strong and that we + dare do new things; and they dearly love to ask questions + about--Rockefeller! Our power, our adaptability, our potential + wealth they never forget. They'll hold fast to our favour for + reasons of prudence as well as for reasons of kinship. And, + whenever we choose to assume the leadership of the world, they'll + grant it--gradually--and follow loyally. They cannot become French, + and they dislike the Germans. They must keep in our boat for safety + as well as for comfort. + + Yours heartily, + WALTER H. PAGE. + +The following extracts are made from other letters written at this time: + + * * * * * + +. . . To-night I had a long talk with the Duchess of X, a kindly woman who +spends much time and money in the most helpful "uplift" work; that's the +kind of woman she is. + +Now she and the Duke are invited to dine at the French Ambassador's +to-morrow night. "If the Duke went into any house where there was any +member of this Government," said she, "he'd turn and walk out again. We +thought we'd better find out who the French Ambassador's guests are. We +didn't wish to ask him nor to have correspondence about it. Therefore +the Duke sent his Secretary quietly to ask the Ambassador's +Secretary--before we accepted." + +This is now a common occurrence. We had Sir Edward Grey to dinner a +little while ago and we had to make sure we had no Tory guests that +night. + +This same Duchess of X sat in the Peeresses' gallery of the House of +Lords to-night till 7 o'clock. "I had to sit in plain sight of the wives +of two members of the Cabinet and of the wife and daughter of the Prime +Minister. I used to know them," she said, "and it was embarrassing." + +Thus the revolution proceeds. For that's what it is. + + * * * * * + +. . . On the other hand the existing order is the most skilfully devised +machinery for perpetuating itself that has ever grown up among civilized +men. Did you ever see a London directory? It hasn't names +alphabetically; but one section is "Tradesmen," another "The City," +etc., etc., and another "The Court." Any one who has ever been presented +at Court is in the "Court" section, and you must sometimes look in +several sections to find a man. Yet everybody so values these +distinctions that nobody complains of the inconvenience. When the +Liberal party makes Liberals Peers in order to have Liberals in the +House of Lords, lo! they soon turn Conservative after they get there. +The system perpetuates itself and stifles the natural desire for change +that most men in a state of nature instinctively desire in order to +assert their own personalities. . . . + + * * * * * + +. . . All this social life which engages us at this particular season, +sets a man to thinking. The mass of the people are very slow--almost +dull; and the privileged are most firmly entrenched. The really alert +people are the aristocracy. They see the drift of events. "What is the +pleasantest part of your country to live in?" Dowager Lady X asked me on +Sunday, more than half in earnest. "My husband's ancestors sat in the +House of Lords for six hundred years. My son sits there now--a dummy. +They have taken all power from the Lords; they are taxing us out of our +lands; they are saving the monarchy for destruction last. England is of +the past--all is going. God knows what is coming." . . . + + * * * * * + +. . . And presently the presentations come. Lord! how sensible American +women scramble for this privilege! It royally fits a few of them. Well, +I've made some rules about presentations myself, since it's really a +sort of personal perquisite of the Ambassador. One rule is, I don't +present any but handsome women. Pretty girls: that's what you want when +you are getting up a show. Far too many of ours come here and marry +Englishmen. I think I shall make another rule and exact a promise that +after presentation they shall go home. But the American women do enliven +London. . . . + + * * * * * + +That triumph with the tariff is historic. I wrote to the President: +"Score one!" And I have been telling the London writers on big subjects, +notably the editor of the _Economist_, that this event, so quiet and +undramatic, will mark a new epoch in the trade history of the world. . . . +This island is a good breeding place for men whose children find +themselves and develop into real men in freer lands. All that is needed +to show the whole world that the future is ours is just this sort of an +act of self-confidence. You know the old story of the Negro who saw a +ghost--"Git outen de way, Mr. Rabbit, and let somebody come who _kin_ +run!" Score one! We're making History, and these people here know it. +The trade of the world, or as much of it as is profitable, we may take +as we will. The over-taxed, under-productive, army-burdened men of the +Old World--alas! I read a settled melancholy in much of their +statesmanship and in more of their literature. The most cheerful men in +official life here are the High Commissioners of Canada, Australia, New +Zealand, and such fellows who know what the English race is doing and +can do freed from uniforms and heavy taxes and class feeling and such +like. . . . + + * * * * * + +. . . The two things that this island has of eternal value are its gardens +and its men. Nature sprinkles it almost every day and holds its moisture +down so that every inch of it is forever green; and somehow men thrive +as the lawns do--the most excellent of all races for progenitors. You +and I[33] can never be thankful enough that our ancestors came of this +stock. Even those that have stayed have cut a wide swath, and they wield +good scythes yet. But I have moods when I pity them--for their +dependence, for instance, on a navy (2 keels to 1) for their very bread +and meat. They frantically resent conveniences. They build their great +law court building (the architecture ecclesiastical) so as to provide an +entrance hall of imposing proportions which they use once a year; and to +get this fine hall they have to make their court rooms, which they must +use all the time, dark and small and inaccessible. They think as much of +that once-a-year ceremony of opening their courts as they think of the +even justice that they dispense; somehow they feel that the justice +depends on the ceremony. + +This moss that has grown all over their lives (some of it very pretty +and most of it very comfortable--it's soft and warm) is of no great +consequence--except that they think they'd die if it were removed. And +this state of mind gives us a good key to their character and habits. + +What are we going to do with this England and this Empire, presently, +when economic forces unmistakably put the leadership of the race in our +hands? How can we lead it and use it for the highest purposes of the +world and of democracy? We can do what we like if we go about it +heartily and with good manners (any man prefers to yield to a gentleman +rather than to a rustic) and throw away--gradually--our isolating fears +and alternate boasting and bashfulness. "What do we most need to learn +from you?" I asked a gentle and bejewelled nobleman the other Sunday, in +a country garden that invited confidences. "If I may speak without +offence, modesty." A commoner in the company, who had seen the Rocky +Mountains, laughed, and said: "No; see your chance and take it: that's +what we did in the years when we made the world's history." . . . + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 11: Mr. Irwin Laughlin, first secretary of the American +Embassy in London.] + +[Footnote 12: In about a year Page moved the Chancery to the present +satisfactory quarters at No. 4 Grosvenor Gardens.] + +[Footnote 13: Mrs. Walter H. Page.] + +[Footnote 14: Miss Katharine A. Page, the Ambassador's daughter.] + +[Footnote 15: "Effendi" is the name by which Mr. F.N. Doubleday, Page's +partner, is known to his intimates. It is obviously suggested by the +initials of his name.] + +[Footnote 16: A reference to William Sulzer, Governor of New York, who +at this time was undergoing impeachment.] + +[Footnote 17: See Chapter VIII, page 258.] + +[Footnote 18: The Ambassador's son.] + +[Footnote 19: Miss Katharine A. Page.] + +[Footnote 20: Mr. Andrew Carnegie.] + +[Footnote 21: Mrs. Walter H. Page is the daughter of a Scotchman from +Ayrshire.] + +[Footnote 22: The astonishing thing about Page's comment on the +leadership of the United States--if it would only take this +leadership--is that these letters were written in 1913, a year before +the outbreak of the war, and eight years before the Washington +Disarmament Conference of 1921-22.] + +[Footnote 23: Just what this critical Briton had in mind, in thinking +that the removal of a New York governor created a vacancy in the +Vice-Presidency, is not clear. Possibly, however, he had a cloudy +recollection of the fact that Theodore Roosevelt, after serving as +Governor of New York State, became Vice-President, and may have +concluded from this that the two offices were held by the same man.] + +[Footnote 24: For years this idea of the stenographer back of a screen +in the Foreign Office has been abroad, but it is entirely unfounded. +Several years ago a Foreign Secretary, perhaps Lord Salisbury, put a +screen behind his desk to keep off the draughts and from this precaution +the myth arose that it shielded a stenographer who took a complete +record of ambassadorial conversations. After an ambassador leaves, the +Foreign Secretary, however, does write out the important points in the +conversation. Copies are made and printed, and sent to the King, the +Prime Minister, the British Ambassador in the country to which the +interview relates, and occasionally to others. All these records are, of +course, carefully preserved in the archives of the Foreign Office.] + +[Footnote 25: The Rev. Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley, the well-known Vicar +of Crosthwaite, Keswick, poet and student of Wordsworth. President +Wilson, who used occasionally to spend his vacation in the Lake region, +was one of his friends.] + +[Footnote 26: It is perhaps unnecessary to say that the Ambassador was +thinking only of a diplomatic "fight."] + +[Footnote 27: The Underwood Bill revising the tariff "downward" became a +law October, 1913. It was one of the first important measures of the new +Wilson Administration.] + +[Footnote 28: Secretary of Agriculture in President Wilson's Cabinet.] + +[Footnote 29: Of Aberdeen, North Carolina, the Ambassador's brother.] + +[Footnote 30: Of Pinehurst, North Carolina, the Ambassador's eldest +son.] + +[Footnote 31: Mr. and Mrs. Francis B. Sayre, son-in-law and daughter of +President Wilson, at that time on their honeymoon trip in Europe.] + +[Footnote 32: Mr. Robert N. Page, the Ambassador's brother, was at this +time a Congressman from North Carolina.] + +[Footnote 33: This is from a letter to President Wilson.] + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +"POLICY" AND "PRINCIPLE" IN MEXICO + +I + + +The last days of February, 1913, witnessed one of those sanguinary +scenes in Mexico which for generations had accompanied changes in the +government of that distracted country. A group of revolutionists +assailed the feeble power of Francisco Madero and virtually imprisoned +that executive and his forces in the Presidential Palace. The Mexican +army, whose most influential officers were General Blanquet and General +Victoriano Huerta, was hastily summoned to the rescue of the Government; +instead of relieving the besieged officials, however, these generals +turned their guns upon them, and so assured the success of the uprising. +The speedy outcome of these transactions was the assassination of +President Madero and the seizure of the Presidency by General Huerta. +Another outcome was the presentation to Page of one of the most delicate +problems in the history of Anglo-American relations. + +At almost any other time this change in the Mexican succession would +have caused only a momentary disturbance. There was nothing new in the +violent overthrow of government in Latin-America; in Mexico itself no +president had ever risen to power except by revolution. The career of +Porfirio Diaz, who had maintained his authority for a third of a +century, had somewhat obscured this fundamental fact in Mexican +politics, but Diaz had dominated Mexico for seven presidential terms, +not because his methods differed from the accepted methods of his +country, but because he was himself an executive of great force and a +statesman of genius, and could successfully hold his own against any +aspiring antagonist. The civilized world, including the United States, +had long since become reconciled to this situation as almost a normal +one. In recognizing momentarily successful adventurers, Great Britain +and the United States had never considered such details as justice or +constitutionalism: the legality of the presidential title had never been +the point at issue; the only question involved was whether the +successful aspirant actually controlled the country, whether he had +established a state of affairs that approximately represented order, and +whether he could be depended upon to protect life and property. During +the long dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, however, certain events had +taken place which had awakened the minds of Americans to the possibility +of a new international relationship with all backward peoples. The +consequences of the Spanish War had profoundly impressed Page. This +conflict had left the United States a new problem in Cuba and the +Philippines. Under the principles that for generations had governed the +Old World there would have been no particular difficulty in meeting this +problem. The United States would have candidly annexed the islands, and +exploited their resources and their peoples; we should have concerned +ourselves little about any duties that might be owed to the several +millions of human beings who inhabited them. Indeed, what other +alternatives were there? + +One was to hand the possessions back to Spain, who in a four hundred +years' experiment had demonstrated her unfitness to govern them; another +was to give the islands their independence, which would have meant +merely an indefinite continuance of anarchy. It is one of the greatest +triumphs of American statesmanship that it discovered a more +satisfactory solution. Essentially, the new plan was to establish in +these undeveloped and politically undisciplined regions the fundamental +conditions that may make possible the ultimate creation of democratic, +self-governing states. It was recognized that constitutions and election +ballots in themselves did not necessarily imply a democratic order. +Before these there must come other things that were far more important, +such as popular education, scientific agriculture, sanitation, public +highways, railroads, and the development of the resources of nature. If +the backward peoples of the world could be schooled in such a +preliminary apprenticeship, the time might come when the intelligence +and the conscience of the masses would be so enlightened that they could +be trusted with independence. The labour of Leonard Wood in Cuba, and of +other Americans in the Philippines, had apparently pointed the way to +the only treatment of such peoples that was just to them and safe for +mankind. + +With the experience of Cuba and the Philippines as a guide, it is not +surprising that the situation in Mexico appealed to many Americans as +opening a similar opportunity to the United States. The two facts that +outstood all others were that Mexico, in her existing condition of +popular ignorance, could not govern herself, and that the twentieth +century could not accept indefinitely a condition of disorder and +bloodshed that had apparently satisfied the nineteenth. The basic +difficulty in this American republic was one of race and of national +character. The fact that was constantly overlooked was that Mexico was +not a Caucasian country: it was a great shambling Indian Republic. Of +its 15,000,000 people less than 3,000,000 were of unmixed white blood, +about 35 per cent. were pure Indian, and the rest represented varying +mixtures of white and aboriginal stock. The masses had advanced little +in civilization since the days of Cortez. Eighty per cent. were +illiterate; their lives for the most part were a dull and squalid +routine; protection against disease was unknown; the agricultural +methods were most primitive; the larger number still spoke the native +dialects which had been used in the days of Montezuma; and over good +stretches of the country the old tribal régime still represented the +only form of political organization. The one encouraging feature was +that these Mexican Indians, backward as they might be, were far superior +to the other native tribes of the North American Continent; in ancient +times, they had developed a state of society far superior to that of the +traditional Redskin. Nevertheless, it was true that the progress of +Mexico in the preceding fifty years had been due almost entirely to +foreign enterprise. By 1913, about 75,000 Americans were living in +Mexico as miners, engineers, merchants, and agriculturists; American +investments amounted to about $1,200,000,000--a larger sum than that of +all the other foreigners combined. Though the work of European +countries, particularly Great Britain, was important, yet Mexico was +practically an economic colony of the United States. Most observers +agree that these foreign activities had not only profited the +foreigners, but that they had greatly benefited the Mexicans themselves. +The enterprise of Americans had disclosed enormous riches, had given +hundreds of thousands employment at very high wages, had built up new +Mexican towns on modern American lines, had extended the American +railway system over a large part of the land, and had developed street +railways, electric lighting, and other modern necessities in all +sections of the Republic. The opening up of Mexican oil resources was +perhaps the most typical of these achievements, as it was certainly the +most adventurous. Americans had created this, perhaps the greatest of +Mexican industries, and in 1913, these Americans owned nearly 80 per +cent. of Mexican oil. Their success had persuaded several Englishmen, +the best known of whom was Lord Cowdray, to enter this same field. The +activities of the Americans and the British in oil had an historic +significance which was not foreseen in 1913, but which assumed the +greatest importance in the World War; for the oil drawn from these +Mexican fields largely supplied the Allied fleets and thus became an +important element in the defeat of the Central Powers. In 1913, however, +American and British oil operators were objects of general suspicion in +both continents. They were accused of participating too actively in +Mexican politics and there were those who even held them responsible for +the revolutionary condition of the country. One picturesque legend +insisted that the American oil interests looked with jealous hostility +upon the great favours shown by the Diaz Administration to Lord +Cowdray's company, and that they had instigated the Madero revolution in +order to put in power politicians who would be more friendly to +themselves. The inevitable complement to this interpretation of events +was a prevailing suspicion that the Cowdray interests had promoted the +Huerta revolt in order to turn the tables on "Standard Oil," to make +safe the "concessions" already obtained from Diaz and to obtain still +more from the new Mexican dictator. + +To determine the truth in all these allegations, which were freely +printed in the American press of the time, would demand more facts than +are at present available; yet it is clear that these oil and other +"concessions" presented the perpetual Mexican problem in a new and +difficult light. The Wilson Administration came into power a few days +after Huerta had seized the Mexican Government. The first difficulty +presented to the State Department was to determine its attitude toward +this usurper. + +A few days after President Wilson's inauguration Mr. Irwin Laughlin, +then Chargé d'Affaires in London--this was several weeks before Page's +arrival--was instructed to ask the British Foreign Office what its +attitude would be in regard to the recognition of President Huerta. Mr. +Laughlin informed the Foreign Office that he was not instructed that the +United States had decided on any policy, but that he felt sure it would +be to the advantage of both countries to follow the same line. The query +was not an informal one; it was made in definite obedience to +instructions and was intended to elicit a formal commitment. The +unequivocal answer that Mr. Laughlin received was that the British +Government would not recognize Huerta, either formally or tacitly. + +Mr. Laughlin sent his message immediately to Washington, where it +apparently made a favourable impression. The Administration then let it +be known that the United States would not recognize the new Mexican +régime. Whether Mr. Wilson would at this time have taken such a +position, irrespective of the British attitude, is not known, but at +this stage of the proceedings Great Britain and the United States were +standing side by side. + +About three weeks afterward Mr. Laughlin heard that the British Foreign +Office was about to recognize Huerta. Naturally the report astonished +him; he at once called again on the Foreign Office, taking with him the +despatch that he had recently sent to Washington. Why had the British +Government recognized Huerta when it had given definite assurances to +Washington that it had no intention of doing so? The outcome of the +affair was that Sir Cecil Spring Rice, British Ambassador in Washington, +was instructed to inform the State Department that Great Britain had +changed its mind. France, Germany, Spain, and most other governments +followed the British example in recognizing the new President of Mexico. + +It is thus apparent that the initial mistake in the Huerta affair was +made by Great Britain. Its action produced the most unpleasant +impression upon the new Administration. Mr. Wilson, Mr. Bryan, and their +associates in the cabinet easily found an explanation that was +satisfactory to themselves and to the political enthusiasms upon which +they had come into power. They believed that the sudden change in the +British attitude was the result of pressure from British commercial +interests which hoped to profit from the Huerta influence. Lord Cowdray +was a rich and powerful Liberal; he had great concessions in Mexico +which had been obtained from President Diaz; it was known that Huerta +aimed to make his dictatorship a continuation of that of Diaz, to rule +Mexico as Diaz had ruled it, that is, by force, and to extend a +welcoming hand to foreign capitalists. An important consideration was +that the British Navy had a contract with the Cowdray Company for oil, +which was rapidly becoming indispensable as a fuel for warships, and +this fact necessarily made the British Government almost a champion of +the Cowdray interests. It was not necessary to believe all the rumours +that were then afloat in the American press to conclude that a Huerta +administration would be far more acceptable to the Cowdray Company than +any headed by one of the military chieftains who were then disputing the +control of Mexico. Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bryan believed that these events +proved that certain "interests," similar to the "interests" which, in +their view, had exercised so baleful an influence on American politics, +were also active in Great Britain. The Wilson election in 1912 had been +a protest against the dominance of "Wall Street" in American politics; +Mr. Bryan's political stock-in-trade for a generation had consisted of +little except a campaign against these forces; naturally, therefore, the +suspicion that Great Britain was giving way to a British "Standard Oil" +was enough to arm these statesmen against the Huerta policy, and to +intensify that profound dislike of Huerta himself that was soon to +become almost an obsession. + +With this as a starting point President Wilson presently formulated an +entirely new principle for dealing with Latin-American republics. There +could be no permanent order in these turbulent countries and nothing +approaching a democratic system until the habit of revolution should he +checked. One of the greatest encouragements to revolution, said the +President, was the willingness of foreign governments to recognize any +politician who succeeded in seizing the executive power. He therefore +believed that a refusal to recognize any government "founded upon +violence" would exercise a wholesome influence in checking this national +habit; if Great Britain and the United States and the other powers would +set the example by refusing to have any diplomatic dealings with General +Huerta, such an unfriendly attitude would discourage other forceful +intriguers from attempting to repeat his experiment. The result would be +that the decent elements in Mexico and other Latin-American countries +would at last assert themselves, establish a constitutional system, and +select their governments by constitutional means. At the bottom of the +whole business were, in the President's and Mr. Bryan's opinion, the +"concession" seekers, the "exploiters," who were constantly obtaining +advantages at the hands of these corrupt governments and constantly +stirring up revolutions for their financial profit. The time had now +come to end the whole miserable business. "We are closing one chapter in +the history of the world," said Mr. Wilson, "and opening another of +unimaginable significance. . . . It is a very perilous thing to determine +the foreign policy of a nation in the terms of material interests. . . . We +have seen such material interests threaten constitutional freedom in the +United States. Therefore we will now know how to sympathize with those +in the rest of America who have to contend with such powers, not only +within their borders, but from outside their borders." + +In this way General Huerta, who, in his own eyes, was merely another in +the long succession of Mexican revolutionary chieftains, was translated +into an epochal figure in the history of American foreign policy; he +became a symbol in Mr. Wilson's new scheme of things--the representative +of the order which was to come to an end, the man who, all unwittingly, +was to point the new way not only in Mexico, but in all Latin-American +countries. The first diplomatic task imposed upon Page therefore was one +that would have dismayed a more experienced ambassador. This was to +persuade Great Britain to retrace its steps, to withdraw its recognition +of Huerta, and to join hands with the United States in bringing about +his downfall. The new ambassador sympathized with Mr. Wilson's ideas to +a certain extent; the point at which he parted company with the +President's Mexican policy will appear in due course. He therefore began +zealously to preach the new Latin-American doctrine to the British +Foreign Office, with results that appear in his letters of this period. + +_To the President_ + + 6 Grosvenor Square, London, + Friday night, October 24, 1913. + + DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: + + In this wretched Mexican business, about which I have read columns + and columns and columns of comment these two days and turned every + conceivable proposition back and forth in my mind--in this whole + wretched waste of comment, I have not seen even an allusion to any + moral principle involved nor a word of concern about the Mexican + people. It is all about who is the stronger, Huerta or some other + bandit, and about the necessity of order for the sake of financial + interests. Nobody recalls our action in giving Cuba to the Cubans + or our pledge to the people of the Philippine Islands. But there is + reference to the influence of Standard Oil in the American policy. + This illustrates the complete divorce of European politics from + fundamental morals, and it shocks even a man who before knew of + this divorce. + + In my last talk with Sir Edward Grey I drove this home by + emphasizing strongly the impossibility of your playing primary heed + to any American business interest in Mexico--even the immorality of + your doing so; there are many things that come before business and + there are some things that come before order. I used American + business interests because I couldn't speak openly of British + business interests and his Government. I am sure he saw the obvious + inference. But not even from him came a word about the moral + foundation of government or about the welfare of the Mexican + people. These are not in the European governing vocabulary. + + I have been trying to find a way to help this Government to wake up + to the effect of its pro-Huerta position and to give them a chance + to refrain from repeating that mistake--and to save their faces; + and I have telegraphed one plan to Mr. Bryan to-day. I think they + ought now to be forced to show their hand without the possibility + of evasion. They will not risk losing our good-will--if it seem + wise to you to put them to a square test. + + It's a wretched business, and the sordid level of European + statecraft is sad. + + I ran across the Prime Minister at the royal wedding reception[34] + the other day. + + "What do you infer from the latest news from Mexico?" he asked. + + "Several things." + + "Tell me the most important inference you draw." + + "Well, the danger of prematurely making up one's mind about a + Mexican adventurer." + + "Ah!" and he moved on. + + Very heartily yours, + WALTER H. PAGE. + + _To the President_ + + London, Sunday, Nov. 16, 1913. + + . . . About the obligations and inferences of democracy, they are + dense. They don't really believe in it; and they are slow to see + what good will come of ousting Huerta unless we know beforehand who + will succeed him. Sir Edward Grey is not dense, but in this matter + even he is slow fully to understand. The Lord knows I've told him + plainly over and over again and, I fear, even preached to him. At + first he couldn't see the practical nature of so "idealistic" a + programme. I explained to him how the immemorial "policy" that we + all followed of recognizing momentarily successful adventurers in + Latin-America had put a premium on revolution; that you had found + something better than a policy, namely, a principle; that policies + change, but principles do not; that he need not he greatly + concerned about the successor to Huerta; that this is primarily and + ultimately an American problem; that Great Britain's interest being + only commercial is far less than the interest of the United States, + which is commercial and also ethical; and so on and so on. His + sympathies and his friendliness are all right. But Egypt and India + were in his mind. He confessed to me that he was much + impressed--"if you can carry it through." Many men are seeing the + new idea (I wonder if you are conscious how new it is and how + incredible to the Old World mind?) and they express the greatest + and sincerest admiration for "your brave new President"; and a wave + of friendliness to the United States swept over the Kingdom when + the Government took its open stand. At the annual dinner of the + oldest and richest of the merchants' guilds at which they invited + me to respond to a toast the other night they proposed your health + most heartily and, when I arose, they cheered longer and louder + than I had before heard men cheer in this kingdom. There is, I am + sure, more enthusiasm for the United States here, by far, than for + England in the United States. They are simply dense about any sort + of government but their own--particularly dense about the + application of democracy to "dependencies" and inferior peoples. I + have a neighbour who spent many years as an administrator in India. + He has talked me deaf about the inevitable failure of this + "idealistic" Mexican programme. He is wholly friendly, and wholly + incredulous. And for old-time Toryism gone to seed commend me to + the _Spectator_. Not a glimmering of the idea has entered + Strachey's head. The _Times_, however, now sees it pretty clearly. + I spent Sunday a few weeks ago with two of its editors in the + country, and they have come to see me several times since and + written fairly good "leaders" out of my conversation with them. So + much for this head. For the moment at least that is satisfactory. + You must not forget that they can't all at once take it in, for + they do not really know what democracy is or whither it leads and + at bottom they do not really believe in it as a scheme of + government--not even this Liberal Cabinet. + + The British concern for commercial interests, which never sleeps, + will, I fear, come up continuously. But we shall simply do justice + and stand firm, when this phase of the subject comes forward. + + It's amusing, when you forget its sadness, that their first impulse + is to regard an unselfish international act as what Cecil Rhodes + called the English "unctuous rectitude." But this experience that + we are having with them will be worth much in future dealings. They + already feel very clearly that a different hand has the helm in + Washington; and we can drive them hard, if need be, for they will + not forfeit our friendship. + + It is worth something to discover that Downing Street makes many + mistakes. Infallibility dwells a long way from them. In this matter + they have made two terrible blunders--the recognition of Huerta + (they know that now) and the sending of Carden (they may already + suspect that: they'll know it presently). + + Yours always faithfully, + WALTER H. PAGE. + + P.S. By Jove, I didn't know that I'd ever have to put the British + Government through an elementary course in Democracy! + + To the President. + +Occasionally Page discussed with Sir Edward Grey an alternative +American policy which was in the minds of most people at that time: + + _To the President_ + + . . . The foregoing I wrote before this Mexican business took its + present place. I can't get away from the feeling that the English + simply do not and will not believe in any unselfish public + action--further than the keeping of order. They have a mania for + order, sheer order, order for the sake of order. They can't see how + anything can come in any one's thought before order or how anything + need come afterward. Even Sir Edward Grey jocularly ran me across + our history with questions like this: + + "Suppose you have to intervene, what then?" + + "Make 'em vote and live by their decisions." + + "But suppose they will not so live?" + + "We'll go in again and make 'em vote again." + + "And keep this up 200 years?" asked he. + + "Yes," said I. "The United States will he here two hundred years + and it can continue to shoot men for that little space till they + learn to vote and to rule themselves." + + I have never seen him laugh so heartily. Shooting men into + self-government! Shooting them into orderliness--he comprehends + that; and that's all right. But that's as far as his habit of mind + goes. At Sheffield last night, when I had to make a speech, I + explained "idealism" (they always quote it) in Government. They + listened attentively and even eagerly. Then they came up and asked + if I really meant that Government should concern itself with + idealistic things--beyond keeping order. Ought they to do so in + India?--I assure you they don't think beyond order. A nigger + lynched in Mississippi offends them more than a tyrant in Mexico. + + _To Edward M. House_ + + London, November 2, 1913. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + I've been writing to the President that the Englishman has a mania + for order, order for order's sake, and for--trade. He has reduced a + large part of the world to order. He is the best policeman in + creation; and--he has the policeman's ethics! Talk to him about + character as a basis of government or about a moral basis of + government in any outlying country, he'll think you daft. Bah! what + matter who governs or how he governs or where he got his authority + or how, so long as he keeps order. He won't see anything else. The + lesson of our dealing with Cuba is lost on him. He doesn't believe + _that_. We may bring this Government in line with us on Mexico. But + in this case and in general, the moral uplift of government must be + forced by us--I mean government in outlying countries. + + Mexico is only part of Central America, and the only way we can + ever forge a Central and South American policy that will endure is + _this_ way, precisely, by saying that your momentarily successful + adventurer can't count on us anywhere; the man that rules must + govern for the governed. Then we have a policy; and nobody else has + that policy. This Mexican business is worth worlds to us--to + establish this. + + We may have a diplomatic fight here; and I'm ready! Very ready on + this, for its own sake and for reasons that follow, to wit: + + Extraordinary and sincere and profound as is the respect of the + English for the American people, they hold the American Government + in contempt. It shifts and doesn't keep its treaty, etc., + etc.--They are right, too. But they need to feel the hand that now + has the helm. + + But one or two things have first to be got out of the way. That + Panama tolls is the worst. We are dead wrong in that, as we are + dead right on the Mexican matter. If it were possible (I don't know + that it is) for the President to say (quietly, not openly) that he + agrees with us--if he do--then the field would be open for a fight + on Mexico; and the reënforcement of our position would he + incalculable. + + Then we need in Washington some sort of Bureau or Master of + Courtesies for the Government, to do and to permit us to do those + little courtesies that the English spend half their time in + doing--this in the course of our everyday life and intercourse. For + example: When I was instructed to inform this Government that our + fleet would go to the Mediterranean, I was instructed also to say + that they mustn't trouble to welcome us--don't pay no 'tention to + us! Well, that's what they live for in times of peace--ceremonies. + We come along and say, "We're comin' but, hell! don't kick up no + fuss over us, we're from Missouri, we are!" And the Briton shrugs + his shoulders and says, "Boor!" These things are happening all the + time. Of course no one nor a dozen nor a hundred count; but + generations of 'em have counted badly. A Government without + manners. + + If I could outdo these folk at their game of courtesy, and could + keep our treaty faith with 'em, then I could lick 'em into the next + century on the moral aspects of the Mexican Government, and make + 'em look up and salute every time the American Government is + mentioned. See?--Is there any hope?--Such is the job exactly. And + you know what it would lead to--even in our lifetime--_to the + leadership of the world_: and we should presently be considering + how we may best use the British fleet, the British Empire, and the + English race for the betterment of mankind. + + Yours eagerly, + W.H.P. + +A word of caution is necessary to understand Page's references to the +British democracy. That the parliamentary system is democratic in the +sense that it is responsive to public opinion he would have been the +first to admit. That Great Britain is a democracy in the sense that the +suffrage is general is also apparent. But, in these reflections on the +British commonwealth, the Ambassador was thinking of his old familiar +figure, the "Forgotten Man"--the neglected man, woman, and child of the +masses. In an address delivered, in June, 1914, before the Royal +Institution of Great Britain, Page gave what he regarded as the +definition of the American ideal. "The fundamental article in the creed +of the American democracy--you may call it the fundamental dogma if you +like--is the unchanging and unchangeable resolve that every human being +shall have his opportunity for his utmost development--his chance to +become and to do the best that he can." Democracy is not only a system +of government--"it is a scheme of society." Every citizen must have not +only the suffrage, he must likewise enjoy the same advantages as his +neighbour for education, for social opportunity, for good health, for +success in agriculture, manufacture, finance, and business and +professional life. The country that most successfully opened all these +avenues to every boy or girl, exclusively on individual merit, was in +Page's view the most democratic. He believed that the United States did +this more completely than Great Britain or any other country; and +therefore he believed that we were far more democratic. He had not found +in other countries the splendid phenomenon presented by America's great +agricultural region. "The most striking single fact about the United +States is, I think, this spectacle, which, so far as I know, is new in +the world: On that great agricultural area are about seven million farms +of an average size of about 140 acres, most of which are tilled by the +owners themselves, a population that varies greatly, of course, in its +thrift and efficiency, but most of which is well housed, in houses they +themselves own, well clad, well fed, and a population that trains +practically all its children in schools maintained by public taxation." +It was some such vision as this that Page hoped to see realized +ultimately in Mexico. And some such development as this would make +Mexico a democracy. It was his difficulty in making the British see the +Mexican problem in this light that persuaded him that, in this +comprehensive meaning of the word, the democratic ideal had made an +inappreciable progress in Europe--and even in Great Britain itself. + + +II + +These letters are printed somewhat out of their chronological order +because they picture definitely the two opposing viewpoints of Great +Britain and the United States on Mexico and Latin-America generally. +Here, then, was the sharp issue drawn between the Old World and the +New--on one side the dreary conception of outlying countries as fields +to be exploited for the benefit of "investors," successful +revolutionists to be recognized in so far as they promoted such ends, +and no consideration to be shown to the victims of their rapacity; and +the new American idea, the idea which had been made reality in Cuba and +the Philippines, that the enlightened and successful nations stood +something in the position of trustees to such unfortunate lands and that +it was their duty to lead them along the slow pathway of progress and +democracy. So far the Wilsonian principle could be joyfully supported by +the Ambassador. Page disagreed with the President, however, in that he +accepted the logical consequences of this programme. His formula of +"shooting people into self-government," which had so entertained the +British Foreign Secretary, was a characteristically breezy description +of the alternative that Page, in the last resort, was ready to adopt, +but which President Wilson and Secretary Bryan persistently refused to +consider. Page was just as insistent as the Washington Administration +that Huerta should resign and that Great Britain should assist the +United States in accomplishing his dethronement, and that the Mexican +people should have a real opportunity of setting up for themselves. He +was not enough of an "idealist," however, to believe that the Mexicans, +without the assistance of their powerful neighbours, could succeed in +establishing a constitutional government. In early August, 1913, +President Wilson sent Mr. John Lind, ex-Governor of Minnesota, to Mexico +as his personal representative. His mission was to invite Huerta to +remove himself from Mexican politics, and to permit the Mexican people +to hold a presidential election at which Huerta would himself agree not +to be a candidate. Mr. Lind presented these proposals on August 15th, +and President Huerta rejected every one of them with a somewhat +disconcerting promptitude. + +That Page was prepared to accept the consequences of this failure +appears in the following letter. The lack of confidence which it +discloses in Secretary Bryan was a feeling that became stronger as the +Mexican drama unfolded. + + _To Edward M. House_ + + London, August 25, 1913. + + MY DEAR HOUSE: + + . . . If you find a chance, get the substance of this memorandum into + the hands of two men: the President and the Secretary of + Agriculture. Get 'em in Houston's at once--into the President's + whenever the time is ripe. I send the substance to Washington and I + send many other such things. But I never feel sure that they reach + the President. The most confidential letter I have written was lost + in Washington, and there is pretty good testimony that it reached + the Secretary's desk. He does not acknowledge the important things, + but writes me confidentially to inquire if the office of the man + who attends to the mail pouches (the diplomatic and naval + despatches in London[35]) is not an office into which he might put + a Democrat.--But I keep at it. It would he a pleasure to know that + the President knows what I am trying to do. . . . + + Yours heartily, + WALTER H. PAGE. + +Following is the memorandum: + + In October the provisional recognition of Huerta by England will + end. Then this Government will be free. Then is the time for the + United States to propose to England joint intervention merely to + reduce this turbulent scandal of a country to order--on an + agreement, of course, to preserve the territorial integrity of + Mexico. It's a mere police duty that all great nations have to + do--as they did in the case of the Boxer riots in China. Of course + Germany and France, etc., ought to be invited--on the same pledge: + the preservation of territorial integrity. If Germany should come + in, she will thereby practically acknowledge the Monroe Doctrine, + as England has already done. If Germany stay out, then she can't + complain. England and the United States would have only to announce + their intention: there'd be no need to fire a gun. Besides settling + the Mexican trouble, we'd gain much--having had England by our side + in a praise-worthy enterprise. That, and the President's visit[36] + would give the world notice to whom it belongs, and cause it to be + quiet and to go about its proper business of peaceful industry. + + Moreover, it would show all the Central and South American States + that we don't want any of their territory, that we will not let + anybody else have any, but that they, too, must keep orderly + government or the great Nations of the earth, will, at our bidding, + forcibly demand quiet in their borders. I believe a new era of + security would come in all Spanish America. Investments would be + safer, governments more careful and orderly. And--we would not have + made any entangling alliance with anybody. All this would prevent + perhaps dozens of little wars. It's merely using the English fleet + and ours to make the world understand that the time has come for + orderliness and peace and for the honest development of backward, + turbulent lands and peoples. + + If you don't put this through, tell me what's the matter with it. + I've sent it to Washington after talking and being talked to for a + month and after the hardest kind of thinking. Isn't this + constructive? Isn't it using the great power lying idle about the + world, to do the thing that most needs to be done? + +Colonel House presented this memorandum to the President, but events +sufficiently disclosed that it had no influence upon his Mexican policy. +Two days after it was written Mr. Wilson went before Congress, announced +that the Lind Mission had failed, and that conditions in Mexico had +grown worse. He advised all Americans to leave the country, and declared +that he would lay an embargo on the shipment of munitions--an embargo +that would affect both the Huerta forces and the revolutionary groups +that were fighting them. + +Meanwhile Great Britain had taken another step that made as unpleasant +an impression on Washington as had the recognition of Huerta. Sir Lionel +Edward Gresley Carden had for several years been occupying British +diplomatic posts in Central America, in all of which he had had +disagreeable social and diplomatic relations with Americans. Sir Lionel +had always shown great zeal in promoting British commercial interests, +and, justly or unjustly, had acquired the fame of being intensely +anti-American. From 1911 to 1913 Carden had served as British Minister +to Cuba; here his anti-Americanism had shown itself in such obnoxious +ways that Mr. Knox, Secretary of State under President Taft, had +instructed Ambassador Reid to bring his behaviour to the attention of +the British Foreign Office. These representations took practically the +form of requesting Carden's removal from Cuba. Perhaps the unusual +relations that the United States bore toward Cuba warranted Mr. Knox in +making such an approach; yet the British refused to see the matter in +that light; not only did they fail to displace Carden, but they knighted +him--the traditional British way of defending a faithful public servant +who has been attacked. Sir Lionel Carden refused to mend his ways; he +continued to indulge in what Washington regarded as anti-American +propaganda; and a second time Secretary Knox intimated that his removal +would he acceptable to this country, and a second time this request was +refused. With this preliminary history of Carden as a background, and +with the British-American misunderstanding over Huerta at its most +serious stage, the emotions of Washington may well be imagined when the +news came, in July, 1913, that this same gentleman had been appointed +British Minister to Mexico. If the British Government had ransacked its +diplomatic force to find the one man who would have been most +objectionable to the United States, it could have made no better +selection. The President and Mr. Bryan were pretty well persuaded that +the "oil concessionaires" were dictating British-Mexican policy, and +this appointment translated their suspicion into a conviction. Carden +had seen much service in Mexico; he had been on the friendliest terms +with Diaz; and the newspapers openly charged that the British oil +capitalists had dictated his selection. All these assertions Carden and +the oil interests denied; yet Carden's behaviour from the day of his +appointment showed great hostility to the United States. A few days +after he had reached New York, on his way to his new post, the New York +_World_ published an interview with Carden in which he was reported as +declaring that President Wilson knew nothing about the Mexican situation +and in which he took the stand that Huerta was the man to handle Mexico +at this crisis. His appearance in the Mexican capital was accompanied by +other highly undiplomatic publications. In late October President Huerta +arrested all his enemies in the Mexican Congress, threw them into jail, +and proclaimed himself dictator. Washington was much displeased that Sir +Lionel Carden should have selected the day of these high-handed +proceedings to present to Huerta his credentials as minister; in its +sensitive condition, the State Department interpreted this act as a +reaffirmation of that recognition that had already caused so much +confusion in Mexican affairs. + +Carden made things worse by giving out more newspaper interviews, a +tendency that had apparently grown into a habit. "I do not believe that +the United States recognizes the seriousness of the situation here. . . . I +see no reason why Huerta should be displaced by another man whose +abilities are yet to be tried. . . . Safety in Mexico can be secured only +by punitive and remedial methods, and a strong man;"--such were a few of +the reflections that the reporters attributed to this astonishing +diplomat. Meanwhile, the newspapers were filled with reports that the +British Minister was daily consorting with Huerta, that he was +constantly strengthening that chieftain's backbone in opposition to the +United States and that he was obtaining concessions in return for this +support. To what extent these press accounts rested on fact cannot be +ascertained definitely at this time; yet it is a truth that Carden's +general behaviour gave great encouragement to Huerta and that it had the +deplorable effect of placing Great Britain and the United States in +opposition. The interpretation of the casual reader was that Great +Britain was determined to seat Huerta in the Presidency against the +determination of the United States to keep him out. The attitude of the +Washington cabinet was almost bitter at this time against the British +Government. "There is a feeling here," wrote Secretary Lane to Page, +"that England is playing a game unworthy of her." + +The British Government promptly denied the authenticity of the Carden +interview, but that helped matters little, for the American public +insisted on regarding such denials as purely diplomatic. Something of a +storm against Carden arose in England itself, where it was believed that +his conception of his duties was estranging two friendly countries. +Probably the chief difficulty was that the British Foreign Office could +see no logical sequence in the Washington policy. Put Huerta out--yes, +by all means: but what then? Page's notes of his visit to Sir Edward +Grey a few days after the latest Carden interview confirm this: + + * * * * * + +I have just come from an hour's talk with Grey about Mexico. He showed +me his telegram to Carden, asking about Carden's reported interview +criticizing the United States, and Carden's flat denial. He showed me +another telegram to Carden about Huerta's reported boast that he would +have the backing of London, Paris, and Berlin against the United States, +in which Grey advised Carden that British policy should be to keep aloof +from Huerta's boasts and plans. Carden denied that Huerta made such a +boast in his statement to the Diplomatic Corps. Grey wishes the +President to know of these telegrams. + +Talk then became personal and informal. I went over the whole subject +again, telling how the Press and people of the United States were +becoming critical of the British Government; that they regarded the +problem as wholly American; that they resented aid to Huerta, whom they +regarded as a mere tyrant; that they suspected British interests of +giving financial help to Huerta; that many newspapers and persons +refused to believe Carden's denial; that the President's policy was not +academic but was the only policy that would square with American ideals +and that it was unchangeable. I cited our treatment of Cuba. I explained +again that I was talking unofficially and giving him only my own +interpretation of the people's mood. He asked, if the British Government +should withdraw the recognition of Huerta, what would happen. + +"In my opinion," I replied, "he would collapse." + +"What would happen then--worse chaos?" + +"That is impossible," I said. "There is no worse chaos than deputies in +jail, the dictatorial doubling of the tariff, the suppression of +opinion, and the practical banishment of independent men. If Huerta +should fall, there is hope that suppressed men and opinion will set up a +successful government." + +"Suppose that fail," he asked--"what then?" + +I replied that, in case of continued and utter failure, the United +States might feel obliged to repeat its dealings with Cuba and that the +continued excitement of opinion in the United States might precipitate +this. + +Grey protested that he knew nothing of what British interests had done +or were doing, that he wished time to think the matter out and that he +was glad to await the President's communication. He thanked me cordially +for my frank statements and declared that he understood perfectly their +personal nature. I impressed him with the seriousness of American public +opinion. + + * * * * * + +The last thing that the British Government desired at this time was a +serious misunderstanding with the United States, on Mexico or any other +matter. Yet the Mexican situation, in early November, 1913, clearly +demanded a complete cleaning up. The occasion soon presented itself. Sir +William Tyrrell, the private secretary of Sir Edward Grey sailed, in +late October, for the United States. The purpose of his visit was not +diplomatic, but Page evidently believed that his presence in the United +States offered too good an opportunity to be lost. + + To Edward M. House + + Newton Hall, Newton, Cambridge. + + Sunday, October 26, 1913. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + Sir William Tyrrell, the secretary of Sir Edward Grey--himself, I + think, an M.P.--has gone to the United States to visit his friend, + Sir Cecil Spring Rice. He sailed yesterday, going first to Dublin, + N.H., thence with the Ambassador to Washington. He has never before + been to the United States, and he went off in high glee, alone, to + see it. He's a good fellow, a thoroughly good fellow, and he's an + important man. He of course has Sir Edward's complete confidence, + but he's also a man on his own account. I have come to reckon it + worth while to get ideas that I want driven home into his head. + It's a good head and a good place to put good ideas. + + The Lord knows you have far too much to do; but in this juncture I + should count it worth your while to pay him some attention. I want + him to get the President's ideas about Mexico, good and firm and + hard. They are so far from altruistic in their politics here that + it would be a good piece of work to get our ideas and aims into + this man's head. His going gives you and the President and + everybody a capital chance to help me keep our good + American-English understanding. + + Whatever happen in Mexico, I'm afraid there will be a disturbance + of the very friendly feeling between the American people and the + English. I am delivering a series of well-thought-out discourses to + Sir Edward--with what effect, I don't know. If the American press + could be held in a little, that would be as good as it is + impossible. + + I'm now giving the Foreign Office the chance to refrain from more + premature recognizing. + + Very hastily yours, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + +Sir William Tyrrell, to whom Page refers so pleasantly, was one of the +most engaging men personally in the British Foreign Office, as well as +one of the most influential. Though he came to America on no official +mission to our Government, he was exceptionally qualified to discuss +Mexico and other pending questions with the Washington Administration. +He had an excellent background, and a keen insight into the human +aspects of all problems, but perhaps his most impressive physical trait +was a twinkling eye, as his most conspicuous mental quality was +certainly a sense of humour. Constant association with Sir Edward Grey +had given his mind a cast not dissimilar to that of his chief--a belief +in ordinary decency in international relations, an enthusiasm for the +better ordering of the world, a sincere admiration for the United States +and a desire to maintain British-American friendship. In his first +encounter with official Washington Sir William needed all that sense of +the ludicrous with which he is abundantly endowed. This took the form of +a long interview with Secretary Bryan on the foreign policy of Great +Britain. The Secretary harangued Sir William on the wickedness of the +British Empire, particularly in Egypt and India and in Mexico. The +British oil men, Mr. Bryan declared, was nothing but the "paymasters" of +the British Cabinet. + +"You are wrong," replied the Englishman, who saw that the only thing to +do on an occasion of this kind was to refuse to take the Secretary +seriously. "Lord Cowdray hasn't money enough. Through a long experience +with corruption the Cabinet has grown so greedy that Cowdray hasn't the +money necessary to reach their price." + +"Ah," said Mr. Bryan, triumphantly, accepting Sir William's bantering +answer as made in all seriousness. "Then you admit the charge." + +From this he proceeded to denounce Great Britain in still more +unmeasured terms. The British, he declared, had only one interest in +Mexico, and that was oil. The Foreign Office had simply handed its +Mexican policy over to the "oil barons" for predatory purposes. + +"That's just what the Standard Oil people told me in New York," the +British diplomat replied. "Mr. Secretary, you are talking just like a +Standard Oil man. The ideas that you hold are the ones which the +Standard Oil is disseminating. You are pursuing the policy which they +have decided on. Without knowing it you are promoting the interest of +Standard Oil." + +Sir William saw that it was useless to discuss Mexico with Mr. +Bryan--that the Secretary was not a thinker but an emotionalist. +However, despite their differences, the two men liked each other and had +a good time. As Sir William was leaving, he bowed deferentially to the +Secretary of State and said: + +"You have stripped me naked, Mr. Secretary, but I am unashamed." + +With President Wilson, however, the Englishman had a more satisfactory +experience. He was delighted by the President's courtesy, charm, +intelligence, and conversational powers. The impression which Sir +William obtained of the American President on this occasion remained +with him for several years and was itself an important element in +British-American relations after the outbreak of the World War. And the +visit was a profitable one for Mr. Wilson, since he obtained a clear +understanding of the British policy toward Mexico. Sir William succeeded +in persuading the President that the so-called oil interests were not +dictating the policy of Sir Edward Grey. That British oil men were +active in Mexico was apparent; but they were not using a statesman of so +high a character as Sir Edward Grey for their purposes and would not be +able to do so. The British Government entertained no ambitions in Mexico +that meant unfriendliness to the United States. In no way was the policy +of Great Britain hostile to our own. In fact, the British recognized the +predominant character of the American interest in Mexico and were +willing to accept any policy in which Washington would take the lead. +All it asked was that British property and British lives be protected; +once these were safeguarded Great Britain was ready to stand aside and +let the United States deal with Mexico in its own way. + +The one disappointment of this visit was that Sir William Tyrrell was +unable to obtain from President Wilson any satisfactory statement of his +Mexican policy. + +"When I go back to England," said the Englishman, as the interview was +approaching an end, "I shall be asked to explain your Mexican policy. +Can you tell me what it is?" + +President Wilson looked at him earnestly and said, in his most decisive +manner: + +"I am going to teach the South American Republics to elect good men!" + +This was excellent as a purpose, but it could hardly be regarded as a +programme. + +"Yes," replied Sir William, "but, Mr. President, I shall have to explain +this to Englishmen, who, as you know, lack imagination. They cannot see +what is the difference between Huerta, Carranza, and Villa." + +The only answer he could obtain was that Carranza was the best of the +three and that Villa was not so bad as he had been painted. But the +phrase that remained with the British diplomat was that one so +characteristically Wilsonian: "I propose to teach the South American +Republics to elect good men." In its attitude, its phrasing, it held the +key to much Wilson history. + +Additional details of this historic interview are given in Colonel +House's letters: + + From Edward M. House + + 145 East 35th Street, + + New York City. + + November 4, 1913. + + DEAR PAGE: + + Your cablegram, telling me of the arrival of Sir William Tyrrell on + the _Imperator_, was handed me on my way to the train as I left for + Washington. + + The President talked with me about the Mexican situation and it + looks as if something positive will be done in a few days unless + Huerta abdicates. + + It is to be the policy of this Administration henceforth not to + recognize any Central American government that is not formed along + constitutional lines. Anything else would be a makeshift policy. As + you know, revolutions and assassinations in order to obtain control + of governments are instituted almost wholly for the purpose of loot + and when it is found that these methods will not bring the desired + results, they will cease. + + The President also feels strongly in regard to foreign financial + interests seeking to control those unstable governments through + concessions and otherwise. This, too, he is determined to + discourage as far as it is possible to do so. + + This was a great opportunity for England and America to get + together. You know how strongly we both feel upon this subject and + I do not believe that the President differed greatly from us, but + the recent actions of the British Government have produced a + decided irritation, which to say the least is unfortunate. + + Faithfully yours, + + E.M. HOUSE. + + + 145 East 35th Street, + New York City. + November 14, 1913. + + DEAR PAGE: + + Things have happened quickly since I last wrote to you. I went to + Washington Monday night as the guest of the Bryans. They have been + wanting me to come to them and I thought this a good opportunity. + + I talked the Mexican situation out thoroughly with him and one of + your dispatches came while I was there. I found that he was + becoming prejudiced against the British Government, believing that + their Mexican policy was based purely upon commercialism, that they + were backing Huerta quietly at the instance of Lord Cowdray, and + that Cowdray had not only already obtained concessions from the + Huerta Government, but expected to obtain others. Sir Lionel Carden + was also all to the bad. + + I saw the President and his views were not very different from + those of Mr. Bryan. I asked the President to permit me to see Sir + William Tyrrell and talk to him frankly and to attempt to + straighten the tangle out. He gave me a free hand. + + I lunched with Sir William at the British Embassy although Sir + Cecil Spring Rice was not well enough to be present. I had a long + talk with Sir William after lunch and found that our suspicions + were unwarranted and that we could get together without any + difficulty whatever. + + I told him very frankly what our purpose was in Mexico and that we + were determined to carry it through if it was within our power to + do so. That being so I suggested that he get his government to + coöperate cordially with ours rather than to accept our policy + reluctantly. + + I told him that you and I had dreamed of a sympathetic alliance + between the two countries and that it seemed to me that this dream + might come true very quickly because of the President and Sir + Edward Grey. He expressed a willingness to coöperate freely and I + told him I would arrange an early meeting with the President. I + thought it better to bring the President into the game rather than + Mr. Bryan. I told him of the President's attitude upon the Panama + toll question but I touched upon that lightly and in confidence, + preferring for the President himself to make his own statement. + + I left the Bryans in the morning of the luncheon with Sir William, + intending to take an afternoon train for New York, but the + President wanted me to stay with him at the White House over night + and meet Sir William with him at half past nine the following + morning. He was so tired that I did not have the heart to urge a + meeting that night. + + From half past nine until half past ten the President and Sir + William repeated to each other what they had said separately to me, + and which I had given to each, and then the President elaborated + upon the toll question much to the satisfaction of Sir William. + + He explained the matter in detail and assured him of his entire + sympathy and purpose to carry out our treaty obligations, both in + the letter and the spirit. + + Sir William was very happy after the interview and when the + President left us he remained to talk to me and to express his + gratification. He cleared up in the President's mind all suspicion, + I think, in regard to concessions and as to the intentions and + purposes of the British Government. He assured the President that + his government would work cordially with ours and that they would + do all that they could to bring about joint pressure through + Germany and France for the elimination of Huerta. + + We are going to give them a chance to see what they can do with + Huerta before moving any further. Sir William thinks that if we are + willing to let Huerta save his face he can be got out without force + of arms. + + Sir William said that if foreign diplomats could have heard our + conversation they would have fallen in a faint; it was so frankly + indiscreet and undiplomatic. I did not tell him so, but I had it in + the back of my mind that where people wanted to do right and had + the power to carry out their intentions there was no need to cloak + their thoughts in diplomatic language. + + All this makes me very happy for it looks as if we are in sight of + the promised land. + + I am pleased to tell you of the compliments that have been thrown + at you by the President, Mr. Bryan, and Sir William. They were all + enthusiastic over your work in London and expressed the keenest + appreciation of the way in which you have handled matters. Sir + William told me that he did not remember an American Ambassador + that was your equal. + + Faithfully yours, + + E.M. HOUSE. + +So far as a meeting between a British diplomat and the President of the +United States could solve the Mexican problem, that problem was +apparently solved. The dearest wish of Mr. Wilson, the elimination of +Huerta, seemed to be approaching realization, now that he had persuaded +Great Britain to support him in this enterprise. Whether Sir William +Tyrrell, or Sir Edward Grey, had really become converted to the +President's "idealistic" plans for Mexico is an entirely different +question. At this time there was another matter in which Great Britain's +interest was even greater than in Mexico. These letters have already +contained reference to tolls on the Panama Canal. Colonel House's letter +shows that the President discussed this topic with Sir William Tyrrell +and gave him assurances that this would be settled on terms satisfactory +to Great Britain. It cannot be maintained that that assurance was really +the consideration which paved the way to an understanding on Huerta. The +conversation was entirely informal; indeed, it could not be otherwise, +for Sir William Tyrrell brought no credentials; there could be no +definite bargain or agreement, but there is little question that Mr. +Wilson's friendly disposition toward British shipping through the Panama +Canal made it easy for Great Britain to give him a free hand in Mexico. + +A few days after this White House interview Sir Lionel Carden performed +what must have been for him an uncongenial duty. This loquacious +minister led a procession of European diplomats to General Huerta, +formally advised that warrior to yield to the American demands and +withdraw from the Presidency of Mexico. The delegation informed the grim +dictator that their governments were supporting the American policy and +Sir Lionel brought him the unwelcome news that he could not depend upon +British support. About the same time Premier Asquith made conciliatory +remarks on Mexico at the Guildhall banquet. He denied that the British +Government had undertaken any policy "deliberately opposed to that of +the United States. There is no vestige of foundation for such a rumour." +These events changed the atmosphere at Washington, which now became +almost as cordial to Great Britain as it had for several months been +suspicious. + + _To Edward M. House_ + + London, November 15, 1913. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + All's well here. The whole trouble was caused not here but in + Mexico City; and that is to be remedied yet. And it will be! For + the moment it is nullified. But you need give yourself no concern + about the English Government or people, in the long run. It is + taking them some time to see the vast difference between acting by + a principle and acting by what they call a "policy." They and we + ourselves too have from immemorial time been recognizing successful + adventurers, and they didn't instantly understand this new + "idealistic" move; they didn't know the man at the helm! I preached + many sermons to our friend, I explained the difference to many + private groups, I made after-dinner speeches leading right up to + the point--as far as I dared, I inspired many newspaper articles; + and they see it now and have said it and have made it public; and + the British people are enthusiastic as far as they understand it. + + And anybody concerned here understands the language that the + President speaks now. You mustn't forget that in all previous + experiences in Latin America we ourselves have been as much to + blame as anybody else. Now we have a clear road to travel, a policy + based on character to follow forever--a new era. Our dealing with + Cuba was a new chapter in the history of the world. Our dealing + with Mexico is Chapter II of the same Revelation. Tell 'em this in + Washington. + + The remaining task will be done too and I think pretty soon. For + that I need well-loaded shells. I'll supply the gunpowder. + + And don't you concern yourself about the English. They're all + right--a little slow, but all right. + + Heartily yours, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + + _To Edward M. House_ + + Newtimber Place, Hassocks, Sussex, + Sunday, November 23, 1913. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + Your letter telling me about Tyrrell and the President brought me + great joy. Tyrrell is in every way a square fellow, much like his + Chief; and, you may depend on it, they are playing fair--in their + slow way. They always think of India and of Egypt--never of Cuba. + Lord! Lord! the fun I've had, the holy joy I am having (I never + expected to have such exalted and invigorating felicity) in + delivering elementary courses of instruction in democracy to the + British Government. Deep down at the bottom, they don't know what + Democracy means. Their Empire is in the way. Their centuries of + land-stealing are in the way. Their unsleeping watchfulness of + British commerce is in the way. "You say you'll shoot men into + self-government," said Sir Edward. "Doesn't that strike you as + comical?" And I answered, "It is comical only to the Briton and to + others who have associated shooting with subjugation. We associate + shooting with freedom." Half this blessed Sunday at this country + house I have been ramming the idea down the throat of the Lord + Chancellor[37]. _He_ sees it, too, being a Scotchman. I take the + members of the Government, as I get the chance or can make it, and + go over with them the A B C of the President's principle: no + territorial annexation; no trafficking with tyrants; no stealing of + American governments by concession or financial thimble-rigging. + They'll not recognize another Huerta--they're sick of that. And + they'll not endanger our friendship. They didn't see the idea in + the beginning. Of course the real trouble has been in Mexico + City--Carden. They don't know yet just what he did. But they will, + if _I_ can find out. I haven't yet been able to make them tell me + at Washington. Washington is a deep hole of silence toward + ambassadors. By gradual approaches, I'm going to prove that Carden + can do--and in a degree has already done--as much harm as Bryce did + good--and all about a paltry few hundreds of million dollars' worth + of oil. What the devil does the oil or the commerce of Mexico or + the investments there amount to in comparison with the close + friendship of the two nations? Carden can't be good long: he'll + break out again presently. He has no political imagination. That's + a rather common disease here, too. Few men have. It's good fun. I'm + inviting the Central and South American Ministers to lunch with me, + one by one, and I'm incidentally loading them up. I have all the + boys in the Embassy full of zeal and they are tackling the + Secretaries of the Central and South American legations. We've got + a _principle_ now to deal by with them. They'll see after a while. + + English people are all right, too--except the Doctrinaires. They + write much rank ignorance. But the learned men learn things last of + all. + + I thank you heartily for your good news about Tyrrell, about the + President (but I'm sorry he's tired: make him quit eating meat and + play golf); about the Panama tolls; about the Currency Bill (my + love to McAdoo); about my own little affairs.--We are looking with + the very greatest pleasure to the coming of the young White House + couple. I've got two big dinners for them--Sir Edward, the Lord + Chancellor, a duchess or two, some good folk, Ruth Bryan, a couple + of ambassadors, etc., etc., etc. Then we'll take 'em to a literary + speaking-feast or two, have 'em invited to a few great houses; then + we'll give 'em another dinner, and then we'll get a guide for them + to see all the reforming institutions in London, to their hearts' + content--lots of fun. + + Lots of fun: I got the American Society for its Thanksgiving dinner + to invite the Lord Chancellor to respond to a toast to the + President. He's been to the United States lately and he is greatly + pleased. So far, so good. Then I came down here--where he, too, is + staying. After five or six hours' talk about everything else he + said, "By the way, your countrymen have invited me," etc., etc. + "Now what would be appropriate to talk about?" Then I poured him + full of the New Principle as regards Central and South America; + for, if he will talk on that, what he says will be reported and + read on both continents. He's a foxy Scot, and he didn't say he + would, but he said that he'd consider it. "Consider it" means that + he will confer with Sir Edward. I'm beginning to learn their + vocabulary. Anyhow the Lord Chancellor is in line. + + It's good news you send always. Keep it up--keep it up. The volume + of silence that I get is oppressive. You remember the old nigger + that wished to pick a quarrel with another old nigger? Nigger No. 1 + swore and stormed at nigger No. 2, and kept on swearing and + storming, hoping to provoke him. Nigger No. 2 said not a word, but + kept at his work. Nigger No. 1 swore and stormed more. Nigger No. 2 + said not a word. Nigger No. 1 frothed still more. Nigger No. 2, + still silent. Nigger No. 1 got desperate and said: "Look here, you + kinky-headed, flat-nosed, slab-footed nigger, I warns you 'fore + God, don't you keep givin' me none o' your damned silence!" I wish + you'd tell all my friends that story. + + Always heartily yours, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 34: Prince Arthur of Connaught and the Duchess of Fife were +married in the Chapel Royal, October 16, 1913.] + +[Footnote 35: See the Appendix (at end of Vol. II) for this episode in +detail.] + +[Footnote 36: There was a suggestion, which the Ambassador endorsed, +that President Wilson should visit England to accept, in the name of the +United States, Sulgrave Manor, the ancestral hone, of the Washingtons. +See Chapter IX, page 274.] + +[Footnote 37: Viscount Haldane, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain +since 1912.] + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +PERSONALITIES OF THE MEXICAN PROBLEM + + +Page's remarks about the "trouble in Mexico City" and the "remaining +task" refer, of course, to Sir Lionel Carden. "As I make Carden out," he +wrote about this time, "he's a slow-minded, unimaginative, commercial +Briton, with as much nimbleness as an elephant. British commerce is his +deity, British advantage his duty and mission; and he goes about his +work with blunt dullness and ineptitude. That's his mental calibre as I +read him--a dull, commercial man." + +Although Sir Lionel Carden had been compelled to harmonize himself with +the American policy, Page regarded his continued presence in Mexico City +as a standing menace to British-American relations. He therefore set +himself to accomplish the minister's removal. The failure of President +Taft's attempt to obtain Carden's transfer from Havana, in 1912, showed +that Page's new enterprise was a delicate and difficult one; yet he did +not hesitate. + +The part that the wives of diplomats and statesmen play in international +relations is one that few Americans understand. Yet in London, the +Ambassador's wife is almost as important a person as the Ambassador +himself. An event which now took place in the American Embassy +emphasized this point. A certain lady, well known in London, called upon +Mrs. Page and gave her a message on Mexican affairs for the Ambassador's +benefit. The purport was that the activities of certain British +commercial interests in Mexico, if not checked, would produce a serious +situation between Great Britain and the United States. The lady in +question was herself a sincere worker for Anglo-American amity, and this +was the motive that led her to take an unusual step. + +"It's all being done for the benefit of one man," she said. + +The facts were presented in the form of a memorandum, which Mrs. Page +copied and gave the Ambassador. This, in turn, Page sent to President +Wilson. + + _To Edward M. House_ + + London, November 26, 1913. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + Won't you read the enclosed and get it to the President? It is + somewhat extra-official but it is very confidential, and I have a + special reason for wishing it to go through your hands. Perhaps it + will interest you. + + The lady that wrote it is one of the very best-informed women I + know, one of those active and most influential women in the high + political society of this Kingdom, at whose table statesmen and + diplomats meet and important things come to pass. . . . + + I am sure she has no motive but the avowed one. She has taken a + liking to Mrs. Page and this is merely a friendly and patriotic + act. + + I had heard most of the things before as gossip--never before as + here put together by a responsible hand. + + Mrs. Page went to see her and, as evidence of our appreciation and + safety, gave the original back to her. We have kept no copy, and I + wish this burned, if you please. It would raise a riot here, if any + breath of it were to get out, that would put bedlam to shame. + + Lord Cowdray has been to see me for four successive days. I have a + suspicion (though I don't know) that, instead of his running the + Government, the Government has now turned the tables and is running + him. His government contract is becoming a bad thing to sleep with. + He told me this morning that he (through Lord Murray) had withdrawn + the request for any concession in Colombia[38]. I congratulated + him. "That, Lord Cowdray, will save you as well as some other + people I know a good deal of possible trouble." I have explained to + him the whole New Principle _in extenso_, "so that you may see + clearly where the line of danger runs." Lord! how he's changed! + Several weeks ago when I ran across him accidentally he was + humorous, almost cynical. Now he's very serious. I explained to him + that the only thing that had kept South America from being + parcelled out as Africa has been is the Monroe Doctrine and the + United States behind it. He granted that. + + "In Monroe's time," said I, "the only way to take a part of South + America was to take land. Now finance has new ways of its own!" + + "Perhaps," said he. + + "Right there," I answered, "where you put your 'perhaps,' I put a + danger signal. That, I assure you, you will read about in the + histories as 'The Wilson Doctrine'!" + + You don't know how easy it all is with our friend and leader in + command. I've almost grown bold. You feel steady ground beneath + you. They are taking to their tents. + + "What's going to happen in Mexico City?" + + "A peaceful tragedy, followed by emancipation." + + "And the great industries of Mexico?" + + "They will not have to depend on adventurers' favours!" + + "But in the meantime, what?" + + "Patience, looking towards justice!" + + Yours heartily and in health (you bet!) + W.H.P. + + + _From Edward M. House_ + + 145 East 35th Street, + New York City. + December 12, 1913. + + DEAR PAGE: + + Your budget under dates, November 15th, 23rd, and 26th came to me + last week, just after the President had been here. I saved the + letters until I went to Washington, from which place I have just + returned. + + The President has been in bed for nearly a week and Doctor Grayson + permitted no one to see him but me. Yesterday before I left he was + feeling so well that I asked him if he did not want to feel better + and then I read him your letters. Mrs. Wilson was present. + + I cannot tell you how pleased he was. He laughed repeatedly at the + different comments you made and he was delighted with what you had + to say concerning Lord Cowdray. We do not love him for we think + that between Cowdray and Carden a large part of our troubles in + Mexico has been made. Your description of his attitude at the + beginning and his present one pleased us much. + + After I had read the confidential letter the President said "now + let me see if I have the facts." He then recited them in + consecutive order just as the English lady had written them, almost + using the same phrases, showing the well-trained mind that he has. + I then dropped the letter in the grate. + + He enjoyed heartily the expression "Washington is a deep hole of + silence towards ambassadors," and again "The volume of silence that + I get is oppressive," and of course the story apropos of this last + remark. + + I was with him for more than an hour and he was distinctly better + when I left. I hated to look at him in bed for I could not help + realizing what his life means to the Democratic Party, to the + Nation and almost to the world. + + Of course you know that I only read your letters to him. Mr. Bryan + was my guest on Wednesday and I returned to Washington with him but + I made no mention of our correspondence and I never have. The + President seems to like our way of doing things and further than + that I do not care. + + Upon my soul I do not believe the President could be better pleased + than he is with the work you are doing. + + Faithfully yours, + + E.M. HOUSE. + +From now on the Ambassador exerted a round-about pressure--the method of +"gradual approach" already referred to--upon the Foreign Office for +Carden's removal. An extract from a letter to the President gives a hint +concerning this method: + + * * * * * + +I have already worked upon Sir Edward's mind about his Minister to +Mexico as far as I could. Now that the other matter is settled and while +Carden is behaving, I go at it. Two years ago Mr. Knox made a bad +blunder in protesting against Carden's "anti-Americanism" in Cuba. Mr. +Knox sent Mr. Reid no definite facts nor even accusations to base a +protest on. The result was a failure--a bad failure. I have again asked +Mr. Bryan for all the definite reports he has heard about Carden. That +man, in my judgment, has caused nine tenths of the trouble here. + + * * * * * + +Naturally Page did not ask the Minister's removal directly--that would +have been an unpardonable blunder. His meetings during this period with +Sir Edward were taking place almost every day, and Carden, in one way or +another, kept coming to the front in their conversation. Sir Edward, +like Page, would sacrifice much in the cause of Anglo-American +relations; Page would occasionally express his regret that the British +Minister to Mexico was not a man who shared their enthusiasm on this +subject; in numerous other ways the impression was conveyed that the two +countries could solve the Mexican entanglement much better if a more +congenial person represented British interests in the Southern Republic. +This reasoning evidently produced the desired results. In early January, +1914, a hint was unofficially conveyed to the American Ambassador that +Carden was to be summoned to London for a "conversation" with Sir Edward +Grey, and that his return to Mexico would depend upon the outcome of +that interview. There was a likelihood that, in future, Sir Lionel +Carden would represent the British Empire in Brazil. + +This news, sent in discreet cipher to Washington, delighted the +Administration. "It is fine about Carden," wrote Colonel House on +January 10th. "I knew you had done it when I saw it in the papers, but I +did not know just how. You could not have brought it about in a more +diplomatic and effectual way." + +And the following came from the President: + + From President Wilson + + Pass Christian, + + January 6, 1914. + + MY DEAR PAGE: + + I have your letter of December twenty-first, which I have greatly + enjoyed. + + Almost at the very time I was reading it, the report came through + the Associated Press from London that Carden was to be transferred + immediately to Brazil. If this is true, it is indeed a most + fortunate thing and I feel sure it is to be ascribed to your + tactful and yet very plain representations to Sir Edward Grey. I do + not think you realize how hard we worked to get from either Lind or + O'Shaughnessy[39] definite items of speech or conduct which we + could furnish you as material for what you had to say to the + Ministers about Carden. It simply was not obtainable. Everything + that we got was at second or third hand. That he was working + against us was too plain for denial, and yet he seems to have done + it in a very astute way which nobody could take direct hold of. I + congratulate you with all my heart on his transference. + + I long, as you do, for an opportunity to do constructive work all + along the line in our foreign relations, particularly with Great + Britain and the Latin-American states, but surely, my dear fellow, + you are deceiving yourself in supposing that constructive work is + not now actually going on, and going on at your hands quite as much + as at ours. The change of attitude and the growing ability to + understand what we are thinking about and purposing on the part of + the official circle in London is directly attributable to what you + have been doing, and I feel more and more grateful every day that + you are our spokesman and interpreter there. This is the only + possible constructive work in foreign affairs, aside from definite + acts of policy. So far as the policy is concerned, you may be sure + I will strive to the utmost to obtain both a repeal of the + discrimination in the matter of tolls and a renewal of the + arbitration treaties, and I am not without hope that I can + accomplish both at this session. Indeed this is the session in + which these things must be done if they are to be done at all. + + Back of the smile which came to my face when you spoke of the + impenetrable silence of the State Department toward its foreign + representatives lay thoughts of very serious concern. We must + certainly manage to keep our foreign representatives properly + informed. The real trouble is to conduct genuinely confidential + correspondence except through private letters, but surely the thing + can be changed and it will be if I can manage it. + + We are deeply indebted to you for your kindness and generous + hospitality to our young folks[40] and we have learned with delight + through your letters and theirs of their happy days in England. + + With deep regard and appreciation, + + Cordially and faithfully yours, + + WOODROW WILSON. + + HON. WALTER H. PAGE, + + American Embassy, + + London, England. + +Yet for the American Ambassador the experience was not one of unmixed +satisfaction. These letters have contained references to the demoralized +condition of the State Department under Mr. Bryan and the succeeding +ones will contain more; the Carden episode portrayed the stupidity and +ignorance of that Department at their worst. By commanding Carden to +cease his anti-American tactics and to support the American policy the +Foreign Office had performed an act of the utmost courtesy and +consideration to this country. By quietly "promoting" the same minister +to another sphere, several thousand miles away from Mexico and +Washington, it was now preparing to eliminate all possible causes of +friction between the two countries. The British, that is, had met the +wishes of the United States in the two great matters that were then +making serious trouble--Huerta and Carden. Yet no government, Great +Britain least of all, wishes to be placed in the position of moving its +diplomats about at the request of another Power. The whole deplorable +story appears in the following letter. + + _To Edward M. House_ + + January 8th, 1914. + + MY DEAR HOUSE: + + Two days ago I sent a telegram to the Department saying that I had + information from a private, _unofficial_ source that the report + that Carden would be transferred was true, and from another source + that Marling would succeed him. The Government here has given out + nothing. I know nothing from official sources. Of course the only + decent thing to do at Washington was to sit still till this + Government should see fit to make an announcement. But what do they + do? Give my telegram to the press! It appears here almost verbatim + in this morning's _Mail_.--I have to make an humiliating + explanation to the Foreign Office. This is the third time I've had + to make such an humiliating explanation to Sir Edward. It's getting + a little monotonous. He's getting tired, and so am I. They now deny + at the Foreign Office that anything has been decided about Carden, + and this meddling by us (as they look at it) will surely cause a + delay and may even cause a change of purpose. + + That's the practical result of their leaking at Washington. On a + previous occasion they leaked the same way. When I telegraphed a + remonstrance, they telegraphed back to me that the leak had been + _here_! That was the end of it--except that I had to explain to Sir + Edward the best I could. And about a lesser matter, I did the same + thing a third time, in a conversation. Three times this sort of + thing has happened.--On the other hand, the King's Master of + Ceremonies called on me on the President's Birthday and requested + for His Majesty that I send His Majesty's congratulations. Just ten + days passed before a telegraphic answer came! The very hour it + came, I was myself making up an answer for the President that I was + going to send, to save our face. + + Now, I'm trying with all my might to do this job. I spend all my + time, all my ingenuity, all my money at it. I have organized my + staff as a sort of Cabinet. We meet every day. We go over + everything conceivable that we may do or try to do. We do good team + work. I am not sure but I doubt whether these secretaries have + before been taken into just such a relation to their chief. They + are enthusiastic and ambitious and industrious and--_safe_. There's + no possibility of any leak. We arrange our dinners with reference + to the possibility of getting information and of carrying points. + Mrs. Page gives and accepts invitations with the same end in view. + We're on the job to the very limit of our abilities. + + And I've got the Foreign Office in such a relation that they are + frank and friendly. (I can't keep 'em so, if this sort of thing + goes on.) + + Now the State Department seems (as it touches us) to be utterly + chaotic--silent when it ought to respond, loquacious when it ought + to be silent. There are questions that I have put to it at this + Government's request to which I can get no answer. + + It's hard to keep my staff enthusiastic under these conditions. + When I reached the Chancery this morning, they were in my room, + with all the morning papers marked, on the table, eagerly + discussing what we ought to do about this publication of my + dispatch. The enthusiasm and buoyancy were all gone out of them. By + their looks they said, "Oh! what's the use of our bestirring + ourselves to send news to Washington when they use it to embarrass + us?"--While we are thus at work, the only two communications from + the Department to-day are two letters from two of the Secretaries + about--presenting "Democratic" ladies from Texas and Oklahoma at + court! And Bryan is now lecturing in Kansas. + + Since I began to write this letter, Lord Cowdray came here to the + house and stayed two and a half hours, talking about possible joint + intervention in Mexico. Possibly he came from the Foreign Office. I + don't know whether to dare send a despatch to the State Department, + telling what he told me, for fear they'd leak. And to leak + this--Good Lord! Two of the Secretaries were here to dinner, and I + asked them if I should send such a despatch. They both answered + instantly: "No, sir, don't dare: _write_ it to the President." I + said: "No, I have no right to bother the President with regular + business nor with frequent letters." To that they agreed; but the + interesting and somewhat appalling thing is, they're actually + afraid to have a confidential despatch go to the State Department. + + I see nothing to do but to suggest to the President to put + somebody in the Department who will stay there and give intelligent + attention to the diplomatic telegrams and letters--some + conscientious assistant or clerk. For I hear mutterings, somewhat + like these mutterings of mine, from some of the continental + embassies.--The whole thing is disorganizing and demoralizing + beyond description. + + All these and more are _my_ troubles. I'll take care of them. But + remember what I am going to write on the next sheet. For here may + come a trouble for _you:_ + + Mrs. Page has learned something more about Secretary Bryan's + proposed visit here in the spring. He's coming to talk his peace + plan which, you know, is a sort of grape-juice arbitration--a + distinct step backward from a real arbitration treaty. Well, if he + comes with _that_, when you come to talk about reducing armaments, + you'll wish you'd never been born. Get your ingenuity together, + then, and prevent that visit[41]. + + Not the least funny thing in the world is--Senator X turned up + to-day. As he danced around the room begging everybody's pardon + (nobody knew what for) he complimented everybody in sight, + explained the forged letter, dilated on state politics, set the + Irish question on the right end, cleared Bacon[42] of all hostility + to me, declined tea because he had insomnia and explained just how + it works to keep you awake, danced more and declared himself happy + and bowed himself out--well pleased. He's as funny a cuss as I've + seen in many a day. Lord Cowdray, who was telling Mexican woes to + Katharine in the corner, looked up and asked, "Who's the little + dancing gentleman?" Suppose X had known he was dancing for--Lord + Cowdray's amusement, what do y' suppose he'd've thought? There are + some strange combinations in our house on Mrs. Page's days at home. + Cowdray has, I am sure, lost (that is, failed to make) a hundred + million dollars that he had within easy reach by this Wilson + Doctrine, but he's game. He doesn't lie awake. He's a dead-game + sport, and he knows he's knocked out in that quarter and he doesn't + squeal. His experiences will serve us many a good turn in the + future--as a warning. I rather like him. He eats out of my hand in + the afternoon and has one of his papers jump on me in the morning. + Some time in the twenty-four hours, he must attain about the normal + temperature--say about noon. He admires the President + greatly--sincerely. Force meets force, you see. With the President + behind me I could really enjoy Cowdray centuries after X had danced + himself into oblivion. + + By the way, Cowdray said to me to-day: "Whatever the United States + and Great Britain agree on the world must do." He's right. (1) The + President must come here, perhaps in his second term; (2) these two + Governments must enter a compact for peace and for gradual + disarmament. Then we can go about our business for (say) a hundred + years. + + Heartily, + W.H.P. + +In spite of the continued pressure of the United States and the passive +support of its anti-Huerta policy by Great Britain, the Mexican usurper +refused to resign. President Wilson now began to espouse the interests +of Villa and Carranza. His letters to Page indicate that he took these +men at their own valuation, believed that they were sincere patriots +working for the cause of "democracy" and "constitutionalism" and that +their triumph would usher in a day of enlightenment and progress for +Mexico. It was the opinion of the Foreign Office that Villa and Carranza +were worse men than Huerta and that any recognition of their +revolutionary activities would represent no moral gain. + + _From President Wilson_ + + The White House, Washington, + May 18, 1914. + + MY DEAR PAGE: + + . . . As to the attitude of mind on that side of the water toward the + Constitutionalists, it is based upon prejudices which cannot be + sustained by the facts. I am enclosing a copy of an interview by a + Mr. Reid[43] which appeared in one of the afternoon papers recently + and which sums up as well as they could be summed up my own + conclusions with regard to the issues and the personnel of the + pending contest in Mexico. I can verify it from a hundred different + sources, most of them sources not in the least touched by + predilections for such men as our friends in London have supposed + Carranza and Villa to be. + + Cordially and faithfully yours, + WOODROW WILSON. + + HON. WALTER H. PAGE, + U.S. Embassy, + London, England. + + The White House, Washington, + June 1, 1914. + + MY DEAR PAGE: + + . . . The fundamental thing is that they (British critics of Villa) + are all radically mistaken. There has been less disorder and less + danger to life where the Constitutionalists have gained control + than there has been where Huerta is in control. I should think that + if they are getting correct advices from Tampico, people in England + would be very much enlightened by what has happened there. Before + the Constitutionalists took the place there was constant danger to + the oil properties and to foreign residents. Now there is no danger + and the men who felt obliged to leave the oil wells to their + Mexican employees are returning, to find, by the way, that their + Mexican employees guarded them most faithfully without wages, and + in some instances almost without food. I am told that the + Constitutionalists cheered the American flag when they entered + Tampico. + + I believe that Mexico City will be much quieter and a much safer + place to live in after the Constitutionalists get there than it is + now. The men who are approaching and are sure to reach it are much + less savage and much more capable of government than Huerta. + + These, I need not tell you, are not fancies of mine but conclusions + I have drawn from facts which are at last becoming very plain and + palpable, at least to us on this side of the water. If they are not + becoming plain in Great Britain, it is because their papers are not + serving them with the truth. Our own papers were prejudiced enough + in all conscience against Villa and Carranza and everything that + was happening in the north of Mexico, but at last the light is + dawning on them in spite of themselves and they are beginning to + see things as they really are. I would be as nervous and impatient + as your friends in London are if I feared the same things that they + fear, but I do not. I am convinced that even Zapata would restrain + his followers and leave, at any rate, all foreigners and all + foreign property untouched if he were the first to enter Mexico + City. + + Cordially and faithfully yours, + WOODROW WILSON. + + HON. WALTER H. PAGE, + American Embassy, + London, England. + +On this issue, however, the President and his Ambassador to Great +Britain permanently disagreed. The events which took place in April, +1914--the insult to the American flag at Tampico, the bombardment and +capture of Vera Cruz by American forces--made stronger Page's +conviction, already set forth in this correspondence, that there was +only one solution of the Mexican problem. + + _To Edward M. House_ + + April 27, 1914. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + . . . And, as for war with Mexico--I confess I've had a continually + growing fear of it for six months. I've no confidence in the + Mexican leaders--none of 'em. We shall have to Cuba-ize the + country, which means thrashing 'em first--I fear, I fear, I fear; + and I feel sorry for us all, the President in particular. It's + inexpressibly hard fortune for him. I can't tell you with what + eager fear we look for despatches every day and twice a day hurry + to get the newspapers. All England believes we've got to fight it + out. + + Well, the English are with us, you see. Admiral Cradock, I + understand, does not approve our policy, but he stands firmly with + us whatever we do. The word to stand firmly with us has, I am very + sure, been passed along the whole line--naval, newspaper, + financial, diplomatic. Carden won't give us any more trouble + during the rest of his stay in Mexico. The yellow press's abuse of + the President and me has actually helped us here. + + Heartily yours, + W.H.P. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 38: This was another manifestation of British friendliness. +When the American excitement was most acute, it became known that +British capitalists had secured oil concessions in Colombia. At the +demand of the British Government they gave them up.] + +[Footnote 39: Mr. Nelson O'Shaughnessy, Chargé d'Affaires in Mexico.] + +[Footnote 40: Mr. and Mrs. Francis B. Sayre.] + +[Footnote 41: Colonel House succeeded in preventing it.] + +[Footnote 42: Senator Augustus O. Bacon, of Georgia who was reported to +nourish ill-feeling toward Page for his authorship of "The Southerner."] + +[Footnote 43: Probably an error for John Reed, at that time a newspaper +correspondent in Mexico--afterward well known as a champion of the +Bolshevist régime in Russia.] + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +HONOUR AND DISHONOUR IN PANAMA + + +In the early part of January, 1914, Colonel House wrote Page, asking +whether he would consider favourably an offer to enter President +Wilson's Cabinet, as Secretary of Agriculture. Mr. David F. Houston, who +was then most acceptably filling that position, was also an authority on +banking and finance; the plan was to make him governor of the new +Federal Reserve Board, then in process of formation, and to transfer +Page to the vacant place in the Cabinet. The proposal was not carried +through, but Page's reply took the form of a review of his +ambassadorship up to date, of his vexations, his embarrassments, his +successes, and especially of the very important task which still lay +before him. There were certain reasons, it will appear, why he would +have liked to leave London; and there was one impelling reason why he +preferred to stay. From the day of his arrival in England, Page had been +humiliated, and his work had been constantly impeded, by the almost +studied neglect with which Washington treated its diplomatic service. +The fact that the American Government provided no official residence for +its Ambassador, and no adequate financial allowance for maintaining the +office, had made his position almost an intolerable one. All Page's +predecessors for twenty-five years had been rich men who could advance +the cost of the Embassy from their own private purses; to meet these +expenses, however, Page had been obliged to encroach on the savings of a +lifetime, and such liberality on his part necessarily had its +limitations. + + _To Edward M. House_ + + London, England, + February 13, 1914. + + MY DEAR HOUSE: + + . . . Of course I am open to the criticism of having taken the place + at all. But I was both uninformed and misinformed about the cost as + well as about the frightful handicap of having no Embassy. It's a + kind of scandal in London and it has its serious effect. Everybody + talks about it all the time: "Will you explain to me why it is that + your great Government has no Embassy: it's very odd!" "What a + frugal Government you have!" "It's a damned mean outfit, your + American Government." Mrs. Page collapses many an evening when she + gets to her room. "If they'd only quit talking about it!" The other + Ambassadors, now that we're coming to know them fairly well, + commiserate us. It's a constant humiliation. Of course this aspect + of it doesn't worry me much--I've got hardened to it. But it is a + good deal of a real handicap, and it adds that much dead weight + that a man must overcome; and it greatly lessens the respect in + which our Government and its Ambassador are held. If I had known + this fully in advance, I should not have had the courage to come + here. Now, of course, I've got used to it, have discounted it, and + can "bull" it through--could "bull" it through if I could afford to + pay the bill. But I shouldn't advise any friend of mine to come + here and face this humiliation without realizing precisely what it + means--wholly apart, of course, from the cost of it. . . . + + My dear House, on the present basis much of the diplomatic + business is sheer humbug. It will always be so till we have our own + Embassies and an established position in consequence. Without a + home or a house or a fixed background, every man has to establish + his own position for himself; and unless he be unusual, this throws + him clean out of the way of giving emphasis to the right things. . . . + + As for our position, I think I don't fool myself. The job at the + Foreign Office is easy because there is no real trouble between us, + and because Sir Edward Grey is pretty nearly an ideal man to get on + with. I think he likes me, too, because, of course, I'm + straightforward and frank with him, and he likes the things we + stand for. Outside this official part of the job, of course, we're + commonplace--a successful commonplace, I hope. But that's all. We + don't know how to try to be anything but what we naturally are. I + dare say we are laughed at here and there about this and that. + Sometimes I hear criticisms, now and then more or less serious + ones. Much of it comes of our greenness; some of it from the very + nature of the situation. Those who expect to find us brilliant are, + of course, disappointed. Nor are we smart, and the smart set (both + American and English) find us uninteresting. But we drive ahead and + keep a philosophical temper and simply do the best we can, and, you + may be sure, a good deal of it. It _is_ laborious. For instance, + I've made two trips lately to speak before important bodies, one at + Leeds, the other at Newcastle, at both of which, in different ways, + I have tried to explain the President's principle in dealing with + Central American turbulent states--and, incidentally, the American + ideals of government. The audiences see it, approve it, applaud it. + The newspaper editorial writers never quite go the length--it + involves a denial of the divine right of the British Empire; at + least they fear so. The fewest possible Englishmen really + understand our governmental aims and ideals. I have delivered + unnumbered and innumerable little speeches, directly or indirectly, + about them; and they seem to like them. But it would take an army + of oratorical ambassadors a lifetime to get the idea into the heads + of them all. In some ways they are incredibly far back in + mediævalism--incredibly. + + If I have to leave in the fall or in December, it will be said and + thought that I've failed, unless there be some reason that can be + made public. I should be perfectly willing to tell the reason--the + failure of the Government to make it financially possible. I've + nothing to conceal--only definite amounts. I'd never say what it + has cost--only that it costs more than I or anybody but a rich man + can afford. If then, or in the meantime, the President should wish + me to serve elsewhere, that would, of course, be a sufficient + reason for my going. + + Now another matter, with which I shall not bother the President--he + has enough to bear on that score. It was announced in one of the + London papers the other day that Mr. Bryan would deliver a lecture + here, and probably in each of the principal European capitals, on + Peace. Now, God restrain me from saying, much more from doing, + anything rash. But if I've got to go home at all, I'd rather go + before he comes. It'll take years for the American Ambassadors to + recover what they'll lose if he carry out this plan. They now laugh + at him here. Only the President's great personality saves the + situation in foreign relations. Of course the public here doesn't + know how utterly unorganized the State Department is--how we can't + get answers to important questions, and how they publish most + secret despatches or allow them to leak out. But "bad breaks" like + this occur. Mr. Z, of the 100-years'-Peace Committee[44], came + here a week ago, with a letter from Bryan to the Prime Minister! Z + told me that this 100-year business gave a chance to bind the + nations together that ought not to be missed. Hence Bryan had asked + him to take up the relations of the countries with the Prime + Minister! Bryan sent a telegram to Z to be read at a big 100-year + meeting here. As for the personal indignity to me--I overlook that. + I don't think he means it. But if he doesn't mean it, what does he + mean? That's what the Prime Minister asks himself. Fortunately Mr. + Asquith and I get along mighty well. He met Bryan once, and he told + me with a smile that he regarded him as "a peculiar product of your + country." But the Secretary is always doing things like this. He + dashes off letters of introduction to people asking me to present + them to Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, etc. + + In the United States we know Mr. Bryan. We know his good points, + his good services, his good intentions. We not only tolerate him; + we like him. But when he comes here as "the American Prime + Minister" [45]--good-bye, John! All that we've tried to do to gain + respect for our Government (as they respect our great nation) will + disappear in one day. Of course they'll feel obliged to give him + big official dinners, etc. And-- + + Now you'd just as well abandon your trip if he comes; and (I + confess) I'd rather be gone. No member of another government ever + came here and lectured. T.R. did it as a private citizen, and even + then he split the heavens asunder[46]. Most Englishmen will regard + it as a piece of effrontery. Of course, I'm not in the least + concerned about mere matters of taste. It's only the bigger effects + that I have in mind in _queering_ our Government in their eyes. He + must be kept at home on the Mexican problem, or some other. + + Yours faithfully, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + + P.S. But, by George, it's a fine game! This Government and ours are + standing together all right, especially since the President has + taken hold of our foreign relations himself. With such a man at the + helm at home, we can do whatever we wish to do with the English, as + I've often told you. (But it raises doubts every time the + shoestring necktie, broad-brimmed black hat, oratorical, old-time, + River Platte kind of note is heard.) We've come a long way in a + year--a very joyful long way, full of progress and real + understanding; there's no doubt about that. A year ago they knew + very well the failure that had saddled them with the tolls trouble + and the failure of arbitration, and an unknown President had just + come in. Presently an unknown Ambassador arrived. Mexico got worse; + would we not recognize Huerta? They send Carden. We had nothing to + say about the tolls--simply asked for time. They were very + friendly; but our slang phrase fits the situation--"nothin' doin'." + They declined San Francisco[47]. Then presently they began to see + some plan in Mexico; they began to see our attitude on the tolls; + they began to understand our attitude toward concessions and + governments run for profit; they began dimly to see that Carden was + a misfit; the Tariff Bill passed; the Currency Bill; the President + loomed up; even the Ambassador, they said, really believed what he + preached; he wasn't merely making pretty, friendly speeches.--Now, + when we get this tolls job done, we've got 'em where we can do any + proper and reasonable thing we want. It's been a great three + quarters of a year--immense, in fact. No man has been in the White + House who is so regarded since Lincoln; in fact, they didn't regard + Lincoln while he lived. + + Meantime, I've got to be more or less at home. The Prime Minister + dines with me, the Foreign Secretary, the Archbishop, the Colonial + Secretary--all the rest of 'em; the King talks very freely; Mr. + Asquith tells me some of his troubles; Sir Edward is become a good + personal friend; Lord Bryce warms up; the Lord Chancellor is + chummy; and so it goes. + + So you may be sure we are all in high feather after all; and the + President's (I fear exaggerated) appreciation of what I've done is + very gratifying indeed. I've got only one emotion about it + all--gratitude; and gratitude begets eagerness to go on. Of course + I can do future jobs better than I have done any past ones. + + There are two shadows in the background--not disturbing, but + shadows none the less: + + 1. The constant reminder that the American Ambassador's homeless + position (to this Government and to this whole people) shows that + the American Government and the American people know nothing about + foreign relations and care nothing--regard them as not worth buying + a house for. This leaves a doubt about any continuity of any + American policy. It even suggests a sort of fear that we don't + really care. + + The other is (2) the dispiriting experience of writing and + telegraphing about important things and never hearing a word + concerning many of them, and the consequent fear of some dead bad + break in the State Department. The clubs are full of stories of the + silly and incredible things that are _said_ to happen there. + + After all, these are old troubles. They are not new--neither of + them. And we are the happiest group you ever saw. + + W.H.P. + +Page's letters of this period contain many references to his inability +to maintain touch with the State Department. His letters remained +unacknowledged, his telegrams unanswered; and he was himself left +completely in the dark as to the plans and opinions at Washington. + + To Edward M. House + + February 28, 1914. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + . . . _Couldn't the business with Great Britain be put into + Moore's[48] hands_? It is surely important enough at times to + warrant separate attention--or (I might say) attention. You know, + after eight or nine months of this sort of thing, the feeling grows + on us all here that perhaps many of our telegrams and letters may + not be read by anybody at all. You begin to feel that they may not + be deciphered or even opened. Then comes the feeling (for a + moment), why send any more? Why do anything but answer such + questions as come now and then? Corresponding with Nobody--can you + imagine how that feels?--What the devil do you suppose does become + of the letters and telegrams that I send, from which and about + which I never hear a word? As a mere matter of curiosity I should + like to know who receives them and what he does with them! + + I've a great mind some day to send a despatch saying that an + earthquake has swallowed up the Thames, that a suffragette has + kissed the King, and that the statue of Cromwell has made an + assault on the House of Lords--just to see if anybody deciphers it. + + Alter the Civil War an old fellow in Virginia was tired of the + world. He'd have no more to do with it. He cut a slit in a box in + his house and nailed up the box. Whenever a letter came for him, + he'd read the postmark and say "Baltimore--Baltimore--there isn't + anybody in Baltimore that I care to hear from." Then he'd drop the + letter unopened through the slit into the box. "Philadelphia? I + have no friend in Philadelphia"--into the box, unopened. When he + died, the big box was nearly full of unopened letters. When I get + to Washington again, I'm going to look for a big box that must now + be nearly full of my unopened letters and telegrams. + + W.H.P. + +The real reason why the Ambassador wished to remain in London was to +assist in undoing a great wrong which the United States had done itself +and the world. Page was attempting to perform his part in introducing +new standards into diplomacy. His discussions of Mexico had taken the +form of that "idealism" which he was apparently having some difficulty +in persuading British statesmen and the British public to accept. He was +doing his best to help bring about that day when, in Gladstone's famous +words, "the idea of public right would be the governing idea" of +international relations. But while the American Ambassador was preaching +this new conception, the position of his own country on one important +matter was a constant impediment to his efforts. Page was continually +confronted by the fact that the United States, high-minded as its +foreign policy might pretend to be, was far from "idealistic" in the +observance of the treaty that it had made with Great Britain concerning +the Panama Canal. There was a certain embarrassment involved in +preaching unselfishness in Mexico and Central America at a time when the +United States was practising selfishness and dishonesty in Panama. For, +in the opinion of the Ambassador and that of most other dispassionate +students of the Panama treaty, the American policy on Panama tolls +amounted to nothing less. + +To one unskilled in legal technicalities, the Panama controversy +involved no great difficulty. Since 1850 the United States and Great +Britain had had a written understanding upon the construction of the +Panama Canal. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which was adopted that year, +provided that the two countries should share equally in the construction +and control of the proposed waterway across the Isthmus. This idea of +joint control had always rankled in the United States, and in 1901 the +American Government persuaded Great Britain to abrogate the +Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and agree to another--the Hay-Pauncefote--which +transferred the rights of ownership and construction exclusively to this +country. In consenting to this important change, Great Britain had made +only one stipulation. "The Canal," so read Article III of the Convention +of 1901, "shall be free and open to the vessels of commerce and war of +all nations observing these rules, on terms of entire equality, so that +there shall be no discrimination against any such nation, or its +citizens or subjects, in respect of the conditions or charges of +traffic, or otherwise." It would seem as though the English language +could utter no thought more clearly than this. The agreement said, not +inferentially, but in so many words, that the "charges" levied on the +ships of "all nations" that used the Canal should be the same. The +history of British-American negotiations on the subject of the Canal had +always emphasized this same point. All American witnesses to drawing the +Treaty have testified that this was the American understanding. The +correspondence of John Hay, who was Secretary of State at the time, +makes it clear that this was the agreement. Mr. Elihu Root, who, as +Secretary of War, sat next to John Hay in the Cabinet which authorized +the treaty, has taken the same stand. The man who conducted the +preliminary negotiations with Lord Salisbury, Mr. Henry White, has +emphasized the same point. Mr. Joseph H. Choate, who, as American +Ambassador to Great Britain in 1901, had charge of the negotiations, has +testified that the British and American Governments "meant what they +said and said what they meant." + +In the face of this solemn understanding, the American Congress, in +1912, passed the Panama Canal Act, which provided that "no tolls shall +be levied upon vessels engaged in the coastwise trade of the United +States." A technical argument, based upon the theory that "all nations" +did not include the United States, and that, inasmuch as this country +had obtained sovereign rights upon the Isthmus, the situation had +changed, persuaded President Taft to sign this bill. Perhaps this line +of reasoning satisfied the legal consciences of President Taft and Mr. +Knox, his Secretary of State, but it really cut little figure in the +acrimonious discussion that ensued. Of course, there was only one +question involved; that was as to whether the exemption violated the +Treaty. This is precisely the one point that nearly all the +controversialists avoided. The statement that the United States had +built the Canal with its own money and its own genius, that it had +achieved a great success where other nations had achieved a great +failure, and that it had the right of passing its own ships through its +own highway without assessing tolls--this was apparently argument +enough. When Great Britain protested the exemption as a violation of the +Treaty, there were not lacking plenty of elements in American politics +and journalism to denounce her as committing an act of high-handed +impertinence, as having intruded herself in matters which were not +properly her concern, and as having attempted to rob the American public +of the fruits of its own enterprise. That animosity to Great Britain, +which is always present in certain parts of the hyphenated population, +burst into full flame. + +Clear as were the legal aspects of the dispute, the position of the +Wilson Administration was a difficult one. The Irish-American elements, +which have specialized in making trouble between the United States and +Great Britain, represented a strength to the Democratic Party in most +large cities. The great mass of Democratic Senators and Congressmen had +voted for the exemption bill. The Democratic platform of 1912 had +endorsed this same legislation. This declaration was the handiwork of +Senator O'Gorman, of New York State, who had long been a leader of the +anti-British crusade in American politics. More awkward still, President +Wilson, in the course of his Presidential campaign, had himself spoken +approvingly of free tolls for American ships. The probability is that, +when the President made this unfortunate reference to this clause in the +Democratic programme, he had given the matter little personal +investigation; it must be held to his credit that, when the facts were +clearly presented to him, his mind quickly grasped the real point at +issue--that it was not a matter of commercial advantage or +disadvantage, but one simply of national honour, of whether the United +States proposed to keep its word or to break it. + +Page's contempt for the hair-drawn technicalities of lawyers was +profound, and the tortuous effort to make the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty mean +something quite different from what it said, inevitably moved him to +righteous wrath. Before sailing for England he spent several days in the +State Department studying the several questions that were then at issue +between his country and Great Britain. A memorandum contains his +impressions of the free tolls contention: + + "A little later I went to Washington again to acquaint myself with + the business between the United States and Great Britain. About + that time the Senate confirmed my appointment, and I spent a number + of days reading the recent correspondence between the two + governments. The two documents that stand out in my memory are the + wretched lawyer's note of Knox about the Panama tolls (I never read + a less sincere, less convincing, more purely artificial argument) + and Bryce's brief reply, which did have the ring of sincerity in + it. The diplomatic correspondence in general seemed to me very dull + stuff, and, after wading through it all day, on several nights as I + went to bed the thought came to me whether this sort of activity + were really worth a man's while." + +Anything which affected British shipping adversely touched Great Britain +in a sensitive spot; and Page had not been long in London before he +perceived the acute nature of the Panama situation. In July, 1913, Col. +Edward M. House reached the British capital. A letter of Page's to Sir +Edward Grey gives such a succinct description of this new and +influential force in American public life that it is worth quoting: + + To Sir Edward Grey + + Coburg Hotel, London. + + [No date.] + + DEAR SIR EDWARD: + + There is an American gentleman in London, the like of whom I do not + know. Mr. Edward M. House is his name. He is "the silent partner" + of President Wilson--that is to say, he is the most trusted + political adviser and the nearest friend of the President. He is a + private citizen, a man without personal political ambition, a + modest, quiet, even shy fellow. He helps to make Cabinets, to shape + policies, to select judges and ambassadors and suchlike merely for + the pleasure of seeing that these tasks are well done. + + He is suffering from over-indulgence in advising, and he has come + here to rest. I cannot get him far outside his hotel, for he cares + to see few people. But he is very eager to meet you. + + I wonder if you would do me the honour to take luncheon at the + Coburg Hotel with me, to meet him either on July 1, or 3, or 5--if + you happen to be free? I shall have only you and Mr. House. + + Very sincerely yours, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + +The chief reason why Colonel House wished to meet the British Foreign +Secretary was to bring him a message from President Wilson on the +subject of the Panama tolls. The three men--Sir Edward, Colonel House, +and Mr. Page--met at the suggested luncheon on July 3rd. Colonel House +informed the Foreign Secretary that President Wilson was now convinced +that the Panama Act violated the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty and that he +intended to use all his influence to secure its repeal. The matter, the +American urged, was a difficult one, since it would be necessary to +persuade Congress to pass a law acknowledging its mistake. The best way +in which Great Britain could aid in the process was by taking no public +action. If the British should keep protesting or discussing the subject +acrimoniously in the press and Parliament, such a course would merely +reënforce the elements that would certainly oppose the President. Any +protests would give them the opportunity to set up the cry of "British +dictation," and a change in the Washington policy would subject it to +the criticism of having yielded to British pressure. The inevitable +effect would be to defeat the whole proceeding. Colonel House therefore +suggested that President Wilson be left to handle the matter in his own +way and in his own time, and he assured the British statesman that the +result would be satisfactory to both countries. Sir Edward Grey at once +saw that Colonel House's statement of the matter was simply common +sense, and expressed his willingness to leave the Panama matter in the +President's hands. + +Thus, from July 3, 1913, there was a complete understanding between the +British Government and the Washington Administration on the question of +the tolls. But neither the British nor the American public knew that +President Wilson had pledged himself to a policy of repeal. All during +the summer and fall of 1913 this matter was as generally discussed in +England as was Mexico. Everywhere the Ambassador went--country houses, +London dinner tables, the colleges and the clubs--he was constantly +confronted with what was universally regarded as America's great breach +of faith. How deeply he felt in the matter his letters show. + + To Edward M. House + + August 25, 1913. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + . . . The English Government and the English people without regard to + party--I hear it and feel it everywhere--are of one mind about + this: they think we have acted dishonourably. They really think + so--it isn't any mere political or diplomatic pretense. We made a + bargain, they say, and we have repudiated it. If it were a mere + bluff or game or party contention--that would be one thing. We + could "bull" it through or live it down. But they look upon it as + we look upon the repudiation of a debt by a state. Whatever the + arguments by which the state may excuse itself, we never feel the + same toward it--never quite so safe about it. They say, "You are a + wonderful nation and a wonderful people. We like you. But your + Government is not a government of honour. Your honourable men do + not seem to get control." You can't measure the damage that this + does us. Whatever the United States may propose till this is fixed + and forgotten will be regarded with a certain hesitancy. They will + not fully trust the honour of our Government. They say, too, "See, + you've preached arbitration and you propose peace agreements, and + yet you will not arbitrate this: you know you are wrong, and this + attitude proves it." Whatever Mr. Hay might or could have done, he + made a bargain. The Senate ratified it. We accepted it. Whether it + were a good bargain or a bad one, we ought to keep it. The English + feeling was shown just the other week when Senator Root received an + honourary degree at Oxford. The thing that gave him fame here was + his speech on this treaty[49]. There is no end of ways in which + they show their feeling and conviction. + + Now, if in the next regular session the President takes a firm + stand against the ship subsidy that this discrimination gives, + couldn't Congress be carried to repeal this discrimination? For + this economic objection also exists. + + No Ambassador can do any very large constructive piece of work so + long as this suspicion of the honour of our Government exists. Sir + Edward Grey will take it up in October or November. If I could say + then that the President will exert all his influence for this + repeal--that would go far. If, when he takes it up, I can say + nothing, it will be practically useless for me to take up any other + large plan. This is the most important thing for us on the + diplomatic horizon. + + To the President + + Dornoch, Scotland, + + September 10, 1913. + + DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: + + I am spending ten or more of the dog days visiting the Englishman + and the Scotchman in their proper setting--their country + homes--where they show themselves the best of hosts and reveal + their real opinions. There are, for example, in the house where I + happen to be to-day, the principals of three of the Scotch + universities, and a Member of Parliament, and an influential + editor. + + They have, of course--I mean all the educated folk I meet--the most + intelligent interest in American affairs, and they have an + unbounded admiration for the American people--their energy, their + resourcefulness, their wealth, their economic power and social + independence. I think that no people ever really admired and, in a + sense, envied another people more. They know we hold the keys of + the future. + + But they make a sharp distinction between our people and our + Government. They are sincere, God-fearing people who speak their + convictions. They cite Tammany, the Thaw case, Sulzer, the + Congressional lobby, and sincerely regret that a democracy does not + seem to be able to justify itself. I am constantly amazed and + sometimes dumbfounded at the profound effect that the yellow press + (including the American correspondents of the English papers) has + had upon the British mind. Here is a most serious journalistic + problem, upon which I have already begun to work seriously with + some of the editors of the better London papers. But it is more + than a journalistic problem. It becomes political. To eradicate + this impression will take years of well-planned work. I am going to + make this the subject of one of the dozen addresses that I must + deliver during the next six months--"The United States as an + Example of Honest and Honourable Government." + + And everywhere--in circles the most friendly to us, and the best + informed--I receive commiseration because of the dishonourable + attitude of our Government about the Panama Canal tolls. This, I + confess, is hard to meet. We made a bargain--a solemn compact--and + we have broken it. Whether it were a good bargain or a bad one, a + silly one or a wise one; that's far from the point. Isn't it? I + confess that this bothers me. . . . + + And this Canal tolls matter stands in the way of everything. It is + in their minds all the time--the minds of all parties and all + sections of opinion. They have no respect for Mr. Taft, for they + remember that he might have vetoed the bill; and they ask, + whenever they dare, what you will do about it. They hold our + Government in shame so long as this thing stands. + + As for the folly of having made such a treaty--that's now passed. + As for our unwillingness to arbitrate it--that's taken as a + confession of guilt. . . . + + We can command these people, this Government, this tight island, + and its world-wide empire; they honour us, they envy us, they see + the time near at hand when we shall command the capital and the + commerce of the world if we unfetter our mighty people; they wish + to keep very close to us. But they are suspicious of our Government + because, they contend, it has violated its faith. Is it so or is it + not? + + Life meantime is brimful of interest; and, despite this reflex + result of the English long-blunder with Ireland (how our sins come + home to roost), the Great Republic casts its beams across the whole + world and I was never so proud to be an American democrat, as I see + it light this hemisphere in a thousand ways. + + All health and mastery to you! + + WALTER H. PAGE. + +The story of Sir William Tyrrell's[50] visit to the White House in +November, 1913, has already been told. On this occasion, it will be +recalled, not only was an agreement reached on Mexico, but President +Wilson also repeated the assurances already given by Colonel House on +the repeal of the tolls legislation. Now that Great Britain had accepted +the President's leadership in Mexico, the time was approaching when +President Wilson might be expected to take his promised stand on Panama +tolls. Yet it must be repeated that there had been no definite +diplomatic bargain. But Page was exerting all his efforts to establish +the best relations between the two countries on the basis of fair +dealing and mutual respect. Great Britain had shown her good faith in +the Mexican matter; now the turn of the United States had come. + + _To the President_ + + London, 6 Grosvenor Square. + + January 6, 1914. + + DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: + + We've travelled a long way since this Mexican trouble began--a long + way with His Majesty's Government. When your policy was first flung + at 'em, they showed at best a friendly incredulity: what! set up a + moral standard for government in Mexico? Everybody's mind was fixed + merely on the restoring of order--the safety of investments. They + thought of course our army would go down in a few weeks. I recall + that Sir Edward Grey asked me one day if you would not consult the + European governments about the successor to Huerta, speaking of it + as a problem that would come up next week. And there was also much + unofficial talk about joint intervention. + + Well, they've followed a long way. They apologized for Carden + (that's what the Prime Minister's speech was); they ordered him to + be more prudent. Then the real meaning of concessions began to get + into their heads. They took up the dangers that lurked in the + Government's contract with Cowdray for oil; and they pulled Cowdray + out of Colombia and Nicaragua--granting the application of the + Monroe Doctrine to concessions that might imperil a country's + autonomy. Then Sir Edward asked me if you would not consult him + about such concessions--a long way had been travelled since his + other question! Lord Haldane made the Thanksgiving speech that I + suggested to him. And now they have transferred Carden. They've + done all we asked and more; and, more wonderful yet, they've come + to understand what we are driving at. + + As this poor world goes, all this seems to me rather handsomely + done. At any rate, it's square and it's friendly. + + Now in diplomacy, as in other contests, there must be give and + take; it's our turn. + + If you see your way clear, it would help the Liberal Government + (which needs help) and would be much appreciated if, before + February 10th, when Parliament meets, you could say a public word + friendly to our keeping the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty--on the tolls. + You only, of course, can judge whether you would be justified in + doing so. I presume only to assure you of the most excellent effect + it would have here. If you will pardon me for taking a personal + view of it, too, I will say that such an expression would cap the + climax of the enormously heightened esteem and great respect in + which recent events and achievements have caused you to be held + here. It would put the English of all parties in the happiest + possible mood toward you for whatever subsequent dealings may await + us. It was as friendly a man as Kipling who said to me the night I + spent with him: "You know your great Government, which does many + great things greatly, does _not_ lie awake o' nights to keep its + promises." + + It's our turn next, whenever you see your way clear. + + Most heartily yours, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + + From Edward M. House + + 145 East 35th Street, + + New York City. + + January 24, 1914. + + DEAR PAGE: + + I was with the President for twenty-four hours and we went over + everything thoroughly. + + He decided to call the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to the + White House on Monday and tell them of his intentions regarding + Panama tolls. We discussed whether it would be better to see some + of them individually, or to take them collectively. It was agreed + that the latter course was better. It was decided, however, to have + Senator Jones poll the Senate in order to find just how it stood + before getting the Committee together. The reason for this quick + action was in response to your letter urging that something be done + before the 10th of February. . . . + + Faithfully yours, + + E.M. HOUSE. + +On March 5th the President made good his promise by going before +Congress and asking the two houses to repeal that clause in the Panama +legislation which granted preferential treatment to American coastwise +shipping. The President's address was very brief and did not discuss the +matter in the slightest detail. Mr. Wilson made the question one simply +of national honour. The exemption, he said, clearly violated the +Hay-Pauncefote Treaty and there was nothing left to do but to set the +matter right. The part of the President's address that aroused the +greatest interest was the conclusion: + +"I ask this of you in support of the foreign policy of the +Administration. I shall not know how to deal with other matters of even +greater delicacy and nearer consequence, if you do not grant it to me in +ungrudging measure." + +The impression that this speech made upon the statesman who then +presided over the British Foreign office is evident from the following +letter that he wrote to the Ambassador in Washington. + + _Sir Edward Grey to Sir C. Spring Rice_ + Foreign Office, + + March 13, 1914. + + SIR: + + In the course of a conversation with the American Ambassador + to-day, I took the opportunity of saying how much I had been struck + by President Wilson's Message to Congress about the Panama Canal + tolls. When I read it, it struck me that, whether it succeeded or + failed in accomplishing the President's object, it was something to + the good of public life, for it helped to lift public life to a + higher plane and to strengthen its morale. + + I am, &c., + + E. GREY. + +Two days after his appearance before Congress the President wrote to his +Ambassador: + + _From the President_ + The White House, Washington, + + March 7, 1914. + + MY DEAR PAGE: + + I have your letters of the twenty-second and twenty-fourth of + February and I thank you for them most warmly. Happily, things are + clearing up a little in the matters which have embarrassed our + relations with Great Britain, and I hope that the temper of public + opinion is in fact changing there, as it seems to us from this + distance to be changing. + + Your letters are a lamp to my feet. I feel as I read that their + analysis is searching and true. + + Things over here go on a tolerably even keel. The prospect at this + moment for the repeal of the tolls exemption is very good indeed. I + am beginning to feel a considerable degree of confidence that the + repeal will go through, and the Press of the country is certainly + standing by me in great shape. + + My thoughts turn to you very often with gratitude and affectionate + regard. If there is ever at any time anything specific you want to + learn, pray do not hesitate to ask it of me directly, if you think + best. + + Carden was here the other day and I spent an hour with him, but I + got not even a glimpse of his mind. I showed him all of mine that + he cared to see. + + With warmest regards from us all, + + Faithfully yours, + + WOODROW WILSON. + +The debate which now took place in Congress proved to be one of the +stormiest in the history of that body. The proceeding did not prove to +be the easy victory that the Administration had evidently expected. The +struggle was protracted for three months; and it signalized Mr. Wilson's +first serious conflict with the Senate--that same Senate which was +destined to play such a vexatious and destructive rôle in his career. At +this time, however, Mr. Wilson had reached the zenith of his control +over the law-making bodies. It was early in his Presidential term, and +in these early days Senators are likely to be careful about quarrelling +with the White House--especially the Senators who are members of the +President's political party. In this struggle, moreover, Mr. Wilson had +the intelligence and the character of the Senate largely on his side, +though, strangely enough, his strongest supporters were Republicans and +his bitterest opponents were Democrats. Senator Root, Senator Burton, +Senator Lodge, Senator Kenyon, Senator McCumber, all Republicans, day +after day and week after week upheld the national honour; while Senators +O'Gorman, Chamberlain, Vardaman, and Reed, all members of the +President's party, just as persistently led the fight for the baser +cause. The debate inspired an outburst of Anglophobia which was most +distressing to the best friends of the United States and Great Britain. +The American press, as a whole, honoured itself by championing the +President, but certain newspapers made the debate an occasion for +unrestrained abuse of Great Britain, and of any one who believed that +the United States should treat that nation honestly. The Hearst organs, +in cartoon and editorial page, shrieked against the ancient enemy. All +the well-known episodes and characters in American history--Lexington, +Bunker Hill, John Paul Jones, Washington, and Franklin--were paraded as +arguments against the repeal of an illegal discrimination. Petitions +from the Ancient Order of Hibernians and other Irish societies were +showered upon Congress--in almost unending procession they clogged the +pages of the Congressional Record; public meetings were held in New York +and elsewhere where denouncing an administration that disgraced the +country by "truckling" to Great Britain. The President was accused of +seeking an Anglo-American Alliance and of sacrificing American shipping +to the glory of British trade, while the history of our diplomatic +relations was surveyed in detail for the purpose of proving that Great +Britain had broken every treaty she had ever made. In the midst of this +deafening hubbub the quiet voice of Senator McCumber--"we are too big in +national power to be too little in national integrity"--and that of +Senator Root, demolishing one after another the pettifogging arguments +of the exemptionists, demonstrated that, after all, the spirit and the +eloquence that had given the Senate its great fame were still +influential forces in that body. + +In all this excitement, Page himself came in for his share of hard +knocks. Irish meetings "resolved" against the Ambassador as a statesman +who "looks on English claims as superior to American rights," and +demanded that President Wilson recall him. It has been the fate of +practically every American ambassador to Great Britain to be accused of +Anglomania. Lowell, John Hay, and Joseph H. Choate fell under the ban of +those elements in American life who seem to think that the main duty of +an American diplomat in Great Britain is to insult the country of which +he has become the guest. In 1895 the house of Representatives solemnly +passed a resolution censuring Ambassador Thomas F. Bayard for a few +sentiments friendly to Great Britain which he had uttered at a public +banquet. That Page was no undiscriminating idolater of Great Britain +these letters have abundantly revealed. That he had the profoundest +respect for the British character and British institutions has been made +just as clear. With Page this was no sudden enthusiasm; the conviction +that British conceptions of liberty and government and British ideals of +life represented the fine flower of human progress was one that he felt +deeply. The fact that these fundamentals had had the opportunity of even +freer development in America he regarded as most fortunate both for the +United States and for the world. He had never concealed his belief that +the destinies of mankind depended more upon the friendly coöperation of +the United States and Great Britain than upon any other single +influence. He had preached this in public addresses, and in his writings +for twenty-five years preceding his mission to Great Britain. But the +mere fact that he should hold such convictions and presume to express +them as American Ambassador apparently outraged those same elements in +this country who railed against Great Britain in this Panama Tolls +debate. + +On August 16, 1913, the City of Southampton, England, dedicated a +monument in honour of the _Mayflower_ Pilgrims--Southampton having been +their original point of departure for Massachusetts. Quite appropriately +the city invited the American Ambassador to deliver an address on this +occasion; and quite appropriately the Ambassador acknowledged the debt +that Americans of to-day owed to the England that had sent these +adventurers to lay the foundations of new communities on foreign soil. +Yet certain historic truths embodied in this very beautiful and eloquent +address aroused considerable anger in certain parts of the United +States. "Blood," said the Ambassador, "carries with it that particular +trick of thought which makes us all English in the last resort. . . . And +Puritan and Pilgrim and Cavalier, different yet, are yet one in that +they are English still. And thus, despite the fusion of races and of the +great contributions of other nations to her 100 millions of people and +to her incalculable wealth, the United States is yet English-led and +English-ruled." This was merely a way of phrasing a great historic +truth--that overwhelmingly the largest element in the American +population is British in origin[51]; that such vital things as its +speech and its literature are English; and that our political +institutions, our liberty, our law, our conceptions of morality and of +life are similarly derived from the British Isles. Page applied the word +"English" to Americans in the same sense in which that word is used by +John Richard Green, when he traces the history of the English race from +a German forest to the Mississippi Valley and the wilds of Australia. +But the anti-British elements on this side of the water, taking +"English-led and English-ruled" out of its context, misinterpreted the +phrase as meaning that the American Ambassador had approvingly called +attention to the fact that the United States was at present under the +political control of Great Britain! Senator Chamberlain of Oregon +presented a petition from the _Staatsverband Deutschsprechender Vereine +von Oregon_, demanding the Ambassador's removal, while the +Irish-American press and politicians became extremely vocal. + +Animated as was this outburst, it was mild compared with the excitement +caused by a speech that Page made while the Panama debate was raging in +Congress. At a dinner of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, in early +March, the Ambassador made a few impromptu remarks. The occasion was one +of good fellowship and good humour, and Page, under the inspiration of +the occasion, indulged in a few half-serious, half-jocular references to +the Panama Canal and British-American good-feeling, which, when +inaccurately reported, caused a great disturbance in the England-baiting +press. "I would not say that we constructed the Panama Canal even for +you," he said, "for I am speaking with great frankness and not with +diplomatic indirection. We built it for reasons of our own. But I will +say that it adds to the pleasure of that great work that you will profit +by it. You will profit most by it, for you have the greatest carrying +trade." A few paragraphs on the Monroe Doctrine, which practically +repeated President Wilson's Mobile speech on that subject, but in which +Mr. Page used the expression, "we prefer that European Powers shall +acquire no more territory on this continent," alarmed those precisians +in language, who pretended to believe that the Ambassador had used the +word "prefer" in its literal sense, and interpreted the sentence to mean +that, while the United States would "prefer" that Europe should not +overrun North and South America, it would really raise no serious +objection if Europe did so. + +Senator Chamberlain of Oregon, who by this time had apparently become +the Senatorial leader of the anti-Page propaganda, introduced a +resolution demanding that the Ambassador furnish the Senate a complete +copy of this highly pro-British outgiving. The copy was furnished +forthwith--and with that the tempest subsided. + + _To the President_ + + American Embassy, London, + March 18, 1914. + + DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: + + About this infernal racket in the Senate over my poor speech, I + have telegraphed you all there is to say. Of course, it was a + harmless courtesy--no bowing low to the British or any such + thing--as it was spoken and heard. Of course, too, nothing would + have been said about it but for the controversy over the Canal + tolls. That was my mistake--in being betrayed by the friendly + dinner and the high compliments paid to us into mentioning a + subject under controversy. + + I am greatly distressed lest possibly it may embarrass you. I do + hope not. + + I think I have now learned _that_ lesson pretty thoroughly. These + Anglophobiacs--Irish and Panama--hound me wherever I go. I think I + told you of one of their correspondents, who one night got up and + yawned at a public dinner as soon as I had spoken and said to his + neighbours: "Well, I'll go, the Ambassador didn't say anything that + I can get him into trouble about." + + I shall, hereafter, write out my speeches and have them gone over + carefully by my little Cabinet of Secretaries. Yet something + (perhaps not much) will be lost. For these people are infinitely + kind and friendly and courteous. + + They cannot be driven by anybody to do anything, but they can be + led by us to do anything--by the use of spontaneous courtesy. It is + by spontaneous courtesy that I have achieved whatever I have + achieved, and it is for this that those like me who do like me. Of + course, what some of the American newspapers have said is + true--that I am too free and too untrained to be a great + Ambassador. But the conventional type of Ambassador would not be + worth his salt to represent the United States here now, when they + are eager to work with us for the peace of the world, if they are + convinced of our honour and right-mindedness and the genuineness of + our friendship. + + I talked this over with Sir Edward Grey the other day, and after + telling me that I need fear no trouble at this end of the line, he + told me how severely he is now criticized by a "certain element" + for "bowing too low to the Americans." We then each bowed low to + the other. The yellow press and Chamberlain would give a year's + growth for a photograph of us in that posture! + + I am infinitely obliged to you for your kind understanding and your + toleration of my errors. + + Yours always heartily, + WALTER H. PAGE. + + To the President. + + P.S. The serious part of the speech--made to convince the financial + people, who are restive about Mexico, that we do not mean to forbid + legitimate investments in Central America--has had a good effect + here. I have received the thanks of many important men. + + W.H.P. + + _From the President_ + + The White House, Washington, + March 25, 1914. + + MY DEAR PAGE: + + Thank you for your little note of March thirteenth[52]. You may be + sure that none of us who knew you or read the speech felt anything + but admiration for it. It is very astonishing to me how some + Democrats in the Senate themselves bring these artificial + difficulties on the Administration, and it distresses me not a + little. Mr. Bryan read your speech yesterday to the Cabinet, who + greatly enjoyed it. It was at once sent to the Senate and I hope + will there be given out for publication in full. + + I want you to feel constantly how I value the intelligent and + effective work you are doing in London. I do not know what I should + do without you. + + The fight is on now about the tolls, but I feel perfectly confident + of winning in the matter, though there is not a little opposition + in Congress--more in the House, it strangely turns out, where a + majority of the Democrats originally voted against the exemption, + than in the Senate, where a majority of the Democrats voted for it. + The vicissitudes of politics are certainly incalculable. + + With the warmest regard, in necessary haste, + + Cordially and faithfully yours, + WOODROW WILSON. + + + HON. WALTER H. PAGE, + American Embassy, + London, England. + + _To the President_ + + American Embassy, London, + March 2, 1914. + + DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: + + I have read in the newspapers here that, after you had read my + poor, unfortunate speech, you remarked to callers that you regarded + it as proper. I cannot withhold this word of affectionate thanks. + + I do not agree with you, heartily as I thank you. The speech + itself, in the surroundings and the atmosphere, was harmless and + was perfectly understood. But I ought not to have been betrayed + into forgetting that the subject was about to come up for fierce + discussion in Congress. . . . + + Of course, I know that the whole infernal thing is cooked up to + beat you, if possible. But that is the greater reason why you must + win. I am willing to be sacrificed, if that will help--for + forgetting the impending row or for any reason you will. + + I suppose we've got to go through such a struggle to pull our + Government and our people up to an understanding of our own place + in the world--a place so high and big and so powerful that all the + future belongs to us. From an economic point of view, we _are_ the + world; and from a political point of view also. How any man who + sees this can have any feeling but pity for the Old World, passes + understanding. Our rôle is to treat it most courteously and to make + it respect our character--nothing more. Time will do the rest. + + I congratulate you most heartily on the character of most of your + opposition--the wild Irish (they must be sat upon some time, why + not now?), the Clark[53] crowd (characteristically making a stand + on a position of dishonour), the Hearst press, and demagogues + generally. I have confidence in the people. + + This stand is necessary to set us right before the world, to enable + us to build up an influential foreign policy, to make us respected + and feared, and to make the Democratic Party the party of honour, + and to give it the best reason to live and to win. + + May I make a suggestion? + + The curiously tenacious hold that Anglophobia has on a certain + class of our people--might it not be worth your while to make, at + some convenient time and in some natural way, a direct attack on + it--in a letter to someone, which could be published, or in some + address, or possibly in a statement to a Senate committee, which + could be given to the press? Say how big and strong and + sure-of-the-future we are; so big that we envy nobody, and that + those who have Anglophobia or any Europe-phobia are the only + persons who "truckle" to any foreign folk or power; that in this + tolls-fight all the Continental governments are a unit; that we + respect them all, fear none, have no favours, except proper favours + among friendly nations, to ask of anybody; and that the idea of a + "trade" with England for holding off in Mexico is (if you will + excuse my French) a common gutter lie. + + This may or may not be wise; but you will forgive me for venturing + to suggest it. It is _we_ who are the proud and erect and patriotic + Americans, fearing nobody; but the other fellows are fooling some + of the people in making them think that _they_ are. + + Yours most gratefully, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + +To the President. + + _From the President_ + The White House, Washington, + + April 2, 1914. + + MY DEAR PAGE: + + Please do not distress yourself about that speech. I think with you + that it was a mistake to touch upon that matter while it was right + hot, because any touch would be sure to burn the finger; but as for + the speech itself, I would be willing to subscribe to every bit of + it myself, and there can be no rational objection to it. We shall + try to cool the excited persons on this side of the water and I + think nothing further will come of it. In the meantime, pray + realize how thoroughly and entirely you are enjoying my confidence + and admiration. + + Your letter about Cowdray and Murray was very illuminating and will + be very serviceable to me. I have come to see that the real + knowledge of the relations between countries in matters of public + policy is to be gained at country houses and dinner tables, and not + in diplomatic correspondence; in brief, that when we know the men + and the currents of opinion, we know more than foreign ministers + can tell us; and your letters give me, in a thoroughly dignified + way, just the sidelights that are necessary to illuminate the + picture. I am heartily obliged to you. + + All unite with me in the warmest regards as always. + + In haste, + + Faithfully yours, + + WOODROW WILSON. + + HON. WALTER H. PAGE, + American Embassy, + London, England. + +A note of a conversation with Sir Edward Grey touches the same point: +"April 1, 1914. Sir Edward Grey recalled to me to-day that he had waited +for the President to take up the Canal tolls controversy at his +convenience. 'When he took it up at his own time to suit his own plans, +he took it up in the most admirable way possible.' This whole story is +too good to be lost. If the repeal of the tolls clause passes the +Senate, I propose to make a speech in the House of Commons on 'The +Proper Way for Great Governments to Deal with One Another,' and use this +experience. + +"Sir Edward also spoke of being somewhat 'depressed' by the fierce +opposition to the President on the tolls question--the extent of +Anglophobia in the United States. + +"Here is a place for a campaign of education--Chautaqua and whatnot. + +"The amount of Anglophobia _is_ great. But I doubt if it be as great as +it seems; for it is organized and is very vociferous. If you collected +together or thoroughly organized all the people in the United States who +have birthmarks on their faces, you'd be 'depressed' by the number of +them." + +Nothing could have more eloquently proved the truth of this last remark +than the history of this Panama bill itself. After all the politicians +in the House and Senate had filled pages of the _Congressional Record_ +with denunciations of Great Britain--most of it intended for the +entertainment of Irish-Americans and German-Americans in the +constituencies--the two Houses proceeded to the really serious business +of voting. The House quickly passed the bill by 216 to 71, and the +Senate by 50 to 35. Apparently the amount of Anglophobia was not +portentous, when it came to putting this emotion to the test of counting +heads. The bill went at once to the President, was signed--and the +dishonour was atoned for. + +Mr. and Mrs. Page were attending a ball in Buckingham Palace when the +great news reached London. The gathering represented all that was most +distinguished in the official and diplomatic life of the British +capital. The word was rapidly passed from guest to guest, and the +American Ambassador and his wife soon found themselves the centre of a +company which could hardly restrain itself in expressing its admiration +for the United States. Never in the history of the country had American +prestige stood so high as on that night. The King and the Prime Minister +were especially affected by this display of fair-dealing in Washington. +The slight commercial advantage which Great Britain had obtained was not +the thought that was uppermost in everybody's mind. The thing that +really moved these assembled statesmen and diplomats was the fact that +something new had appeared in the history of legislative chambers. A +great nation had committed an outrageous wrong--that was something that +had happened many times before in all countries. But the unprecedented +thing was that this same nation had exposed its fault boldly to the +world--had lifted up its hands and cried, "We have sinned!" and then had +publicly undone its error. Proud as Page had always been of his country, +that moment was perhaps the most triumphant in his life. The action of +Congress emphasized all that he had been saying of the ideals of the +United States, and gave point to his arguments that justice and honour +and right, and not temporary selfish interest, should control the +foreign policy of any nation which really claimed to be enlightened. The +general feeling of Great Britain was perhaps best expressed by the +remark made to Mrs. Page, on this occasion, by Lady D----: + +"The United States has set a high standard for all nations to live up +to. I don't believe that there is any other nation that would have done +it." + +One significant feature of this great episode was the act of Congress in +accepting the President's statement that the repeal of the Panama +discrimination was a necessary preliminary to the success of American +foreign policy. Mr. Wilson's declaration, that, unless this legislation +should be repealed, he would not "know how to deal with other matters of +even greater delicacy and nearer consequence" had puzzled Congress and +the country. The debates show the keenest curiosity as to what the +President had in mind. The newspapers turned the matter over and over, +without obtaining any clew to the mystery. Some thought that the +President had planned to intervene in Mexico, and that the tolls +legislation was the consideration demanded by Great Britain for a free +hand in this matter. But this correspondence has already demolished that +theory. Others thought that Japan was in some way involved--but that +explanation also failed to satisfy. + +Congress accepted the President's statement trustfully and blindly, and +passed the asked-for legislation. Up to the present moment this passage +in the Presidential message has been unexplained. Page's papers, +however, disclose what seems to be a satisfactory solution to the +mystery. They show that the President and Colonel House and Page were at +this time engaged in a negotiation of the utmost importance. At the very +time that the tolls bill was under discussion Colonel House was making +arrangements for a visit to Great Britain, France, and Germany, the +purpose of which was to bring these nations to some kind of an +understanding that would prevent a European war. This evidently was the +great business that could not be disclosed at the time and for which the +repeal of the tolls legislation was the necessary preliminary. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 44: The Committee to celebrate the centennial of the signing +of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. The plan to make +this an elaborate commemoration of a 100 years' peace between the +English-speaking peoples was upset by the outbreak of the World War.] + +[Footnote 45: This was the designation Mr. Bryan's admirers sometimes +gave him.] + +[Footnote 46: The reference is to President Roosevelt's speech at the +Guildhall in June, 1910.] + +[Footnote 47: This refers to the declination of the British Government +to be represented at the San Francisco world exhibition, held in 1915.] + +[Footnote 48: John Bassett Moore, at that time the very able counsellor +of the State Department.] + +[Footnote 49: Mr. Root's masterly speech on Panama tolls was made in the +United States Senate, January 21, 1913.] + +[Footnote 50: Ante: page 202.] + +[Footnote 51: This is the fact that is too frequently lost sight of in +current discussions of the melting pot. In the _Atlantic Monthly_ for +August, 1920, Mr. William S. Rossiter, for many years chief clerk of the +United States Census and a statistician of high standing, shows that, of +the 95,000,000 white people of the United States, 55,000,000 trace their +origin to England, Scotland, and Wales.] + +[Footnote 52: The Ambassador's letter is dated March 18th.] + +[Footnote 53: Mr. Champ Clark, Speaker of the House of Representatives, +was one of the most blatant opponents of Panama repeal.] + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +AMERICA TRIES TO PREVENT THE EUROPEAN WAR + + +Page's mind, from the day of his arrival in England, had been filled +with that portent which was the most outstanding fact in European life. +Could nothing be done to prevent the dangers threatened by European +militarism? Was there no way of forestalling the war which seemed every +day to be approaching nearer? The dates of the following letters, +August, 1913, show that this was one of the first ideas which Page +presented to the new Administration. + + _To Edward M. House_ + Aug. 28, 1913. + + MY DEAR HOUSE: + + . . . Everything is lovely and the goose hangs high. We're having a + fine time. Only, only, only--I do wish to do something constructive + and lasting. Here are great navies and armies and great withdrawals + of men from industry--an enormous waste. Here are kings and courts + and gold lace and ceremonies which, without producing anything, + require great cost to keep them going. Here are all the privileges + and taxes that this state of things implies--every one a hindrance + to human progress. We are free from most of these. We have more + people and more capable people and many times more territory than + both England and Germany; and we have more potential wealth than + all Europe. They know that. They'd like to find a way to escape. + The Hague programmes, for the most part, just lead them around a + circle in the dark back to the place where they started. Somebody + needs to _do_ something. If we could find some friendly use for + these navies and armies and kings and things--in the service of + humanity--they'd follow us. We ought to find a way to use them in + cleaning up the tropics under our leadership and under our code of + ethics--that everything must be done for the good of the tropical + peoples and that nobody may annex a foot of land. They want a job. + Then they'd quit sitting on their haunches, growling at one + another. + + I wonder if we couldn't serve notice that the land-stealing game is + forever ended and that the cleaning up of backward lands is now in + order--for the people that live there; and then invite Europe's + help to make the tropics as healthful as the Panama Zone? + + There's no future in Europe's vision--no long look ahead. They give + all their thought to the immediate danger. Consider this Balkan + War; all European energy was spent merely to keep the Great Powers + at peace. The two wars in the Balkans have simply impoverished the + people--left the world that much worse than it was before. Nobody + has considered the well-being or the future of those peoples nor of + their land. The Great Powers are mere threats to one another, + content to check, one the other! There can come no help to the + progress of the world from this sort of action--no step forward. + + Work on a world-plan. Nothing but blue chips, you know. Is it not + possible that Mexico may give an entering wedge for this kind of + thing? + + Heartily yours, + WALTER H. PAGE. + +In a memorandum, written about the same time, Mr. Page explains his +idea in more detail: + + Was there ever greater need than there is now of a first-class mind + unselfishly working on world problems? The ablest ruling minds are + engaged on domestic tasks. There is no world-girdling intelligence + at work in government. On the continent of Europe, the Kaiser is + probably the foremost man. Yet he cannot think far beyond the + provincial views of the Germans. In England, Sir Edward Grey is the + largest-visioned statesman. All the Europeans are spending their + thought and money in watching and checkmating one another and in + maintaining their armed and balanced _status quo_. + + A way must be found out of this stagnant watching. Else a way will + have to be fought out of it; and a great European war would set the + Old World, perhaps the whole world, back a long way; and + thereafter, the present armed watching would recur; we should have + gained nothing. It seems impossible to talk the Great Powers out of + their fear of one another or to "Hague" them out of it. They'll + never be persuaded to disarm. The only way left seems to be to find + some common and useful work for these great armies to do. Then, + perhaps, they'll work themselves out of their jealous position. + Isn't this sound psychology? + + To produce a new situation, the vast energy that now spends itself + in maintaining armies and navies must find a new outlet. Something + new must be found for them to do, some great unselfish task that + they can do together. + + Nobody can lead in such a new era but the United States. + + May there not come such a chance in Mexico--to clean out bandits, + yellow fever, malaria, hookworm--all to make the country + healthful, safe for life and investment, and for orderly + self-government at last? What we did in Cuba might thus be made the + beginning of a new epoch in history--conquest for the sole benefit + of the conquered, worked out by a sanitary reformation. The new + sanitation will reclaim all tropical lands; but the work must be + first done by military power--probably from the outside. + + May not the existing military power of Europe conceivably be + diverted, gradually, to this use? One step at a time, as political + and financial occasions arise? As presently in Mexico? + + This present order must change. It holds the Old World still. It + keeps all parts of the world apart, in spite of the friendly + cohesive forces of trade and travel. It keeps back self-government + and the progress of man. + + And the tropics cry out for sanitation, which is at first an + essentially military task. + +A strange idea this may have seemed in August, 1913, a year before the +outbreak of the European war; yet the scheme is not dissimilar to the +"mandatory" principle, adopted by the Versailles Peace Conference as the +only practical method of dealing with backward peoples. In this work, as +in everything that would help mankind on its weary way to a more +efficient and more democratic civilization, Page regarded the United +States, Great Britain, and the British Dominions as inevitable partners. +Anything that would bring these two nations into a closer coöperation he +looked upon as a step making for human advancement. He believed that any +opportunity of sweeping away misconceptions and prejudices and of +impressing upon the two peoples their common mission should be eagerly +seized by the statesmen of the two countries. And circumstances at this +particular moment, Page believed, presented a large opportunity of this +kind. It is one of the minor ironies of modern history that the United +States and Great Britain should have selected 1914 as a year for a great +peace celebration. That year marked the one hundredth anniversary of the +signing of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812, and in 1913 +comprehensive plans had already been formed for observing this +impressive centennial. The plan was to make it more than the mere +observance of a hundred years of peaceful intercourse; it was the +intention to use the occasion to emphasize the fundamental identity of +American and British ideals and to lay the foundation of a permanent +understanding and friendship. The erection of a monument to Abraham +Lincoln at Westminster--a plan that has since been realized--was one +detail of this programme. Another was the restoration of Sulgrave Manor, +the English country seat of the Washingtons, and its preservation as a +place where the peoples of both countries could share their common +traditions. Page now dared to hope that President Wilson might associate +himself with this great purpose to the extent of coming to England and +accepting this gift in the name of the American nation. Such a +Presidential visit, he believed, would exercise a mighty influence in +forestalling a threatening European war. The ultimate purpose, that is, +was world peace--precisely the same motive that led President Wilson, in +1919, to make a European pilgrimage. + +This idea was no passing fancy with Page: it was with him a favourite +topic of conversation. Such a presidential visit, he believed, would +accomplish more than any other influences in dissipating the clouds that +were darkening the European landscape. He would elaborate the idea at +length in discussions with his intimates. + +"What I want," he would say, "is to have the President of the United +States and the King of England stand up side by side and let the world +take a good look at them!" + + _To Edward M. House_ + + August 25, 1913. + + . . . I wrote him (President Wilson) my plan--a mere outline. He'll + only smile now. But when the tariff and the currency and Mexico are + off his hands, and when he can be invited to come and deliver an + oration on George Washington next year at the presentation of the + old Washington homestead here, he may be "pushed over." You do the + pushing. Mrs. Page has invited the young White House couple to + visit us on their honeymoon[54]. Encourage that and that may + encourage the larger plan later. Nothing else would give such a + friendly turn to the whole world as the President's coming here. + The old Earth would sit up and rub its eyes and take notice to whom + it belongs. This visit might prevent an English-German war and an + American-Japanese war, by this mere show of friendliness. It would + be one of the greatest occasions of our time. Even at my little + speeches, they "whoop it up!" What would they do over the + President's! + +But at that time Washington was too busy with its domestic programme to +consider such a proposal seriously. "Your two letters," wrote Colonel +House in reply, "have come to me and lifted me out of the rut of things +and given me a glimpse of a fair land. What you are thinking of and what +you want this Administration to do is beyond the power of +accomplishment for the moment. My desk is covered with matters of no +lasting importance, but which come to me as a part of the day's work, +and which must be done if I am to help lift the load that is pressing +upon the President. It tells me better than anything else what he has to +bear, and how utterly futile it is for him to attempt such problems as +you present." + + _From the President_ + + MY DEAR PAGE: + + . . . As for your suggestion that I should myself visit England + during my term of office, I must say that I agree with all your + arguments for it, and yet the case against the President's leaving + the country, particularly now that he is expected to exercise a + constant leadership in all parts of the business of the government, + is very strong and I am afraid overwhelming. It might be the + beginning of a practice of visiting foreign countries which would + lead Presidents rather far afield. + + It is a most attractive idea, I can assure you, and I turn away + from it with the greatest reluctance. + + We hear golden opinions of the impression you are making in + England, and I have only to say that it is just what I had + expected. + + Cordially and faithfully yours, + WOODROW WILSON. + + HON. WALTER H. PAGE, + American Embassy, + London, England. + +In December, however, evidently Colonel House's mind had turned to the +general subject that had so engaged that of the Ambassador. + + _From Edward M. House_ + 145 East 35th Street, + New York City. + + December 13th, 1913. + + DEAR PAGE: + + In my budget of yesterday I did not tell you of the suggestion + which I made to Sir William Tyrrell when he was here, and which I + also made to the President. + + It occurred to me that between us all we might bring about the + naval holiday which Winston Churchill has proposed. My plan is that + I should go to Germany in the spring and see the Kaiser, and try to + win him over to the thought that is uppermost in our mind and that + of the British Government. + + Sir William thought there was a good sporting chance of success. He + offered to let me have all the correspondence that had passed + between the British and German governments upon this question so + that I might be thoroughly informed as to the position of them + both. He thought I should go directly to Germany without stopping + in England, and that Gerard should prepare the Kaiser for my + coming, telling him of my relations with the President. He thought + this would be sufficient without any further credentials. + + In other words, he would do with the Kaiser what you did with Sir + Edward Grey last summer. + + I spoke to the President about the matter and he seemed pleased + with the suggestion; in fact, I might say, he was enthusiastic. He + said, just as Sir William did, that it would be too late for this + year's budget; but he made a suggestion that he get the + Appropriations Committee to incorporate a clause, permitting him to + eliminate certain parts of the battleship budget in the event that + other nations declared for a naval holiday. So this will be done + and will further the plan. + + Now I want to get you into the game. If you think it advisable, + take the matter up with Sir William Tyrrell and then with Sir + Edward Grey, or directly with Sir Edward, if you prefer, and give + me the benefit of your advice and conclusions. + + Please tell Sir William that I lunched at the Embassy with the + Spring Rices yesterday, and had a satisfactory talk with both Lady + Spring Rice and Sir Cecil. + + Faithfully yours, + E.M. HOUSE. + + * * * * * + +It is apparent from Page's letters that the suggestion now contained in +Colonel House's communication would receive a friendly hearing. The idea +that Colonel House suggested was merely the initial stage of a plan +which soon took on more ambitious proportions. At the time of Sir +William Tyrrell's American visit, the Winston Churchill proposal for a +naval holiday was being actively discussed by the British and the +American press. In one form or another it had been figuring in the news +for nearly two years. Viscount Haldane, in the course of his famous +visit to Berlin in February, 1912, had attempted to reach some +understanding with the German Government on the limitation of the German +and the British fleets. The Agadir crisis of the year before had left +Europe with a bad state of nerves, and there was a general belief that +only some agreement on shipbuilding could prevent a European war. Lord +Haldane and von Tirpitz spent many hours discussing the relative sizes +of the two navies, but the discussions led to no definite +understanding. In March, 1913, Mr. Churchill, then First Lord of the +Admiralty, took up the same subject in a different form. In this speech +he first used the words "naval holiday," and proposed that Germany and +Great Britain should cease building first-class battleships for one +year, thus giving the two nations a breathing space, during which time +they might discuss their future plans in the hope of reaching a +permanent agreement. The matter lagged again until October 18, 1913, +when, in a speech at Manchester, Mr. Churchill placed his proposal in +this form: "Now, we say to our great neighbour, Germany, 'If you will +put off beginning your two ships for twelve months from the ordinary +date when you would have begun them, we will put off beginning our four +ships, in absolute good faith, for exactly the same period.'" About the +same time Premier Asquith made it clear that the Ministry was back of +the suggested programme. In Germany, however, the "naval holiday" soon +became an object of derision. The official answer was that Germany had a +definite naval law and that the Government could not entertain any +suggestion of departing from it. Great Britain then answered that, for +every keel Germany laid down, the Admiralty would lay down two. The +outcome, therefore, of this attempt at friendship was that the two +nations had been placed farther apart than ever. + +The dates of this discussion, it will be observed, almost corresponded +with the period covered by the Tyrrell visit to America. This fact, and +Page's letters of this period, had apparently implanted in Colonel +House's mind an ambition for definite action. He now proposed that +President Wilson should take up the broken threads of the rapprochement +and attempt to bring them together again. From this, as will be made +plain, the plan developed into something more comprehensive. Page's +ideas on the treatment of backward nations had strongly impressed both +the President and Colonel House. The discussion on Mexico which had just +taken place between the American and the British Governments seemed to +have developed ideas that could have a much wider application. The +fundamental difficulties in Mexico were not peculiar to that country nor +indeed to Latin-America. Perhaps the most prolific cause of war among +the more enlightened countries was that produced by the jealousies and +antagonisms which were developed by their contacts with unprogressive +peoples--in the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire, Asia, and the Far East. The +method of dealing with such peoples, which the United States had found +so successful in Cuba and the Philippines, had proved that there was +just one honourable way of dealing with the less fortunate and more +primitive races in all parts of the world. Was it not possible to bring +the greatest nations, especially the United States, Great Britain, and +Germany, to some agreement on this question, as well as on the question +of disarmament? This once accomplished, the way could be prepared for +joint action on the numerous other problems which were then threatening +the peace of the world. The League of Nations was then not even a +phrase, but the plan that was forming in Colonel House's mind was at +least some scheme for permanent international coöperation. For several +years Germany had been the nation which had proved the greatest obstacle +to such international friendliness and arbitration. The Kaiser had +destroyed both Hague Conferences as influential forces in the remaking +of the world; and in the autumn of 1913 he had taken on a more +belligerent attitude than ever. If this attempt to establish a better +condition of things was to succeed, Germany's coöperation would be +indispensable. This is the reason why Colonel House proposed first of +all to visit Berlin. + + _From Edward M. House_ + 145 East 35th Street, + New York City. + January 4th, 1914. + + Dear Page: + + . . . Benj. Ide Wheeler[55] took lunch with me the other day. He is + just back from Germany and he is on the most intimate terms with + the Kaiser. He tells me he often takes dinner with the family + alone, and spends the evening with them. + + I know, now, the different Cabinet officials who have the Kaiser's + confidence and I know his attitude toward England, naval armaments, + war, and world politics in general. + + Wheeler spoke to me very frankly and the information he gave me + will be invaluable in the event that my plans carry. The general + idea is to bring about a sympathetic understanding between England, + Germany, and America, not only upon the question of disarmament, + but upon other matters of equal importance to themselves, and to + the world at large. + + It seems to me that Japan should come into this pact, but Wheeler + tells me that the Kaiser feels very strongly upon the question of + Asiatics. He thinks the contest of the future will be between the + Eastern and Western civilizations. + + Your friend always, + E.M. House. + +By January 4, 1914, the House-Wilson plan had thus grown into an +Anglo-American-German "pact," to deal not only with "disarmament, but +other matters of equal importance to themselves and to the world at +large." Page's response to this idea was consistent and characteristic. +He had no faith in Germany and believed that the existence of Kaiserism +was incompatible with the extension of the democratic ideal. Even at +this early time--eight months before the outbreak of the World War--he +had no enthusiasm for anything in the nature of an alliance, or a +"pact," that included Germany as an equal partner. He did, however, have +great faith in the coöperation of the English-speaking peoples as a +force that would make for permanent peace and international justice. In +his reply to Colonel House, therefore, Page fell back at once upon his +favourite plan for an understanding between the United States, Great +Britain, and the British colonies. That he would completely sympathize +with the Washington aspiration for disarmament was to be expected. + + To Edward M. House + January 2, 1914. + + My Dear House: + + You have set my imagination going. I've been thinking of this thing + for months, and now you've given me a fresh start. It can be worked + out somehow--doubtless, not in the form that anybody may at first + see; but experiment and frank discussion will find a way. + + As I think of it, turning it this way and that, there always comes + to me just as I am falling to sleep this reflection: the + English-speaking peoples now rule the world in all essential facts. + They alone and Switzerland have permanent free government. In + France there's freedom--but for how long? In Germany and + Austria--hardly. In the Scandinavian States--yes, but they are + small and exposed as are Belgium and Holland. In the big secure + South American States--yes, it's coming. In Japan--? Only the + British lands and the United States have secure liberty. They also + have the most treasure, the best fighters, the most land, the most + ships--the future in fact. + + Now, because George Washington warned us against alliances, we've + gone on as if an alliance were a kind of smallpox. Suppose there + were--let us say for argument's sake--the tightest sort of an + alliance, offensive and defensive, between all Britain, colonies + and all, and the United States--what would happen? Anything we'd + say would go, whether we should say, "Come in out of the wet," or, + "Disarm." That might be the beginning of a real world-alliance and + union to accomplish certain large results--disarmament, for + instance, or arbitration--dozens of good things. + + Of course, we'd have to draw and quarter the O'Gormans[56]. But + that ought to be done anyhow in the general interest of good sense + in the world. We could force any nation into this "trust" that we + wanted in it. + + Isn't it time we tackled such a job frankly, fighting out the Irish + problem once for all, and having done with it? + + I'm not proposing a programme. I'm only thinking out loud. I see + little hope of doing anything so long as we choose to be ruled by + an obsolete remark made by George Washington. + + W.H.P. + + January H, 1914. + + . . . But this armament flurry is worth serious thought. Lloyd George + gave out an interview, seeming to imply the necessity of reducing + the navy programme. The French allies of the British went up in + the air! They raised a great howl. Churchill went to see them, to + soothe them. They would not be soothed. Now the Prime Minister is + going to Paris--ostensibly to see his daughter off to the Riviera. + Nobody believes that reason. They say he's going to smooth out the + French. Meantime the Germans are gleeful. + + And the British Navy League is receiving money and encouraging + letters from British subjects, praying greater activity to keep the + navy up. You touch the navy and you touch the quick--that's the + lesson. It's an enormous excitement that this small incident has + caused. + + W.H.P. + + + _To Edward M. House_ + London, February 24, 1914. + + My Dear House: + + You'll be interested in these pamphlets by Sir Max Waechter, who + has opened an office here and is spending much money to "federate" + Europe, and to bring a lessening of armaments. I enclose also an + article about him from the _Daily Telegraph_, which tells how he + has interviewed most of the Old World monarchs. Get also, + immediately, the new two-volume life of Lord Lyons, Minister to the + United States during the Civil War, and subsequently Ambassador to + France. You will find an interesting account of the campaign of + about 1870 to reduce armaments, when old Bismarck dumped the whole + basket of apples by marching against France. You know I sometimes + fear some sort of repetition of that experience. Some government + (probably Germany) will see bankruptcy staring it in the face and + the easiest way out will seem a great war. Bankruptcy before a war + would be ignominious; after a war, it could be charged to "Glory." + It'll take a long time to bankrupt England. It's unspeakably rich; + they pay enormous taxes, but they pay them out of their incomes, + not out of their principal, except their inheritance tax. That + looks to me as if it came out of the principal. . . . + + I hope you had a good time in Texas and escaped some cold weather. + This deceptive sort of winter here is grippe-laden. I've had the + thing, but I'm now getting over it. . . . + + This Benton[57]-Mexican business is causing great excitement here. + + Always heartily yours, + W.H.P. + + P.S. There's nothing like the President. By George! the passage of + the arbitration treaty (renewal) almost right off the bat, and + apparently the tolls discrimination coming presently to its repeal! + Sir Edward Grey remarked to me yesterday: "Things are clearing up!" + I came near saying to him: "Have you any miracles in mind that + you'd like to see worked?" Wilson stock is at a high premium on + this side of the water in spite of the momentary impatience caused + by Benton's death. + + W.H.P. + + _From Edward M. House_ + 145 East 35th Street, + New York City. + April 19th, 1914. + + DEAR PAGE: + + I have had a long talk with Mr. Laughlin[58]. At first he thought I + would not have more than one chance in a million to do anything + with the Kaiser, but after talking with him further, he concluded + that I would have a fairly good sporting chance. I have about + concluded to take it. + + If I can do anything, I can do it in a few days. I was with the + President most of last week. . . . + + He spoke of your letters to him and to me as being classics, and + said they were the best letters, as far as he knew, that any one + had ever written. Of course you know how heartily I concur in this. + He said that sometime they should be published. + + The President is now crystallizing his mind in regard to the + Federal Reserve Board, and if you are not to remain in London, then + he would probably put Houston on the Board and ask you to take the + Secretaryship of Agriculture. + + You have no idea the feeling that is being aroused by the tolls + question. The Hearst papers are screaming at all of us every day. + They have at last honoured me with their abuse. . . . + + With love and best wishes, I am, + + Faithfully yours, + + E.M. HOUSE. + + + _From Edward M. House_ + + 145 East 35th Street, + New York City. + April 20th, 1914. + + Dear Page: + + . . . It is our purpose to sail on the _Imperator_, May 16th, and go + directly to Germany. I expect to be there a week or more, but Mrs. + House will reach London by the 1st or 2nd of June. . . . + + Our friend[59] in Washington thinks it is worth while for me to go + to Germany, and that determines the matter. The press is shrieking + to-day over the Mexican situation, but I hope they will be + disappointed. It is not the intention to do anything further for + the moment than to blockade the ports, and unless some overt act is + made from the North, our troops will not cross the border. + + Your friend always, + E.M. HOUSE. + + _To Edward M. House_ + London, April 27, 1914. + + MY DEAR HOUSE: + + Of course you decided wisely to carry out your original Berlin + plan, and you ought never to have had a moment's hesitation, if you + did have any hesitation. I do not expect you to produce any visible + or immediate results. I hope I am mistaken in this. But you know + that the German Government has a well-laid progressive plan for + shipbuilding for a certain number of years. I believe that the work + has, in fact, already been arranged for. But that has nothing to do + with the case. You are going to see what effect you can produce on + the mind of a man. Perhaps you will never know just what effect you + will produce. Yet the fact that you are who you are, that you make + this journey for this especial purpose, that you are everlastingly + right--these are enough. + + Moreover, you can't ever tell results, nor can you afford to make + your plans in this sort of high work with the slightest reference + to probable results. That's the bigness and the glory of it. Any + ordinary man can, on any ordinary day, go and do a task, the + favourable results of which may be foreseen. _That's_ easy. The big + thing is to go confidently to work on a task, the results of which + nobody can possibly foresee--a task so vague and improbable of + definite results that small men hesitate. It is in this spirit that + very many of the biggest things in history have been done. Wasn't + the purchase of Louisiana such a thing? Who'd ever have supposed + that that could have been brought about? I applaud your errand and + I am eagerly impatient to hear the results. When will _you_ get + here? I assume that Mrs. House will not go with you to Berlin. No + matter so you both turn up here for a good long stay. + + I've taken me a little bit of a house about twenty miles out of + town whither we are going in July as soon as we can get away from + London. I hope to stay down there till far into October, coming up + to London about thrice a week. That's the dull season of the year. + It's a charming little country place--big enough for you to visit + us. . . . + + _From Edward M. House_ + + An Bord des Dampfers _Imperator_ + + den May 21, 1914. + + Hamburg-Amerika Linie + + Dear Page: + + Here we are again. The Wallaces[60] land at Cherbourg, Friday + morning, and we of course go on to Berlin. I wish I might have the + benefit of your advice just now, for the chances for success in + this great adventure are slender enough at best. The President has + done his part in the letter I have with me, and it is clearly up to + me to do mine. . . . + + Faithfully yours, + + E.M. House. + +It will be observed that Colonel House had taken the advice of Sir +William Tyrrell, and had sailed directly to Germany on a German +ship--the _Imperator_. Ambassador Gerard had made preparations for his +reception in Berlin, and the American soon had long talks with Admiral +von Tirpitz, Falkenhayn, Von Jagow, Solf, and others. Von +Bethmann-Hollweg's wife died almost on the day of his arrival in Berlin, +so it was impossible for him to see the Chancellor--the man who would +have probably been the most receptive to these peace ideas. All the +leaders of the government, except Von Tirpitz, gave Colonel House's +proposals a respectful if somewhat cynical hearing. Von Tirpitz was +openly and demonstratively hostile. The leader of the German Navy simply +bristled with antagonism at any suggestion for peace or disarmament or +world coöperation. He consumed a large part of the time which Colonel +House spent with him denouncing England and all its works. Hatred of the +"Island Kingdom" was apparently the consuming passion of his existence. +On the whole, Von Tirpitz thus made no attempt to conceal his feeling +that the purpose of the House mission was extremely distasteful to him. +The other members of the Government, while not so tactlessly hostile, +were not particularly encouraging. The usual objections to disarmament +were urged--the fear of other Powers, the walled-in state of Germany, +the vigilant enemies against which it was necessary constantly to be +prepared and watchful. Even more than the unsympathetic politeness of +the German Cabinet the general atmosphere of Berlin was depressing to +Colonel House. The militaristic oligarchy was absolutely in control. +Militarism possessed not only the army, the navy, and the chief officers +of state, but the populace as well. One almost trivial circumstance has +left a lasting impression on Colonel House's mind. Ambassador Gerard +took him out one evening for a little relaxation. Both Mr. Gerard and +Colonel House were fond of target shooting and the two men sought one of +the numerous rifle galleries of Berlin. They visited gallery after +gallery, but could not get into one. Great crowds lined up at every +place, waiting their turns at the target; it seemed as though every +able-bodied man in Berlin was spending all his time improving his +marksmanship. But this was merely a small indication of the atmosphere +of militarism which prevailed in the larger aspects of life. Colonel +House found himself in a strange place to preach international accord +for the ending of war! + +He had come to Berlin not merely to talk with the Cabinet heads; his +goal was the Kaiser himself. But he perceived at once a persistent +opposition to his plan. As he was the President's personal +representative, and carried a letter from the President to the Kaiser, +an audience could not be refused--indeed, it had already been duly +arranged; but there was a quiet opposition to his consorting with the +"All Highest" alone. It was not usual, Colonel House was informed, for +His Imperial Majesty to discuss such matters except in the presence of a +representative of the Foreign Office. Germany had not yet recovered from +the shock which the Emperor's conversation with certain foreign +correspondents had given the nation. The effects were still felt of the +famous interviews of October 28, 1908, which, when published in the +London _Telegraph_, had caused the bitterest resentment in Great +Britain. The Kaiser had given his solemn word that he would indulge in +no more indiscretions of this sort, and a private interview with Colonel +House was regarded by his advisers as a possible infraction of that +promise. But the American would not be denied. He knew that an +interview with a third person present would be simply time thrown away +since his message was intended for the Kaiser's own ears; and ultimately +his persistence succeeded. The next Monday would be June 1st--a great +day in Germany. It was the occasion of the Schrippenfest, a day which +for many years had been set aside for the glorification of the German +Army. On that festival, the Kaiser entertained with great pomp +representative army officers and representative privates, as well as the +diplomatic corps and other distinguished foreigners. Colonel House was +invited to attend the Kaiser's luncheon on that occasion, and was +informed that, after this function was over, he would have an +opportunity of having a private conversation with His Majesty. + +The affair took place in the palace at Potsdam. The militarism which +Colonel House had felt so oppressively in Berlin society was especially +manifest on this occasion. There were two luncheon parties--that of the +Kaiser and his officers and guests in the state dining room, and that of +the selected private soldiers outside. The Kaiser and the Kaiserin spent +a few moments with their humbler subjects, drinking beer with them and +passing a few comradely remarks; they then proceeded to the large dining +hall and took their places with the gorgeously caparisoned and +bemedalled chieftains of the German Army. The whole proceeding has an +historic interest, in that it was the last Schrippenfest held. Whether +another will ever be held is problematical, for the occasion was an +inevitable part of the trappings of Hohenzollernism. Despite the gravity +of the occasion, Colonel House's chief memory of this function is +slightly tinged with the ludicrous. He had spent the better part of a +lifetime attempting to rid himself of his military title, but uselessly. +He was now embarrassed because these solemn German officers persisted +in regarding him as an important part of the American Army, and in +discussing technical and strategical problems. The visitor made several +attempts to explain that he was merely a "geographical colonel"--that +the title was constantly conferred in an informal sense on Americans, +especially Southerners, and that the handle to his name had, therefore, +no military significance. But the round-faced Teutons stared at his +explanation in blank amazement; they couldn't grasp the point at all, +and continued to ask his opinion of matters purely military. + +When the lunch was finished, the Kaiser took Colonel House aside, and +the two men withdrew to the terrace, out of earshot of the rest of the +gathering. However, they were not out of sight. For nearly half an hour +the Kaiser and the American stood side by side upon the terrace, the +German generals, at a respectful distance, watching the proceeding, +resentful, puzzled, curious as to what it was all about. The quiet +demeanour of the American "Colonel," his plain citizen's clothes, and +his almost impassive face, formed a striking contrast to the Kaiser's +dazzling uniform and the general scene of military display. Two or three +of the generals and admirals present were in the secret, but only two or +three; the mass of officers watching this meeting little guessed that +the purpose of House's visit was to persuade the Kaiser to abandon +everything for which the Schrippenfest stood; to enter an international +compact with the United States and Great Britain for reducing armaments, +to reach an agreement about trade and the treatment of backward peoples, +and to form something of a permanent association for the preservation of +peace. The one thing which was apparent to the watchers was that the +American was only now and then saying a brief word, but that the Kaiser +was, as usual, doing a vast amount of talking. His speech rattled on +with the utmost animation, his arms were constantly gesticulating, he +would bring one fist down into his palm to register an emphatic point, +and enforce certain ideas with a menacing forefinger. At times Colonel +House would show slight signs of impatience and interrupt the flow of +talk. But the Kaiser was clearly absorbed in the subject under +discussion. His entourage several times attempted to break up the +interview. The Court Chamberlain twice gingerly approached and informed +His Majesty that the Imperial train was waiting to take the party back +to Berlin. Each time the Kaiser, with an angry gesture, waved the +interrupter away. Despairing of the usual resources, the Kaiserin was +sent with the same message. The Kaiser did not treat her so summarily, +but he paid no attention to the request, and continued to discuss the +European situation with the American. + +[Illustration: Walter H. Page, from a photograph taken a few years +before he became American Ambassador to Great Britain] + +[Illustration: The British Foreign Office, Downing Street] + +The subject that had mainly aroused the Imperial warmth was the "Yellow +Peril." For years this had been an obsession with the Kaiser, and he +launched into the subject as soon as Colonel House broached the purpose +of his visit. There could be no question of disarmament, the Kaiser +vehemently declared, as long as this danger to civilization existed. "We +white nations should join hands," he said, "to oppose Japan and the +other yellow nations, or some day they will destroy us." + +It was with difficulty that Colonel House could get His Majesty away +from this subject. Whatever topic he touched upon, the Kaiser would +immediately start declaiming on the dangers that faced Europe from the +East. His insistence on this accounted partly for the slight signs of +impatience which the American showed. He feared that all the time +allotted for the interview would be devoted to discussing the Japanese. +About another nation, the Kaiser showed almost as much alarm as he did +about Japan, and that was Russia. He spoke contemptuously of France and +Great Britain as possible enemies, for he apparently had no fear of +them. But the size of Russia and the exposed eastern frontier of Germany +seemed to appal him. How could Germany join a peace pact, and reduce its +army, so long as 175,000,000 Slavs threatened them from this direction? + +Another matter that the Kaiser discussed with derision was Mr. Bryan's +arbitration treaty. Practically all the great nations had already +ratified this treaty except Germany. The Kaiser now laughed at the +treaties and pooh-poohed Bryan. Germany, he declared, would never accept +such an arbitration plan. Colonel House had particular cause to remember +this part of the conversation three years afterward, when the United +States declared war on Germany. The outstanding feature of the Bryan +treaty was the clause which pledged the high contracting parties not to +go to war without taking a breathing spell of one year in which to think +the matter over. Had Germany adopted this treaty, the United States, in +April, 1917, after Germany had presented a _casus belli_ by resuming +unrestricted submarine warfare, could not have gone to war. We should +have been obliged to wait a year, or until April, 1918, before engaging +in hostilities. That is, an honourable observance of this Bryan treaty +by the United States would have meant that Germany would have starved +Great Britain into surrender, and crushed Europe with her army. Had the +Kaiser, on this June afternoon, not notified Colonel House that Germany +would not accept this treaty, but, instead, had notified him that he +would accept it, William II might now be sitting on the throne of a +victorious Germany, with Europe for a footstool. + +Despite the Kaiser's hostile attitude toward these details, his general +reception of the President's proposals was not outwardly unfriendly. +Perhaps he was sincere, perhaps not; yet the fact is that he manifested +more cordiality to this somewhat vague "get-together" proposal than had +any of his official advisers. He encouraged Colonel House to visit +London, talk the matter over with British statesmen, and then return to +Berlin. + +"The last thing," he said, "that Germany wants is war We are getting to +be a great commercial country. In a few years Germany will be a rich +country, like England and the United States. We don't want a war to +interfere with our progress." + +Any peace suggestion that was compatible with German safety, he said, +would be entertained. Yet his parting words were not reassuring. + +"Every nation in Europe," he said, "has its bayonets pointed at Germany. +But--"--and with this he gave a proud and smiling glance at the +glistening representatives of his army gathered on this brilliant +occasion--"we are ready!" + +Colonel house left Berlin, not particularly hopeful; the Kaiser +impressed him as a man of unstable nervous organization--as one who was +just hovering on the borderland of insanity. Certainly, this was no man +to be entrusted with such powers as the American had witnessed that day +at Potsdam. Dangerous as the Kaiser was, however, he did not seem to +Colonel House to be as great a menace to mankind as were his military +advisers. The American came away from Berlin with the conviction that +the most powerful force in Germany was the militaristic clique, and +second, the Hohenzollern dynasty. He has always insisted that this +represented the real precedence in power. So long as the Kaiser was +obedient to the will of militarism, so long could he maintain his +standing. He was confident, however, that the militaristic oligarchy was +determined to have its will, and would dethrone the Kaiser the moment he +showed indications of taking a course that would lead to peace. Colonel +House was also convinced that this militaristic oligarchy was determined +on war. The coolness with which it listened to his proposals, the +attempts it made to keep him from seeing the Kaiser alone, its repeated +efforts to break up the conversation after it had begun, all pointed to +the inevitable tragedy. The fact that the Kaiser expressed a wish to +discuss the matter again, after Colonel House had sounded London, was +the one hopeful feature of an otherwise discouraging experience, and +accounts for the tone of faint optimism in his letters describing the +visit. + + _From Edward M. House_ + + Embassy of the United States of America, + Berlin, + + May 28, 1914. + + Dear Page: + + . . . I have done something here already--not much, but enough to + open negotiations with London. I lunch with the Kaiser on Monday. I + was advised to avoid Admiral von Tirpitz as being very + unsympathetic. However, I went directly at him and had a most + interesting talk. He is a forceful fellow. Von Jagow is pleasant + but not forceful. I have had a long talk with him. The Chancellor's + wife died last week so I have not got in touch with him. I will + write you more fully from Paris. My address there will be Hotel + Ritz. + + Hastily, + + E.M.H. + + _From Edward M. House_ + + Hotel Ritz, 15, Place Vendôme, Paris. + + June 3, 1914. + + Dear Page: + + I had a satisfactory talk with the Kaiser on Monday. I have now + seen everyone worthwhile in Germany except the Chancellor. I am + ready now for London. Perhaps you had better prepare the way. The + Kaiser knows I am to see them, and I have arranged to keep him in + touch with results--if there are any. We must work quickly after I + arrive, for it may be advisable for me to return to Germany, and I + am counting on sailing for home July 15th or 28th. . . . I am eager to + see you and tell you what I know. + + Yours, + + E.M.H. + +Colonel House left that night for Paris, but there the situation was a +hopeless one. France was not thinking of a foreign war; it was engrossed +with its domestic troubles. There had been three French ministries in +two weeks; and the trial of Madame Caillaux for the murder of Gaston +Calmette, editor of the Paris _Figaro_, was monopolizing all the +nation's capacity for emotion. Colonel House saw that it would be a +waste of energy to take up his mission at Paris--there was no government +stable enough to make a discussion worth while. He therefore immediately +left for London. + +The political situation in Great Britain was almost as confused as that +in Paris. The country was in a state approaching civil war on the +question of Home Rule for Ireland; the suffragettes were threatening to +dynamite the Houses of Parliament; and the eternal struggle between the +Liberal and the Conservative elements was raging with unprecedented +virulence. A European war was far from everybody's mind. It was this +utter inability to grasp the realities of the European situation which +proved the main impediment to Colonel House's work in England. He met +all the important people--Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, Sir Edward +Grey, and others. With them he discussed his "pact" proposal in great +detail. + +Naturally, ideas of this sort were listened to sympathetically by +statesmen of the stamp of Asquith, Grey, and Lloyd George. The +difficulty, however, was that none of these men apprehended an immediate +war. They saw no necessity of hurrying about the matter. They had the +utmost confidence in Prince Lichnowsky, the German Ambassador in London, +and Von Bethmann-Hollweg, the German Chancellor. Both these men were +regarded by the Foreign Office as guarantees against a German attack; +their continuance in their office was looked upon as an assurance that +Germany entertained no immediately aggressive plans. Though the British +statesmen did not say so definitely, the impression was conveyed that +the mission on which Colonel House was engaged was an unnecessary one--a +preparation against a danger that did not exist. Colonel House attempted +to persuade Sir Edward Grey to visit the Kiel regatta, which was to take +place in a few days, see the Kaiser, and discuss the plan with him. But +the Government feared that such a visit would be very disturbing to +France and Russia. Already Mr. Churchill's proposal for a "naval +holiday" had so wrought up the French that a hurried trip to France by +Mr. Asquith had been necessary to quiet them; the consternation that +would have been caused in Paris by the presence of Sir Edward Grey at +Kiel can only be imagined. The fact that the British statesmen +entertained so little apprehension of a German attack may possibly be a +reflection on their judgment; yet Colonel House's visit has great +historical value, for the experience afterward convinced him that Great +Britain had had no part in bringing on the European war, and that +Germany was solely responsible. It certainly should have put the Wilson +Administration right on this all-important point, when the great storm +broke. + +The most vivid recollection which the British statesmen whom Colonel +House met retain of his visit, was his consternation at the spirit that +had confronted him everywhere in Germany. The four men most +interested--Sir Edward Grey, Sir William Tyrrell, Mr. Page, and Colonel +House--met at luncheon in the American Embassy a few days after +President Wilson's emissary had returned from Berlin. Colonel House +could talk of little except the preparations for war which were manifest +on every hand. + +"I feel as though I had been living near a mighty electric dynamo," +Colonel House told his friends. "The whole of Germany is charged with +electricity. Everybody's nerves are tense. It needs only a spark to set +the whole thing off." + +The "spark" came two weeks afterward with the assassination of the +Archduke Ferdinand. + + * * * * * + +"It is all a bad business," Colonel House wrote to Page when war broke +out, "and just think how near we came to making such a catastrophe +impossible! If England had moved a little faster and had let me go back +to Germany, the thing, perhaps, could have been done." + +To which Page at once replied: + +"No, no, no--no power on earth could have prevented it. The German +militarism, which is _the_ crime of the last fifty years, has been +working for this for twenty-five years. It is the logical result of +their spirit and enterprise and doctrine. It had to come. But, of +course, they chose the wrong time and the wrong issue. Militarism has no +judgment. Don't let your conscience be worried. You did all that any +mortal man could do. But nobody could have done anything effective. + +"We've got to see to it that this system doesn't grow up again. That's +all." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 54: Mr. and Mrs. Francis B. Sayre, son-in-law and daughter of +President Wilson.] + +[Footnote 55: Ex-President of the University of California, Roosevelt +Professor at the University of Berlin, 1909-10.] + +[Footnote 56: James A. O'Gorman was the anti-British Senator from New +York State at this time working hard against the repeal of the Panama +tolls discrimination.] + +[Footnote 57: In February, 1915, William S. Benton, an English subject +who had spent the larger part of his life in Mexico, was murdered in the +presence of Francisco Villa.] + +[Footnote 58: Mr. Irwin Laughlin, first secretary of the American +Embassy in London; at this time spending a few weeks in the United +States.] + +[Footnote 59: Obviously President Wilson.] + +[Footnote 60: Mr. Hugh C. Wallace, afterward Ambassador to France, and +Mrs. Wallace. Mr. and Mrs. Wallace accompanied Mr. and Mrs. House on +this journey.] + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE GRAND SMASH + + +In the latter part of July the Pages took a small house at Ockham, in +Surrey, and here they spent the fateful week that preceded the outbreak +of war. The Ambassador's emotions on this event are reflected in a +memorandum written on Sunday, August 2nd--a day that was full of +negotiations, ultimatums, and other precursors of the approaching +struggle. + + Bachelor's Farm, Ockham, Surrey. + Sunday, August 2, 1914. + +The Grand Smash is come. Last night the German Ambassador at St. +Petersburg handed the Russian Government a declaration of war. To-day +the German Government asked the United States to take its diplomatic and +consular business in Russia in hand. Herrick, our Ambassador in Paris, +has already taken the German interests there. + +It is reported in London to-day that the Germans have invaded Luxemburg +and France. + +Troops were marching through London at one o'clock this morning. Colonel +Squier[61] came out to luncheon. He sees no way for England to keep out +of it. There is no way. If she keep out, Germany will take Belgium and +Holland, France would be betrayed, and England would be accused of +forsaking her friends. + +People came to the Embassy all day to-day (Sunday), to learn how they +can get to the United States--a rather hard question to answer. I +thought several times of going in, but Greene and Squier said there was +no need of it. People merely hoped we might tell them what we can't tell +them. + +Returned travellers from Paris report indescribable confusion--people +unable to obtain beds and fighting for seats in railway carriages. + +It's been a hard day here. I have a lot (not a big lot either) of +routine work on my desk which I meant to do. But it has been impossible +to get my mind off this Great Smash. It holds one in spite of one's +self. I revolve it and revolve it--of course getting nowhere. + +It will revive our shipping. In a jiffy, under stress of a general +European war, the United States Senate passed a bill permitting American +registry to ships built abroad. Thus a real emergency knocked the old +Protectionists out, who had held on for fifty years! Correspondingly the +political parties here have agreed to suspend their Home Rule quarrel +till this war is ended. Artificial structures fall when a real wind +blows. + +The United States is the only great Power wholly out of it. The United +States, most likely, therefore, will be able to play a helpful and +historic part at its end. It will give President Wilson, no doubt, a +great opportunity. It will probably help us politically and it will +surely help us economically. + +The possible consequences stagger the imagination. Germany has staked +everything on her ability to win primacy. England and France (to say +nothing of Russia) really ought to give her a drubbing. If they do not, +this side of the world will henceforth be German. If they do flog +Germany, Germany will for a long time be in discredit. + +I walked out in the night a while ago. The stars are bright, the night +is silent, the country quiet--as quiet as peace itself. Millions of men +are in camp and on warships. Will they all have to fight and many of +them die--to untangle this network of treaties and affiances and to blow +off huge debts with gunpowder so that the world may start again? + +A hurried picture of the events of the next seven days is given in the +following letter to the President: + + _To the President_ + London, Sunday, August 9, 1914. + + DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: + + God save us! What a week it has been! Last Sunday I was down here + at the cottage I have taken for the summer--an hour out of + London--uneasy because of the apparent danger and of what Sir + Edward Grey had told me. During the day people began to go to the + Embassy, but not in great numbers--merely to ask what they should + do in case of war. The Secretary whom I had left in charge on + Sunday telephoned me every few hours and laughingly told funny + experiences with nervous women who came in and asked absurd + questions. Of course, we all knew the grave danger that war might + come but nobody could by the wildest imagination guess at what + awaited us. On Monday I was at the Embassy earlier than I think I + had ever been there before and every member of the staff was + already on duty. Before breakfast time the place was + filled-packed--like sardines. This was two days before war was + declared. There was no chance to talk to individuals, such was the + jam. I got on a chair and explained that I had already telegraphed + to Washington--on Saturday--suggesting the sending of money and + ships, and asking them to be patient. I made a speech to them + several times during the day, and kept the Secretaries doing so at + intervals. More than 2,000 Americans crowded into those offices + (which are not large) that day. We were kept there till two o'clock + in the morning. The Embassy has not been closed since. + + Mr. Kent of the Bankers Trust Company in New York volunteered to + form an American Citizens' Relief Committee. He and other men of + experience and influence organized themselves at the Savoy Hotel. + The hotel gave the use of nearly a whole floor. They organized + themselves quickly and admirably and got information about + steamships and currency, etc. We began to send callers at the + Embassy to this Committee for such information. The banks were all + closed for four days. These men got money enough--put it up + themselves and used their English banking friends for help--to + relieve all cases of actual want of cash that came to them. Tuesday + the crowd at the Embassy was still great but smaller. The big space + at the Savoy Hotel gave them room to talk to one another and to get + relief for immediate needs. By that time I had accepted the + volunteer services of five or six men to help us explain to the + people--and they have all worked manfully day and night. We now + have an orderly organization at four places: The Embassy, the + Consul-General's Office, the Savoy, and the American Society in + London, and everything is going well. Those two first days, there + was, of course, great confusion. Crazy men and weeping women were + imploring and cursing and demanding--God knows it was bedlam + turned loose. I have been called a man of the greatest genius for + an emergency by some, by others a damned fool, by others every + epithet between these extremes. Men shook English banknotes in my + face and demanded United States money and swore our Government and + its agents ought all to be shot. Women expected me to hand them + steamship tickets home. When some found out that they could not get + tickets on the transports (which they assumed would sail the next + day) they accused me of favouritism. These absurd experiences will + give you a hint of the panic. But now it has worked out all right, + thanks to the Savoy Committee and other helpers. + + Meantime, of course, our telegrams and mail increased almost as + much as our callers. I have filled the place with stenographers, I + have got the Savoy people to answer certain classes of letters, and + we have caught up. My own time and the time of two of the + secretaries has been almost wholly taken with governmental + problems; hundreds of questions have come in from every quarter + that were never asked before. But even with them we have now + practically caught up--it has been a wonderful week! + + Then the Austrian Ambassador came to give up his Embassy--to have + me take over his business. Every detail was arranged. The next + morning I called on him to assume charge and to say good-bye, when + he told me that he was not yet going! That was a stroke of genius + by Sir Edward Grey, who informed him that Austria had not given + England cause for war. That _may_ work out, or it may not. Pray + Heaven it may! Poor Mensdorff, the Austrian Ambassador, does not + know where he is. He is practically shut up in his guarded Embassy, + weeping and waiting the decree of fate. + + Then came the declaration of war, most dramatically. Tuesday + night, five minutes after the ultimatum had expired, the Admiralty + telegraphed to the fleet "Go." In a few minutes the answer came + back "Off." Soldiers began to march through the city going to the + railway stations. An indescribable crowd so blocked the streets + about the Admiralty, the War Office, and the Foreign Office, that + at one o'clock in the morning I had to drive in my car by other + streets to get home. + + The next day the German Embassy was turned over to me. I went to + see the German Ambassador at three o'clock in the afternoon. He + came down in his pajamas, a crazy man. I feared he might literally + go mad. He is of the anti-war party and he had done his best and + utterly failed. This interview was one of the most pathetic + experiences of my life. The poor man had not slept for several + nights. Then came the crowds of frightened Germans, afraid that + they would be arrested. They besieged the German Embassy and our + Embassy. I put one of our naval officers in the German Embassy, put + the United States seal on the door to protect it, and we began + business there, too. Our naval officer has moved in--sleeps there. + He has an assistant, a stenographer, a messenger: and I gave him + the German automobile and chauffeur and two English servants that + were left there. He has the job well in hand now, under my and + Laughlin's supervision. But this has brought still another new lot + of diplomatic and governmental problems--a lot of them. Three + enormous German banks in London have, of course, been closed. Their + managers pray for my aid. Howling women come and say their innocent + German husbands have been arrested as spies. English, Germans, + Americans--everybody has daughters and wives and invalid + grandmothers alone in Germany. In God's name, they ask, what can I + do for them? Here come stacks of letters sent under the impression + that I can send them to Germany. But the German business is already + well in hand and I think that that will take little of my own time + and will give little trouble. I shall send a report about it in + detail to the Department the very first day I can find time to + write it. In spite of the effort of the English Government to + remain at peace with Austria, I fear I shall yet have the Austrian + Embassy too. But I can attend to it. + + Now, however, comes the financial job of wisely using the $300,000 + which I shall have to-morrow. I am using Mr. Chandler Anderson as + counsel, of course. I have appointed a Committee--Skinner, the + Consul-General, Lieut.-Commander McCrary of our Navy, Kent of the + Bankers Trust Company, New York, and one other man yet to be + chosen--to advise, after investigation, about every proposed + expenditure. Anderson has been at work all day to-day drawing up + proper forms, etc., to fit the Department's very excellent + instructions. I have the feeling that more of that money may be + wisely spent in helping to get people off the continent (except in + France, where they seem admirably to be managing it, under Herrick) + than is immediately needed in England. All this merely to show you + the diversity and multiplicity of the job. + + I am having a card catalogue, each containing a sort of who's who, + of all Americans in Europe of whom we hear. This will be ready by + the time the _Tennessee_[62] comes. Fifty or more stranded + Americans--men and women--are doing this work free. + + I have a member of Congress[63] in the general reception room of + the Embassy answering people's questions--three other volunteers as + well. + + We had a world of confusion for two or three days. But all this + work is now well organized and it can be continued without + confusion or cross purposes. I meet committees and lay plans and + read and write telegrams from the time I wake till I go to bed. + But, since it is now all in order, it is easy. Of course I am + running up the expenses of the Embassy--there is no help for that; + but the bill will be really exceedingly small because of the + volunteer work--for awhile. I have not and shall not consider the + expense of whatever it seems absolutely necessary to do--of other + things I shall always consider the expense most critically. + Everybody is working with everybody else in the finest possible + spirit. I have made out a sort of military order to the Embassy + staff, detailing one man with clerks for each night and forbidding + the others to stay there till midnight. None of us slept more than + a few hours last week. It was not the work that kept them after the + first night or two, but the sheer excitement of this awful + cataclysm. All London has been awake for a week. Soldiers are + marching day and night; immense throngs block the streets about the + government offices. But they are all very orderly. Every day + Germans are arrested on suspicion; and several of them have + committed suicide. Yesterday one poor American woman yielded to the + excitement and cut her throat. I find it hard to get about much. + People stop me on the street, follow me to luncheon, grab me as I + come out of any committee meeting--to know my opinion of this or + that--how can they get home? Will such-and-such a boat fly the + American flag? Why did I take the German Embassy? I have to fight + my way about and rush to an automobile. I have had to buy me a + second one to keep up the racket. Buy?--no--only bargain for it, + for I have not any money. But everybody is considerate, and that + makes no matter for the moment. This little cottage in an + out-of-the-way place, twenty-five miles from London, where I am + trying to write and sleep, has been found by people to-day, who + come in automobiles to know how they may reach their sick + kinspeople in Germany. I have not had a bath for three days: as + soon as I got in the tub, the telephone rang an "urgent" call! + + [Illustration: No. 6 Grosvenor Square, the American Embassy under + Mr. Page] + + [Illustration: Irwin Laughlin, Secretary of the American Embassy at + Longon, 1912-1917, Counsellor 1916-1919]. + + Upon my word, if one could forget the awful tragedy, all this + experience would be worth a lifetime of commonplace. One surprise + follows another so rapidly that one loses all sense of time: it + seems an age since last Sunday. I shall never forget Sir Edward + Grey's telling me of the ultimatum--while he wept; nor the poor + German Ambassador who has lost in his high game--almost a demented + man; nor the King as he declaimed at me for half-an-hour and threw + up his hands and said, "My God, Mr. Page, what else could we do?" + Nor the Austrian Ambassador's wringing his hands and weeping and + crying out, "My dear Colleague, my dear Colleague." + + Along with all this tragedy come two reverend American peace + delegates who got out of Germany by the skin of their teeth and + complain that they lost all the clothes they had except what they + had on. "Don't complain," said I, "but thank God you saved your + skins." Everybody has forgotten what war means--forgotten that + folks get hurt. But they are coming around to it now. A United + States Senator telegraphs me: "Send my wife and daughter home on + the first ship." Ladies and gentlemen filled the steerage of that + ship--not a bunk left; and his wife and daughter are found three + days later sitting in a swell hotel waiting for me to bring them + stateroom tickets on a silver tray! One of my young fellows in the + Embassy rushes into my office saying that a man from Boston, with + letters of introduction from Senators and Governors and + Secretaries, et al., was demanding tickets of admission to a + picture gallery, and a secretary to escort him there. + + "What shall I do with him?" + + "Put his proposal to a vote of the 200 Americans in the room and + see them draw and quarter him." + + I have not yet heard what happened. A woman writes me four pages to + prove how dearly she loves my sister and invites me to her + hotel--five miles away--"please to tell her about the sailing of + the steamships." Six American preachers pass a resolution + unanimously "urging our Ambassador to telegraph our beloved, + peace-loving President to stop this awful war"; and they come with + simple solemnity to present their resolution. Lord save us, what a + world! + + And this awful tragedy moves on to--what? We do not know what is + really happening, so strict is the censorship. But it seems + inevitable to me that Germany will be beaten, that the horrid + period of alliances and armaments will not come again, that England + will gain even more of the earth's surface, that Russia may next + play the menace; that all Europe (as much as survives) will be + bankrupt; that relatively we shall be immensely stronger + financially and politically--there must surely come many great + changes--very many, yet undreamed of. Be ready; for you will be + called on to compose this huge quarrel. I thank Heaven for many + things--first, the Atlantic Ocean; second, that you refrained from + war in Mexico; third, that we kept our treaty--the canal tolls + victory, I mean. Now, when all this half of the world will suffer + the unspeakable brutalization of war, we shall preserve our moral + strength, our political powers, and our ideals. + + God save us! + + W.H.P. + +Vivid as is the above letter, it lacks several impressive details. +Probably the one event that afterward stood out most conspicuously in +Page's mind was his interview with Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign +Secretary. Sir Edward asked the American Ambassador to call Tuesday +afternoon; his purpose was to inform him that Great Britain had sent an +ultimatum to Germany. By this time Page and the Foreign Secretary had +established not only cordial official relations but a warm friendship. +The two men had many things in common; they had the same general outlook +on world affairs, the same ideas of justice and fair dealing, the same +belief that other motives than greed and aggrandizement should control +the attitude of one nation to another. The political tendencies of both +men were idealistic; both placed character above everything else as the +first requisite of a statesman; both hated war, and looked forward to +the time when more rational methods of conducting international +relations would prevail. Moreover, their purely personal qualities had +drawn Sir Edward and Page closely together. A common love of nature and +of out-of-door life had made them akin; both loved trees, birds, +flowers, and hedgerows; the same intellectual diversions and similar +tastes in reading had strengthened the tie. "I could never mention a +book I liked that Mr. Page had not read and liked too," Sir Edward Grey +once remarked to the present writer, and the enthusiasm that both men +felt for Wordsworth's poetry in itself formed a strong bond of union. +The part that the American Ambassador had played in the repeal of the +Panama discrimination had also made a great impression upon this British +statesman--a man to whom honour means more in international dealings +than any other consideration. "Mr. Page is one of the finest +illustrations I have ever known," Grey once said, "of the value of +character in a public man." In their intercourse for the past year the +two men had grown accustomed to disregard all pretense of diplomatic +technique; their discussions had been straightforward man-to-man talks; +there had been nothing suggestive of pose or finesse, and no attempts at +cleverness--merely an effort to get to the bottom of things and to +discover a common meeting ground. The Ambassador, moreover, represented +a nation for which the Foreign Secretary had always entertained the +highest respect and even affection, and he and Page could find no +happier common meeting-ground than an effort to bring about the closest +coöperation between the two countries. Sir Edward, far-seeing statesman +that he was, had already appreciated, even amid the exciting and +engrossing experiences through which he was then passing, the critical +and almost determining part which the United States was destined to play +in the war, and he had now sent for the American Ambassador because he +believed that the President was entitled to a complete explanation of +the momentous decision which Great Britain had just made. + +The meeting took place at three o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, August +4th--a fateful date in modern history. The time represented the interval +which elapsed between the transmission of the British ultimatum to +Germany and the hour set for the German reply. The place was that same +historic room in the Foreign Office where so many interviews had already +taken place and where so many were to take place in the next four years. +As Page came in, Sir Edward, a tall and worn and rather pallid figure, +was standing against the mantelpiece; he greeted the Ambassador with a +grave handshake and the two men sat down. Overwrought the Foreign +Secretary may have been, after the racking week which had just passed, +but there was nothing flurried or excited in his manner; his whole +bearing was calm and dignified, his speech was quiet and restrained, he +uttered not one bitter word against Germany, but his measured accents +had a sureness, a conviction of the justice of his course, that went +home in almost deadly fashion. He sat in a characteristic pose, his +elbows resting on the sides of his chair, his hands folded and placed +beneath his chin, the whole body leaning forward eagerly and his eyes +searching those of his American friend. The British Foreign Secretary +was a handsome and an inspiring figure. He was a man of large, but of +well knit, robust, and slender frame, wiry and even athletic; he had a +large head, surmounted with dark brown hair, slightly touched with gray; +a finely cut, somewhat rugged and bronzed face, suggestive of that +out-of-door life in which he had always found his greatest pleasure; +light blue eyes that shone with straightforwardness and that on this +occasion were somewhat pensive with anxiety; thin, ascetic lips that +could smile in the most confidential manner or close tightly with +grimness and fixed purpose. He was a man who was at the same time shy +and determined, elusive and definite, but if there was one note in his +bearing that predominated all others, it was a solemn and quiet +sincerity. He seemed utterly without guile and magnificently simple. + +Sir Edward at once referred to the German invasion of Belgium. + +"The neutrality of Belgium," he said, and there was the touch of +finality in his voice, "is assured by treaty. Germany is a signatory +power to that treaty. It is upon such solemn compacts as this that +civilization rests. If we give them up, or permit them to be violated, +what becomes of civilization? Ordered society differs from mere force +only by such solemn agreements or compacts. But Germany has violated the +neutrality of Belgium. That means bad faith. It means also the end of +Belgium's independence. And it will not end with Belgium. Next will come +Holland, and, after Holland, Denmark. This very morning the Swedish +Minister informed me that Germany had made overtures to Sweden to come +in on Germany's side. The whole plan is thus clear. This one great +military power means to annex Belgium, Holland, and the Scandinavian +states and to subjugate France." + +Sir Edward energetically rose; he again stood near the mantelpiece, his +figure straightened, his eyes were fairly flashing--it was a picture, +Page once told me, that was afterward indelibly fixed in his mind. + +"England would be forever contemptible," Sir Edward said, "if it should +sit by and see this treaty violated. Its position would be gone if +Germany were thus permitted to dominate Europe. I have therefore asked +you to come to tell you that this morning we sent an ultimatum to +Germany. We have told Germany that, if this assault on Belgium's +neutrality is not reversed, England will declare war." + +"Do you expect Germany to accept it?" asked the Ambassador. + +Sir Edward shook his head. + +"No. Of course everybody knows that there will be war." + +There was a moment's pause and then the Foreign Secretary spoke again: + +"Yet we must remember that there are two Germanys. There is the Germany +of men like ourselves--of men like Lichnowsky and Jagow. Then there is +the Germany of men of the war party. The war party has got the upper +hand." + +At this point Sir Edward's eyes filled with tears. + +"Thus the efforts of a lifetime go for nothing. I feel like a man who +has wasted his life." + +"This scene was most affecting," Page said afterward. "Sir Edward not +only realized what the whole thing meant, but he showed that he realized +the awful responsibility for it." + +Sir Edward then asked the Ambassador to explain the situation to +President Wilson; he expressed the hope that the United States would +take an attitude of neutrality and that Great Britain might look for +"the courtesies of neutrality" from this country. Page tried to tell him +of the sincere pain that such a war would cause the President and the +American people. + +"I came away," the Ambassador afterward said, "with a sort of stunned +sense of the impending ruin of half the world[64]." + +The significant fact in this interview is that the British Foreign +Secretary justified the attitude of his country exclusively on the +ground of the violation of a treaty. This is something that is not yet +completely understood in the United States. The participation of Great +Britain in this great continental struggle is usually regarded as having +been inevitable, irrespective of the German invasion of Belgium; yet the +fact is that, had Germany not invaded Belgium, Great Britain would not +have declared war, at least at this critical time. Sir Edward came to +Page after a week's experience with a wavering cabinet. Upon the general +question of Britain's participation in a European war the Asquith +Ministry had been by no means unanimous. Probably Mr. Asquith himself +and Mr. Lloyd George would have voted against taking such a step. It is +quite unlikely that the cabinet could have carried a majority of the +House of Commons on this issue. But the violation of the Belgian treaty +changed the situation in a twinkling. The House of Commons at once took +its stand in favour of intervention. All members of the cabinet, +excepting John Morley and John Burns, who resigned, immediately aligned +themselves on the side of war. In the minds of British statesmen the +violation of this treaty gave Britain no choice. Germany thus forced +Great Britain into the war, just as, two and a half years afterward, the +Prussian war lords compelled the United States to take up arms. Sir +Edward Grey's interview with the American Ambassador thus had great +historic importance, for it makes this point clear. The two men had +recently had many discussions on another subject in which the violation +of a treaty was the great consideration--that of Panama tolls--and there +was a certain appropriateness in this explanation of the British Foreign +Secretary that precisely the same point had determined Great Britain's +participation in the greatest struggle that has ever devastated Europe. + +Inevitably the question of American mediation had come to the surface in +this trying time. Several days before Page's interview with Grey, the +American Ambassador, acting in response to a cablegram from Washington, +had asked if the good offices of the United States could be used in any +way. "Sir Edward is very appreciative of our mood and willingness," Page +wrote in reference to this visit. "But they don't want peace on the +continent--the ruling classes do not. But they will want it presently +and then our opportunity will come. Ours is the only great government in +the world that is not in some way entangled. Of course I'll keep in +daily touch with Sir Edward and with everybody who can and will keep me +informed." + +This was written about July 27th; at that time Austria had sent her +ultimatum to Serbia but there was no certainty that Europe would become +involved in war. A demand for American mediation soon became widespread +in the United States; the Senate passed a resolution requesting the +President to proffer his good offices to that end. On this subject the +following communications were exchanged between President Wilson and his +chief adviser, then sojourning at his summer home in Massachusetts. Like +Mr. Tumulty, the President's Secretary, Colonel House usually addressed +the President in terms reminiscent of the days when Mr. Wilson was +Governor of New Jersey. Especially interesting also are Colonel House's +references to his own trip to Berlin and the joint efforts made by the +President and himself in the preceding June to forestall the war which +had now broken out. + + _Edward M. House to the President_ + + Pride's Crossing (Mass.), + + August 3, 1914. [Monday.] + + The President, + + The White House, Washington, D.C. + + Dear Governor: + + Our people are deeply shocked at the enormity of this general + European war, and I see here and there regret that you did not use + your good offices in behalf of peace. + + If this grows into criticism so as to become noticeable I believe + everyone would be pleased and proud that you had anticipated this + world-wide horror and had done all that was humanly possible to + avert it. + + The more terrible the war becomes, the greater credit it will be + that you saw the trend of events long before it was seen by other + statesmen of the world. + + Your very faithful, + E.M. House. + + P.S. The question might be asked why negotiations were only with + Germany and England and not with France and Russia. This, of + course, was because it was thought that Germany would act for the + Triple Alliance and England for the Triple Entente[65]. + + _The President to Edward M. House_ + + The White House, + + Washington, D.C. + + August 4th, 1914. [Tuesday.] + + Edward M. House, + + Pride's Crossing, Mass. + +Letter of third received. Do you think I could and should act now and if +so how? + + Woodrow Wilson. + + _Edward M. House to the President_ + + [Telegram] + + Pride's Crossing, Mass. + + August 5th, 1914. [Wednesday.] + + The President, + + The White House, Washington, D.C. + + Olney[66] and I agree that in response to the Senate resolution it + would be unwise to tender your good offices at this time. We + believe it would lessen your influence when the proper moment + arrives. He thinks it advisable that you make a direct or indirect + statement to the effect that you have done what was humanly + possible to compose the situation before this crisis had been + reached. He thinks this would satisfy the Senate and the public in + view of your disinclination to act now upon the Senate resolution. + The story might be told to the correspondents at Washington and + they might use the expression "we have it from high authority." + + He agrees to my suggestion that nothing further should be done now + than to instruct our different ambassadors to inform the respective + governments to whom they are accredited, that you stand ready to + tender your good offices whenever such an offer is desired. + + Olney agrees with me that the shipping bill[67] is full of lurking + dangers. + + E.M. House. + +For some reason, however, the suggested statement was not made. The fact +that Colonel House had visited London, Paris, and Berlin six weeks +before the outbreak of war, in an effort to bring about a plan for +disarmament, was not permitted to reach the public ear. Probably the +real reason why this fact was concealed was that its publication at that +time would have reflected so seriously upon Germany that it would have +been regarded as "un-neutral." Colonel House, as already described, had +found Germany in a most belligerent frame of mind, its army "ready," to +use the Kaiser's own word, for an immediate spring at France; on the +other hand he had found Great Britain in a most pacific frame of mind, +entirely unsuspicious of Germany, and confident that the European +situation was daily improving. It is interesting now to speculate on the +public sensation that would have been caused had Colonel House's account +of his visit to Berlin been published at that exciting time. + +Page's telegrams and letters show that any suggestion at mediation would +have been a waste of effort. The President seriously forebore, but the +desire to mediate was constantly in his mind for the next few months, +and he now interested himself in laying the foundations of future +action. Page was instructed to ask for an audience with King George and +to present the following document: + + _From the President of the United States + to His Majesty the King_ + + SIR: + + As official head of one of the Powers signatory to the Hague + Convention, I feel it to be my privilege and my duty under Article + 3 of that Convention to say to your Majesty, in a spirit of most + earnest friendship, that I should welcome an opportunity to act in + the interest of European peace either now or at any time that might + be thought more suitable as an occasion, to serve your Majesty and + all concerned in a way that would afford me lasting cause for + gratitude and happiness. + + WOODROW WILSON. + +This, of course, was not mediation, but a mere expression of the +President's willingness to mediate at any time that such a tender from +him, in the opinion of the warring Powers, would serve the cause of +peace. Identically the same message was sent to the American +Ambassadors at the capitals of all the belligerent Powers for +presentation to the heads of state. Page's letter of August 9th, printed +above, refers to the earnestness and cordiality with which King George +received him and to the freedom with which His Majesty discussed the +situation. + +In this exciting week Page was thrown into intimate contact with the two +most pathetic figures in the diplomatic circle of London--the Austrian +and the German Ambassadors. To both of these men the war was more than a +great personal sorrow: it was a tragedy. Mensdorff, the Austrian +Ambassador, had long enjoyed an intimacy with the British royal family. +Indeed he was a distant relative of King George, for he was a member of +the family of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a fact which was emphasized by his +physical resemblance to Prince Albert, the consort of Queen Victoria. +Mensdorff was not a robust man, physically or mentally, and he showed +his consternation at the impending war in most unrestrained and even +unmanly fashion. As his government directed him to turn the Austrian +Embassy over to the American Ambassador, it was necessary for Page to +call and arrange the details. The interview, as Page's letter indicates, +was little less than a paroxysm of grief on the Austrian's part. He +denounced Germany and the Kaiser; he paraded up and down the room +wringing his hands; he could be pacified only by suggestions from the +American that perhaps something might happen to keep Austria out of the +war. The whole atmosphere of the Austrian Embassy radiated this same +feeling. "Austria has no quarrel with England," remarked one of +Mensdorff's assistants to one of the ladies of the American Embassy; and +this sentiment was the general one in Austrian diplomatic circles. The +disinclination of both Great Britain and Austria to war was so great +that, as Page relates, for several days there was no official +declaration. + +Even more tragical than the fate of the Austrian Ambassador was that of +his colleague, the representative of the German Emperor. It was more +tragical because Prince Lichnowsky represented the power that was +primarily responsible, and because he had himself been an unwilling tool +in bringing on the cataclysm. It was more profound because Lichnowsky +was a man of deeper feeling and greater moral purpose than his Austrian +colleague, and because for two years he had been devoting his strongest +energies to preventing the very calamity which had now become a fact. As +the war went on Lichnowsky gradually emerged as one of its finest +figures; the pamphlet which he wrote, at a time when Germany's military +fortunes were still high, boldly placing the responsibility upon his own +country and his own Kaiser, was one of the bravest acts which history +records. Through all his brief Ambassadorship Lichnowsky had shown these +same friendly traits. The mere fact that he had been selected as +Ambassador at this time was little less than a personal calamity. His +appointment gives a fair measure of the depths of duplicity to which the +Prussian system could descend. For more than fourteen years Lichnowsky +had led the quiet life of a Polish country gentleman; he had never +enjoyed the favour of the Kaiser; in his own mind and in that of his +friends his career had long since been finished; yet from this +retirement he had been suddenly called upon to represent the Fatherland +at the greatest of European capitals. The motive for this elevation, +which was unfathomable then, is evident enough now. Prince Lichnowsky +was known to be an Anglophile; everything English--English literature, +English country life, English public men--had for him an irresistible +charm; and his greatest ambition as a diplomat had been to maintain the +most cordial relations between his own country and Great Britain. This +was precisely the type of Ambassador that fitted into the Imperial +purpose at that crisis. Germany was preparing energetically but quietly +for war; it was highly essential that its most formidable potential foe, +Great Britain, should be deceived as to the Imperial plans and lulled +into a sense of security. The diabolical character of Prince +Lichnowsky's selection for this purpose was that, though his mission was +one of deception, he was not himself a party to it and did not realize +until it was too late that he had been used merely as a tool. Prince +Lichnowsky was not called upon to assume a mask; all that was necessary +was that he should simply be himself. And he acquitted himself with +great success. He soon became a favourite in London society; the Foreign +Office found him always ready to coöperate in any plan that tended to +improve relations between the two countries. It will be remembered that, +when Colonel House returned to London from his interview with the Kaiser +in June, 1914, he found British statesmen incredulous about any trouble +with Germany. This attitude was the consequence of Lichnowsky's work. +The fact is that relations between the two countries had not been so +harmonious in twenty years. All causes of possible friction had been +adjusted. The treaty regulating the future of the Bagdad Railroad, the +only problem that clouded the future, had been initialled by both the +British and the German Foreign Offices and was about to be signed at the +moment when the ultimatums began to fly through the air. Prince +Lichnowsky was thus entitled to look upon his ambassadorship as one of +the most successful in modern history, for it had removed all possible +cause of war. + +And then suddenly came the stunning blow. For several days Lichnowsky's +behaviour was that of an irresponsible person. Those who came into +contact with him found his mind wandering and incoherent. Page describes +the German Ambassador as coming down and receiving him in his pajamas; +he was not the only one who had that experience, for members of the +British Foreign Office transacted business with this most punctilious of +diplomats in a similar condition of personal disarray. And the +dishabille extended to his mental operations as well. + +But Lichnowsky's and Mensdorff's behaviour merely portrayed the general +atmosphere that prevailed in London during that week. This atmosphere +was simply hysterical. Among all the intimate participants, however, +there was one man who kept his poise and who saw things clearly. That +was the American Ambassador. It was certainly a strange trick which +fortune had played upon Page. He had come to London with no experience +in diplomacy. Though the possibility of such an outbreak as this war had +been in every man's consciousness for a generation, it had always been +as something certain yet remote; most men thought of it as most men +think of death--as a fatality which is inevitable, but which is so +distant that it never becomes a reality. Thus Page, when he arrived in +London, did not have the faintest idea of the experience that awaited +him. Most people would have thought that his quiet and studious and +unworldly life had hardly prepared him to become the representative of +the most powerful neutral power at the world's capital during the +greatest crisis of modern history. To what an extent that impression was +justified the happenings of the next four years will disclose; it is +enough to point out in this place that in one respect at least the war +found the American Ambassador well prepared. From the instant +hostilities began his mind seized the significance of it all. "Mr. Page +had one fine qualification for his post," a great British statesman once +remarked to the present writer. "From the beginning he saw that there +was a right and a wrong to the matter. He did not believe that Great +Britain and Germany were equally to blame. He believed that Great +Britain was right and that Germany was wrong. I regard it as one of the +greatest blessings of modern times that the United States had an +ambassador in London in August, 1914, who had grasped this overwhelming +fact. It seems almost like a dispensation of Providence." + +It is important to insist on this point now, for it explains Page's +entire course as Ambassador. The confidential telegram which Page sent +directly to President Wilson in early September, 1914, furnishes the +standpoint from which his career as war Ambassador can be understood: + + _Confidential to the President_ + September 11, 3 A.M. + No. 645. + + Accounts of atrocities are so inevitably a part of every war that + for some time I did not believe the unbelievable reports that were + sent from Europe, and there are many that I find incredible even + now. But American and other neutral observers who have seen these + things in France and especially in Belgium now convince me that the + Germans have perpetrated some of the most barbarous deeds in + history. Apparently credible persons relate such things without + end. + + Those who have violated the Belgian treaty, those who have sown + torpedoes in the open sea, those who have dropped bombs on Antwerp + and Paris indiscriminately with the idea of killing whom they may + strike, have taken to heart Bernhardi's doctrine that war is a + glorious occupation. Can any one longer disbelieve the completely + barbarous behaviour of the Prussians? + + PAGE. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 61: At this time American military attaché.] + +[Footnote 62: The American Government, on the outbreak of war, sent the +U.S.S. _Tennessee_ to Europe, with large supplies of gold for the relief +of stranded Americans.] + +[Footnote 63: The late Augustus P. Gardner, of Massachusetts.] + +[Footnote 64: The materials on which this account is based are a +memorandum of the interview made by Sir Edward Grey, now in the archives +of the British Foreign Office, a similar memorandum made by Page, and a +detailed description given verbally by Page to the writer.] + +[Footnote 65: Colonel House, of course, is again referring to his +experience in Berlin and London, described in the preceding chapter.] + +[Footnote 66: Richard Olney, Secretary of State in the Cabinet of +President Cleveland, who was a neighbour of Colonel House at his summer +home, and with whom the latter apparently consulted.] + +[Footnote 67: This is the bill passed soon after the outbreak of war +admitting foreign built ships to American registry. Subsequent events +showed that it was "full of lurking dangers."] + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +ENGLAND UNDER THE STRESS OF WAR + + +The months following the outbreak of the war were busy ones for the +American Embassy in London. The Embassies of all the great Powers with +which Great Britain was contending were handed over to Page, and the +citizens of these countries--Germany, Austria, Turkey--who found +themselves stranded in England, were practically made his wards. It is a +constant astonishment to his biographer that, during all the labour and +distractions of this period, Page should have found time to write long +letters describing the disturbing scene. There are scores of them, all +penned in the beautiful copper-plate handwriting that shows no signs of +excitement or weariness, but is in itself an evidence of mental poise +and of the sure grip which Page had upon the evolving drama. From the +many sent in these autumn and early winter months the following +selections are made: + + _To Edward M. House_ + September 22nd, 1914. + + MY DEAR HOUSE: + + When the day of settlement comes, the settlement must make sure + that the day of militarism is done and can come no more. If sheer + brute force is to rule the world, it will not be worth living in. + If German bureaucratic brute force could conquer Europe, presently + it would try to conquer the United States; and we should all go + back to the era of war as man's chief industry and back to the + domination of kings by divine right. It seems to me, therefore, + that the Hohenzollern idea must perish--be utterly strangled in the + making of peace. + + Just how to do this, it is not yet easy to say. If the German + defeat be emphatic enough and dramatic enough, the question may + answer itself--how's the best way to be rid of the danger of the + recurrence of a military bureaucracy? But in any event, this thing + must be killed forever--somehow. I think that a firm insistence on + this is the main task that mediation will bring. The rest will be + corollaries of this. + + The danger, of course, as all the world is beginning to fear, is + that the Kaiser, after a local victory--especially if he should yet + take Paris--will propose peace, saying that he dreads the very + sight of blood--propose peace in time, as he will hope, to save his + throne, his dynasty, his system. That will be a dangerous day. The + horror of war will have a tendency to make many persons in the + countries of the Allies accept it. All the peace folk in the world + will say "Accept it!" But if he and his throne and his dynasty and + his system be saved, in twenty-five years the whole job must be + done over again. We are settling down to a routine of double work + and to an oppression of gloom. Dead men, dead men, maimed men, the + dull gray dread of what may happen next, the impossibility of + changing the subject, the monotony of gloom, the consequent dimness + of ideals, the overworking of the emotions and the heavy bondage of + thought--the days go swiftly: that's one blessing. + + The diplomatic work proper brings fewer difficulties than you would + guess. New subjects and new duties come with great rapidity, but + they soon fall into formulas--at least into classes. We shall have + no sharp crises nor grave difficulties so long as our Government + and this Government keep their more than friendly relations. I see + Sir Edward Grey almost every day. We talk of many things--all + phases of one vast wreck; and all the clear-cut points that come up + I report by telegraph. To-day the talk was of American cargoes in + British ships and the machinery they have set up here for fair + settlement. Then of Americans applying for enlistment in Canadian + regiments. "If sheer brute force conquer Europe," said he, "the + United States will be the only country where life will be worth + living; and in time you will have to fight against it, too, if it + conquer Europe." He spoke of the letter he had just received from + the President, and he asked me many sympathetic questions about you + also and about your health. I ventured to express some solicitude + for him. + + "How much do you get out now + + "Only for an automobile drive Sunday afternoon." + + This from a man who is never happy away from nature and is at home + only in the woods and along the streams. He looks worn. + + I hear nothing but satisfaction with our neutrality tight-rope + walk. I think we are keeping it here, by close attention to our + work and by silence. + + Our volunteer and temporary aids are doing well--especially the + army and navy officers. We now occupy three work-places: (1) the + over-crowded embassy; (2) a suite of offices around the corner + where the ever-lengthening list of inquiries for persons is handled + and where an army officer pays money to persons whose friends have + deposited it for them with the Government in Washington--just now + at the rate of about $15,000 a day; and (3) two great rooms at the + Savoy Hotel, where the admirable relief committee (which meets all + trains that bring people from the continent) gives aid to the + needy and helps people to get tickets home. They have this week + helped about 400 with more or less money--after full investigation. + + At the Embassy a secretary remains till bed-time, which generally + means till midnight; and I go back there for an hour or two every + night. + + The financial help we give to German and Austrian subjects (poor + devils) is given, of course, at their embassies, where we have + men--our men-in charge. Each of these governments accepted my offer + to give our Ambassadors (Gerard and Penfield) a sum of money to + help Americans if I would set aside an equal sum to help their + people here. The German fund that I thus began with was $50,000; + the Austrian, $25,000. All this and more will be needed before the + war ends.--All this activity is kept up with scrupulous attention + to the British rules and regulations. In fact, we are helping this + Government much in the management of these "alien enemies," as they + call them. + + I am amazed at the good health we all keep with this big volume of + work and the long hours. Not a man nor a woman has been ill a day. + I have known something about work and the spirit of good work in + other organizations of various sorts; but I never saw one work in + better spirit than this. And remember, most of them are volunteers. + + The soldiers here complained for weeks in private about the + lethargy of the people--the slowness of men to enlist. But they + seemed to me to complain with insufficient reason. For now they + come by thousands. They do need more men in the field, and they may + conscript them, but I doubt the necessity. But I run across such + incidents as these: I met the Dowager Countess of D---- + yesterday--a woman of 65, as tall as I and as erect herself as a + soldier, who might be taken for a woman of 40, prematurely gray. + "I had five sons in the Boer War. I have three in this war. I do + not know where any one of them is." Mrs. Page's maid is talking of + leaving her. "My two brothers have gone to the war and perhaps I + ought to help their wives and children." The Countess and the maid + are of the same blood, each alike unconquerable. My chauffeur has + talked all day about the naval battle in which five German ships + were lately sunk[68]. He reminded me of the night two months ago + when he drove Mrs. Page and me to dine with Sir John and Lady + Jellicoe--Jellicoe now, you know, being in command of the British + fleet. + + This Kingdom has settled down to war as its one great piece of + business now in hand, and it is impossible, as the busy, burdensome + days pass, to pick out events or impressions that one can be sure + are worth writing. For instance a soldier--a man in the War + Office--told me to-day that Lord Kitchener had just told him that + the war may last for several years. That, I confess, seems to me + very improbable, and (what is of more importance) it is not the + notion held by most men whose judgment I respect. But all the + military men say it will be long. It would take several years to + kill that vast horde of Germans, but it will not take so long to + starve them out. Food here is practically as cheap as it was three + months ago and the sea routes are all open to England and + practically all closed to Germany. The ultimate result, of course, + will be Germany's defeat. But the British are now going about the + business of war as if they knew they would continue it + indefinitely. The grim efficiency of their work even in small + details was illustrated to-day by the Government's informing us + that a German handy man, whom the German Ambassador left at his + Embassy, with the English Government's consent, is a spy--that he + sends verbal messages to Germany by women who are permitted to go + home, and that they have found letters written by him sewed in some + of these women's undergarments! This man has been at work there + every day under the two very good men whom I have put in charge + there and who have never suspected him. How on earth they found + this out simply passes my understanding. Fortunately it doesn't + bring any embarrassment to us; he was not in our pay and he was + left by the German Ambassador with the British Government's + consent, to take care of the house. Again, when the German + Chancellor made a statement two days ago about the causes of the + war, in a few hours Sir Edward Grey issued a statement showing that + the Chancellor had misstated every important historic fact.--The + other day a commercial telegram was sent (or started) by Mr. Bryan + for some bank or trading concern in the United States, managed by + Germans, to some correspondent of theirs in Germany. It contained + the words, "Where is Harry?" The censor here stopped it. It was + brought to me with the explanation that "Harry" is one of the most + notorious of German spies--whom they would like to catch. The + English were slow in getting into full action, but now they never + miss a trick, little or big. + + The Germans have far more than their match in resources and in + shrewdness and--in character. As the bloody drama unfolds itself, + the hollow pretence and essential barbarity of Prussian militarism + become plainer and plainer: there is no doubt of that. And so does + the invincibility of this race. A well-known Englishman told me + to-day that his three sons, his son-in-law, and half his office men + are in the military service, "where they belong in a time like + this." The lady who once so sharply criticized this gentleman to + Mrs. Page has a son and a brother in the army in France. It makes + you take a fresh grip on your eyelids to hear either of these talk. + In fact the strain on one's emotions, day in and day out, makes one + wonder if the world is real--or is this a vast dream? From sheer + emotional exhaustion I slept almost all day last Sunday, though I + had not for several days lost sleep at all. Many persons tell me of + their similar experiences. The universe seems muffled. There is a + ghostly silence in London (so it seems); and only dim street lights + are lighted at night. No experience seems normal. A vast + organization is working day and night down town receiving Belgian + refugees. They become the guests of the English. They are assigned + to people's homes, to boarding houses, to institutions. They are + taking care of them--this government and this people are. I do not + recall when one nation ever did another whole nation just such a + hospitable service as this. You can't see that work going on and + remain unmoved. An old woman who has an income of $15 a week + decided that she could live on $7.50. She buys milk with the other + $7.50 and goes to meet every train at one of the big stations with + a basket filled with baby bottles, and she gives milk to every + hungry-looking baby she sees. Our American committeeman, Hoover, + saw her in trouble the other day and asked her what was the matter. + She explained that the police would no longer admit her to the + platform because she didn't belong to any relief committee. He took + her to headquarters and said: "Do you see this good old lady? She + puts you and me and everybody else to shame--do you understand?" + The old lady now gets to the platform. Hoover himself gave $5,000 + for helping stranded Americans and he goes to the trains to meet + them, while the war has stopped his big business and his big + income. This is a sample of the noble American end of the story. + + These are the saving class of people to whom life becomes a bore + unless they can help somebody. There's just such a fellow in + Brussels--you may have heard of him, for his name is Whitlock. + Stories of his showing himself a man come out of that closed-up + city every week. To a really big man, it doesn't matter whether his + post is a little post, or a big post but, if I were President, I'd + give Whitlock a big post. There's another fellow somewhere in + Germany--a consul--of whom I never heard till the other day. But + people have taken to coming in my office--English ladies--who wish + to thank "you and your great government" for the courage and + courtesy of this consul[69]. Stories about him will follow. + Herrick, too, in Paris, somehow causes Americans and English and + even Guatemalans who come along to go out of their way to say what + he has done for them. Now there is a quality in the old woman with + the baby bottles, and in the consul and in Whitlock and Hoover and + Herrick and this English nation which adopts the Belgians--a + quality that is invincible. When folk like these come down the + road, I respectfully do obeisance to them. And--it's this kind of + folk that the Germans have run up against. I thank Heaven I'm of + their race and blood. + + The whole world is bound to be changed as a result of this war. If + Germany should win, our Monroe Doctrine would at once be shot in + two, and we should have to get "out of the sun." The military party + is a party of conquest--absolutely. If England wins, as of course + she will, it'll be a bigger and a stronger England, with no strong + enemy in the world, with her Empire knit closer than ever--India, + Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Egypt; under + obligations to and in alliance with Russia! England will not need + our friendship as much as she now needs it; and there may come + governments here that will show they do not. In any event, you see, + the world will be changed. It's changed already: witness + Bernstorff[70] and Münsterberg[71] playing the part once played by + Irish agitators! + + All of which means that it is high time we were constructing a + foreign service. First of all, Congress ought to make it possible + to have half a dozen or more permanent foreign + under-secretaries--men who, after service in the Department, could + go out as Ministers and Ambassadors; it ought generously to + reorganize the whole thing. It ought to have a competent study made + of the foreign offices of other governments. Of course it ought to + get room to work in. Then it ought at once to give its Ambassadors + and Ministers homes and dignified treatment. We've got to play a + part in the world whether we wish to or not. Think of these things. + + The blindest great force in this world to-day is the Prussian War + Party--blind and stupid.--Well, and the most weary man in London + just at this hour is + + Your humble servant, + W.H.P, + +but he'll be all right in the morning. + + _To Arthur W. Page_ + [Undated][72] + + DEAR ARTHUR: + + . . . I recall one night when we were dining at Sir John Jellicoe's, he + told me that the Admiralty never slept--that he had a telephone by + his bed every night. + + "Did it ever ring?" I asked. + + "No; but it will." + + You begin to see pretty clearly how English history has been made + and makes itself. This afternoon Lady S---- told your mother of her + three sons, one on a warship in the North Sea, another with the + army in France, and a third in training to go. "How brave you all + are!" said your mother, and her answer was: "They belong to their + country; we can't do anything else." One of the daughters-in-law of + the late Lord Salisbury came to see me to find out if I could make + an inquiry about her son who was reported "missing" after the + battle of Mons. She was dry-eyed, calm, self-restrained--very + grateful for the effort I promised to make; but a Spartan woman + would have envied her self-possession. It turned out that her son + was dead. + + You hear experiences like these almost every day. These are the + kinds of women and the kinds of men that have made the British + Empire and the English race. You needn't talk of decadence. All + their great qualities are in them here and now. I believe that half + the young men who came to Katharine's[73] dances last winter and + who used to drop in at the house once in a while are dead in France + already. They went as a matter of course. This is the reason they + are going to win. Now these things impress you, as they come to you + day by day. + + There isn't any formal social life now--no dinners, no parties. A + few friends dine with a few friends now and then very quietly. The + ladies of fashion are hospital nurses and Red Cross workers, or + they are collecting socks and blankets for the soldiers. One such + woman told your mother to-day that she went to one of the + recruiting camps every day and taught the young fellows what + colloquial French she could. Every man, woman, and child seems to + be doing something. In the ordinary daily life, we see few of them: + everybody is at work somewhere. + + We live in a world of mystery: nothing can surprise us. The rumour + is that a servant in one of the great families sent word to the + Germans where the three English cruisers[74] were that German + submarines blew up the other day. Not a German in the Kingdom can + earn a penny. We're giving thousands of them money at the German + Embassy to keep them alive. Our Austrian Embassy runs a soup + kitchen where it feeds a lot of Austrians. Your mother went around + there the other day and they showed that they thought they owe + their daily bread to her. One day she went to one of the big houses + where the English receive and distribute the thousands of Belgians + who come here, poor creatures, to be taken care of. One old woman + asked your mother in French if she were a princess. The lady that + was with your mother answered, "Une Grande Dame." That seemed to do + as well. + + This government doesn't now let anybody carry any food away. But + to-day they consented on condition I'd receive the food (for the + Belgians) and consign it to Whitlock. This is their way of keeping + it out of German hands--have the Stars and Stripes, so to speak, to + cover every bag of flour and of salt. That's only one of 1,000 + queer activities that I engage in. I have a German princess's[75] + jewels in our safe--$100,000 worth of them in my keeping; I have an + old English nobleman's check for $40,000 to be sent to men who have + been building a house for his daughter in Dresden--to be sent as + soon as the German Government agrees not to arrest the lady for + debt. I have sent Miss Latimer[76] over to France to bring an + Austrian baby eight months old whose mother will take it to the + United States and bring it up an American citizen! The mother can't + go and get it for fear the French might detain her; I've got the + English Government's permission for the family to go to the United + States. Harold[77] is in Belgium, trying to get a group of English + ladies home who went there to nurse wounded English and Belgians + and whom the Germans threaten to kidnap and transport to German + hospitals--every day a dozen new kinds of jobs. + + London is weird and muffled and dark and, in the West End, + deserted. Half the lamps are not lighted, and the upper half of the + globes of the street lights are painted black--so the Zeppelin + raiders may not see them. You've no idea what a strange feeling it + gives one. The papers have next to no news. The 23rd day of the + great battle is reported very much in the same words as the 3rd day + was. Yet nobody talks of much else. The censor erases most of the + matter the correspondents write. We're in a sort of dumb as well as + dark world. And yet, of course, we know much more here than they + know in any other European capital. + + _To the President_ + + [Undated.] + + Dear Mr. President: + + When England, France, and Russia agreed the other day not to make + peace separately, that cooked the Kaiser's goose. They'll wear him + out. Since England thus has Frenchmen and Russians bound, the + Allies are strength-cued at their only weak place. That done, + England is now going in deliberately, methodically, patiently to do + the task. Even a fortnight ago, the people of this Kingdom didn't + realize all that the war means to them. But the fever is rising + now. The wounded are coming back, the dead are mourned, and the + agony of hearing only that such-and-such a man is missing--these + are having a prodigious effect. The men I meet now say in a + matter-of-fact way: "Oh, yes! we'll get 'em, of course; the only + question is, how long it will take us and how many of us it will + cost. But no matter, we'll get 'em." + + Old ladies and gentlemen of the high, titled world now begin by + driving to my house almost every morning while I am at breakfast. + With many apologies for calling so soon and with the fear that they + interrupt me, they ask if I can make an inquiry in Germany for "my + son," or "my nephew"--"he's among the missing." They never weep; + their voices do not falter; they are brave and proud and + self-restrained. It seems a sort of matter-of-course to them. + Sometimes when they get home, they write me polite notes thanking + me for receiving them. This morning the first man was Sir Dighton + Probyn of Queen Alexandra's household--so dignified and courteous + that you'd hardly have guessed his errand. And at intervals they + come all day. Not a tear have I seen yet. They take it as a part of + the price of greatness and of empire. You guess at their grief only + by their reticence. They use as few words as possible and then + courteously take themselves away. It isn't an accident that these + people own a fifth of the world. Utterly unwarlike, they outlast + anybody else when war comes. You don't get a sense of fighting + here--only of endurance and of high resolve. Fighting is a sort of + incident in the struggle to keep their world from German + domination. . . . + + _To Edward M. House_ + October 11, 1914. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + There is absolutely nothing to write. It's war, war, war all the + time; no change of subject; and, if you changed with your tongue, + you couldn't change in your thought; war, war, war--"for God's sake + find out if my son is dead or a prisoner"; rumours--they say that + two French generals were shot for not supporting French, and then + they say only one; and people come who have helped take the wounded + French from the field and they won't even talk, it is so horrible; + and a lady says that her own son (wounded) told her that when a man + raised up in the trench to fire, the stench was so awful that it + made him sick for an hour; and the poor Belgians come here by the + tens of thousands, and special trains bring the English wounded; + and the newspapers tell little or nothing--every day's reports like + the preceding days'; and yet nobody talks about anything else. + + Now and then the subject of its settlement is mentioned--Belgium + and Serbia, of course, to be saved and as far as possible + indemnified; Russia to have the Slav-Austrian States and + Constantinople; France to have Alsace-Lorraine, of course; and + Poland to go to Russia; Schleswig-Holstein and the Kiel Canal no + longer to be German; all the South-German States to become Austrian + and none of the German States to be under Prussian rule; the + Hohenzollerns to be eliminated; the German fleet, or what is left + of it, to become Great Britain's; and the German colonies to be + used to satisfy such of the Allies as clamour for more than they + get. + + Meantime this invincible race is doing this revolutionary task + marvellously--volunteering; trying to buy arms in the United + States (a Pittsburgh manufacturer is now here trying to close a + bargain with the War Office!)[78]; knitting socks and mufflers; + taking in all the poor Belgians; stopping all possible expenditure; + darkening London at night; doing every conceivable thing to win as + if they had been waging this war always and meant to do nothing + else for the rest of their lives-and not the slightest doubt about + the result and apparently indifferent how long it lasts or how much + it costs. + + Every aspect of it gets on your nerves. I can't keep from wondering + how the world will seem after it is over--Germany (that is, Prussia + and its system) cut out like a cancer; England owning still more of + the earth; Belgium--all the men dead; France bankrupt; Russia + admitted to the society of nations; the British Empire entering on + a new lease of life; no great navy but one; no great army but the + Russian; nearly all governments in Europe bankrupt; Germany gone + from the sea--in ten years it will be difficult to recall clearly + the Europe of the last ten years. And the future of the world more + than ever in our hands! + + We here don't know what you think or what you know at home; we + haven't yet any time to read United States newspapers, which come + very, very late; nobody writes us real letters (or the censor gets + 'em, perhaps!); and so the war, the war, the war is the one thing + that holds our minds. + + We have taken a house for the Chancery[79]--almost the size of my + house in Grosvenor Square--for the same sum as rent that the + landlord proposed hereafter to charge us for the old hole where + we've been for twenty-nine years. For the first time Uncle Sam has + a decent place in London. We've five times as much room and ten + times as much work. Now--just this last week or two--I get off + Sundays: that's doing well. And I don't now often go back at night. + So, you see, we've much to be thankful for.--Shall we insure + against Zeppelins? That's what everybody's asking. I told the + Spanish Ambassador yesterday that I am going to ask the German + Government for instructions about insuring their Embassy here! + + Write and send some news. I saw an American to-day who says he's + going home to-morrow. "Cable me," said I, "if you find the + continent where it used to be." + + Faithfully yours, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + + P.S. It is strange how little we know what you know on your side + and just what you think, what relative value you put on this and + what on that. There's a new sort of loneliness sprung up because of + the universal absorption in the war. + + And I hear all sorts of contradictory rumours about the effect of + the German crusade in the United States. Oh well, the world has got + to choose whether it will have English or German domination in + Europe; that's the single big question at issue. For my part I'll + risk the English and then make a fresh start ourselves to outstrip + them in the spread of well-being; in the elevation of mankind of + all classes; in the broadening of democracy and democratic rule + (which is the sheet-anchor of all men's hopes just as bureaucracy + and militarism are the destruction of all men's hopes); in the + spread of humane feeling and action; in the growth of human + kindness; in the tender treatment of women and children and the + old; in literature, in art; in the abatement of suffering; in great + changes in economic conditions which discourage poverty; and in + science which gives us new leases on life and new tools and wider + visions. These are _our_ world tasks, with England as our friendly + rival and helper. God bless us. + + W.H.P. + + _To Arthur W. Page_ + London, November 6, 1914. + + DEAR ARTHUR: + + Those excellent photographs, those excellent apples, those + excellent cigars--thanks. I'm thinking of sending Kitty[80] over + again. They all spell and smell and taste of home--of the U.S.A. + Even the messenger herself seems Unitedstatesy, and that's a good + quality, I assure you. She's told us less news than you'd think she + might for so long a journey and so long a visit; but that's the way + with us all. And, I dare say, if it were all put together it would + make a pretty big news-budget. And luckily for us (I often think we + are among the luckiest families in the world) all she says is quite + cheerful. It's a wonderful report she makes of County Line[81]--the + country, the place, the house, and its inhabitants. Maybe, praise + God, I'll see it myself some day--it and them. + + But--but--I don't know when and can't guess out of this vast fog of + war and doom. The worst of it is nobody knows just what is + happening. I have, for an example, known for a week of the blowing + up of a British dreadnaught[82]--thousands of people know it + privately--and yet it isn't published! Such secrecy makes you fear + there may be other and even worse secrets. But I don't really + believe there are. What I am trying to say is, so far as news (and + many other things) go, we are under a military rule. + + It's beginning to wear on us badly. It presses down, presses down, + presses down in an indescribable way. All the people you see have + lost sons or brothers; mourning becomes visible over a wider area + all the time; people talk of nothing else; all the books are about + the war; ordinary social life is suspended--people are visibly + growing older. And there are some aspects of it that are + incomprehensible. For instance, a group of American and English + military men and correspondents were talking with me yesterday--men + who have been on both sides--in Germany and Belgium and in + France--and they say that the Germans in France alone have had + 750,000 men killed. The Allies have lost 400,000 to 500,000. This + in France only. Take the other fighting lines and there must + already be a total of 2,000,000 killed. Nothing like that has ever + happened before in the history of the world. A flood or a fire or a + wreck which has killed 500 has often shocked all mankind. Yet we + know of this enormous slaughter and (in a way) are not greatly + moved. I don't know of a better measure of the brutalizing effect + of war--it's bringing us to take a new and more inhuman standard to + measure events by. + + As for any political or economic reckoning--that's beyond any man's + ability yet. I see strings of incomprehensible figures that some + economist or other now and then puts in the papers, summing up the + loss in pounds sterling. But that means nothing because we have no + proper measure of it. If a man lose $10 or $10,000 we can grasp + that. But when nations shoot away so many million pounds sterling + every day--that means nothing to me. I do know that there's going + to be no money on this side the world for a long time to buy + American securities. The whole world is going to be hard up in + consequence of the bankruptcy of these nations, the inestimable + destruction of property, and the loss of productive men. I fancy + that such a change will come in the economic and financial + readjustment of the world as nobody can yet guess at.--Are + Americans studying these things? It is not only South-American + trade; it is all sorts of manufacturers; it is financial + influence--if we can quit spending and wasting, and husband our + earnings. There's no telling the enormous advantages we shall gain + if we are wise. + + The extent to which the German people have permitted themselves to + be fooled is beyond belief. As a little instance of it, I enclose a + copy of a letter that Lord Bryce gave me, written by an English + woman who did good social work in her early life--a woman of + sense--and who married a German merchant and has spent her married + life in Germany. She is a wholly sincere person. This letter she + wrote to a friend in England and--she believes every word of it. If + she believes it, the great mass of the Germans believe similar + things. I have heard of a number of such letters--sincere, as this + one is. It gives a better insight into the average German mind than + a hundred speeches by the Emperor. + + This German and Austrian diplomatic business involves an enormous + amount of work. I've now sent one man to Vienna and another to + Berlin to straighten out almost hopeless tangles and lies about + prisoners and such things and to see if they won't agree to swap + more civilians detained in each country. On top of these, yesterday + came the Turkish Embassy! Alas, we shall never see old Tewfik[83] + again! This business begins briskly to-day with the detention of + every Turkish consul in the British Empire. Lord! I dread the + missionaries; and I know they're coming now. This makes four + embassies. We put up a sign, "The American Embassy," on every one + of them. Work? We're worked to death. Two nights ago I didn't get + time to read a letter or even a telegram that had come that day + till 11 o'clock at night. For on top of all these Embassies, I've + had to become Commissary-General to feed 6,000,000 starving people + in Belgium; and practically all the food must come from the United + States. You can't buy food for export in any country in Europe. The + devastation of Belgium defeats the Germans.--I don't mean in battle + but I mean in the after-judgment of mankind. They cannot recover + from that half as soon as they may recover from the economic losses + of the war. The reducing of those people to starvation--that will + stick to damn them in history, whatever they win or whatever they + lose. + + When's it going to end? Everybody who ought to know says at the + earliest next year--next summer. Many say in two years. As for me, + I don't know. I don't see how it can end soon. Neither can lick the + other to a frazzle and neither can afford to give up till it is + completely licked. This way of living in trenches and fighting a + month at a time in one place is a new thing in warfare. Many a man + shoots a cannon all day for a month without seeing a single enemy. + There are many wounded men back here who say they haven't seen a + single German. When the trenches become so full of dead men that + the living can't stay there longer, they move back to other + trenches. So it goes on. Each side has several more million men to + lose. What the end will be--I mean when it will come, I don't see + how to guess. The Allies are obliged to win; they have more food + and more money, and in the long run, more men. But the German + fighting machine is by far the best organization ever made--not the + best men, but the best organization; and the whole German people + believe what the woman writes whose letter I send you. It'll take a + long time to beat it. + + Affectionately, + W.H.P. + + * * * * * + +The letter that Page inclosed, and another copy of which was sent to the +President, purported to be written by the English wife of a German in +Bremen. It was as follows: + + * * * * * + +It is very difficult to write, more difficult to believe that what I +write will succeed in reaching you. My husband insists on my urging +you--it is not necessary I am sure--to destroy the letter and all +possible indications of its origin, should you think it worth +translating. The letter will go by a business friend of my husband's to +Holland, and be got off from there. For our business with Holland is now +exceedingly brisk as you may understand. Her neutrality is most precious +to us[84]. + +Well, I have of course a divided mind. I think of those old days in +Liverpool and Devonshire--how far off they seem! And yet I spent all +last year in England. It was in March last when I was with you and we +talked of the amazing treatment of your army--I cannot any longer call +it _our_ army--by ministers crying for the resignation of its officers +and eager to make their humiliation an election cry! How far off that +seems, too! Let me tell you that it was the conduct of your ministers, +Churchill especially, that made people here so confident that your +Government could not fight. It seemed impossible that Lloyd George and +his following could have the effrontery to pose as a "war" cabinet; +still more impossible that any sane people could trust them if they did! +Perhaps you may remember a talk we had also in March about Matthew +Arnold whom I was reading again during my convalescence at Sidmouth. You +said that "Friendship's Garland" and its Arminius could not be written +now. I disputed that and told you that it was still true that your +Government talked and "gassed" just as much as ever, and were wilfully +blind to the fact that your power of action was wholly unequal to your +words. As in 1870 so now. Nay, worse, your rulers have always known it +perfectly well, but refused to see it or to admit it, because they +wanted office and knew that to say the truth would bring the radical +vote in the cities upon their poor heads. It is the old hypocrisy, in +the sense in which Germans have always accused your nation: alas! and it +is half my nation too. You pride yourselves on "Keeping your word" to +Belgium. But you pride yourselves also, not so overtly just now, on +always refusing to prepare yourselves to keep that word in _deed_. In +the first days of August you knew, absolutely and beyond all doubt, that +you could do nothing to make good your word. You had not the moral +courage to say so, and, having said so, to act accordingly and to warn +Belgium that your promise was "a scrap of paper," and effectively +nothing more. It _is_ nothing more, and has proved to be nothing more, +but you do not see that your indelible disgrace lies just in this, that +you unctuously proclaim that you are keeping your word when all the time +you know, you have always known, that you refused utterly and completely +to take the needful steps to enable you to translate word into action. +Have you not torn up your "scrap of paper" just as effectively as +Germany has? As my husband puts it: England gave Belgium a check, a big +check, and gave it with much ostentation, but took care that there +should be no funds to meet it! Trusting to your check Belgium finds +herself bankrupt, sequestrated, blotted out as a nation. But I know +England well enough to foresee that English statesmen, with our old +friend, the Manchester _Guardian_, which we used to read in years gone +by, will always quote with pride how they "guaranteed" the neutrality of +Belgium. + +As to the future. You cannot win. A nation that has prided itself on +making no sacrifice for political power or even independence must pay +for its pride. Our house here in Bremen has lately been by way of a +centre for naval men, and to a less extent, for officers of the +neighbouring commands. They are absolutely confident that they will land +ten army corps in England before Christmas. It is terrible to know what +they mean to go for. They mean to destroy. Every town which remotely is +concerned with war material is to be annihilated. Birmingham, Bradford, +Leeds, Newcastle, Sheffield, Northampton are to be wiped out, and the +men killed, ruthlessly hunted down. The fact that Lancashire and +Yorkshire have held aloof from recruiting is not to save them. The fact +that Great Britain is to be a Reichsland will involve the destruction of +inhabitants, to enable German citizens to be planted in your country in +their place. German soldiers hope that your poor creatures will resist, +as patriots should, but they doubt it very much. For resistance will +facilitate the process of clearance. Ireland will be left independent, +and its harmlessness will be guaranteed by its inevitable civil war. + +You may wonder, as I do sometimes, whether this hatred of England is not +unworthy, or a form of mental disease. But you must know that it is at +bottom not hatred but contempt; fierce, unreasoning scorn for a country +that pursues money and ease, from aristocrat to trade-unionist labourer, +when it has a great inheritance to defend. I feel bitter, too, for I +spent half my life in your country and my dearest friends are all +English still; and yet I am deeply ashamed of the hypocrisy and +make-believe that has initiated your national policy and brought you +down. Now, one thing more. England is, after all, only a stepping stone. +From Liverpool, Queenstown, Glasgow, Belfast, we shall reach out across +the ocean. I firmly believe that within a year Germany will have seized +the new Canal and proclaimed its defiance of the great Monroe Doctrine. +We have six million Germans in the United States, and the +Irish-Americans behind them. The Americans, believe me, are _as a +nation_ a cowardly nation, and will never fight organized strength +except in defense of their own territories. With the Nova Scotian +peninsula and the Bermudas, with the West Indies and the Guianas we +shall be able to dominate the Americas. By our possession of the entire +Western European seaboard America can find no outlet for its products +except by our favour. Her finance is in German hands, her commercial +capitals, New York and Chicago, are in reality German cities. It is some +years since my father and I were in New York. But my opinion is not very +different from that of the forceful men who have planned this war--that +with Britain as a base the control of the American continent is under +existing conditions the task of a couple of months. + +I remember a conversation with Doctor Dohrn, the head of the great +biological station at Naples, some four or five years ago. He was +complaining of want of adequate subventions from Berlin. "Everything is +wanted for the Navy," he said. "And what really does Germany want with +such a navy?" I asked. "She is always saying that she certainly does not +regard it as a weapon against England." At that Doctor Dohrn raised his +eyebrows. "But you, _gnädige Frau_, are a German?" "Of course." "Well, +then, you will understand me when I say with all the seriousness I can +command that this fleet of ours is intended to deal with smugglers on +the shores of the Island of Rügen." I laughed. He became graver still. +"The ultimate enemy of our country is America[85]; and I pray that I may +see the day of an alliance between a beaten England and a victorious +Fatherland against the bully of the Americas." Well, Germany and Austria +were never friends until Sadowa had shown the way. Oh! if your country, +which in spite of all I love so much, would but "see things clearly and +see them whole." + +Bremen, September 25, 1914. + + _To Ralph W. Page_[86] + London, Sunday, November 15, 1914. + + DEAR RALPH: + + You were very good to sit down in Greensboro', or anywhere else, + and to write me a fine letter. Do that often. You say there's + nothing to do now in the Sandhills. Write us letters: that's a fair + job! + + God save us, we need 'em. We need anything from the sane part of + the world to enable us to keep our balance. One of the commonest + things you hear about now is the insanity of a good number of the + poor fellows who come back from the trenches as well as of a good + many Belgians. The sights and sounds they've experienced unhinge + their reason. If this war keep up long enough--and it isn't going + to end soon--people who have had no sight of it will go crazy, + too--the continuous thought of it, the inability to get away from + it by any device whatever--all this tells on us all. Letters, then, + plenty of them--let 'em come. + + You are in a peaceful land. The war is a long, long way off. You + suffer nothing worse than a little idleness and a little poverty. + They are nothing. I hope (and believe) that you get enough to eat. + Be content, then. Read the poets, improve a piece of land, play + with the baby, learn golf. That's the happy and philosophic and + fortunate life in these times of world-madness. + + As for the continent of Europe--forget it. We have paid far too + much attention to it. It has ceased to be worth it. And now it's of + far less value to us--and will be for the rest of your life--than + it has ever been before. An ancient home of man, the home, too, of + beautiful things--buildings, pictures, old places, old traditions, + dead civilizations--the place where man rose from barbarism to + civilization--it is now bankrupt, its best young men dead, its + system of politics and of government a failure, its social + structure enslaving and tyrannical--it has little help for us. The + American spirit, which is the spirit that concerns itself with + making life better for the whole mass of men--that's at home at its + best with us. The whole future of the race is in the new + countries--our country chiefly. This grows on one more and more and + more. The things that are best worth while are on our side of the + ocean. And we've got all the bigger job to do because of this + violent demonstration of the failure of continental Europe. It's + gone on living on a false basis till its elements got so mixed that + it has simply blown itself to pieces. It is a great convulsion of + nature, as an earthquake or a volcano is. Human life there isn't + worth what a yellow dog's life is worth in Moore County. Don't + bother yourself with the continent of Europe any more--except to + learn the value of a real democracy and the benefits it can confer + precisely in proportion to the extent to which men trust to it. Did + you ever read my Address delivered before the Royal Institution of + Great Britain[87]? I enclose a copy. Now that's my idea of the very + milk of the word. To come down to daily, deadly things--this + upheaval is simply infernal. Parliament opened the other day and + half the old lords that sat in their robes had lost their heirs and + a larger part of the members of the House wore khaki. To-morrow + they will vote $1,125,000,000 for war purposes. They had already + voted $500,000,000. They'll vote more, and more, and more, if + necessary. They are raising a new army of 2,000,000 men. Every man + and every dollar they have will go if necessary. That's what I call + an invincible people. The Kaiser woke up the wrong passenger. But + for fifty years the continent won't be worth living on. My heavens! + what bankruptcy will follow death! + + Affectionately, + W.H.P. + + _To Frank C. Page_[88] + Sunday, December 20th, 1914. + + DEAR OLD MAN: + + I envy both you and your mother[89] your chance to make plans for + the farm and the house and all the rest of it and to have one + another to talk to. And, most of all, you are where you can now and + then change the subject. You can guess somewhat at our plight when + Kitty and I confessed to one another last night that we were dead + tired and needed to go to bed early and to stay long. She's + sleeping yet, the dear kid, and I hope she'll sleep till lunch + time. There isn't anything the matter with us but the war; but + that's enough, Heaven knows. It's the worst ailment that has ever + struck me. Then, if you add to that this dark, wet, foggy, sooty, + cold, penetrating climate--you ought to thank your stars that + you are not in it. I'm glad your mother's out of it, as much as we + miss her; and miss her? Good gracious! there's no telling the hole + her absence makes in all our life. But Kitty is a trump, true blue + and dead game, and the very best company you can find in a day's + journey. And, much as we miss your mother, you mustn't weep for us; + we are having some fun and are planning more. I could have no end + of fun with her if I had any time. But to work all day and till + bedtime doesn't leave much time for sport. + + The farm--the farm--the farm--it's yours and Mother's to plan and + make and do with as you wish. I shall be happy whatever you do, + even if you put the roof in the cellar and the cellar on top of the + house. + + If you have room enough (16 X 10 plus a fire and a bath are enough + for me), I'll go down there and write a book. If you haven't it, + I'll go somewhere else and write a book. I don't propose to be made + unhappy by any house or by the lack of any house nor by anything + whatsoever. + + All the details of life go on here just the same. The war goes as + slowly as death because it _is_ death, death to millions of men. + We've all said all we know about it to one another a thousand + times; nobody knows anything else; nobody can guess when it will + end; nobody has any doubt about how it will end, unless some + totally improbable and unexpected thing happens, such as the + falling out of the Allies, which can't happen for none of them can + afford it; and we go around the same bloody circle all the time. + The papers never have any news; nobody ever talks about anything + else; everybody is tired to death; nobody is cheerful; when it + isn't sick Belgians, it's aeroplanes; and when it isn't aeroplanes, + it's bombarding the coast of England. When it isn't an American + ship held up, it's a fool American-German arrested as a spy; and + when it isn't a spy it's a liar who _knows_ the Zeppelins are + coming to-night. We don't know anything; we don't believe anybody; + we should be surprised at nothing; and at 3 o'clock I'm going to + the Abbey to a service in honour of the 100 years of peace! The + world has all got itself so jumbled up that the bays are all + promontories, the mountains are all valleys, and earthquakes are + necessary for our happiness. We have disasters for breakfast; mined + ships for luncheon; burned cities for dinner; trenches in our + dreams, and bombarded towns for small talk. + + Peaceful seems the sandy landscape where you are, glad the very + blackjacks, happy the curs, blessed the sheep, interesting the + chin-whiskered clodhopper, innocent the fool darkey, blessed the + mule, for it knows no war. And you have your mother--be happy, boy; + you don't know how much you have to be thankful for. + + Europe is ceasing to be interesting except as an example of + how-not-to-do-it. It has no lessons for us except as a warning. + When the whole continent has to go fighting--every blessed one of + them--once a century, and half of them half the time between and + all prepared even when they are not fighting, and when they shoot + away all their money as soon as they begin to get rich a little and + everybody else's money, too, and make the whole world poor, and + when they kill every third or fourth generation of the best men and + leave the worst to rear families, and have to start over afresh + every time with a worse stock--give me Uncle Sam and his big farm. + We don't need to catch any of this European life. We can do without + it all as well as we can do without the judges' wigs and the court + costumes. Besides, I like a land where the potatoes have some + flavour, where you can buy a cigar, and get your hair cut and have + warm bathrooms. + + Build the farm, therefore; and let me hear at every stage of that + happy game. May the New Year be the best that has ever come for + you! + + Affectionately, + + W.H.P. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 68: Evidently the battle of Heligoland Bight of August 28, +1914.] + +[Footnote 69: The reference in all probability is to Mr. Charles L. +Hoover, at that time American Consul at Carlsbad.] + +[Footnote 70: German Ambassador in Washington.] + +[Footnote 71: Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, whose +openly expressed pro-Germanism was making him exceedingly unpopular in +the United States.] + +[Footnote 72: Evidently written in the latter part of September, 1914.] + +[Footnote 73: Miss Katharine A. Page, the Ambassador's daughter.] + +[Footnote 74: The _Hague_, the _Cressy_, and the _Aboukir_ were +torpedoed by a German submarine September 22, 1914. This exploit first +showed the world the power of the submarine.] + +[Footnote 75: Princess Lichnowsky, wife of the German Ambassador to +Great Britain.] + +[Footnote 76: Private Secretary to Mrs. Page.] + +[Footnote 77: Mr. Harold Fowler, the Ambassador's Secretary.] + +[Footnote 78: Probably a reference to Mr. Charles M. Schwab, President +of the Bethlehem Steel Company, who was in London at this time on this +errand.] + +[Footnote 79: No. 4 Grosvenor Gardens.] + +[Footnote 80: Miss Katharine A. Page had just returned from a visit to +the United States.] + +[Footnote 81: Mr. Arthur W. Page's country home on Long Island.] + +[Footnote 82: Evidently the _Audacious_, sunk by mine off the North of +Ireland, October 27, 1914.] + +[Footnote 83: Tewfik Pasha, the very popular Turkish Ambassador to Great +Britain.] + +[Footnote 84: Germany was conducting her trade with the neutral world +largely through Dutch and Danish ports.] + +[Footnote 85: Mr. Irwin Laughlin, first secretary of the American +Embassy in London, furnishes this note: "This statement about America +was made to me more than once in Germany, between 1910 and 1912, by +German officers, military and naval."] + +[Footnote 86: Of Pinehurst, North Carolina, the Ambassador's oldest +son.] + +[Footnote 87: On June 12, 1914. The title of the address was "Some +Aspects of the American Democracy."] + +[Footnote 88: The Ambassador's youngest son.] + +[Footnote 89: Mrs. W.H. Page was at this time spending a few weeks in +the United States.] + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +"WAGING NEUTRALITY" + +I + + +The foregoing letters sufficiently portray Page's attitude toward the +war; they also show the extent to which he suffered from the daily +tragedy. The great burdens placed upon the Embassy in themselves would +have exhausted a physical frame that had never been particularly robust; +but more disintegrating than these was the mental distress--the constant +spectacle of a civilization apparently bent upon its own destruction. +Indeed there were probably few men in Europe upon whom the war had a +more depressing effect. In the first few weeks the Ambassador +perceptibly grew older; his face became more deeply lined, his hair +became grayer, his body thinner, his step lost something of its +quickness, his shoulders began to stoop, and his manner became more and +more abstracted. Page's kindness, geniality, and consideration had long +since endeared him to all the embassy staff, from his chief secretaries +to clerks and doormen; and all his associates now watched with +affectionate solicitude the extent to which the war was wearing upon +him. "In those first weeks," says Mr. Irwin Laughlin, Page's most +important assistant and the man upon whom the routine work of the +Embassy largely fell, "he acted like a man who was carrying on his +shoulders all the sins and burdens of the world. I know no man who +seemed to realize so poignantly the misery and sorrow of it all. The +sight of an England which he loved bleeding to death in defence of the +things in which he most believed was a grief that seemed to be sapping +his very life." + +Page's associates, however, noted a change for the better after the +Battle of the Marne. Except to his most intimate companions he said +little, for he represented a nation that was "neutral"; but the defeat +of the Germans added liveliness to his step, gave a keener sparkle to +his eye, and even brought back some of his old familiar gaiety of +spirit. One day the Ambassador was lunching with Mr. Laughlin and one or +two other friends. + +"We did pretty well in that Battle of the Marne, didn't we?" he said. + +"Isn't that remark slightly unneutral, Mr. Ambassador?" asked Mr. +Laughlin. + +At this a roar of laughter went up from the table that could be heard +for a considerable distance. + +About this same time Page's personal secretary, Mr. Harold Fowler, came +to ask the Ambassador's advice about enlisting in the British Army. To +advise a young man to take a step that might very likely result in his +death was a heavy responsibility, and the Ambassador refused to accept +it. It was a matter that the Secretary could settle only with his own +conscience. Mr. Fowler decided his problem by joining the British Army; +he had a distinguished career in its artillery and aviation service as +he had subsequently in the American Army. Mr. Fowler at once discovered +that his decision had been highly pleasing to his superior. + +"I couldn't advise you to do this, Harold," Page said, placing his hand +on the young man's shoulder, "but now that you've settled it yourself +I'll say this--if I were a young man like you and in your circumstances, +I should enlist myself." + +Yet greatly as Page abhorred the Prussians and greatly as his +sympathies from the first day of the war were enlisted on the side of +the Allies, there was no diplomat in the American service who was more +"neutral" in the technical sense. "Neutral!" Page once exclaimed. +"There's nothing in the world so neutral as this embassy. Neutrality +takes up all our time." When he made this remark he was, as he himself +used to say, "the German Ambassador to Great Britain." And he was +performing the duties of this post with the most conscientious fidelity. +These duties were onerous and disagreeable ones and were made still more +so by the unreasonableness of the German Government. Though the American +Embassy was caring for the more than 70,000 Germans who were then living +in England and was performing numerous other duties, the Imperial +Government never realized that Page and the Embassy staff were doing it +a service. With characteristic German tactlessness the German Foreign +Office attempted to be as dictatorial to Page as though he had been one +of its own junior secretaries. The business of the German Embassy in +London was conducted with great ability; the office work was kept in the +most shipshape condition; yet the methods were American methods and the +Germans seemed aggrieved because the routine of the Imperial bureaucracy +was not observed. With unparalleled insolence they objected to the +American system of accounting--not that it was unsound or did not give +an accurate picture of affairs--but simply that it was not German. Page +quietly but energetically informed the German Government that the +American diplomatic service was not a part of the German organization, +that its bookkeeping system was American, not German, that he was doing +this work not as an obligation but as a favour, and that, so long as he +continued to do it, he would perform the duty in his own way. At this +the Imperial Government subsided. Despite such annoyances Page refused +to let his own feelings interfere with the work. The mere fact that he +despised the Germans made him over-scrupulous in taking all precautions +that they obtained exact justice. But this was all that the German cause +in Great Britain did receive. His administration of the German Embassy +was faultless in its technique, but it did not err on the side of +over-enthusiasm. + +His behaviour throughout the three succeeding years was entirely +consistent with his conception of "neutrality." That conception, as is +apparent from the letters already printed, was not the Wilsonian +conception. Probably no American diplomat was more aggrieved at the +President's definition of neutrality than his Ambassador to Great +Britain. Page had no quarrel with the original neutrality proclamation; +that was purely a routine governmental affair, and at the time it was +issued it represented the proper American attitude. But the President's +famous emendations filled him with astonishment and dismay. "We must be +impartial in thought as well as in action," said the President on August +19th[90], "we must put a curb upon our sentiments as well as upon every +transaction that might be construed as a prejudice of one party to the +prejudice of another." Page was prepared to observe all the traditional +rules of neutrality, to insist on American rights with the British +Government, and to do full legal justice to the Germans, but he declined +to abrogate his conscience where his personal judgment of the rights and +wrongs of the conflict were concerned. "Neutrality," he said in a letter +to his brother, Mr. Henry A. Page, of Aberdeen, N.C., "is a quality of +government--an artificial unit. When a war comes a government must go in +it or stay out of it. It must make a declaration to the world of its +attitude. That's all that neutrality is. A government can be neutral, +but no _man_ can be." + +"The President and the Government," Page afterward wrote, "in their +insistence upon the moral quality of neutrality, missed the larger +meaning of the war. It is at bottom nothing but the effort of the Berlin +absolute monarch and his group to impose their will on as large a part +of the world as they can overrun. The President started out with the +idea that it was a war brought on by many obscure causes--economic and +the like; and he thus missed its whole meaning. We have ever since been +dealing with the chips which fly from the war machine and have missed +the larger meaning of the conflict. Thus we have failed to render help +to the side of Liberalism and Democracy, which are at stake in the +world." + +Nor did Page think it his duty, in his private communications to his +Government and his friends, to maintain that attitude of moral +detachment which Mr. Wilson's pronouncement had evidently enjoined upon +him. It was not his business to announce his opinions to the world, for +he was not the man who determined the policy of the United States; that +was the responsibility of the President and his advisers. But an +ambassador did have a certain rôle to perform. It was his duty to +collect information and impressions, to discover what important people +thought of the United States and of its policies, and to send forward +all such data to Washington. According to Page's theory of the +Ambassadorial office, he was a kind of listening post on the front of +diplomacy, and he would have grievously failed had he not done his best +to keep headquarters informed. He did not regard it as "loyalty" merely +to forward only that kind of material which Washington apparently +preferred to obtain; with a frankness which Mr. Wilson's friends +regarded as almost ruthless, Page reported what he believed to be the +truth. That this practice was displeasing to the powers of Washington +there is abundant evidence. In early December, 1914, Colonel House was +compelled to transmit a warning to the American Ambassador at London. +"The President wished me to ask you to please be more careful not to +express any unneutral feeling, either by word of mouth, or by letter and +not even to the State Department. He said that both Mr. Bryan and Mr. +Lansing had remarked upon your leaning in that direction and he thought +that it would materially lessen your influence. He feels very strongly +about this." + +Evidently Page did not regard his frank descriptions of England under +war as expressing unneutral feeling; at any rate, as the war went on, +his letters, even those which he wrote to President Wilson, became more +and more outspoken. Page's resignation was always at the President's +disposal; the time came, as will appear, when it was offered; so long as +he occupied his post, however, nothing could turn him from his +determination to make what he regarded as an accurate record of events. +This policy of maintaining an outward impartiality, and, at the same +time, of bringing pressure to bear on Washington in behalf of the +Allies, he called "waging neutrality." + +Such was the mood in which Page now prepared to play his part in what +was probably the greatest diplomatic drama in history. The materials +with which this drama concerned itself were such apparently lifeless +subjects as ships and cargoes, learned discourses on such abstract +matters as the doctrine of continuous voyage, effective blockade, and +conditional contraband; yet the struggle, which lasted for three years, +involved the greatest issue of modern times--nothing less than the +survival of those conceptions of liberty, government, and society which +make the basis of English-speaking civilization. To the newspaper reader +of war days, shipping difficulties signified little more than a +newspaper headline which he hastily read, or a long and involved +lawyer's note which he seldom read at all--or, if he did, practically +never understood. Yet these minute and neglected controversies presented +to the American Nation the greatest decision in its history. Once +before, a century ago, a European struggle had laid before the United +States practically the same problem. Great Britain fought Napoleon, just +as it had now been compelled to fight the Hohenzollern, by blockade; +such warfare, in the early nineteenth century, led to retaliations, just +as did the maritime warfare in the recent conflict, and the United +States suffered, in 1812, as in 1914, from what were regarded as the +depredations of both sides. In Napoleon's days France and Great Britain, +according to the international lawyers, attacked American commerce in +illegal ways; on strictly technical grounds this infant nation had an +adequate cause of war against both belligerents; but the ultimate +consequence of a very confused situation was a declaration of war +against Great Britain. Though an England which was ruled by a George III +or a Prince Regent--an England of rotten boroughs, of an ignorant and +oppressed peasantry, and of a social organization in which caste was +almost as definitely drawn as in an Oriental despotism--could hardly +appeal to the enthusiastic democrat as embodying all the ideals of his +system, yet the England of 1800 did represent modern progress when +compared with the mediæval autocracy of Napoleon. If we take this broad +view, therefore, we must admit that, in 1812, we fought on the side of +darkness and injustice against the forces that were making for +enlightenment. The war of 1914 had not gone far when the thinking +American foresaw that it would present to the American people precisely +this same problem. What would the decision be? Would America repeat the +experience of 1812, or had the teachings of a century so dissipated +hatreds that it would be able to exert its influence in a way more +worthy of itself and more helpful to the progress of mankind? + +There was one great difference, however, between the position of the +United States in 1812 and its position in 1914. A century ago we were a +small and feeble nation, of undeveloped industries and resources and of +immature character; our entrance into the European conflict, on one side +or the other, could have little influence upon its results, and, in +fact, it influenced it scarcely at all; the side we fought against +emerged triumphant. In 1914, we had the greatest industrial organization +and the greatest wealth of any nation and the largest white population +of any country except Russia; the energy of our people and our national +talent for success had long been the marvel of foreign observers. It +mattered little in 1812 on which side the United States took its stand; +in 1914 such a decision Mould inevitably determine the issue. Of all +European statesmen there was one man who saw this point with a +definiteness which, in itself, gives him a clear title to fame. That was +Sir Edward Grey. The time came when a section of the British public was +prepared almost to stone the Foreign Secretary in the streets of London, +because they believed that his "subservience" to American trade +interests was losing the war for Great Britain; his tenure of office was +a constant struggle with British naval and military chiefs who asserted +that the Foreign Office, in its efforts to maintain harmonious relations +with America, was hamstringing the British fleet, was rendering almost +impotent its control of the sea, and was thus throwing away the greatest +advantage which Great Britain possessed in its life and death struggle. +"Some blight has been at work in our Foreign Office for years," said the +_Quarterly Review_, "steadily undermining our mastery of the sea." + +"The fleet is not allowed to act," cried Lord Charles Beresford in +Parliament; the Foreign Office was constantly interfering with its +operations. The word "traitor" was not infrequently heard; there were +hints that pro-Germanism was rampant and that officials in the Foreign +Office were drawing their pay from the Kaiser. It was constantly charged +that the navy was bringing in suspicious cargoes only to have the +Foreign Office order their release. "I fight Sir Edward about stopping +cargoes," Page wrote to Colonel House in December, 1914; "literally +fight. He yields and promises this or that. This or that doesn't happen +or only half happens. I know why. The military ministers balk him. I +inquire through the back door and hear that the Admiralty and the War +Office of course value American good-will, but they'll take their +chances of a quarrel with the United States rather than let copper get +to Germany. The cabinet has violent disagreements. But the military men +yield as little as possible. It was rumoured the other day that the +Prime Minister threatened to resign; and I know that Kitchener's sister +told her friends, with tears in her eyes, that the cabinet shamefully +hindered her brother." + +These criticisms unquestionably caused Sir Edward great unhappiness, but +this did not for a moment move him from his course. His vision was +fixed upon a much greater purpose. Parliamentary orators might rage +because the British fleet was not permitted to make indiscriminate +warfare on commerce, but the patient and far-seeing British Foreign +Secretary was the man who was really trying to win the war. He was one +of the few Englishmen who, in August, 1914, perceived the tremendous +extent of the struggle in which Great Britain had engaged. He saw that +the English people were facing the greatest crisis since William of +Normandy, in 1066, subjected their island to foreign rule. Was England +to become the "Reichsland" of a European monarch, and was the British +Empire to pass under the sway of Germany? Proud as Sir Edward Grey was +of his country, he was modest in the presence of facts; and one fact of +which he early became convinced was that Great Britain could not win +unless the United States was ranged upon its side. Here was the +country--so Sir Edward reasoned--that contained the largest effective +white population in the world; that could train armies larger than those +of any other nation; that could make the most munitions, build the +largest number of battleships and merchant vessels, and raise food in +quantities great enough to feed itself and Europe besides. This power, +the Foreign Secretary believed, could determine the issue of the war. If +Great Britain secured American sympathy and support, she would win; if +Great Britain lost this sympathy and support, she would lose. A foreign +policy that would estrange the United States and perhaps even throw its +support to Germany would not only lose the war to Great Britain, but it +would be perhaps the blackest crime in history, for it would mean the +collapse of that British-American coöperation, and the destruction of +those British-American ideals and institutions which are the greatest +facts in the modern world. This conviction was the basis of Sir Edward's +policy from the day that Great Britain declared war. Whatever enemies he +might make in England, the Foreign Secretary was determined to shape his +course so that the support of the United States would be assured to his +country. A single illustration shows the skill and wisdom with which he +pursued this great purpose. + +Perhaps nothing in the early days of the war enraged the British +military chiefs more than the fact that cotton was permitted to go from +the United States to Germany. That Germany was using this cotton in the +manufacture of torpedoes to sink British ships and of projectiles to +kill British soldiers in trenches was well known; nor did many people +deny that Great Britain had the right to put cotton on the contraband +list. Yet Grey, in the pursuit of his larger end, refused to take this +step. He knew that the prosperity of the Southern States depended +exclusively upon the cotton crop. He also knew that the South had raised +the 1914 crop with no knowledge that a war was impending and that to +deny the Southern planters their usual access to the German markets +would all but ruin them. He believed that such a ruling would +immediately alienate the sympathy of a large section of the United +States and make our Southern Senators and Congressmen enemies of Great +Britain. Sir Edward was also completely informed of the extent to which +the German-Americans and the Irish-Americans were active and he was +familiar with the aims of American pacifists. He believed that declaring +cotton contraband at this time would bring together in Congress the +Southern Senators and Congressmen, the representatives of the Irish and +the German causes and the pacifists, and that this combination would +exercise an influence that would be disastrous to Great Britain. Two +dangers constantly haunted Sir Edward's mind at this time. One was that +the enemies of Great Britain would assemble enough votes in Congress to +place an embargo upon the shipment of munitions from this country. Such +an embargo might well be fatal to Great Britain, for at this time she +was importing munitions, especially shells, in enormous quantities from +the United States. The other was that such pressure might force the +Government to convoy American cargoes with American warships. Great +Britain then could stop the cargoes only by attacking our cruisers, and +to attack a cruiser is an act of war. Had Congress taken either one of +these steps the Allies would have lost the war in the spring of 1915. At +a cabinet meeting held to consider this question, Sir Edward Grey set +forth this view and strongly advised that cotton should not be made +contraband at that time[91]. The Cabinet supported him and events +justified the decision. Afterward, in Washington, several of the most +influential Senators informed Sir Edward that this action had averted a +great crisis. + +This was the motive, which, as will appear as the story of our relations +with Great Britain progresses, inspired the Foreign Secretary in all his +dealings with the United States. His purpose was to use the sea power of +Great Britain to keep war materials and foodstuffs out of Germany, but +never to go to the length of making an unbridgeable gulf between the +United States and Great Britain. The American Ambassador to Great +Britain completely sympathized with this programme. It was Page's +business to protect the rights of the United States, just as it was +Grey's to protect the rights of Great Britain. Both were vigilant in +protecting such rights, and animated differences between the two men on +this point were not infrequent. Great Britain did many absurd and +high-handed things in intercepting American cargoes, and Page was always +active in "protesting" when the basis for the protest actually existed. +But on the great overhanging issue the two men were at one. Like Grey, +Page believed that there were more important things involved than an +occasional cargo of copper or of oil cake. The American Ambassador +thought that the United States should protect its shipping interests, +but that it should realize that maritime law was not an exact science, +that its principles had been modified by every great conflict in which +the blockade had been an effective agency, and that the United States +itself, in the Civil War, had not hesitated to make such changes as the +changed methods of modern transportation had required. In other words he +believed that we could safeguard our rights in a way that would not +prevent Great Britain from keeping war materials and foodstuffs out of +Germany. And like Sir Edward Grey, Page was obliged to contend with +forces at home which maintained a contrary view. In this early period +Mr. Bryan was nominally Secretary of State, but the man who directed the +national policy in shipping matters was Robert Lansing, then counsellor +of the Department. It is somewhat difficult to appraise Mr. Lansing +justly, for in his conduct of his office there was not the slightest +taint of malice. His methods were tactless, the phrasing of his notes +lacked deftness and courtesy, his literary style was crude and +irritating; but Mr. Lansing was not anti-British, he was not pro-German; +he was nothing more nor less than a lawyer. The protection of American +rights at sea was to him simply a "case" in which he had been retained +as counsel for the plaintiff. As a good lawyer it was his business to +score as many points as possible for his client and the more weak joints +he found in the enemy's armour the better did he do his job. It was his +duty to scan the law books, to look up the precedents, to examine facts, +and to prepare briefs that would be unassailable from a technical +standpoint. To Mr. Lansing this European conflict was the opportunity of +a lifetime. He had spent thirty years studying the intricate problems +that now became his daily companions. His mind revelled in such minute +details as ultimate destination, the continuous voyage as applied to +conditional contraband, the searching of cargoes upon the high seas, +belligerent trading through neutral ports, war zones, orders in council, +and all the other jargon of maritime rights in time of war. These topics +engrossed him as completely as the extension of democracy and the +significance of British-American coöperation engrossed all the thoughts +of Page and Grey. + +That Page took this larger view is evident from the communications which +he now began sending to the President. One that he wrote on October 15, +1915, is especially to the point. The date is extremely important; so +early had Page formulated the standards that should guide the United +States and so early had he begun his work of attempting to make +President Wilson understand the real nature of the conflict. The +position which Page now assumed was one from which he never departed. + + _To the President_ + + In this great argument about shipping I cannot help being alarmed + because we are getting into deep water uselessly. The Foreign + Office has yielded unquestioningly to all our requests and has + shown the sincerest wish to meet all our suggestions, so long as + it is not called upon to admit war materials into Germany. It will + not give way to us in that. We would not yield it if we were in + their place. Neither would the Germans. England will risk a serious + quarrel or even hostilities with us rather than yield. You may look + upon this as the final word. + + Since the last lists of contraband and conditional contraband were + published, such materials as rubber and copper and petroleum have + developed entirely new uses in war. The British simply will not let + Germany import them. Nothing that can be used for war purposes in + Germany now will be used for anything else. Representatives of + Spain, Holland, and all the Scandinavian states agree that they can + do nothing but acquiesce and file protests and claims, and they + admit that Great Britain has the right to revise the list of + contraband. This is not a war in the sense in which we have + hitherto used that word. It is a world-clash of systems of + government, a struggle to the extermination of English civilization + or of Prussian military autocracy. Precedents have gone to the + scrap heap. We have a new measure for military and diplomatic + action. Let us suppose that we press for a few rights to which the + shippers have a theoretical claim. The American people gain nothing + and the result is friction with this country; and that is what a + very small minority of the agitators in the United States would + like. Great Britain can any day close the Channel to all shipping + or can drive Holland to the enemy and blockade her ports. + + Let us take a little farther view into the future. If Germany win, + will it make any difference what position Great Britain took on the + Declaration of London? The Monroe Doctrine will be shot through. We + shall have to have a great army and a great navy. But suppose that + England win. We shall then have an ugly academic dispute with her + because of this controversy. Moreover, we shall not hold a good + position for helping to compose the quarrel or for any other + service. + + The present controversy seems here, where we are close to the + struggle, academic. It seems to us a petty matter when it is + compared with the grave danger we incur of shutting ourselves off + from a position to be of some service to civilization and to the + peace of mankind. + + In Washington you seem to be indulging in a more or less + theoretical discussion. As we see the issue here, it is a matter of + life and death for English-speaking civilization. It is not a happy + time to raise controversies that can be avoided or postponed. We + gain nothing, we lose every chance for useful coöperation for + peace. In jeopardy also are our friendly relations with Great + Britain in the sorest need and the greatest crisis in her history. + I know that this is the correct view. I recommend most earnestly + that we shall substantially accept the new Order in Council or + acquiesce in it and reserve whatever rights we may have. I + recommend prompt information be sent to the British Government of + such action. I should like to inform Grey that this is our + decision. + + So far as our neutrality obligations are concerned, I do not + believe that they require us to demand that Great Britain should + adopt for our benefit the Declaration of London. Great Britain has + never ratified it, nor have any other nations except the United + States. In its application to the situation presented by this war + it is altogether to the advantage of Germany. + + I have delayed to write you this way too long. I have feared that I + might possibly seem to be influenced by sympathy with England and + by the atmosphere here. But I write of course solely with reference + to our own country's interest and its position after the + reorganization of Europe. + + Anderson[92] and Laughlin[93] agree with me emphatically. + + WALTER H. PAGE. + + +II + +The immediate cause of this protest was, as its context shows, the fact +that the State Department was insisting that Great Britain should adopt +the Declaration of London as a code of law for regulating its warfare on +German shipping. Hostilities had hardly started when Mr. Bryan made this +proposal; his telegram on this subject is dated August 7, 1914. "You +will further state," said Mr. Bryan, "that this Government believes that +the acceptance of these laws by the belligerents would prevent grave +misunderstandings which may arise as to the relations between +belligerents and neutrals. It therefore hopes that this inquiry may +receive favourable consideration." At the same time Germany and the +other belligerents were asked to adopt this Declaration. + +The communication was thus more than a suggestion; it was a +recommendation that was strongly urged. According to Page this telegram +was the first great mistake the American Government made in its +relations with Great Britain. In September, 1916, the Ambassador +submitted to President Wilson a memorandum which he called "Rough notes +toward an explanation of the British feeling toward the United States." +"Of recent years," he said, "and particularly during the first year of +the present Administration, the British feeling toward the United States +was most friendly and cordial. About the time of the repeal of the +tolls clause in the Panama Act, the admiration and friendliness of the +whole British public (governmental and private) reached the highest +point in our history. In considering the change that has taken place +since, it is well to bear this cordiality in mind as a starting point. +When the war came on there was at first nothing to change this attitude. +The hysterical hope of many persons that our Government might protest +against the German invasion of Belgium caused some feeling of +disappointment, but thinking men did not share it; and, if this had been +the sole cause of criticism of us, the criticism would have died out. +The unusually high regard in which the President--and hence our +Government--was then held was to a degree new. The British had for many +years held the people of the United States in high esteem: they had not, +as a rule, so favourably regarded the Government at Washington, +especially in its conduct of foreign relations. They had long regarded +our Government as ignorant of European affairs and amateurish in its +cockiness. When I first got to London I found evidence of this feeling, +even in the most friendly atmosphere that surrounded us. Mr. Bryan was +looked on as a joke. They forgot him--rather, they never took serious +notice of him. But, when the Panama tolls incident was closed, they +regarded the President as his own Foreign Secretary; and thus our +Government as well as our Nation came into this high measure of esteem. + +"The war began. We, of course, took a neutral attitude, wholly to their +satisfaction. But we at once interfered--or tried to interfere--by +insisting on the Declaration of London, which no Great Power but the +United States (I think) had ratified and which the British House of +Lords had distinctly rejected. That Declaration would probably have +given a victory to Germany if the Allies had adopted it. In spite of +our neutrality we insisted vigorously on its adoption and aroused a +distrust in our judgment. Thus we started in wrong, so far as the +British Government is concerned." + +The rules of maritime warfare which the American State Department so +disastrously insisted upon were the direct outcome of the Hague +Conference of 1907. That assembly of the nations recognized, what had +long been a palpable fact, that the utmost confusion existed in the +operations of warring powers upon the high seas. About the fundamental +principle that a belligerent had the right, if it had the power, to keep +certain materials of commerce from reaching its enemy, there was no +dispute. But as to the particular articles which it could legally +exclude there were as many different ideas as there were nations. That +the blockade, a term which means the complete exclusion of cargoes and +ships from an enemy's ports, was a legitimate means of warfare, was also +an accepted fact, but as to the precise means in which the blockade +could be enforced there was the widest difference of opinion. The Hague +Conference provided that an attempt should be made to codify these laws +into a fixed system, and the representatives of the nations met in +London in 1908, under the presidency of the Earl of Desart, for this +purpose. The outcome of their two months' deliberations was that +document of seven chapters and seventy articles which has ever since +been known as the Declaration of London. Here at last was the thing for +which the world had been waiting so long--a complete system of maritime +law for the regulation of belligerents and the protection of neutrals, +which would be definitely binding upon all nations because all nations +were expected to ratify it. + +But the work of all these learned gentlemen was thrown away. The United +States was the only party to the negotiations that put the stamp of +approval upon its labours. All other nations declined to commit +themselves. In Great Britain the Declaration had an especially +interesting course. In that country it became a football of party +politics. The Liberal Government was at first inclined to look upon it +favourably; the Liberal House of Commons actually ratified it. It soon +became apparent, however, that this vote did not represent the opinion +of the British public. In fact, few measures have ever aroused such +hostility as this Declaration, once its details became known. For more +than a year the hubbub against it filled the daily press, the magazines, +the two Houses of Parliament and the hustings; Rudyard Kipling even +wrote a poem denouncing it. The adoption of the Declaration, these +critics asserted, would destroy the usefulness of the British fleet. In +many quarters it was denounced as a German plot--as merely a part of the +preparations which Germany was making for world conquest. The fact is +that the Declaration could not successfully stand the analysis to which +it was now mercilessly submitted; the House of Lords rejected it, and +this action met with more approbation than had for years been accorded +the legislative pronouncements of that chamber. The Liberal House of +Commons was not in the least dissatisfied with this conclusion, for it +realized that it had made a mistake and it was only too happy to be +permitted to forget it. + +When the war broke out there was therefore no single aspect of maritime +law which was quite so odious as the Declaration of London. Great +Britain realized that she could never win unless her fleet were +permitted to keep contraband out of Germany and, if necessary, +completely to blockade that country. The two greatest conflicts of the +nineteenth century were the European struggle with Napoleon and the +American Civil War. In both the blockade had been the decisive element, +and that this great agency would similarly determine events in this even +greater struggle was apparent. What enraged the British public against +any suggestion of the Declaration was that it practically deprived Great +Britain of this indispensable means of weakening the enemy. In this +Declaration were drawn up lists of contraband, non-contraband, and +conditional contraband, and all of these, in English eyes, worked to the +advantage of Germany and against the advantage of Great Britain. How +absurd this classification was is evident from the fact that airplanes +were not listed as absolute contraband of war. Germany's difficulty in +getting copper was one of the causes of her collapse; yet the +Declaration put copper for ever on the non-contraband list; had this new +code been adopted, Germany could have imported enormous quantities from +this country, instead of being compelled to reinforce her scanty supply +by robbing housewives of their kitchen utensils, buildings of their +hardware, and church steeples of their bells. Germany's constant +scramble for rubber formed a diverting episode in the struggle; there +are indeed few things so indispensable in modern warfare; yet the +Declaration included rubber among the innocent articles and thus opened +up to Germany the world's supply. But the most serious matter was that +the Declaration would have prevented Great Britain from keeping +foodstuffs out of the Fatherland. + +When Mr. Bryan, therefore, blandly asked Great Britain to accept the +Declaration as its code of maritime warfare, he was asking that country +to accept a document which Great Britain, in peace time, had repudiated +and which would, in all probability, have caused that country to lose +the war. The substance of this request was bad enough, but the language +in which it was phrased made matters much worse. It appears that only +the intervention of Colonel House prevented the whole thing from +becoming a tragedy. + + _From Edward M. House_ + 115 East 53rd Street, + New York City. + October 3, 1914. + + HIS EXCELLENCY, + + The American Ambassador, London, England. + + DEAR PAGE: + + . . . I have just returned from Washington where I was with the + President for nearly four days. He is looking well and is well. + Sometimes his spirits droop, but then, again, he is his normal + self. + + I had the good fortune to be there at a time when the discussion of + the Declaration of London had reached a critical stage. Bryan was + away and Lansing, who had not mentioned the matter to Sir + Cecil[94], prepared a long communication to you which he sent to + the President for approval. The President and I went over it and I + strongly urged not sending it until I could have a conference with + Sir Cecil. I had this conference the next day without the knowledge + of any one excepting the President, and had another the day + following. Sir Cecil told me that if the dispatch had gone to you + as written and you had shown it to Sir Edward Grey, it would almost + have been a declaration of war; and that if, by any chance, the + newspapers had got hold of it as they so often get things from our + State Department, the greatest panic would have prevailed. He said + it would have been the Venezuela incident magnified by present + conditions. + + At the President's suggestion, Lansing then prepared a cablegram + to you. This, too, was objectionable and the President and I + together softened it down into the one you received. + + Faithfully yours, + E.M. HOUSE. + +In justice to Mr. Lansing, a passage in a later letter of Colonel House +must be quoted: "It seems that Lansing did not write the particular +dispatch to you that was objected to. Someone else prepared it and +Lansing rather too hastily submitted it to the President, with the +result you know." + +This suppressed communication is probably for ever lost, but its tenor +may perhaps be gathered from instructions which were actually sent to +the Ambassador about this time. After eighteen typewritten pages of not +too urbanely expressed discussion of the Declaration of London and the +general subject of contraband, Page was instructed to call the British +Government's attention to the consequences which followed shipping +troubles in previous times. It is hard to construe this in any other way +than as a threat to Great Britain of a repetition of 1812: + + _Confidential_. You will not fail to impress upon His + Excellency[95] the gravity of the issues which the enforcement of + the Order in Council seems to presage, and say to him in substance + as follows: + + It is a matter of grave concern to this Government that the + particular conditions of this unfortunate war should be considered + by His Britannic Majesty's Government to be such as to justify them + in advancing doctrines and advocating practices which in the past + aroused strong opposition on the part of the Government of the + United States, and bitter feeling among the American people. This + Government feels bound to express the fear, though it does so + reluctantly, that the publicity, which must be given to the rules + which His Majesty's Government announce that they intend to + enforce, will awaken memories of controversies, which it is the + earnest desire of the United States to forget or to pass over in + silence. . . . + +Germany, of course, promptly accepted the Declaration, for the +suggestion fitted in perfectly with her programme; but Great Britain was +not so acquiescent. Four times was Page instructed to ask the British +Government to accede unconditionally, and four times did the Foreign +Office refuse. Page was in despair. In the following letter he notified +Colonel House that if he were instructed again to move in this matter he +would resign his ambassadorship. + + _To Edward M. House_ + American Embassy, London, + October 22, 1914. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + This is about the United States and England. Lets get that settled + before we try our hands at making peace in Europe. + + One of our greatest assets is the friendship of Great Britain, and + our friendship is a still bigger asset for her, and she knows it + and values it. Now, if either country should be damfool enough to + throw this away because old Stone[96] roars in the Senate about + something that hasn't happened, then this crazy world would be + completely mad all round, and there would be no good-will left on + earth at all. + + The case is plain enough to me. England is going to keep + war-materials out of Germany as far as she can. We'd do it in her + place. Germany would do it. Any nation would do it. That's all she + has declared her intention of doing. And, if she be let alone, + she'll do it in a way to give us the very least annoyance possible; + for she'll go any length to keep our friendship and good will. And + _she has not confiscated a single one of our cargoes even of + unconditional contraband_. She has stopped some of them and bought + them herself, but confiscated not one. All right; what do we do? We + set out on a comprehensive plan to regulate the naval warfare of + the world and we up and ask 'em all, "Now, boys, all be good, damn + you, and agree to the Declaration of London." + + "Yah," says Germany, "if England will." + + Now Germany isn't engaged in naval warfare to count, and she never + even paid the slightest attention to the Declaration all these + years. But she saw that it would hinder England and help her now, + by forbidding England to stop certain very important war materials + from reaching Germany. "Yah," said Germany. But England said that + her Parliament had rejected the Declaration in times of peace and + that she could now hardly be expected to adopt it in the face of + this Parliamentary rejection. But, to please us, she agreed to + adopt it with only two changes. + + Then Lansing to the bat: + + "No, no," says Lansing, "you've got to adopt it all." + + Four times he's made me ask for its adoption, the last time coupled + with a proposition that if England would adopt it, she might issue + a subsequent proclamation saying that, since the Declaration is + contradictory, she will construe it her own way, and the United + States will raise no objection! + + Then he sends eighteen pages of fine-spun legal arguments (not all + sound by any means) against the sections of the English + proclamations that have been put forth, giving them a strained and + unfriendly interpretation. + + In a word, England has acted in a friendly way to us and will so + act, if we allow her. But Lansing, instead of trusting to her good + faith and reserving all our rights under international law and + usage, imagines that he can force her to agree to a code that the + Germans now agree to because, in Germany's present predicament, it + will be especially advantageous to Germany. Instead of trusting + her, he assumes that she means to do wrong and proceeds to try to + bind her in advance. He hauls her up and tries her in court--that's + his tone. + + Now the relations that I have established with Sir Edward Grey have + been built up on frankness, fairness and friendship. I can't have + relations of any other sort nor can England and the United States + have relations of any other sort. This is the place we've got to + now. Lansing seems to assume that the way to an amicable agreement + is through an angry controversy. + + Lansing's method is the trouble. He treats Great Britain, to start + with, as if she were a criminal and an opponent. That's the best + way I know to cause trouble to American shipping and to bring back + the good old days of mutual hatred and distrust for a generation or + two. If that isn't playing into the hands of the Germans, what + would be? And where's the "neutrality" of this kind of action? + + See here: If we let England go on, we can throw the whole + responsibility on her and reserve all our rights under + international law and usage and claim damages (and get 'em) for + every act of injury, if acts of injury occur; and we can keep her + friendship and good-will. Every other neutral nation is doing that. + Or we can insist on regulating all naval warfare and have a quarrel + and refer it to a Bryan-Peace-Treaty Commission and claim at most + the selfsame damages with a less chance to get 'em. We can get + damages without a quarrel; or we can have a quarrel and probably + get damages. Now, why, in God's name, should we provoke a quarrel? + + The curse of the world is little men who for an imagined small + temporary advantage throw away the long growth of good-will + nurtured by wise and patient men and who cannot see the lasting and + far greater future evil they do. Of all the years since 1776 this + great war-year is the worst to break the 100 years of our peace, or + even to ruffle it. I pray you, good friend, get us out of these + incompetent lawyer-hands. + + Now about the peace of Europe. Nothing can yet be done, perhaps + nothing now can ever be done by us. The Foreign Office doubts our + wisdom and prudence since Lansing came into action. The whole + atmosphere is changing. One more such move and they will conclude + that Dernburg and Bernstorff have seduced us--without our knowing + it, to be sure; but their confidence in our judgment will be gone. + God knows I have tried to keep this confidence intact and our good + friendship secure. But I have begun to get despondent over the + outlook since the President telegraphed me that Lansing's proposal + would settle the matter. I still believe he did not understand + it--he couldn't have done so. Else he could not have approved it. + But that tied my hands. If Lansing again brings up the Declaration + of London--after four flat and reasonable rejections--I shall + resign. I will not be the instrument of a perfectly gratuitous and + ineffective insult to this patient and fair and friendly + government and people who in my time have done us many kindnesses + and never an injury but Carden[97], and who sincerely try now to + meet our wishes. It would be too asinine an act ever to merit + forgiveness or ever to be forgotten. I should blame myself the rest + of my life. It would grieve Sir Edward more than anything except + this war. It would knock the management of foreign affairs by this + Administration into the region of sheer idiocy. I'm afraid any + peace talk from us, as it is, would merely be whistling down the + wind. If we break with England--not on any case or act of violence + to our shipping--but on a useless discussion, in advance, of + general principles of conduct during the war--just for a + discussion--we've needlessly thrown away our great chance to be of + some service to this world gone mad. If Lansing isn't stopped, + that's what he will do. Why doesn't the President see Spring Rice? + Why don't you take him to see him? + + Good night, my good friend. I still have hope that the President + himself will take this in hand. + + Yours always, + W.H.P. + +The letters and the cablegrams which Page was sending to Colonel House +and the State Department at this time evidently ended the matter. By the +middle of October the two nations were fairly deadlocked. Sir Edward +Grey's reply to the American proposal had been an acceptance of the +Declaration of London with certain modifications. For the list of +contraband in the Declaration he had submitted the list already adopted +by Great Britain in its Order in Council, and he had also rejected that +article which made it impossible for Great Britain to apply the +doctrine of "continuous voyage" to conditional contraband. The modified +acceptance, declared Mr. Lansing, was a practical rejection--as of +course it was, and as it was intended to be. So the situation remained +for several exciting weeks, the State Department insisting on the +Declaration in full, precisely as the legal luminaries had published it +five years before, the Foreign Office courteously but inflexibly +refusing to accede. Only the cordial personal relations which prevailed +between Grey and Page prevented the crisis from producing the most +disastrous results. Finally, on October 17th, Page proposed by cable an +arrangement which he hoped would settle the matter. This was that the +King should issue a proclamation accepting the Declaration with +practically the modifications suggested above, and that a new Order in +Council should be issued containing a new list of contraband. Sir Edward +Grey was not to ask the American Government to accept this proclamation; +all that he asked was that Washington should offer no objections to it. +It was proposed that the United States at the same time should publish a +note withdrawing its suggestion for the adoption of the Declaration, and +explaining that it proposed to rest the rights of its citizens upon the +existing rules of international law and the treaties of the United +States. This solution was accepted. It was a defeat for Mr. Lansing, of +course, but he had no alternative. The relief that Page felt is shown in +the following memorandum, written soon after the tension had ceased: + + * * * * * + +"That insistence on the Declaration entire came near to upsetting the +whole kettle of fish. It put on me the task of insisting on a general +code--at a time when the fiercest war in history was every day becoming +fiercer and more desperate--which would have prevented the British from +putting on their contraband list several of the most important war +materials--accompanied by a proposal that would have angered every +neutral nation through which supplies can possibly reach Germany and +prevented this Government from making friendly working arrangements with +them; and, after Sir Edward Grey had flatly declined for these reasons, +I had to continue to insist. I confess it did look as if we were +determined to dictate to him how he should conduct the war--and in a way +that distinctly favoured the Germans. + +"I presented every insistence; for I should, of course, not have been +excusable if I had failed in any case vigorously to carry out my +instructions. But every time I plainly saw matters getting worse and +worse; and I should have failed of my duty also if I had not so informed +the President and the Department. I can conceive of no more awkward +situation for an Ambassador or for any other man under Heaven. I turned +the whole thing over in my mind backward and forward a hundred times +every day. For the first time in this stress and strain, I lost my +appetite and digestion and did not know the day of the week nor what +month it was--seeing the two governments rushing toward a very serious +clash, which would have made my mission a failure and done the +Administration much hurt, and have sowed the seeds of bitterness for +generations to come. + +"One day I said to Anderson (whose assistance is in many ways +invaluable): 'Of course nobody is infallible--least of all we. Is it +possible that we are mistaken? You and Laughlin and I, who are close to +it all, are absolutely agreed. But may there not be some important +element in the problem that we do not see? Summon and nurse every doubt +that you can possibly muster up of the correctness of our view, put +yourself on the defensive, recall every mood you may have had of the +slightest hesitation, and tell me to-morrow of every possible weak place +there may be in our judgment and conclusions.' The next day Anderson +handed me seventeen reasons why it was unwise to persist in this demand +for the adoption of the Declaration of London. Laughlin gave a similar +opinion. I swear I spent the night in searching every nook and corner of +my mind and I was of the same opinion the next morning. There was +nothing to do then but the most unwelcome double duty: (1) Of continuing +to carry out instructions, at every step making a bad situation worse +and running the risk of a rupture (which would be the only great crime +that now remains uncommitted in the world); and (2) of trying to +persuade our own Government that this method was the wrong method to +pursue. I know it is not my business to make policies, but I conceive it +to be my business to report when they fail or succeed. Now if I were +commanded to look throughout the whole universe for the most unwelcome +task a man may have, I think I should select this. But, after all, a man +has nothing but his own best judgment to guide him; and, if he follow +that and fail--that's all he _can_ do. I do reverently thank God that we +gave up that contention. We may have trouble yet, doubtless we shall, +but it will not be trouble of our own making, as that was. + +"Tyrrell[98] came into the reception room at the Foreign Office the day +after our withdrawal, while I was waiting to see Sir Edward Grey, and he +said: 'I wish to tell you personally--just privately between you and +me--how infinite a relief it is to us all that your Government has +withdrawn that demand. We couldn't accept it; our refusal was not +stubborn nor pig-headed: it was a physical necessity in order to carry +on the war with any hope of success.' Then, as I was going out, he +volunteered this remark: 'I make this guess--that that programme was not +the work of the President but of some international prize court +enthusiast (I don't know who) who had failed to secure the adoption of +the Declaration when parliaments and governments could discuss it at +leisure and who hoped to jam it through under the pressure of war and +thus get his prize court international.' I made no answer for several +reasons, one of which is, I do not know whose programme it was. All that +I know is that I have here, on my desk at my house, a locked dispatch +book half full of telegrams and letters insisting on it, which I do not +wish (now at least) to put in the Embassy files, and the sight of which +brings the shuddering memory of the worst nightmare I have ever +suffered. + +"Now we can go on, without being a party to any general programme, but +in an independent position vigorously stand up for every right and +privilege under law and usage and treaties; and we have here a +government that we can deal with frankly and not (I hope) in a mood to +suspect us of wishing to put it at a disadvantage for the sake of a +general code or doctrine. A land and naval and air and submarine battle +(the greatest battle in the history of the belligerent race of man) +within 75 miles of the coast of England, which hasn't been invaded since +1066 and is now in its greatest danger since that time; and this is no +time I fear, to force a great body of doctrine on Great Britain. God +knows I'm afraid some American boat will run on a mine somewhere in the +Channel or the North Sea. There's war there as there is on land in +Germany. Nobody tries to get goods through on land on the continent, and +they make no complaints that commerce is stopped. Everybody tries to ply +the Channel and the North Sea as usual, both of which have German and +English mines and torpedo craft and submarines almost as thick as +batteries along the hostile camps on land. The British Government (which +now issues marine insurance) will not insure a British boat to carry +food to Holland en route to the starving Belgians; and I hear that no +government and no insurance company will write insurance for anything +going across the North Sea. I wonder if the extent and ferocity and +danger of this war are fully realized in the United States? + +"There is no chance yet effectively to talk of peace[99]. The British +believe that their civilization and their Empire are in grave danger. +They are drilling an army of a million men here for next spring; more +and more troops come from all the Colonies, where additional enlistments +are going on. They feel that to stop before a decisive result is reached +would simply be provoking another war, after a period of dread such as +they have lived through the last ten years; a large and increasing +proportion of the letters you see are on black-bordered paper and this +whole island is becoming a vast hospital and prisoners' camp--all which, +so far from bringing them to think of peace, urges them to renewed +effort; and all the while the bitterness grows. + +"The Straus incident' produced the impression here that it was a German +trick to try to shift the responsibility of continuing the war, to the +British shoulders. Mr. Sharp's bare mention of peace in Paris caused the +French censor to forbid the transmission of a harmless interview; and +our insistence on the Declaration left, for the time being at least, a +distinct distrust of our judgment and perhaps even of our good-will. It +was suspected--I am sure--that the German influence in Washington had +unwittingly got influence over the Department. The atmosphere (toward +me) is as different now from what it was a week ago as Arizona sunshine +is from a London fog, as much as to say, 'After all, perhaps, you don't +_mean_ to try to force us to play into the hands of our enemies!'" + + +III + +And so this crisis was passed; it was the first great service that Page +had rendered the cause of the Allies and his own country. Yet shipping +difficulties had their more agreeable aspects. Had it not been for the +fact that both Page and Grey had an understanding sense of humour, +neutrality would have proved a more difficult path than it actually was. +Even amid the tragic problems with which these two men were dealing +there was not lacking an occasional moment's relaxation into the lighter +aspect of things. One of the curious memorials preserved in the British +Foreign Office is the cancelled $15,000,000 check with which Great +Britain paid the _Alabama_ claims. That the British should frame this +memento of their great diplomatic defeat and hang it in the Foreign +Office is an evidence of the fact that in statesmanship, as in less +exalted matters, the English are excellent sports. The real +justification of the honour paid to this piece of paper, of course, is +that the settlement of the _Alabama_ claims by arbitration signalized a +great forward step in international relations and did much to heal a +century's troubles between the United States and Great Britain. Sir +Edward Grey used frequently to call Page's attention to this document. +It represented the amount of money, then considered large, which Great +Britain had paid the United States for the depredations on American +shipping for which she was responsible during the Civil War. + +One day the two men were discussing certain detentions of American +cargoes--high-handed acts which, in Page's opinion, were unwarranted. +Not infrequently, in the heat of discussion, Page would get up and pace +the floor. And on this occasion his body, as well as his mind, was in a +state of activity. Suddenly his eye was attracted by the framed Alabama +check. He leaned over, peered at it intensely, and then quickly turned +to the Foreign Secretary: + +"If you don't stop these seizures, Sir Edward, some day you'll have your +entire room papered with things like that!" + +Not long afterward Sir Edward in his turn scored on Page. The Ambassador +called to present one of the many State Department notes. The occasion +was an embarrassing one, for the communication was written in the +Department's worst literary style. It not infrequently happened that +these notes, in the form in which Page received them, could not be +presented to the British Government; they were so rasping and +undiplomatic that Page feared that he would suffer the humiliation of +having them returned, for there are certain things which no +self-respecting Foreign Office will accept. On such occasions it was the +practice of the London Embassy to smooth down the language before +handing the paper to the Foreign Secretary. The present note was one of +this kind; but Page, because of his friendly relations with Grey, +decided to transmit the communication in its original shape. + +Sir Edward glanced over the document, looked up, and remarked, with a +twinkle in his eye,-- + +"This reads as though they thought that they are still talking to George +the Third." + +The roar of laughter that followed was something quite unprecedented +amid the thick and dignified walls of the Foreign Office. + +One of Page's most delicious moments came, however, after the Ministry +of Blockade had been formed, with Lord Robert Cecil in charge. Lord +Robert was high minded and conciliatory, but his knowledge of American +history was evidently not without its lapses. One day, in discussing the +ill-feeling aroused in the United States by the seizure of American +cargoes, Page remarked banteringly: + +"You must not forget the Boston Tea Party, Lord Robert." + +The Englishman looked up, rather puzzled. + +"But you must remember, Mr. Page, that I have never been in Boston. I +have never attended a tea party there." + +It has been said that the tact and good sense of Page and Grey, working +sympathetically for the same end, avoided many an impending crisis. The +trouble caused early in 1915 by the ship _Dacia_ and the way in which +the difficulty was solved, perhaps illustrate the value of this +coöperation at its best. In the early days of the War Congress passed a +bill admitting foreign ships to American registry. The wisdom and even +the "neutrality" of such an act were much questioned at the time. +Colonel House, in one of his early telegrams to the President, declared +that this bill "is full of lurking dangers." Colonel House was right. +The trouble was that many German merchant ships were interned in +American harbours, fearing to put to sea, where the watchful British +warships lay waiting for them. Any attempt to place these vessels under +the American flag, and to use them for trade between American and German +ports, would at once cause a crisis with the Allies, for such a paper +change in ownership would be altogether too transparent. Great Britain +viewed this legislation with disfavour, but did not think it politic to +protest such transfers generally; Spring Rice contented himself with +informing the State Department that his government would not object so +long as this changed status did not benefit Germany. If such German +ships, after being transferred to the American flag, engaged in commerce +between American ports and South American ports, or other places +remotely removed from the Fatherland, Great Britain would make no +difficulty. The _Dacia_, a merchantman of the Hamburg-America line, had +been lying at her wharf in Port Arthur, Texas, since the outbreak of the +war. In early January, 1915, she was purchased by Mr. E.N. Breitung, of +Marquette, Michigan. Mr. Breitung caused great excitement in the +newspapers when he announced that he had placed the _Dacia_ under +American registry, according to the terms of this new law, had put upon +her an American crew, and that he proposed to load her with cotton and +sail for Germany. The crisis had now arisen which the well-wishers of +Great Britain and the United States had so dreaded. Great Britain's +position was a difficult one. If it acquiesced, the way would be opened +for placing under American registry all the German and Austrian ships +that were then lying unoccupied in American ports and using them in +trade between the United States and the Central Powers. If Great Britain +seized the _Dacia_, then there was the likelihood that this would +embroil her with the American Government--and this would serve German +purposes quite as well. + +Sir Cecil Spring Rice, the British Ambassador at Washington, at once +notified Washington that the _Dacia_ would be seized if she sailed for a +German port. The cotton which she intended to carry was at that time not +contraband, but the vessel itself Was German and was thus subject to +apprehension as enemy property. The seriousness of this position was +that technically the _Dacia_ was now an American ship, for an American +citizen owned her, she carried an American crew, she bore on her +flagstaff the American flag, and she had been admitted to American +registry under a law recently passed by Congress. How could the United +States sit by quietly and permit this seizure to take place? When the +_Dacia_ sailed on January 23rd the excitement was keen; the voyage had +obtained a vast amount of newspaper advertising, and the eyes of the +world were fixed upon her. German sympathizers attributed the attitude +of the American Government in permitting the vessel to sail as a "dare" +to Great Britain, and the fact that Great Britain had announced her +intention of taking up this "dare" made the situation still more tense. + +When matters had reached this pass Page one day dropped into the Foreign +Office. + +"Have you ever heard of the British fleet, Sir Edward?" he asked. + +Grey admitted that he had, though the question obviously puzzled him. + +"Yes," Page went on musingly. "We've all heard of the British fleet. +Perhaps we have heard too much about it. Don't you think it's had too +much advertising?" + +The Foreign Secretary looked at Page with an expression that implied a +lack of confidence in his sanity. + +"But have you ever heard of the French fleet?" the American went on. +"France has a fleet too, I believe." + +Sir Edward granted that. + +"Don't you think that the French fleet ought to have a little +advertising?" + +"What on earth are you talking about?" + +"Well," said Page, "there's the _Dacia_. Why not let the French fleet +seize it and get some advertising?" + +A gleam of understanding immediately shot across Grey's face. The old +familiar twinkle came into his eye. + +"Yes," he said, "why not let the Belgian royal yacht seize it?" + +This suggestion from Page was one of the great inspirations of the war. +It amounted to little less than genius. By this time Washington was +pretty wearied of the _Dacia_, for mature consideration had convinced +the Department that Great Britain had the right on its side. Washington +would have been only too glad to find a way out of the difficult +position into which it had been forced, and this Page well understood. +But this government always finds itself in an awkward plight in any +controversy with Great Britain, because the hyphenates raise such a +noise that it has difficulty in deciding such disputes upon their +merits. To ignore the capture of this ship by the British would have +brought all this hullabaloo again about the ears of the Administration. +But the position of France is entirely different; the memories of +Lafayette and Rochambeau still exercise a profound spell on the American +mind; France does not suffer from the persecution of hyphenate +populations, and Americans will stand even outrages from France without +getting excited. Page knew that if the British seized the _Dacia_, the +cry would go up in certain quarters for immediate war, but that, if +France committed the same crime, the guns of the adversary would be +spiked. It was purely a case of sentiment and "psychology." And so the +event proved. His suggestion was at once acted on; a French cruiser went +out into the Channel, seized the offending ship, took it into port, +where a French prize court promptly condemned it. The proceeding did not +cause even a ripple of hostility. The _Dacia_ was sold to Frenchmen, +rechristened the _Yser_ and put to work in the Mediterranean trade. The +episode was closed in the latter part of 1915 when a German submarine +torpedoed the vessel and sent it to the bottom. + +Such was the spirit which Page and Sir Edward Grey brought to the +solution of the great shipping problems of 1914-1917. There is much more +to tell of this great task of "waging neutrality," and it will be told +in its proper place. But already it is apparent to what extent these two +men served the great cause of English-speaking civilization. Neither +would quibble or uphold an argument which he thought unjust, even though +his nation might gain in a material sense, and neither would pitch the +discussion in any other key than forbearance and mutual accommodation +and courtliness. For both men had the same end in view. They were both +thinking, not of the present, but of the coming centuries. The +coöperation of the two nations in meeting the dangers of autocracy and +Prussian barbarism, in laying the foundations of a future in which +peace, democracy, and international justice should be the directing +ideas of human society--such was the ultimate purpose at which these two +statesmen aimed. And no men have ever been more splendidly justified by +events. The Anglo-American situation of 1914 contained dangers before +which all believers in real progress now shudder. Had Anglo-American +diplomacy been managed with less skill and consideration, the United +States and Great Britain would have become involved in a quarrel beside +which all their previous differences would have appeared insignificant. +Mutual hatreds and hostilities would have risen that would have +prevented the entrance of the United States into the war on the side of +the Allies. It is not inconceivable that the history of 1812 would have +been repeated, and that the men and resources of this country might have +been used to support purposes which have always been hateful to the +American conscience. That the world was saved from this calamity is +owing largely to the fact that Great Britain had in its Foreign Office a +man who was always solving temporary irritations with his eyes +constantly fixed upon a great goal, and that the United States had as +ambassador in London a man who had the most exalted view of the mission +of his country, who had dedicated his life to the world-wide spread of +the American ideal, and who believed that an indispensable part of this +work was the maintenance of a sympathetic and helpful coöperation with +the English-speaking peoples. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 90: In a letter addressed to "My fellow Countrymen" and +presented to the Senate by Mr. Chilton.] + +[Footnote 91: This was in October, 1914. In August, 1915, when +conditions had changed, cotton was declared contraband.] + +[Footnote 92: Mr. Chandler P. Anderson, of New York, at this time +advising the American Embassy on questions of international law.] + +[Footnote 93: Mr. Irwin Laughlin, first secretary of the Embassy.] + +[Footnote 94: Sir Cecil Spring Rice, British Ambassador at Washington.] + +[Footnote 95: Sir Edward Grey.] + +[Footnote 96: Senator William J. Stone, perhaps the leading spokesman of +the pro-German cause in the United States Senate. Senator Stone +represented Missouri, a state with a large German-American element.] + +[Footnote 97: See Chapter VII.] + +[Footnote 98: Private secretary to Sir Edward Grey.] + +[Footnote 99: The reference is to an attempt by Germany to start peace +negotiations in September, 1914, after the Battle of the Marne. This is +described in the next chapter.] + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +GERMANY'S FIRST PEACE DRIVES + + +The Declaration of London was not the only problem that distracted Page +in these early months of the war. Washington's apparent determination to +make peace also added to his daily anxieties. That any attempt to end +hostilities should have distressed so peace-loving and humanitarian a +statesman as Page may seem surprising; it was, however, for the very +reason that he was a man of peace that these Washington endeavours +caused him endless worry. In Page's opinion they indicated that +President Wilson did not have an accurate understanding of the war. The +inspiring force back of them, as the Ambassador well understood, was a +panic-stricken Germany. The real purpose was not a peace, but a truce; +and the cause which was to be advanced was not democracy but Prussian +absolutism. Between the Battle of the Marne and the sinking of the +_Lusitania_ four attempts were made to end the war; all four were set +afoot by Germany. President Wilson was the man to whom the Germans +appealed to rescue them from their dilemma. It is no longer a secret +that the Germans at this time regarded their situation as a tragic one; +the success that they had anticipated for forty years had proved to be a +disaster. The attempt to repeat the great episodes of 1864, 1866, and +1870, when Prussia had overwhelmed Denmark, Austria, and France in three +brief campaigns, had ignominiously failed. Instead of beholding a +conquered Europe at her feet, Germany awoke from her illusion to find +herself encompassed by a ring of resolute and powerful foes. The fact +that the British Empire, with its immense resources, naval, military, +and economic, was now leading the alliance against them, convinced the +most intelligent Germans that the Fatherland was face to face with the +greatest crisis in its history. + +Peace now became the underground Germanic programme. Yet the Germans did +not have that inexorable respect for facts which would have persuaded +them to accept terms to which the Allies could consent. The military +oligarchy were thinking not so much of saving the Fatherland as of +saving themselves; a settlement which would have been satisfactory to +their enemies would have demanded concessions which the German people, +trained for forty years to expect an unparalleled victory, would have +regarded as a defeat. The collapse of the militarists and of +Hohenzollernism would have ensued. What the German oligarchy desired was +a peace which they could picture to their deluded people as a triumph, +one that would enable them to extricate themselves at the smallest +possible cost from what seemed a desperate position, to escape the +penalties of their crimes, to emerge from their failure with a Germany +still powerful, both in economic resources and in arms, and to set to +work again industriously preparing for a renewal of the struggle at a +more favourable time. If negotiations resulted in such a truce, the +German purpose would be splendidly served; even if they failed, however, +the gain for Germany would still be great. Germany could appear as the +belligerent which desired peace and the Entente could perhaps be +manoeuvred into the position of the side responsible for continuing the +war. The consideration which was chiefly at stake in these tortuous +proceedings was public opinion in the United States. Americans do not +yet understand the extent to which their country was regarded as the +determining power. Both the German and the British Foreign Offices +clearly understood, in August, 1914, that the United States, by throwing +its support, especially its economic support, to one side or the other, +could settle the result. Probably Germany grasped this point even more +clearly than did Great Britain, for, from the beginning, she constantly +nourished the hope that she could embroil the United States and Great +Britain--a calamity which would have given victory to the German arms. +In every German move there were thus several motives, and one of the +chief purposes of the subterranean campaigns which she now started for +peace was the desire of putting Britain in the false light of prolonging +the war for aggressive purposes, and thus turning to herself that public +opinion in this country which was so outspoken on the side of the +Allies. Such public opinion, if it could be brought to regard Germany in +a tolerant spirit, could easily be fanned into a flame by the disputes +over blockades and shipping, and the power of the United States might +thus be used for the advancement of the Fatherland. On the other hand, +if Germany could obtain a peace which would show a profit for her +tremendous effort, then the negotiations would have accomplished their +purpose. + +Conditions at Washington favoured operations of this kind. Secretary +Bryan was an ultra-pacifist; like men of one idea, he saw only the fact +of a hideous war, and he was prepared to welcome anything that would end +hostilities. The cessation of bloodshed was to him the great purpose to +be attained: in the mind of Secretary Bryan it was more important that +the war should be stopped than that the Allies should win. To President +Wilson the European disaster appeared to be merely a selfish struggle +for power, in which both sides were almost equally to blame. He never +accepted Page's obvious interpretation that the single cause was +Germany's determination to embark upon a war of world conquest. From the +beginning, therefore, Page saw that he would have great difficulty in +preventing intervention from Washington in the interest of Germany, yet +this was another great service to which he now unhesitatingly directed +his efforts. + +The Ambassador was especially apprehensive of these peace moves in the +early days of September, when the victorious German armies were marching +on Paris. In London, as in most parts of the world, the capture of the +French capital was then regarded as inevitable. September 3, 1914, was +one of the darkest days in modern times. The population of Paris was +fleeing southward; the Government had moved its headquarters to +Bordeaux; and the moment seemed to be at hand when the German Emperor +would make his long anticipated entry into the capital of France. It was +under these circumstances that the American Ambassador to Great Britain +sent the following message directly to the President: + + _To the President_ + American Embassy, London, + Sep. 3, 4 A.M. + + Everybody in this city confidently believes that the Germans, if + they capture Paris, will make a proposal for peace, and that the + German Emperor will send you a message declaring that he is + unwilling to shed another drop of blood. Any proposal that the + Kaiser makes will be simply the proposal of a conqueror. His real + purpose will be to preserve the Hohenzollern dynasty and the + imperial bureaucracy. The prevailing English judgment is that, if + Germany be permitted to stop hostilities, the war will have + accomplished nothing. There is a determination here to destroy + utterly the German bureaucracy, and Englishmen are prepared to + sacrifice themselves to any extent in men and money. The + preparations that are being made here are for a long war; as I read + the disposition and the character of Englishmen they will not stop + until they have accomplished their purpose. There is a general + expression of hope in this country that neither the American + Government nor the public opinion of our country will look upon any + suggestion for peace as a serious one which does not aim, first of + all, at the absolute destruction of the German bureaucracy. + + From such facts as I can obtain, it seems clear to me that the + opinion of Europe--excluding of course, Germany--is rapidly + solidifying into a severe condemnation of the German Empire. The + profoundest moral judgment of the world is taking the strongest + stand against Germany and German methods. Such incidents as the + burning of Louvain and other places, the slaughter of civilian + populations, the outrages against women and children--outrages of + such a nature that they cannot be printed, but which form a matter + of common conversation everywhere--have had the result of arousing + Great Britain to a mood of the grimmest determination. + + PAGE. + +This message had hardly reached Washington when the peace effort of +which it warned the President began to take practical form. In properly +estimating these manoeuvres it must be borne in mind that German +diplomacy always worked underground and that it approached its +negotiations in a way that would make the other side appear as taking +the initiative. This was a phase of German diplomatic technique with +which every European Foreign Office had long been familiar. Count +Bernstorff arrived in the United States from Germany in the latter part +of August, evidently with instructions from his government to secure the +intercession of the United States. There were two unofficial men in New +York who were ideally qualified to serve the part of intermediaries. Mr. +James Speyer had been born in New York; he had received his education at +Frankfort-on-the-Main, Germany, and had spent his apprenticeship also in +the family banking house in that city. As the head of an American +banking house with important German affiliations, his interests and +sympathies were strong on the side of the Fatherland; indeed, he made no +attempt to conceal his strong pro-Germanism. + +Mr. Oscar S. Straus had been born in Germany; his father had been a +German revolutionist of 'Forty-eight; like Carl Schurz, Abraham Jacobi, +and Franz Sigel, he had come to America to escape Prussian militarism +and the Prussian autocracy, and his children had been educated in a +detestation of the things for which the German Empire stood. Mr. Oscar +Straus was only two years old when he was brought to this country, and +he had given the best evidences of his Americanism in a distinguished +public career. Three times he had served the United States as Ambassador +to Turkey; he had filled the post of Secretary of Commerce and Labour in +President Roosevelt's cabinet, and had held other important public +commissions. Among his other activities, Mr. Straus had played an +important part in the peace movement of the preceding quarter of a +century and he had been a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration +at The Hague. Mr. Straus was on excellent terms with the German, the +British, and the French ambassadors at Washington. As far back as 1888, +when he was American Minister at Constantinople, Bernstorff, then a +youth, was an attaché at the German Embassy; the young German was +frequently at the American Legation and used to remind Mr. Straus, +whenever he met him in later years, how pleasantly he remembered his +hospitality. With Sir Cecil Spring Rice, the British Ambassador, and M. +Jules Jusserand, the French Ambassador, Mr. Straus had also become +friendly in Constantinople and in Washington. This background, and Mr. +Straus's well-known pro-British sentiments, would have made him a +desirable man to act as a liaison agent between the Germans and the +Allies, but there were other reasons why this ex-ambassador would be +useful at this time. Mr. Straus had been in Europe at the outbreak of +the war; he had come into contact with the British statesmen in those +exciting early August days; in particular he had discussed all phases of +the conflict with Sir Edward Grey, and before leaving England, he had +given certain interviews which the British statesmen declared had +greatly helped their cause in the United States. Of course, the German +Government knew all about these activities. + +On September 4th, Mr. Straus arrived at New York on the _Mauretania_. He +had hardly reached this country when he was called upon the telephone by +Mr. Speyer, a friend of many years' standing. Count Bernstorff, the +German Ambassador, Mr. Speyer said, was a guest at his country home, +Waldheim, at Scarboro, on the Hudson; Mr. Speyer was giving a small, +informal dinner the next evening, Saturday, September 5th, and he asked +Mr. and Mrs. Straus to come. The other important guests were Mr. Frank +A. Vanderlip, president of the National City Bank, and Mrs. Vanderlip. +Mr. Straus accepted the invitation, mentally resolving that he would not +discuss the war himself, but merely listen. It would certainly have +been a difficult task for any man to avoid this subject on this +particular evening; the date was September 5th, the day when the German +Army suddenly stopped in its progress toward Paris, and began +retreating, the French and the British forces in pursuit. A few minutes +before Count Bernstorff sat down at Mr. Speyer's table, with Mr. Straus +opposite, he had learned that the magnificent enterprise which Germany +had planned for forty years had failed, and that his country was facing +a monstrous disaster. The Battle of the Marne was raging in all its fury +while this pacific conversation at Mr. Speyer's house was taking place. + +Of course the war became the immediate topic of discussion. Count +Bernstorff at once plunged into the usual German point of view--that +Germany did not want war in the first place, that the Entente had forced +the issue, and the like. + +"The Emperor and the German Government stood for peace," he said. + +Naturally, a man who had spent a considerable part of his life promoting +the peace cause pricked up his ears at this statement. + +"Does that sentiment still prevail in Germany?" asked Mr. Straus. + +"Yes," replied the German Ambassador. + +"Would your government entertain a proposal for mediation now?" asked +Mr. Straus. + +"Certainly," Bernstorff promptly replied. He hastened to add, however, +that he was speaking unofficially. He had had no telegraphic +communication from Berlin for five days, and therefore could not +definitely give the attitude of his government. But he was quite sure +that the Kaiser would be glad to have President Wilson take steps to end +the war. + +The possibility that he might play a part in bringing hostilities to a +close now occurred to Mr. Straus. He had come to the dinner determined +to avoid the subject altogether, but Count Bernstorff had precipitated +the issue in a way that left the American no option. Certainly Mr. +Straus would have been derelict if he had not reported this conversation +to the high quarters for which Count Bernstorff had evidently intended +it. + +"That is a very important statement you have made, Mr. Ambassador," said +Mr. Straus, measuring every word. "May I make use of it?" + +"Yes." + +"May I use it in any way I choose?" + +"You may," replied Bernstorff. + +Mr. Straus saw in this acquiescent mood a chance to appeal directly to +President Wilson. + +"Do you object to my laying this matter before our government?" + +"No, I do not." + +Mr. Straus glanced at his watch; it was 10:15 o'clock. + +"I think I shall go to Washington at once--this very night. I can get +the midnight train." + +Mr. Speyer, who has always maintained that this proceeding was casual +and in no way promoted by himself and Bernstorff, put in a word of +caution. + +"I would sleep on it," he suggested. + +But, in a few moments, Mr. Straus was speeding in his automobile through +Westchester County in the direction of the Pennsylvania Station. He +caught the express, and, the next morning, which was Sunday the sixth, +he was laying the whole matter before Secretary Bryan at the latter's +house. Naturally, Mr. Bryan was overjoyed at the news; he at once +summoned Bernstorff from New York to Washington, and went over the +suggestion personally. The German Ambassador repeated the statements +which he had made to Mr. Straus--always guardedly qualifying his remarks +by saying that the proposal had not come originally from him but from +his American friend. Meanwhile Mr. Bryan asked Mr. Straus to discuss the +matter with the British and French ambassadors. + +The meeting took place at the British Embassy. The two representatives +of the Entente, though only too glad to talk the matter over, were more +skeptical about the attitude of Bernstorff than Mr. Bryan had been. + +"Of course, Mr. Straus," said Sir Cecil Spring Rice, "you know that this +dinner was arranged purposely so that the German Ambassador could meet +you?" + +Mr. Straus demurred at this statement, but the Englishman smiled. + +"Do you suppose," Sir Cecil asked, "that any ambassador would make such +a statement as Bernstorff made to you without instructions from his +government?" + +"You and M. Jusserand," replied the American, "have devoted your whole +lives to diplomacy with distinguished ability and you can therefore +answer that question better than I." + +"I can assure you," replied M. Jusserand, "that no ambassador under the +German system would dare for a moment to make such a statement without +being authorized to do so." + +"The Germans," added Sir Cecil, "have a way of making such statements +unofficially and then denying that they have ever made them." + +Both the British and French ambassadors, however, thought that the +proposal should be seriously considered. + +"If it holds out one chance in a hundred of lessening the length of the +war, we should entertain it," said Ambassador Jusserand. + +"I certainly hope that you will entertain it cordially," said Mr. +Straus. + +"Not cordially--that is a little too strong." + +"Well, sympathetically?" + +"Yes, sympathetically," said M. Jusserand, with a smile. + +These facts were at once cabled to Page, who took the matter up with Sir +Edward Grey. A despatch from the latter to the British Ambassador in +Washington gives a splendid summary of the British attitude on such +approaches at this time. + + _Sir Edward Grey to Sir Cecil Spring Rice_ + Foreign Office, + September 9, 1914. + + SIR: + + The American Ambassador showed me to-day a communication that he + had from Mr. Bryan. It was to the effect that Mr. Straus and Mr. + Speyer had been talking with the German Ambassador, who had said + that, though he was without instructions, he thought that Germany + might be disposed to end the war by mediation. This had been + repeated to Mr. Bryan, who had spoken to the German Ambassador, and + had heard the same from him. Mr. Bryan had taken the matter up, and + was asking direct whether the German Emperor would accept mediation + if the other parties who were at war would do the same. + + The American Ambassador said to me that this information gave him a + little concern. He feared that, coming after the declaration that + we had signed last week with France and Russia about carrying on + the war in common[100], the peace parties in the United States + might be given the impression that Germany was in favour of peace, + and that the responsibility for continuing the war was on others. + + I said that the agreement that we had made with France and Russia + was an obvious one; when three countries were at war on the same + side, one of them could not honourably make special terms for + itself and leave the others in the lurch. As to mediation, I was + favourable to it in principle, but the real question was: On what + terms could the war be ended? If the United States could devise + anything that would bring this war to an end and prevent another + such war being forced on Europe I should welcome the proposal. + + The Ambassador said that before the war began I had made + suggestions for avoiding it, and that these suggestions had been + refused. + + I said that this was so, but since the war began there were two + further considerations to be borne in mind: We were fighting to + save the west of Europe from being dominated by Prussian + militarism; Germany had prepared to the day for this war, and we + could not again have a great military power in the middle of Europe + preparing war in this way and forcing it upon us; and the second + thing was that cruel wrong had been done to Belgium, for which + there should be some compensation. I had no indication whatever + that Germany was prepared to make any reparation to Belgium, and, + while repeating that in principle I was favourable to mediation, I + could see nothing to do but to wait for the reply of the German + Emperor to the question that Mr. Bryan had put to him and for the + United States to ascertain on what terms Germany would make peace + if the Emperor's reply was favourable to mediation. + + The Ambassador made it quite clear that he regarded what the German + Ambassador had said as a move in the game. He agreed with what I + had said respecting terms of peace, and that there seemed no + prospect at present of Germany being prepared to accept them. + + I am, &c., + E. GREY. + +A letter from Page to Colonel House gives Page's interpretation of this +negotiation: + + _To Edward M. House_ + London, September 10, 1914. + + MY DEAR HOUSE: + + A rather serious situation has arisen: The Germans of course + thought that they would take Paris. They were then going to propose + a conqueror's terms of peace, which they knew would not be + accepted. But they would use their so-called offer of peace purely + for publicity purposes. They would say, "See, men of the world, we + want peace; we offer peace; the continuance of this awful war is + not our doing." They are using Hearst for this purpose. I fear they + are trying to use so good a man as Oscar Straus. They are fooling + the Secretary. + + Every nation was willing to accept Sir Edward Grey's proposals but + Germany. She was bent on a war of conquest. Now she's likely to get + licked--lock, stock and barrel. She is carrying on a propaganda and + a publicity campaign all over the world. The Allies can't and won't + accept any peace except on the condition that German militarism be + uprooted. They are not going to live again under that awful shadow + and fear. They say truly that life on such terms is not worth + living. Moreover, if Germany should win the military control of + Europe, she would soon--that same war-party--attack the United + States. The war will not end until this condition can be + imposed--that there shall be no more militarism. + + But in the meantime, such men as Straus (a good fellow) may be able + to let (by helping) the Germans appear to the Peace people as + really desiring peace. Of course, what they want is to save their + mutton. + + And if we begin mediation talk now on that basis, we shall not be + wanted when a real chance for mediation comes. If we are so silly + as to play into the hands of the German-Hearst publicity bureau, + our chance for real usefulness will be thrown away. + + Put the President on his guard. + + W.H.P. + +In the latter part of the month came Germany's reply. One would never +suspect, when reading it, that Germany had played any part in +instigating the negotiation. The Kaiser repeated the old charges that +the Entente had forced the war on the Fatherland, that it was now +determined to annihilate the Central Powers and that consequently there +was no hope that the warring countries could agree upon acceptable terms +for ending the struggle. + +So ended Germany's first peace drive, and in the only possible way that +it could end. But the Washington administration continued to be most +friendly to mediation. A letter of Colonel House's, dated October 4, +1914, possesses great historical importance. It was written after a +detailed discussion with President Wilson, and it indicates not only the +President's desire to bring the struggle to a close, but it describes +in some detail the principles which the President then regarded as +essential to a permanent peace. It furnishes the central idea of the +presidential policy for the next four years; indeed, it contains the +first statement of that famous "Article X" of the Covenant of the League +of Nations which was Mr. Wilson's most important contribution to that +contentious document. This was the article which pledges the League "to +respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial +integrity and existing political independence" of all its members; it +was the article which, more than any other, made the League obnoxious to +Americans, who interpreted it as an attempt to involve them perpetually +in the quarrels of Europe; and it was the one section of the Treaty of +Versailles which was most responsible for the rejection of that document +by the United States Senate. There are other suggestions in Colonel +House's letter which apparently bore fruit in the League Covenant. It is +somewhat astonishing that a letter of Colonel House's, written as far +back as October 3, 1914, two months after the outbreak of the war, +should contain "Article X" as one of the essential terms of peace, as +well as other ideas afterward incorporated in that document, accompanied +by an injunction that Page should present the suggestion to Sir Edward +Grey: + + _From Edward M. House_ + 115 East 53rd Street, + New York City. + October 3rd, 1914. + + DEAR PAGE: + + Frank [the Ambassador's son] has just come in and has given me your + letter of September 22nd[101] which is of absorbing interest. You + have never done anything better than this letter, and some day, + when you give the word, it must be published. But in the meantime, + it will repose in the safe deposit box along with your others and + with those of our great President. + + I have just returned from Washington where I was with the President + for nearly four days. He is looking well and is well. Sometimes his + spirits droop, but then again, he is his normal self. + + Before I came from Prides[102] I was fearful lest Straus, + Bernstorff, and others would drive the President into doing + something unwise. I have always counselled him to remain quiet for + the moment and let matters unfold themselves further. In the + meantime, I have been conferring with Bernstorff, with Dumba[103], + and, of course, Spring Rice. The President now wants me to keep in + touch with the situation, and I do not think there is any danger of + any one on the outside injecting himself into it unless Mr. Bryan + does something on his own initiative. + + Both Bernstorff and Dumba say that their countries are ready for + peace talks, but the difficulty is with England. Sir Cecil says + their statements are made merely to place England in a false + position. + + The attitude, I think, for England to maintain is the one which she + so ably put forth to the world. That is, peace must come only upon + condition of disarmament and must be permanent. I have a feeling + that Germany will soon be willing to discuss terms. I do not agree + that Germany has to be completely crushed and that terms must be + made either in Berlin or London. It is manifestly against England's + interest and the interest of Europe generally for Russia to become + the dominating military force in Europe, just as Germany was. The + dislike which England has for Germany should not blind her to + actual conditions. If Germany is crushed, England cannot solely + write the terms of peace, but Russia's wishes must also largely + prevail. + + With Russia strong in militarism, there is no way by which she + could be reached. Her government is so constituted that friendly + conversations could not be had with her as they might be had even + with such a power as Germany, and the world would look forward to + another cataclysm and in the not too distant future. + + When peace conversations begin, at best, they will probably + continue many months before anything tangible comes from them. + England and the Allies could readily stand on the general + proposition that only enduring peace will satisfy them and I can + see no insuperable obstacle in the way. + + The Kaiser did not want war and was not responsible for it further + than his lack of foresight which led him to build up a formidable + engine of war which later dominated him. Peace cannot be made until + the war party in Germany find that their ambitions cannot be + realized, and this, I think, they are beginning to know. + + When the war is ended and the necessary territorial alignments + made, it seems to me, the best guaranty of peace could be brought + by every nation in Europe guaranteeing the territorial integrity of + every other nation[104]. By confining the manufacture of arms to + the governments themselves and by permitting representatives of all + nations to inspect, at any time, the works[105]. + + Then, too, all sources of national irritation should be removed so + what at first may be a sore spot cannot grow into a malignant + disease[106]. It will not be too difficult, I think, to bring about + an agreement that will insure permanent peace, provided all the + nations of Europe are honest in their desire for it. + + I am writing this to you with the President's knowledge and consent + and with the thought that it will be conveyed to Sir Edward. There + is a growing impatience in this country because of this war and + there is constant pressure upon the President to use his influence + to bring about normal conditions. He does not wish to do anything + to irritate or offend any one of the belligerent nations, but he + has an abiding faith in the efficacy of open and frank discussion + between those that are now at war. + + As far as I can see, no harm can be done by a dispassionate + discussion at this stage, even though nothing comes of it. In a + way, it is perhaps better that informal and unofficial + conversations are begun and later the principals can take it up + themselves. + + I am sure that Sir Edward is too great a man to let any prejudices + deter him from ending, as soon as possible, the infinite suffering + that each day of war entails. + + Faithfully yours, + E.M. HOUSE. + +It is apparent that the failure of this first attempt at mediation +discouraged neither Bernstorff nor the Washington administration. +Colonel House was constantly meeting the German and the British +Ambassadors; he was also, as his correspondence shows, in touch with +Zimmermann, the German Under Foreign Secretary. The German desire for +peace grew stronger in the autumn and winter of 1914-1915, as the fact +became more and more clear that Great Britain was summoning all her +resources for the greatest effort in her history, as the stalemate on +the Aisne more and more impressed upon the German chieftains the +impossibility of obtaining any decision against the French Army, and as +the Russians showed signs of great recuperation after the disaster of +Tannenberg. By December 4th Washington had evidently made up its mind to +move again. + + _From Edward M. House_ + 115 East 53rd Street, + New York City. + December 4th, 1914. + + DEAR PAGE: + + The President desires to start peace parleys at the very earliest + moment, but he does not wish to offend the sensibilities of either + side by making a proposal before the time is opportune. He is + counting upon being given a hint, possibly through me, in an + unofficial way, as to when a proffer from him will be acceptable. + + Pressure is being brought upon him to offer his services again, for + this country is suffering, like the rest of the neutral world, from + the effects of the war, and our people are becoming restless. + + Would you mind conveying this thought delicately to Sir Edward Grey + and letting me know what he thinks? + + Would the Allies consider parleys upon a basis of indemnity for + Belgium and a cessation of militarism? If so, then something may be + begun with the Dual Alliance. + + I have been told that negotiations between Russia and Japan were + carried on several months before they agreed to meet at Portsmouth. + The havoc that is being wrought in human lives and treasure is too + great to permit racial feeling or revenge to enter into the + thoughts of those who govern the nations at war. + + I stand ready to go to Germany at any moment in order to sound the + temper of that government, and I would then go to England as I did + last June. + + This nation would not look with favour upon a policy that held + nothing but the complete annihilation of the enemy. + + Something must be done sometime, by somebody, to initiate a peace + movement, and I can think of no way, at the moment, than the one + suggested. + + I will greatly appreciate your writing me fully and freely in + regard to this phase of the situation. + + Faithfully yours, + E.M. HOUSE. + +To this Page immediately replied: + + _To Edward M. House_ + December 12th, 1914. + + MY DEAR HOUSE: + + The English rulers have no feeling of vengeance. I have never seen + the slightest traces of that. But they are determined to secure + future safety. They will not have this experience repeated if they + can help it. They realize now that they have been living under a + sort of fear--or dread--for ten years: they sometimes felt that it + was bound to come some time and then at other times they could + hardly believe it. And they will spend all the men and all the + money they have rather than suffer that fear again or have that + danger. Now, if anybody could fix a basis for the complete + restoration of Belgium, so far as restoration is possible, and for + the elimination of militarism, I am sure the _English_ would talk + on that basis. But there are two difficulties-Russia wouldn't talk + till she has Constantinople, and I haven't found anybody who can + say exactly what you mean by the "elimination of militarism." + Disarmament? England will have her navy to protect her incoming + bread and meat. How, then, can she say to Germany, "You can't have + an army"? + + You say the Americans are becoming "restless." The plain fact is + that the English people, and especially the English military and + naval people, don't care a fig what the Americans think and feel. + They say, "We're fighting their battle, too--the battle of + democracy and freedom from bureaucracy--why don't they come and + help us in our life-and-death struggle?" I have a drawer full of + letters saying this, not one of which I have ever answered. The + official people never say that of course--nor the really + responsible people, but a vast multitude of the public do. This + feeling comes out even in the present military and naval rulers of + this Kingdom--comes indirectly to me. A part of the public, then, + and the military part of the Cabinet, don't longer care for + American opinion and they resent even such a reference to peace as + the President made in his Message to Congress[107]. But the civil + part of the Cabinet and the responsible and better part of the + public do care very much. The President's intimation about peace, + however, got no real response here. They think he doesn't + understand the meaning of the war. They don't want war; they are + not a warlike people. They don't hate the Germans. There is no + feeling of vengeance. They constantly say: "Why do the Germans + hate us? We don't hate them." But, since Germany set out to rule + the world and to conquer Great Britain, they say, "We'll all die + first." That's "all there is to it." And they will all die unless + they can so fix things that this war cannot be repeated. Lady + K----, as kindly an old lady as ever lived, said to me the other + day: "A great honour has come to us. Our son has been killed in + battle, fighting for the safety of England." + + Now, the question which nobody seems to be able to answer is this: + How can the military party and the military spirit of Germany be + prevented from continuing to prepare for the conquest of Great + Britain and from going to work to try it again? That implies a + change in the form, spirit, and control of the German Empire. If + they keep up a great army, they will keep it up with that end more + or less in view. If the military party keeps in power, they will + try it again in twenty-five or forty years. This is all that the + English care about or think about. + + They don't see how it is to be done themselves. All they see yet is + that they must show the Germans that they can't whip Great Britain. + If England wins decisively the English hope that somehow the + military party will be overthrown in Germany and that the Germans, + under peaceful leadership, will go about their + business--industrial, political, educational, etc.--and quit + dreaming of and planning for universal empire and quit maintaining + a great war-machine, which at some time, for some reason, must + attack somebody to justify its existence. This makes it difficult + for the English to make overtures to or to receive overtures from + this military war-party which now _is_ Germany. But, if it he + possible so completely to whip the war party that it will somehow + be thrown out of power at home--that's the only way they now see + out of it. To patch up a peace, leaving the German war party in + power, they think, would be only to invite another war. + + If you can get over this point, you can bring the English around in + ten minutes. But they are not going to take any chances on it. Read + English history and English literature about the Spanish Armada or + about Napoleon. They are acting those same scenes over again, + having the same emotions, the same purpose: nobody must invade or + threaten England. "If they do, we'll spend the last man and the + last shilling. We value," they say truly, "the good-will and the + friendship of the United States more than we value anything except + our own freedom, but we'll risk even that rather than admit copper + to Germany, because every pound of copper prolongs the war." + + There you are. I've blinked myself blind and talked myself hoarse + to men in authority--from Grey down--to see a way out--without + keeping this intolerable slaughter up to the end. But they stand + just where I tell you. + + And the horror of it no man knows. The news is suppressed. Even + those who see it and know it do not realize it. Four of the crack + regiments of this kingdom--regiments that contained the flower of + the land and to which it was a distinction to belong--have been + practically annihilated, one or two of them annihilated twice. Yet + their ranks are filled up and you never hear a murmur. Presently + it'll be true that hardly a title or an estate in England will go + to its natural heir--the heir has been killed. Yet, not a murmur; + for England is threatened with invasion. They'll all die first. It + will presently be true that more men will have been killed in this + war than were killed before in all the organized wars since the + Christian era began. The English are willing and eager to stop it + if things can be so fixed that there will be no military power in + Europe that wishes or prepares to attack and invade England. + + I've had many one-hour, two-hour, three-hour talks with Sir Edward + Grey. He sees nothing further than I have written. He says to me + often that if the United States could see its way to cease to + protest against stopping war materials from getting into Germany, + they could end the war more quickly--all this, of course, + informally; and I say to him that the United States will consider + any proposal you will make that does not infringe on a strict + neutrality. Violate a rigid neutrality we will not do. And, of + course, he does not ask that. I give him more trouble than all the + other neutral Powers combined; they all say this. And, on the other + side, his war-lord associates in the Cabinet make his way hard. + + So it goes--God bless us, it's awful. I never get away from + it--war, war, war every waking minute, and the worry of it; and I + see no near end of it. I've had only one thoroughly satisfactory + experience in a coon's age, and this was this: Two American ships + were stopped the other day at Falmouth. I telegraphed the captains + to come here to see me. I got the facts from them--all the facts. I + telephoned Sir Edward that I wished to see him at once. I had him + call in one of his ship-detaining committee. I put the facts on the + table. I said, "By what right, or theory of right, or on what + excuse, are those ships stopped? They are engaged in neutral + commerce. They fly the American flag." One of them was released + that night--no more questions asked. The other was allowed to go + after giving bond to return a lot of kerosene which was loaded at + the bottom of the ship. + + If I could get facts, I could do many things. The State Department + telegraphs me merely what the shipper says--a partial statement. + The British Government tells me (after infinite delay) another set + of facts. The British Government says, "We're sorry, but the Prize + Court must decide." Our Government wires a dissertation on + International Law--Protest, protest: (I've done nothing else since + the world began!) One hour with a sensible ship captain does more + than a month of cross-wrangling with Government Departments. + + I am trying my best, God knows, to keep the way as smooth as + possible; but neither government helps me. Our Government merely + sends the shipper's ex-parte statement. This Government uses the + Navy's excuse. . . . + + At present, I can't for the life of me see a way to peace, for the + one reason I have told you. The Germans wish to whip England, to + invade England. They started with their army toward England. Till + that happened England didn't have an army. But I see no human power + that can give the English now what they are determined to + have--safety for the future--till some radical change is made in + the German system so that they will no longer have a war-party any + more than England has a war-party. England surely has no wish to + make conquest of Germany. If Germany will show that she has no wish + to make conquest of England, the war would end to-morrow. + + What impresses me through it all is the backwardness of all the Old + World in realizing the true aims of government and the true + methods. I can't see why any man who has hope for the progress of + mankind should care to live anywhere in Europe. To me it is all + infinitely sad. This dreadful war is a logical outcome of their + condition, their thought, their backwardness. I think I shall never + care to see the continent again, which of course is committing + suicide and bankruptcy. When my natural term of service is done + here, I shall go home with more joy than you can imagine. That's + the only home for a man who wishes his horizon to continue to grow + wider. + + All this for you and me only--nobody else. + + Heartily yours, + WALTER H. PAGE. + +Probably Page thought that this statement of the case--and it was +certainly a masterly statement--would end any attempt to get what he +regarded as an unsatisfactory and dangerous peace. But President Wilson +could not be deterred from pressing the issue. His conviction was firm +that this winter of 1914-1915 represented the most opportune time to +bring the warring nations to terms, and it was a conviction from which +he never departed. After the sinking of the _Lusitania_ the +Administration gazed back regretfully at its frustrated attempts of the +preceding winter, and it was inclined to place the responsibility for +this failure upon Great Britain and France. "The President's judgment," +wrote Colonel House on August 4, 1915, three months after the +_Lusitania_ went down, "was that last autumn was the time to discuss +peace parleys, and we both saw present possibilities. War is a great +gamble at best, and there was too much at stake in this one to take +chances. I believe if one could have started peace parleys in November, +we could have forced the evacuation of both France and Belgium, and +finally forced a peace which would have eliminated militarism on land +and sea. The wishes of the Allies were heeded with the result that the +war has now fastened itself upon the vitals of Europe and what the end +may be is beyond the knowledge of man." + +This shows that the efforts which the Administration was making were not +casual or faint-hearted, but that they represented a most serious +determination to bring hostilities to an end. This letter and the +correspondence which now took place with Page also indicate the general +terms upon which the Wilson Administration believed that the mighty +differences could be composed. The ideas which Colonel House now set +forth were probably more the President's than his own; he was merely the +intermediary in their transmission. They emphasized Mr. Wilson's +conviction that a decisive victory on either side would be a misfortune +for mankind. As early as August, 1914, this was clearly the conviction +that underlay all others in the President's interpretation of events. +His other basic idea was that militarism should come to an end "on land +and sea"; this could mean nothing except that Germany was expected to +abandon its army and that Great Britain was to abandon its navy. + + _From Edward M. House_ + 115 East 53rd Street, + New York City. + January 4th, 1915. + + DEAR PAGE: + + I believe the Dual Alliance is thoroughly ready for peace and I + believe they would be willing to agree upon terms England would + accept provided Russia and France could be satisfied. + + They would, in my opinion, evacuate both Belgium and France and + indemnify the former, and they would, I think, be willing to begin + negotiations upon a basis looking to permanent peace. + + It would surprise me if the Germans did not come out in the open + soon and declare that they have always been for peace, that they + are for peace now, and that they are willing to enter into a + compact which would insure peace for all time; that they have been + misrepresented and maligned and that they leave the entire + responsibility for the continuation of the war with the Allies. + + If they should do this, it would create a profound impression, and + if it was not met with sympathy by the Allies, the neutral + sentiment, which is now almost wholly against the Germans, would + veer toward them. + + Will you not convey this thought to Sir Edward and let me know what + he says? + + The President is willing and anxious for me to go to England and + Germany as soon as there is anything tangible to go on, and + whenever my presence will be welcome. The Germans have already + indicated this feeling but I have not been able to get from Spring + Rice any expression from his Government. + + As I told you before, the President does not wish to offend the + sensibilities of any one by premature action, but he is, of course, + enormously interested in initiating at least tentative + conversations. + + Will you not advise me in regard to this? + + Faithfully yours, + E.M. HOUSE. + + _From Edward M. House_ + 115 East 53rd Street, + New York City. + January 18, 1915. + + DEAR PAGE: + + The President has sent me a copy of your confidential dispatch No. + 1474, January 15th. + + The reason you had no information in regard to what General French + mentioned was because no one knew of it outside of the President + and myself and there was no safe way to inform you. + + As a matter of fact, there has been no direct proposal made by + anybody. I have had repeated informal talks with the different + ambassadors and I have had direct communication with Zimmermann, + which has led the President and me to believe that peace + conversations may be now initiated in an unofficial way. + + This is the purpose of my going over on the _Lusitania_, January + 30th. When I reach London I will be guided by circumstances as to + whether I shall go next to France or Germany. + + The President and I find that we are going around in a circle in + dealing with the representatives in Washington, and he thinks it + advisable and necessary to reach the principals direct. When I + explain just what is in the President's mind, I believe they will + all feel that it was wise for me to come at this time. + + I shall not write more fully for the reason I am to see you so + soon. + + I am sending this through the kindness of Sir Horace Plunkett. + + Faithfully yours, + E.M. HOUSE. + + P.S. We shall probably say, for public consumption, that I am + coming to look into relief measures, and see what further can be + done. Of course, no one but you and Sir Edward must know the real + purpose of my visit. + +Why was Colonel House so confident that the Dual Alliance was prepared +at this time to discuss terms of peace? Colonel House, as his letter +shows, was in communication with Zimmermann, the German Under Foreign +Secretary. But a more important approach had just been made, though +information bearing on this had not been sent to Page. The Kaiser had +asked President Wilson to transmit to Great Britain a suggestion for +making peace on the basis of surrendering Belgium and of paying for its +restoration. It seems incredible that the Ambassador should not have +been told of this, but Page learned of the proposal from Field Marshal +French, then commanding the British armies in the field, and this +accounts for Colonel House's explanation that, "the reason you had no +information, in regard to what General French mentioned was because no +one knew of it outside of the President and myself and there was no safe +way to inform you." Page has left a memorandum which explains the whole +strange proceeding--a paper which is interesting not only for its +contents, but as an illustration of the unofficial way in which +diplomacy was conducted in Washington at this time: + + * * * * * + +Field Marshal Sir John French, secretly at home from his command of the +English forces in France, invited me to luncheon. There were his +especially confidential friend Moore, the American who lives with him, +and Sir John's private secretary. The military situation is this: a +trench stalemate in France. Neither army has made appreciable progress +in three months. Neither can advance without a great loss of men. +Neither is whipped. Neither can conquer. It would require a million more +men than the Allies can command and a very long time to drive the +Germans back across Belgium. Presently, if the Russians succeed in +driving the Germans back to German soil, there will be another trench +stalemate there. Thus the war wears a practically endless outlook so far +as military operations are concerned. Germany has plenty of men and +plenty of food for a long struggle yet; and, if she use all the copper +now in domestic use in the Empire, she will probably have also plenty of +ammunition for a long struggle. She is not nearly at the end of her rope +either in a military or an economic sense. + +What then? The Allies are still stronger--so long as they hold together +as one man. But is it reasonable to assume that they can? And, even if +they can, is it worth while to win a complete victory at such a cost as +the lives of practically all the able-bodied men in Europe? But can the +Allies hold together as one man for two or three or four years? Well, +what are we going to do? And here came the news of the lunch. General +French informed me that the President had sent to England, at the +request of the Kaiser, a proposal looking toward peace, Germany offering +to give up Belgium and to pay for its restoration. + +"This," said Sir John, "is their fourth proposal." + +"And," he went on, "if they will restore Belgium and give +Alsace-Lorraine to France and Constantinople will go to Russia, I can't +see how we can refuse it." + +He scouted the popular idea of "crushing out militarism" once for all. +It would be desirable, even if it were not necessary, to leave Germany +as a first-class power. We couldn't disarm her people forever. We've got +to leave her and the rest to do what they think they must do; and we +must arm ourselves the best we can against them. + +Now--did General French send for me and tell me this just for fun and +just because he likes me? He was very eager to know my opinion whether +this peace offer were genuine or whether it was a trick of the Germans +to--publish it later and thereby to throw the blame for continuing the +war on England? + +It occurs to me as possible that he was directed to tell me what he +told, trusting to me, in spite of his protestations of personal +confidence, etc., to get it to the President. Assuming that the +President sent the Kaiser's message to the King, this may be a suggested +informal answer--that if the offer be extended to give France and Russia +what they want, it will be considered, etc. This may or may not be +true. Alas! the fact that I know nothing about the offer has no meaning; +for the State Department never informs me of anything it takes up with +the British Ambassador in Washington. Well, I'll see. + + * * * * * + +These were therefore the reasons why Colonel House had decided to go to +Europe and enter into peace negotiations with the warring powers. +Colonel House was wise in taking all possible precautions to conceal the +purpose of this visit. His letter intimates that the German Government +was eager to have him cross the ocean on this particular mission; it +discloses, on the other hand, that the British Government regarded the +proposed negotiations with no enthusiasm. Sir Edward Grey and Mr. +Asquith would have been glad to end hostilities on terms that would +permanently establish peace and abolish the vices which were responsible +for the war, and they were ready to welcome courteously the President's +representative and discuss the situation with him in a fair-minded +spirit. But they did not believe that such an enterprise could serve a +useful purpose. Possibly the military authorities, as General French's +remarks to Page may indicate, did not believe that either side could win +a decisive victory, but this was not the belief of the British public +itself. The atmosphere in England at that time was one of confidence in +the success of British arms and of suspicion and distrust of the British +Government. A strong expectation prevailed in the popular mind, that the +three great Powers of the Entente would at an early date destroy the +menace which had enshrouded Europe for forty years, and there was no +intention of giving Germany a breathing spell during which she could +regenerate her forces to resume the onslaught. In the winter of 1915 +Great Britain was preparing for the naval attack on the Dardanelles, and +its success was regarded as inevitable. Page had an opportunity to +observe the state of optimism which prevailed in high British circles. +In March of 1915 he was visiting the Prime Minister at Walmer Castle; +one afternoon Mr. Asquith took him aside, informed him of the +Dardanelles preparations and declared that the Allies would have +possession of Constantinople in two weeks. The Prime Minister's attitude +was not one of hope; it was one of confidence. The capture of +Constantinople, of course, would have brought an early success to the +allied army on all fronts[108]. This was the mood that was spurring on +the British public to its utmost exertions, and, with such a +determination prevailing everywhere, a step in the direction of peace +was the last thing that the British desired; such a step could have been +interpreted only as an attempt to deprive the Allies of their victory +and as an effort to assist Germany in escaping the consequences of her +crimes. Combined with this stout popular resolve, however, there was a +lack of confidence in the Asquith ministry. An impression was broadcast +that it was pacifist, even "defeatist," in its thinking, and that it +harboured a weak humanitarianism which was disposed to look gently even +upon the behaviour of the Prussians. The masses suspected that the +ministry would welcome a peace with Germany which would mean little more +than a cessation of hostilities and which would leave the great problems +of the war unsolved. That this opinion was unjust, that, on the +contrary, the British Foreign Office was steadily resisting all attempts +to end the war on an unsatisfactory basis, Page's correspondence, +already quoted, abundantly proves, but this unreasoning belief did +prevail and it was an important factor in the situation. This is the +reason why the British Cabinet regarded Colonel House's visit at that +time with positive alarm. It feared that, should the purpose become +known, the British public and press would conclude that the Government +had invited a peace discussion. Had any such idea seized the popular +mind in February and March, 1915, a scandal would have developed which +would probably have caused the downfall of the Asquith Ministry. "Don't +fool yourself about peace," Page writes to his son Arthur, about this +time. "If any one should talk about peace, or doves, or ploughshares +here, they'd shoot him." + +Colonel House reached London early in February and was soon in close +consultation with the Prime Minister and Sir Edward Grey. He made a +great personal success; the British statesmen gained a high regard for +his disinterestedness and his general desire to serve the cause of +decency among nations; but he made little progress in his peace plans, +simply because the facts were so discouraging and so impregnable. Sir +Edward repeated to him what he had already said to Page many times: that +Great Britain was prepared to discuss a peace that would really +safeguard the future of Europe, but was not prepared to discuss one that +would merely reinstate the régime that had existed before 1914. The fact +that the Germans were not ready to accept such a peace made discussion +useless. Disappointed at this failure, Colonel House left for Berlin. +His letters to Page show that the British judgment of Germany was not +unjust and that the warnings which Page had sent to Washington were +based on facts: + + _From Edward M. House_ + Embassy of the United States of America, + Berlin, Germany, + March 20, 1915. + + DEAR PAGE: + + I arrived yesterday morning and I saw Zimmermann[109] almost + immediately. He was very cordial and talked to me frankly and + sensibly. + + I tried to bring about a better feeling toward England, and told + him how closely their interests touched at certain points. I also + told him of the broad way in which Sir Edward was looking at the + difficult problems that confronted Europe, and I expressed the hope + that this view would be reciprocated elsewhere, so that, when the + final settlement came, it could be made in a way that would be to + the advantage of mankind. + + The Chancellor is out of town for a few days and I shall see him + when he returns. I shall also see Ballin, Von Gwinner, and many + others. I had lunch yesterday with Baron von Wimpsch who is a very + close friend of the Emperor. + + Zimmermann said that it was impossible for them to make any peace + overtures, and he gave me to understand that, for the moment, even + what England would perhaps consent to now, could not be accepted by + Germany, to say nothing of what France had in mind. + + I shall hope to establish good relations here and then go somewhere + and await further developments. I even doubt whether more can be + done until some decisive military result is obtained by one or + other of the belligerents. + + I will write further if there is any change in the situation. I + shall probably be here until at least the 27th. + + Faithfully yours, + E.M. HOUSE. + + _From Edward M. House_ + Embassy of the United States of America, + Berlin, Germany. + March 26, 1915. + + DEAR PAGE: + + While I have accomplished here much that is of value, yet I leave + sadly disappointed that no direct move can be made toward peace. + + The Civil Government are ready, and upon terms that would at least + make an opening. There is also a large number in military and naval + circles that I believe would be glad to begin parleys, but the + trouble is mainly with the people. It is a very dangerous thing to + permit a people to be misled and their minds inflamed either by the + press, by speeches, or otherwise. + + In my opinion, no government could live here at this time if peace + was proposed upon terms that would have any chance of acceptance. + Those in civil authority that I have met are as reasonable and + fairminded as their counterparts in England or America, but, for + the moment, they are impotent. + + I hear on every side the old story that all Germany wants is a + permanent guaranty of peace, so that she may proceed upon her + industrial career undisturbed. + + I have talked of the second convention[110], and it has been + cordially received, and there is a sentiment here, as well as + elsewhere, to make settlement upon lines broad enough to prevent a + recurrence of present conditions. + + There is much to tell you verbally, which I prefer not to write. + + Faithfully yours, + E.M. HOUSE. + +Colonel House's next letter is most important, for it records the birth +of that new idea which afterward became a ruling thought with President +Wilson and the cause of almost endless difficulties in his dealings with +Great Britain. The "new phase of the situation" to which he refers is +"the Freedom of the Seas" and this brief note to Page, dated March 27, +1915, contains the first reference to this idea on record. Indeed, it is +evident from the letter itself that Colonel House made this notation the +very day the plan occurred to him. + + _From Edward M. House_ + Embassy of the United States of America, + Berlin, Germany. + March 27, 1915. + + DEAR PAGE: + + I have had a most satisfactory talk with the Chancellor. After + conferring with Stovall[111], Page[112], and Willard[113], I shall + return to Paris and then to London to discuss with Sir Edward a + phase of the situation which promises results. + + I did not think of it until to-day and have mentioned it to both + the Chancellor and Zimmermann, who have received it cordially, and + who join me in the belief that it may be the first thread to bridge + the chasm. + + I am writing hastily, for the pouch is waiting to be closed. + + Faithfully yours, + E.M. HOUSE. + +The "freedom of the seas" was merely a proposal to make all merchant +shipping, enemy and neutral, free from attack in time of war. It would +automatically have ended all blockades and all interference with +commerce. Germany would have been at liberty to send all her merchant +ships to sea for undisturbed trade with all parts of the world in war +time as in peace, and, in future, navies would be used simply for +fighting. Offensively, their purpose would be to bombard enemy +fortifications, to meet enemy ships in battle, and to convoy ships which +were transporting troops for the invasion of enemy soil; defensively, +their usefulness would consist in protecting the homeland from such +attacks and such invasions. Perhaps an argument can be made for this new +rule of warfare, but it is at once apparent that it is the most +startling proposal brought forth in modern times in the direction of +disarmament. It meant that Great Britain should abandon that agency of +warfare with which she had destroyed Napoleon, and with which she +expected to destroy Germany in the prevailing struggle--the blockade. +From a defensive standpoint, Colonel House's proposed reform would have +been a great advantage to Britain, for an honourable observance of the +rule would have insured the British people its food supply in wartime. +With Great Britain, however, the blockade has been historically an +offensive measure: it is the way in which England has always made war. +Just what reception this idea would have had with official London, in +April, 1915, had Colonel House been able to present it as his own +proposal, is not clear, but the Germans, with characteristic stupidity, +prevented the American from having a fair chance. The Berlin Foreign +Office at once cabled to Count Bernstorff and Bernhard Dernburg--the +latter a bovine publicity agent who was then promoting the German cause +in the American press--with instructions to start a "propaganda" in +behalf of the "freedom of the seas." By the time Colonel House reached +London, therefore, these four words had been adorned with the Germanic +label. British statesmen regarded the suggestion as coming from Germany +and not from America, and the reception was worse than cold. + +And another tragedy now roughly interrupted President Wilson's attempts +at mediation. Page's letters have disclosed that he possessed almost a +clairvoyant faculty of foreseeing approaching events. The letters of the +latter part of April and of early May contain many forebodings of +tragedy. "Peace? Lord knows when!" he writes to his son Arthur on May +2nd. "The blowing up of a liner with American passengers may be the +prelude. I almost expect such a thing." And again on the same date: "If +a British liner full of American passengers be blown up, what will Uncle +Sam do? That's what's going to happen." "We all have the feeling here," +the Ambassador writes on May 6th, "that more and more frightful things +are about to happen." + +The ink on those words was scarcely dry when a message from Queenstown +was handed to the American Ambassador. A German submarine had torpedoed +and sunk the _Lusitania_ off the Old head of Kinsale, and one hundred +and twenty-four American men, women, and children had been drowned. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 100: On September 5, 1914, Great Britain, France, and Russia +signed the Pact of London, an agreement which bound the three powers of +the Entente to make war and peace as a unit. Each power specifically +pledged itself not to make a separate peace.] + +[Footnote 101: Published in Chapter XI, page 327.] + +[Footnote 102: Colonel House's summer home in Massachusetts.] + +[Footnote 103: Ambassador from Austria-Hungary to the United States.] + +[Footnote 104: This, with certain modifications is Article 10 of the +Covenant of the League of Nations.] + +[Footnote 105: There is a suggestion of these provisions in Article 8 of +the League Covenant.] + +[Footnote 106: Article 11 of the League Covenant reflects the influence +of this idea.] + +[Footnote 107: From the President's second message to Congress, December +8, 1914: "It is our dearest present hope that this character and +reputation may presently, in God's providence, bring us an opportunity, +such as has seldom been vouchsafed any nation, to counsel and obtain +peace in the world and reconciliation and a healing settlement of many a +matter that has cooled and interrupted the friendship of nations."] + +[Footnote 108: The opening of the Dardanelles would have given Russian +agricultural products access to the markets of the world and thus have +preserved the Russian economic structure. It would also have enabled the +Entente to munition the Russian Army. With a completely equipped Russian +Army in the East and the Entente Army in the West, Germany could not +long have survived the pressure.] + +[Footnote 109: German Under Foreign Secretary.] + +[Footnote 110: It was the Wilson Administration's plan that there should +be two peace gatherings, one of the belligerents to settle the war, and +the other of belligerents and neutrals, to settle questions of general +importance growing out of the war. This latter is what Colonel House +means by "the second convention."] + +[Footnote 111: Mr. Pleasant A. Stovall, American Minister to +Switzerland.] + +[Footnote 112: Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, American Ambassador to Italy.] + +[Footnote 113: Mr. Joseph E. Willard. American Ambassador to Spain.] + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life and Letters of Walter H. +Page, Volume I, by Burton J. 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Page, Vol. I, by Burton J. 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Page, +Volume I, by Burton J. Hendrick + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I + +Author: Burton J. Hendrick + +Release Date: November 6, 2005 [EBook #17017] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF *** + + + + +Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="Frontispiece1" id="Frontispiece1" /> +<a href="images/1001.jpg"><img src= +"images/1001.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br /> +<b>Walter H. Page</b><br /> +<br /> +</div> + +<div class="redletter"> +<h1>THE<br /> +LIFE AND LETTERS OF<br /> +WALTER H. PAGE</h1> +</div> + +<h3>BY</h3> +<h2>BURTON J. HENDRICK</h2> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/1002.png" width="10%" alt="" title="" /><br /> +</div> + +<h3>VOLUME I</h3> + +<div class='center'> +GARDEN CITY NEW YORK<br /> +DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY<br /> +1922 +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class='center'> +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES<br /> +AT<br /> +THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.<br /> +<br /> +<i>First Edition<br /> +after the printing of 377 de luxe copies</i><br /> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><i>PREFATORY NOTE</i></h2> + + +<p><i>Among the many who have assisted in the preparation of +this Biography especial acknowledgment is made to Mr. +Irwin Laughlin, First Secretary and Counsellor of the London +Embassy under Mr. Page. Mr. Page's papers show the +high regard which he entertained for Mr. Laughlin's abilities +and character, and the author similarly has found Mr. +Laughlin's assistance indispensable. Mr. Laughlin has had +the goodness to read the manuscript and make numerous suggestions, +all for the purpose of reënforcing the accuracy of the +narrative. The author gratefully remembers many long conversations +with Viscount Grey of Fallodon, in which Anglo-American +relations from 1913 to 1916 were exhaustively +canvassed and many side-lights thrown upon Mr. Page's conduct +of his difficult and delicate duties. The British Foreign +Office most courteously gave the writer permission to examine +a large number of documents in its archives bearing upon Mr. +Page's ambassadorship and consented to the publication of +several of the most important.</i></p> + +<p>B.J.H.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-1-vii" id="page1-1-vii"></a>[pg I-vii]</span></div> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<h3>VOLUME I</h3> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='right'>CHAPTER</td> +<td> </td> +<td align='right'>PAGE</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></td> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_I">A RECONSTRUCTION BOYHOOD</a></td> +<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">1</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></td> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_II">JOURNALISM</a></td> +<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">32</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></td> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_III">"THE FORGOTTEN MAN"</a></td> +<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">64</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></td> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">THE WILSONIAN ERA BEGINS</a></td> +<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">102</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></td> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_V">ENGLAND BEFORE THE WAR</a></td> +<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">132</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></td> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">"POLICY" AND "PRINCIPLE" IN MEXICO</a></td> +<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">175</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></td> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">PERSONALITIES OF THE MEXICAN PROBLEM</a></td> +<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">215</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">HONOUR AND DISHONOUR IN PANAMA</a></td> +<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">232</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a></td> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">AMERICA TRIES TO PREVENT THE EUROPEAN WAR</a></td> +<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">270</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X.</a></td> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_X">THE GRAND SMASH</a></td> +<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_X">301</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.</a></td> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">ENGLAND UNDER THE STRESS OF WAR</a></td> +<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">327</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a></td> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">"WAGING NEUTRALITY"</a></td> +<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">357</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a></td> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">GERMANY'S FIRST PEACE DRIVES</a></td> +<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">398</a></td></tr> +</table> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-1-ix" id="page1-1-ix"></a>[pg I-ix]</span> +</div><h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td><a href="#Frontispiece1">Walter H. Page</a></td> +<td align='right'><i><a href="#Frontispiece1">Frontispiece</a></i></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#i1032">Allison Francis Page</a> (1824-1899), father of Walter H. Page</td> +<td align='right'><a href="#i1032">20</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#i1033">Catherine Raboteau Page</a> (1831-1897), mother of Walter H. Page</td> +<td align='right'><a href="#i1033">21</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#i1050">Walter H. Page in 1876</a>, when he was a Fellow of Johns Hopkins</td> +<td> </td></tr> +<tr><td> University, Baltimore, Md.</td> +<td align='right'><a href="#i1050">36</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#i1051">Basil L. Gildersleeve</a>, Professor of Greek, Johns Hopkins</td> +<td> </td></tr> +<tr><td> University, 1876-1915</td> +<td align='right'><a href="#i1051">37</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#i1116">Walter H. Page (1899)</a> from a photograph taken when he was</td> +<td> </td></tr> +<tr><td> editor of the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i></td> +<td align='right'><a href="#i1116">100</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#i1117">Dr. Wallace Buttrick</a>, President of the General Education Board</td> +<td align='right'><a href="#i1117">101</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#i1134">Charles D. McIver</a>, of Greensboro, North Carolina, a leader in</td> +<td> </td></tr> +<tr><td> the cause of Southern Education</td> +<td align='right'><a href="#i1134">116</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#i1135">Woodrow Wilson in 1912</a></td> +<td align='right'><a href="#i1135">117</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#i1312">Walter H. Page</a>, from a photograph taken a few years before he</td> +<td> </td></tr> +<tr><td> became American Ambassador to Great Britain</td> +<td align='right'><a href="#i1312">292</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#i1313">The British Foreign Office, Downing Street</a></td> +<td align='right'><a href="#i1313">293</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#i1330">No. 6 Grosvenor Square</a>, the American Embassy under Mr. Page</td> +<td align='right'><a href="#i1330">308</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#i1331">Irwin Laughlin</a>, Secretary of the American Embassy at London,</td> +<td> </td></tr> +<tr><td>1912-1917, Counsellor 1916-1919</td> +<td align='right'><a href="#i1331">309</a></td></tr> +</table> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>THE</h2> + +<h2>LIFE AND LETTERS</h2> + +<h2>OF</h2> + +<h2>WALTER H. PAGE</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-1-1" id="page1-1-1"></a>[pg I-1]</span> +</div><h2>THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I" />CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>A RECONSTRUCTION BOYHOOD</h3> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>The earliest recollections of any man have great +biographical interest, and this is especially the case +with Walter Page, for not the least dramatic aspect of his +life was that it spanned the two greatest wars in history. +Page spent his last weeks in England, at Sandwich, on +the coast of Kent; every day and every night he could +hear the pounding of the great guns in France, as the +Germans were making their last desperate attempt to +reach Paris or the Channel ports. His memories of his +childhood days in America were similarly the sights and +sounds of war. Page was a North Carolina boy; he has +himself recorded the impression that the Civil War left +upon his mind.</p> + +<p>"One day," he writes, "when the cotton fields were +white and the elm leaves were falling, in the soft autumn +of the Southern climate wherein the sky is fathomlessly +clear, the locomotive's whistle blew a much longer time +than usual as the train approached Millworth. It did +not stop at so small a station except when there was somebody +to get off or to get on, and so long a blast meant that +someone was coming. Sam and I ran down the avenue of +elms to see who it was. Sam was my Negro companion, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-1-2" id="page1-1-2"></a>[pg I-2]</span> +philosopher, and friend. I was ten years old and Sam +said that he was fourteen. There was constant talk +about the war. Many men of the neighbourhood had +gone away somewhere—that was certain; but Sam and I +had a theory that the war was only a story. We had +been fooled about old granny Thomas's bringing the baby +and long ago we had been fooled also about Santa Claus. +The war might be another such invention, and we sometimes +suspected that it was. But we found out the truth +that day, and for this reason it is among my clearest early +recollections.</p> + +<p>"For, when the train stopped, they put off a big box +and gently laid it in the shade of the fence. The only +man at the station was the man who had come to change +the mail-bags; and he said that this was Billy Morris's +coffin and that he had been killed in a battle. He asked +us to stay with it till he could send word to Mr. Morris, +who lived two miles away. The man came back presently +and leaned against the fence till old Mr. Morris +arrived, an hour or more later. The lint of cotton was +on his wagon, for he was hauling his crop to the gin when +the sad news reached him; and he came in his shirt +sleeves, his wife on the wagon seat with him.</p> + +<p>"All the neighbourhood gathered at the church, a +funeral was preached and there was a long prayer for our +success against the invaders, and Billy Morris was buried. +I remember that I wept the more because it now seemed +to me that my doubt about the war had somehow done +Billy Morris an injustice. Old Mrs. Gregory wept more +loudly than anybody else; and she kept saying, while the +service was going on, 'It'll be my John next.' In a +little while, sure enough, John Gregory's coffin was put +off the train, as Billy Morris's had been, and I regarded +her as a woman gifted with prophecy. Other coffins, too, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-1-3" id="page1-1-3"></a>[pg I-3]</span> +were put off from time to time. About the war there +could no longer be a doubt. And, a little later, its realities +and horrors came nearer home to us, with swift, deep +experiences.</p> + +<p>"One day my father took me to the camp and parade +ground ten miles away, near the capital. The General +and the Governor sat on horses and the soldiers marched +by them and the band played. They were going to the +front. There surely must be a war at the front, I told +Sam that night. Still more coffins were brought home, +too, as the months and the years passed; and the women +of the neighbourhood used to come and spend whole days +with my mother, sewing for the soldiers. So precious +became woollen cloth that every rag was saved and the +threads were unravelled to be spun and woven into new +fabrics. And they baked bread and roasted chickens +and sheep and pigs and made cakes, all to go to the +soldiers at the front<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1" /><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>."</p> + +<p>The quality that is uppermost in the Page stock, both +in the past and in the present generation, is that of the +builder and the pioneer. The ancestor of the North Carolina +Pages was a Lewis Page, who, in the latter part of the +eighteenth century, left the original American home in +Virginia, and started life anew in what was then regarded +as the less civilized country to the south. Several explanations +have survived as to the cause of his departure, +one being that his interest in the rising tide of Methodism +had made him uncongenial to his Church of England +relatives; in the absence of definite knowledge, however, +it may safely be assumed that the impelling motive was +that love of seeking out new things, of constructing a +new home in the wilderness, which has never forsaken his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-1-4" id="page1-1-4"></a>[pg I-4]</span> +descendants. His son, Anderson Page, manifesting this +same love of change, went farther south into Wake County, +and acquired a plantation of a thousand acres about twelve +miles north of Raleigh. He cultivated this estate with +slaves, sending his abundant crops of cotton and tobacco +to Petersburg, Virginia, a traffic that made him sufficiently +prosperous to give several of his sons a college +education. The son who is chiefly interesting at the +present time, Allison Francis Page, the father of the future +Ambassador, did not enjoy this opportunity. This fact +in itself gives an insight into his character. While his +brothers were grappling with Latin and Greek and theology—one +of them became a Methodist preacher of the +hortatory type for which the South is famous—we catch +glimpses of the older man battling with the logs in the +Cape Fear River, or penetrating the virgin pine forest, +felling trees and converting its raw material to the uses +of a growing civilization. Like many of the Page breed, +this Page was a giant in size and in strength, as sound +morally and physically as the mighty forests in which a +considerable part of his life was spent, brave, determined, +aggressive, domineering almost to the point of intolerance, +deeply religious and abstemious—a mixture of the +frontiersman and the Old Testament prophet. Walter +Page dedicated one of his books<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2" /><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> to his father, in words +that accurately sum up his character and career. "To +the honoured memory of my father, whose work was work +that built up the commonwealth." Indeed, Frank Page—for +this is the name by which he was generally known—spent +his whole life in these constructive labours. He +founded two towns in North Carolina, Cary and Aberdeen; +in the City of Raleigh he constructed hotels and +other buildings; his enterprising and restless spirit opened +up Moore County—which includes the Pinehurst region; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-1-5" id="page1-1-5"></a>[pg I-5]</span> +he scattered his logging camps and his sawmills all over +the face of the earth; and he constructed a railroad through +the pine woods that made him a rich man.</p> + +<p>Though he was not especially versed in the learning of +the schools, Walter Page's father had a mind that was +keen and far-reaching. He was a pioneer in politics as +he was in the practical concerns of life. Though he was +the son of slave-holding progenitors and even owned +slaves himself, he was not a believer in slavery. The +country that he primarily loved was not Moore County +or North Carolina, but the United States of America. +In politics he was a Whig, which meant that, in the +years preceding the Civil War, he was opposed to the +extension of slavery and did not regard the election of +Abraham Lincoln as a sufficient provocation for the secession +of the Southern States. It is therefore not surprising +that Walter Page, in the midst of the London turmoil +of 1916, should have found his thoughts reverting to his +father as he remembered him in Civil War days. That +gaunt figure of America's time of agony proved an inspiration +and hope in the anxieties that assailed the Ambassador. +"When our Civil War began," wrote Page to +Col. Edward M. House—the date was November 24, +1916, one of the darkest days for the Allied cause—"every +man who had a large and firm grip on economic facts +foresaw how it would end—not when but how. Young +as I was, I recall a conversation between my father and +the most distinguished judge of his day in North Carolina. +They put down on one side the number of men in +the Confederate States, the number of ships, the number +of manufactures, as nearly as they knew, the number of +skilled workmen, the number of guns, the aggregate of +wealth and of possible production. On the other side +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-1-6" id="page1-1-6"></a>[pg I-6]</span> +they put down the best estimate they could make of all +these things in the Northern States. The Northern +States made two (or I shouldn't wonder if it were three) +times as good a showing in men and resources as the +Confederacy had. 'Judge,' said my father, 'this is the +most foolhardy enterprise that man ever undertook.' +But Yancey of Alabama was about that time making +five-hour speeches to thousands of people all over the +South, declaring that one Southerner could whip five +Yankees, and the awful slaughter began and darkened +our childhood and put all our best men where they would +see the sun no more. Our people had at last to accept +worse terms than they could have got at the beginning. +This World War, even more than our Civil War, is an +economic struggle. Put down on either side the same +items that my father and the judge put down and add the +items up. You will see the inevitable result."</p> + +<p>If we are seeking an ancestral explanation for that +moral ruggedness, that quick perception of the difference +between right and wrong, that unobscured vision into +men and events, and that deep devotion to America and +to democracy which formed the fibre of Walter Page's +being, we evidently need look no further than his father. +But the son had qualities which the older man did not +possess—an enthusiasm for literature and learning, a love +of the beautiful in Nature and in art, above all a gentleness +of temperament and of manner. These qualities he held +in common with his mother. On his father's side Page +was undiluted English; on his mother's he was French and +English. Her father was John Samuel Raboteau, the +descendant of Huguenot refugees who had fled from +France on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; her +mother was Esther Barclay, a member of a family which +gave the name of Barclaysville to a small town half way +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-1-7" id="page1-1-7"></a>[pg I-7]</span> +between Raleigh and Fayetteville, North Carolina. It +is a member of this tribe to whom Page once referred as +the "vigorous Barclay who held her receptions to notable +men in her bedroom during the years of her bedridden +condition." She was the proprietor of the "Half Way +House," a tavern located between Fayetteville and +Raleigh; and in her old age she kept royal state, in the +fashion which Page describes, for such as were socially entitled +to this consideration. The most vivid impression +which her present-day descendants retain is that of her +fervent devotion to the Southern cause. She carried the +spirit of secession to such an extreme that she had the +gate to her yard painted to give a complete presentment +of the Confederate Flag. Walter Page's mother, the +granddaughter of this determined and rebellious lady, +had also her positive quality, but in a somewhat more +subdued form. She did not die until 1897, and so the +recollection of her is fresh and vivid. As a mature woman +she was undemonstrative and soft spoken; a Methodist +of old-fashioned Wesleyan type, she dressed with a +Quaker-like simplicity, her brown hair brushed flatly down +upon a finely shaped head and her garments destitute of +ruffles or ornamentation. The home which she directed +was a home without playing cards or dancing or smoking +or wine-bibbing or other worldly frivolities, yet the +memories of her presence which Catherine Page has left +are not at all austere. Duty was with her the prime +consideration of life, and fundamental morals the first +conceptions which she instilled in her children's growing +minds, yet she had a quiet sense of humour and a real +love of fun.</p> + +<p>She had also strong likes and dislikes, and was not +especially hospitable to men and women who fell under +her disapproval. A small North Carolina town, in the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-1-8" id="page1-1-8"></a>[pg I-8]</span> +years preceding and following the Civil War, was not +a fruitful soil for cultivating an interest in things intellectual, +yet those who remember Walter Page's mother remember +her always with a book in her hand. She would +read at her knitting and at her miscellaneous household +duties, which were rather arduous in the straitened days +that followed the war, and the books she read were always +substantial ones. Perhaps because her son Walter +was in delicate health, perhaps because his early tastes +and temperament were not unlike her own, perhaps because +he was her oldest surviving child, the fact remains +that, of a family of eight, he was generally regarded as +the child with whom she was especially sympathetic. +The picture of mother and son in those early days is an +altogether charming one. Page's mother was only twenty-four +when he was born; she retained her youth for many +years after that event, and during his early childhood, in +appearance and manner, she was little more than a girl. +When Walter was a small boy, he and his mother used to +take long walks in the woods, sometimes spending the +entire day, fishing along the brooks, hunting wild flowers, +now and then pausing while the mother read pages of +Dickens or of Scott. These experiences Page never forgot. +Nearly all his letters to his mother—to whom, +even in his busiest days in New York, he wrote constantly—have +been accidentally destroyed, but a few scraps +indicate the close spiritual bond that existed between +the two. Always he seemed to think of his mother +as young. Through his entire life, in whatever part +of the world he might be, and however important +was the work in which he might be engaged, Page never +failed to write her a long and affectionate letter at Christmas.</p> + +<p>"Well, I've gossiped a night or two"—such is the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-1-9" id="page1-1-9"></a>[pg I-9]</span> +conclusion of his Christmas letter of 1893, when Page was +thirty-eight, with a growing family of his own—"till +I've filled the paper—all such little news and less nonsense +as most gossip and most letters are made of. But +it is for you to read between the lines. That's where the +love lies, dear mother. I wish you were here Christmas; +we should welcome you as nobody else in the world can +be welcomed. But wherever you are and though all +the rest have the joy of seeing you, which is denied to me, +never a Christmas comes but I feel as near you as I did +years and years ago when we were young. (In those +years <i>big</i> fish bit in old Wiley Bancom's pond by the +railroad: they must have been two inches long!)—I would +give a year's growth to have the pleasure of having you +here. You may be sure that every one of my children +along with me will look with an added reverence toward +the picture on the wall that greets me every morning, +when we have our little Christmas frolics—the picture +that little Katharine points to and says 'That's my +grandmudder.'—The years, as they come, every one, deepen +my gratitude to you, as I better and better understand +the significance of life and every one adds to an affection +that was never small. God bless you.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"WALTER."</span><br /> +</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Such were the father and mother of Walter Hines Page; +they were married at Fayetteville, North Carolina, July 5, +1849; two children who preceded Walter died in infancy. +The latter was born at Cary, August 15, 1855. Cary +was a small village which Frank Page had created; in +honour of the founder it was for several years known +as Page's Station; the father himself changed the name to +Cary, as a tribute to a temperance orator who caused +something of a commotion in the neighbourhood in the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-10" id="page1-10"></a>[pg I-10]</span> +early seventies. Cary was not then much of a town and +has not since become one; but it was placed amid the +scene of important historical events. Page's home was +almost the last stopping place of Sherman's army on its +march through Georgia and the Carolinas, and the Confederacy +came to an end, with Johnston's surrender of the +last Confederate Army, at Durham, only fifteen miles from +Page's home. Walter, a boy of ten, his brother Robert, +aged six, and the negro "companion" Tance—who figures +as Sam in the extract quoted above—stood at the second-story +window and watched Sherman's soldiers pass their +house, in hot pursuit of General "Joe" Wheeler's cavalry. +The thing that most astonished the children was the vast +size of the army, which took all day to file by their home. +They had never realized that either of the fighting forces +could embrace such great numbers of men. Nor did the +behaviour of the invading troops especially endear them to +their unwilling hosts. Part of the cavalry encamped in the +Page yard; their horses ate the bark off the mimosa trees; +an army corps built its campfires under the great oaks, and +cut their emblems on the trunks; the officers took possession +of the house, a colonel making his headquarters in the +parlour. Several looting cavalrymen ran their swords +through the beds, probably looking for hidden silver; the +hearth was torn up in the same feverish quest; angry at +their failure, they emptied sacks of flour and scattered their +contents in the bedrooms and on the stairs; for days the +flour, intermingled with feathers from the bayonetted +beds, formed a carpet all over the house. It is therefore +perhaps not strange that the feelings which Walter +entertained for Sherman's "bummers," despite his +father's Whig principles, were those of most Southern communities. +One day a kindly Northern soldier, sympathizing +with the boy because of the small rations left for the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-11" id="page1-11"></a>[pg I-11]</span> +local population, invited him to join the officers' mess at +dinner. Walter drew proudly back.</p> + +<p>"I'll starve before I'll eat with the Yankees," he said.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"I slept that night on a trundle bed by my mother's," +Page wrote years afterward, describing these early +scenes, "for her room was the only room left for the +family, and we had all lived there since the day before. +The dining room and the kitchen were now superfluous, +because there was nothing more to cook or to eat. . . . +A week or more after the army corps had gone, I drove +with my father to the capital one day, and almost every +mile of the journey we saw a blue coat or a gray coat +lying by the road, with bones or hair protruding—the +unburied and the forgotten of either army. Thus I had +come to know what war was, and death by violence was +among the first deep impressions made on my mind. +My emotions must have been violently dealt with and +my sensibilities blunted—or sharpened? Who shall say? +The wounded and the starved straggled home from hospitals +and from prisons. There was old Mr. Sanford, the +shoemaker, come back again, with a body so thin and a +step so uncertain that I expected to see him fall to pieces. +Mr. Larkin and Joe Tatum went on crutches; and I saw +a man at the post-office one day whose cheek and ear had +been torn away by a shell. Even when Sam and I sat +on the river-bank fishing, and ought to have been silent +lest the fish swim away, we told over in low tones the +stories that we had heard of wounds and of deaths and of +battles.</p> + +<p>"But there was the cheerful gentleness of my mother +to draw my thoughts to different things. I can even now +recall many special little plans that she made to keep my +mind from battles. She hid the military cap that I had +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-12" id="page1-12"></a>[pg I-12]</span> +worn. She bought from me my military buttons and put +them away. She would call me in and tell me pleasant +stories of her own childhood. She would put down her +work to make puzzles with me, and she read gentle +books to me and kept away from me all the stories of the +war and of death that she could. Whatever hardships +befell her (and they must have been many) she kept a +tender manner of resignation and of cheerful patience.</p> + +<p>"After a while the neighbourhood came to life again. +There were more widows, more sonless mothers, more +empty sleeves and wooden legs than anybody there had +ever seen before. But the mimosa bloomed, the cotton was +planted again, and the peach trees blossomed; and the +barnyard and the stable again became full of life. For, +when the army marched away, they, too, were as silent +as an old battlefield. The last hen had been caught under +the corn-crib by a 'Yankee' soldier, who had torn his +coat in this brave raid. Aunt Maria told Sam that all +Yankees were chicken thieves whether they 'brung +freedom or no.'</p> + +<p>"Every year the cotton bloomed and ripened and +opened white to the sun; for the ripening of the cotton +and the running of the river and the turning of the mills +make the thread not of my story only but of the story of +our Southern land—of its institutions, of its misfortunes +and of its place in the economy of the world; and they will +make the main threads of its story, I am sure, so long as +the sun shines on our white fields and the rivers run—a +story that is now rushing swiftly into a happier narrative +of a broader day. The same women who had guided the +spindles in war-time were again at their tasks—they at +least were left; but the machinery was now old and +worked ill. Negro men, who had wandered a while +looking for an invisible 'freedom,' came back and went to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-13" id="page1-13"></a>[pg I-13]</span> +work on the farm from force of habit. They now received +wages and bought their own food. That was the +only apparent difference that freedom had brought them.</p> + +<p>"My Aunt Katharine came from the city for a visit, +my Cousin Margaret with her. Through the orchard, out +into the newly ploughed ground beyond, back over the +lawn which was itself bravely repairing the hurt done by +horses' hoofs and tent-poles, and under the oaks, which +bore the scars of camp-fires, we two romped and played +gentler games than camp and battle. One afternoon, as +our mothers sat on the piazza and saw us come loaded +with apple-blossoms, they said something (so I afterward +learned) about the eternal blooming of childhood and of +Nature—how sweet the early summer was in spite of the +harrying of the land by war; for our gorgeous pageant of +the seasons came on as if the earth had been the home of +unbroken peace<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3" /><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>."</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>And so it was a tragic world into which this boy Page +had been born. He was ten years old when the Civil +War came to an end, and his early life was therefore cast +in a desolate country. Like all of his neighbours, Frank +Page had been ruined by the war. Both the Southern +and Northern armies had passed over the Page territory; +compared with the military depredations with which +Page became familiar in the last years of his life, the +Federal troops did not particularly misbehave, the attacks +on hen roosts and the destruction of feather beds +representing the extreme of their "atrocities"; but no +country can entertain two great fighting forces without +feeling the effects for a prolonged period. Life in this +part of North Carolina again became reduced to its +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-14" id="page1-14"></a>[pg I-14]</span> +fundamentals. The old homesteads and the Negro huts +were still left standing, and their interiors were for the +most part unharmed, but nearly everything else had disappeared. +Horses, cattle, hogs, livestock of all kinds had +vanished before the advancing hosts of hungry soldiers; +and there was one thing which was even more a rarity +than these. That was money. Confederate veterans +went around in their faded gray uniforms, not only because +they loved them, but because they did not have the +wherewithal to buy new wardrobes. Judges, planters, +and other dignified members of the community became +hack drivers from the necessity of picking up a few small +coins. Page's father was more fortunate than the rest, +for he had one asset with which to accumulate a little +liquid capital; he possessed a fine peach orchard, which +was particularly productive in the summer of 1865, and +the Northern soldiers, who drew their pay in money that +had real value, developed a weakness for the fruit. Walter +Page, a boy of ten, used to take his peaches to Raleigh, +and sell them to the "invader"; although he still disdained +having companionable relations with the enemy, he +was not above meeting them on a business footing; and +the greenbacks and silver coin obtained in this way laid a +new basis for the family fortunes.</p> + +<p>Despite this happy windfall, life for the next few years +proved an arduous affair. The horrors of reconstruction +which followed the war were more agonizing than the +war itself. Page's keenest enthusiasm in after life was +democracy, in its several manifestations; but the form +in which democracy first unrolled before his astonished +eyes was a phase that could hardly inspire much enthusiasm. +Misguided sentimentalists and more malicious +politicians in the North had suddenly endowed the Negro +with the ballot. In practically all Southern States that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-15" id="page1-15"></a>[pg I-15]</span> +meant government by Negroes—or what was even worse, +government by a combination of Negroes and the most +vicious white elements, including that which was native to +the soil and that which had imported itself from the North +for this particular purpose. Thus the political vocabulary +of Page's formative years consisted chiefly of such +words as "scalawag," "carpet bagger," "regulator," +"Union League," "Ku Klux Klan," and the like. The +resulting confusion, political, social, and economic, did not +completely amount to the destruction of a civilization, +for underneath it all the old sleepy ante-bellum South +still maintained its existence almost unchanged. The +two most conspicuous and contrasting figures were the +Confederate veteran walking around in a sleeveless coat +and the sharp-featured New England school mar'm, +armed with that spelling book which was overnight to +change the African from a genial barbarian into an intelligent +and conscientious social unit; but more persistent +than these forces was that old dreamy, "unprogressive" +Southland—the same country that Page himself described +in an article on "An Old Southern Borough" +which, as a young man, he contributed to the <i>Atlantic +Monthly</i>. It was still the country where the "old-fashioned +gentleman" was the controlling social influence, +where a knowledge of Latin and Greek still made its +possessor a person of consideration, where Emerson was +a "Yankee philosopher" and therefore not important, +where Shakespeare and Milton were looked upon almost +as contemporary authors, where the Church and politics +and the matrimonial history of friends and relatives +formed the staple of conversation, and where a strong +prejudice still existed against anything that resembled +popular education. In the absence of more substantial +employment, stump speaking, especially eloquent in praise +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-16" id="page1-16"></a>[pg I-16]</span> +of the South and its achievements in war, had become +the leading industry.</p> + +<p>"Wat" Page—he is still known by this name in his +old home—was a tall, rangy, curly-headed boy, with +brown hair and brown eyes, fond of fishing and hunting, +not especially robust, but conspicuously alert and vital. +Such of his old playmates as survive recall chiefly his +keenness of observation, his contagious laughter, his +devotion to reading and to talk. He was also given to +taking long walks in the woods, frequently with the solitary +companionship of a book. Indeed, his extremely +efficient family regarded him as a dreamer and were not +entirely clear as to what purpose he was destined to serve +in a community which, above all, demanded practical +men. Such elementary schools as North Carolina possessed +had vanished in the war; the prevailing custom was +for the better-conditioned families to join forces and +engage a teacher for their assembled children. It was +in such a primary school in Cary that Page learned the +elementary branches, though his mother herself taught +him to read and write. The boy showed such aptitude +in his studies that his mother began to hope, though in +no aggressive fashion, that he might some day become a +Methodist clergyman; she had given him his middle name, +"Hines," in honour of her favourite preacher—a kinsman. +At the age of twelve Page was transferred to the +Bingham School, then located at Mcbane. This was the +Eton of North Carolina, from both a social and an educational +standpoint. It was a military school; the boys +all dressed in gray uniforms built on the plan of the Confederate +army; the hero constantly paraded before their +imaginations was Robert E. Lee; discipline was rigidly military; +more important, a high standard of honour was insisted +upon. There was one thing a boy could not do at +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-17" id="page1-17"></a>[pg I-17]</span> +Bingham and remain in the school; that was to cheat in +class-rooms or at examinations. For this offence no second +chance was given. "I cannot argue the subject," Page +quotes Colonel Bingham saying to the distracted parent +whose son had been dismissed on this charge, and who +was begging for his reinstatement. "In fact, I have no +power to reinstate your boy. I could not keep the honour +of the school—I could not even keep the boys, if he were +to return. They would appeal to their parents and most +of them would be called home. They are the flower of +the South, Sir!" And the social standards that controlled +the thinking of the South for so many years after +the war were strongly entrenched. "The son of a Confederate +general," Page writes, "if he were at all a decent +fellow, had, of course, a higher social rank at the Bingham +School than the son of a colonel. There was some difficulty +in deciding the exact rank of a judge or a governor, +as a father; but the son of a preacher had a fair chance of +a good social rating, especially of an Episcopalian clergyman. +A Presbyterian preacher came next in rank. I +at first was at a social disadvantage. My father had been +a Methodist—that was bad enough; but he had had no +military title at all. If it had become known among the +boys that he had been a 'Union man'—I used to shudder +at the suspicion in which I should be held. And the +fact that my father had held no military title did at last +become known!"</p> + +<p>A single episode discloses that Page maintained his +respect for the Bingham School to the end. In March, +1918, as American Ambassador, he went up to Harrow +and gave an informal talk to the boys on the United +States. His hosts were so pleased that two prizes were +established to commemorate his visit. One was for an +essay by Harrow boys on the subject: "The Drawing +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-18" id="page1-18"></a>[pg I-18]</span> +Together of America and Great Britain by Common +Devotion to a Great Cause." A similar prize on the same +subject was offered to the boys of some American school, +and Page was asked to select the recipient. He promptly +named his old Bingham School in North Carolina.</p> + +<p>It was at Bingham that Page gained his first knowledge +of Greek, Latin, and mathematics, and he was an outstanding +student in all three subjects. He had no particular +liking for mathematics, but he could never understand +why any one should find this branch of learning difficult; +he mastered it with the utmost ease and always stood +high. In two or three years he had absorbed everything +that Bingham could offer and was ready for the next +step. But political conditions in North Carolina now had +their influence upon Page's educational plans. Under +ordinary conditions he would have entered the State +University at Chapel Hill; it had been a great headquarters +in ante-bellum days for the prosperous families +of the South. But by the time that Page was ready to go +to college the University had fallen upon evil days. The +forces which then ruled the state, acting in accordance +with the new principles of racial equality, had opened the +doors of this, one of the most aristocratic of Southern +institutions, to Negroes. The consequences may be easily +imagined. The newly enfranchised blacks showed no inclination +for the groves of Academe, and not a single +representative of the race applied for matriculation. +The outraged white population turned its back upon this +new type of coeducation; in the autumn of 1872 not a +solitary white boy made his appearance. The old university +therefore closed its doors for lack of students and +for the next few years it became a pitiable victim to +the worst vices of the reconstruction era. Politicians +were awarded the presidency and the professorships as +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-19" id="page1-19"></a>[pg I-19]</span> +political pap, and the resources of the place, in money and +books, were scattered to the wind. Page had therefore +to find his education elsewhere. The deep religious feelings +of his family quickly settled this point. The young +man promptly betook himself to the backwoods of North +Carolina and knocked at the doors of Trinity College, +a Methodist Institution then located in Randolph County. +Trinity has since changed its abiding place to Durham +and has been transformed into one of the largest and most +successful colleges of the new South; but in those days +a famous Methodist divine and journalist described it +as "a college with a few buildings that look like tobacco +barns and a few teachers that look as though they ought +to be worming tobacco." Page spent something more +than a year at Trinity, entering in the autumn of 1871, +and leaving in December, 1872. A few letters, written +from this place, are scarcely more complimentary than +the judgment passed above. They show that the young +man was very unhappy. One long letter to his mother +is nothing but a boyish diatribe against the place. "I do +not care a horse apple for Trinity's distinction," he writes, +and then he gives the reasons for this juvenile contempt. +His first report, he says, will soon reach home; he warns +his mother that it will be unfavourable, and he explains +that this bad showing is the result of a deliberate plot. +The boys who obtain high marks, Page declares, secure +them usually by cheating or through the partisanship of +the professors; a high grade therefore really means that +the recipient is either a humbug or a bootlicker. Page +had therefore attempted to keep his reputation unsullied +by aiming at a low academic record! The report on that +three months' work, which still survives, discloses that +Page's conspiracy against himself did not succeed, for his +marks are all high. "Be sure to send him back" is the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-20" id="page1-20"></a>[pg I-20]</span> +annotation on this document, indicating that Page had +made a better impression on Trinity than Trinity had +made on Page.</p> + +<p>But the rebellious young man did not return. After +Christmas, 1872, his schoolboy letters reveal him at +Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va. Here again +the atmosphere is Methodistical, but of a somewhat more +genial type. "It was at Ashland that I first began to +unfold," said Page afterward. "Dear old Ashland!" +Dr. Duncan, the President, was a clergyman whose pulpit +oratory is still a tradition in the South, but, in addition +to his religious exaltation, he was an exceedingly +lovable, companionable, and stimulating human being. +Certainly there was no lack of the religious impulse. +"We have a preacher president," Page writes his mother, +"a preacher secretary, a preacher chaplain, and a dozen +preacher students and three or more preachers are living +here and twenty-five or thirty yet-to-be preachers in +college!" In this latter class Page evidently places +himself; at least he gravely writes his mother—he was +now eighteen—that he had definitely made up his mind +to enter the Methodist ministry. He had a close friend—Wilbur +Fisk Tillett—who cherished similar ambitions, +and Page one day surprised Tillett by suggesting that, at +the approaching Methodist Conference, they apply for +licensing as "local preachers" for the next summer. His +friend dissuaded him, however, and henceforth Page +concentrated on more worldly studies. In many ways +he was the life of the undergraduate body. His desire +for an immediate theological campaign was merely that +passion for doing things and for self-expression which +were always conspicuous traits. His intense ambition +as a boy is still remembered in this sleepy little village. +He read every book in the sparse college library; he talked +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-21" id="page1-21"></a>[pg I-21]</span> +to his college mates and his professors on every imaginable +subject; he led his associates in the miniature parliament—the +Franklin Debating Society—to which he belonged; +he wrote prose and verse at an astonishing rate; he +explored the country for miles around, making frequent +pilgrimages to the birthplace of Henry Clay, which is the +chief historical glory of Ashland, and to that Hanover +Court House which was the scene of the oratorical triumph +of Patrick Henry; he flirted with the pretty girls +in the village, and even had two half-serious love affairs +in rapid succession; he slept upon a hard mattress at night +and imbibed more than the usual allotment of Greek, +Latin, and mathematics in the daytime. One year he +captured the Greek prize and the next the Sutherlin +medal for oratory. With a fellow classicist he entered +into a solemn compact to hold all their conversation, +even on the most trivial topics, in Latin, with heavy +penalties for careless lapses into English. Probably the +linguistic result would have astonished Quintilian, but +the experiment at least had a certain influence in improving +the young man's Latinity. Another favourite +dissipation was that of translating English masterpieces +into the ancient tongue; there still survives among Page's +early papers a copy of Bryant's "Waterfowl" done into +Latin iambics. As to Page's personal appearance, a +designation coined by a fellow student who afterward became +a famous editor gives the suggestion of a portrait. +He called him one of the "seven slabs" of the college. +And, as always, the adjectives which his contemporaries +chiefly use in describing Page are "alert" and "positive."</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="i1032" id="i1032" /> +<a href="images/1032.jpg"><img src= +"images/1032.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br /> +<b>Allison Francis Page (1824-1899), father of Walter H. Page</b><br /> +<br /> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="i1033" id="i1033" /> +<a href="images/1033.jpg"><img src= +"images/1033.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br /> +<b>Catherine Raboteau Page (1831-1897), mother of Walter H. Page</b><br /> +<br /> +</div> + +<p>But Randolph-Macon did one great thing for Page. +Like many small struggling Southern, colleges it managed +to assemble several instructors of real mental distinction. +And at the time of Page's undergraduate life it possessed +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-22" id="page1-22"></a>[pg I-22]</span> +at least one great teacher. This was Thomas R. Price, +afterward Professor of Greek at the University of Virginia +and Professor of English at Columbia University in +New York. Professor Price took one forward step that +has given him a permanent fame in the history of Southern +education. He found that the greatest stumbling block +to teaching Greek was not the conditional mood, but the +fact that his hopeful charges were not sufficiently familiar +with their mother tongue. The prayer that was always +on Price's lips, and the one with which he made his boys +most familiar, was that of a wise old Greek: "O Great +Apollo, send down the reviving rain upon our fields; preserve +our flocks; ward off our enemies; and—build up our +speech!" "It is irrational," he said, "absurd, almost +criminal, to expect a young man, whose knowledge of +English words and construction is scant and inexact, to +put into English a difficult thought of Plato or an involved +period of Cicero." Above all, it will be observed, Price's +intellectual enthusiasm was the ancient tongue. A +present-day argument for learning Greek and Latin is +that thereby we improve our English; but Thomas H. +Price advocated the teaching of English so that we might +better understand the dead languages. To-day every +great American educational institution has vast resources +for teaching English literature; even in 1876, most +American universities had their professors of English; +but Price insisted on placing English on exactly the same +footing as Greek and Latin. He himself became head of +the new English school at Randolph-Macon; and Page +himself at once became the favourite pupil. This distinguished +scholar—a fine figure with an imperial beard +that suggested the Confederate officer—used to have +Page to tea at least twice a week and at these meetings +the young man was first introduced in an understanding +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-23" id="page1-23"></a>[pg I-23]</span> +way to Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, +and the other writers who became the literary passions +of his maturer life. And Price did even more for Page; +he passed him on to another place and to another teacher +who extended his horizon. Up to the autumn of 1876 +Page had never gone farther North than Ashland; he was +still a Southern boy, speaking with the Southern drawl, +living exclusively the thoughts and even the prejudices +of the South. His family's broad-minded attitude had +prevented him from acquiring a too restricted view of certain +problems that were then vexing both sections of the +country; however, his outlook was still a limited one, as his +youthful correspondence shows. But in October of the +centennial year a great prospect opened before him.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>Two or three years previously an eccentric merchant +named Johns Hopkins had died, leaving the larger part +of his fortune to found a college or university in +Baltimore. Johns Hopkins was not an educated man +himself and his conception of a new college did not +extend beyond creating something in the nature of a +Yale or Harvard in Maryland. By a lucky chance, however, +a Yale graduate who was then the President of +the University of California, Daniel Coit Gilman, was +invited to come to Baltimore and discuss with the trustees +his availability for the headship of the new institution. +Dr. Gilman promptly informed his prospective employers +that he would have no interest in associating himself with +a new American college built upon the lines of those which +then existed. Such a foundation would merely be a duplication +of work already well done elsewhere and therefore +a waste of money and effort. He proposed that this +large endowment should be used, not for the erection of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-24" id="page1-24"></a>[pg I-24]</span> +expensive architecture, but primarily for seeking out, in +all parts of the world, the best professorial brains in certain +approved branches of learning. In the same spirit he +suggested that a similarly selective process be adopted in +the choice of students: that only those American boys +who had displayed exceptional promise should be admitted +and that part of the university funds should be used to +pay the expenses of twenty young men who, in undergraduate +work at other colleges, stood head and shoulders +above their contemporaries. The bringing together of +these two sets of brains for graduate study would constitute +the new university. A few rooms in the nearest +dwelling house would suffice for headquarters. Dr. Gilman's +scheme was approved; he became President on these +terms; he gathered his faculty not only in the United +States but in England, and he collected his first body of +students, especially his first twenty fellows, with the same +minute care.</p> + +<p>It seems almost a miracle that an inexperienced youth +in a little Methodist college in Virginia should have been +chosen as one of these first twenty fellows, and it is a +sufficient tribute to the impression that Page must have +made upon all who met him that he should have won this +great academic distinction. He was only twenty-one at +the time—the youngest of a group nearly every member +of which became distinguished in after life. He won a +Fellowship in Greek. This in itself was a great good +fortune; even greater was the fact that his new life +brought him into immediate contact with a scholar of +great genius and lovableness. Someone has said that +America has produced four scholars of the very first +rank—Agassiz in natural science, Whitney in philology, +Willard Gibbs in physics, and Gildersleeve in Greek. It +was the last of these who now took Walter Page in charge. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-25" id="page1-25"></a>[pg I-25]</span> +The atmosphere of Johns Hopkins was quite different +from anything which the young man had previously +known. The university gave a great shock to that part +of the American community with which Page had spent +his life by beginning its first session in October, 1876, +without an opening prayer. Instead Thomas H. Huxley +was invited from England to deliver a scientific address—an +address which now has an honoured place in his collected +works. The absence of prayer and the presence +of so audacious a Darwinian as Huxley caused a tremendous +excitement in the public prints, the religious +press, and the evangelical pulpit. In the minds of Gilman +and his abettors, however, all this was intended to emphasize +the fact that Johns Hopkins was a real university, +in which the unbiased truth was to be the only aim. And +certainly this was the spirit of the institution. "Gentlemen, +you must light your own torch," was the admonition +of President Gilman, in his welcoming address to his +twenty fellows; intellectual independence, freedom from +the trammels of tradition, were thus to be the directing +ideas. One of Page's associates was Josiah Royce, who +afterward had a distinguished career in philosophy at +Harvard. "The beginnings of Johns Hopkins," he afterward +wrote, "was a dawn wherein it was bliss to be alive. +The air was full of noteworthy work done by the older +men of the place and of hopes that one might find a way to +get a little working power one's self. One longed to be +a doer of the word, not a hearer only, a creator of his +own infinitesimal fraction of the product, bound in God's +name to produce when the time came."</p> + +<p>A choice group of five aspiring Grecians, of whom Page +was one, periodically gathered around a long pine table +in a second-story room of an old dwelling house on Howard +Street, with Professor Gildersleeve at the head. The +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-26" id="page1-26"></a>[pg I-26]</span> +process of teaching was thus the intimate contact of +mind with mind. Here in the course of nearly two years' +residence, Page was led by Professor Gildersleeve into +the closest communion with the great minds of the ancient +world and gained that intimate knowledge of their +written word which was the basis of his mental equipment. +"Professor Gildersleeve, splendid scholar that he +is!" he wrote to a friend in North Carolina. "He makes +me grow wonderfully. When I have a chance to enjoy +Æschylus as I have now, I go to work on those immortal +pieces with a pleasure that swallows up everything." To +the extent that Gildersleeve opened up the literary treasures +of the past—and no man had a greater appreciation +of his favourite authors than this fine humanist—Page's +life was one of unalloyed delight. But there was another +side to the picture. This little company of scholars was +composed of men who aspired to no ordinary knowledge +of Greek; they expected to devote their entire lives to the +subject, to edit Greek texts, and to hold Greek chairs +at the leading American universities. Such, indeed, has +been the career of nearly all members of the group. The +Greek tragedies were therefore read for other things than +their stylistic and dramatic values. The sons of Germania +then exercised a profound influence on American +education; Professor Gildersleeve himself was a graduate +of Göttingen, and the necessity of "settling hoti's business" +was strong in his seminar. Gildersleeve was a +writer of English who developed real style; as a Greek +scholar, his fame rests chiefly upon his work in the field +of historical syntax. He assumed that his students could +read Greek as easily as they could read French, and the +really important tasks he set them had to do with the +most abstruse fields of philology. For work of this kind +Page had little interest and less inclination. When Professor +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-27" id="page1-27"></a>[pg I-27]</span> +Gildersleeve would assign him the adverb [Greek: prin], +and direct him to study the peculiarities of its use from +Homer down to the Byzantine writers, he really found +himself in pretty deep waters. Was it conceivable that a +man could spend a lifetime in an occupation of this kind? +By pursuing such studies Gildersleeve and his most advanced +pupils uncovered many new facts about the +language and even found hitherto unsuspected beauties; +but Page's letters show that this sort of effort was extremely +uncongenial. He fulminates against the "grammarians" +and begins to think that perhaps, after all, a +career of erudite scholarship is not the ideal existence. +"Learn to look on me as a Greek drudge," he writes, +"somewhere pounding into men and boys a faint hint of +the beauty of old Greekdom. That's most probably what +I shall come to before many years. I am sure that I +have mistaken my lifework, if I consider Greek my lifework. +In truth at times I am tempted to throw the whole +thing away. . . . But without a home feeling in +Greek literature no man can lay claim to high culture." +So he would keep at it for three or four years and "then +leave it as a man's work." Despite these despairing +words Page acquired a living knowledge of Greek that +was one of his choicest possessions through life. That +he made a greater success than his self-depreciation would +imply is evident from the fact that his Fellowship was renewed +for the next year.</p> + +<p>But the truth is that the world was tugging at Page +more insistently than the cloister. "Speaking grammatically," +writes Prof. E.G. Sihler, one of Page's fellow +students of that time, in his "Confessions and Convictions +of a Classicist," "Page was interested in that one of the +main tenses which we call the Present." In his after +life, amid all the excitements of journalism, Page could +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-28" id="page1-28"></a>[pg I-28]</span> +take a brief vacation and spend it with Ulysses by the +sea; but actuality and human activity charmed him even +more than did the heroes of the ancient world. He +went somewhat into Baltimore society, but not extensively; +he joined a club whose membership comprised +the leading intellectual men of the town; probably his +most congenial associations, however, came of the Saturday +night meetings of the fellows in Hopkins Hall, where, +over pipes and steins of beer, they passed in review all +the questions of the day. Page was still the Southern +boy, with the strange notions about the North and +Northern people which were the inheritance of many +years' misunderstandings. He writes of one fellow student +to whom he had taken a liking. "He is that rare +thing," he says, "a Yankee Christian gentleman." He +particularly dislikes one of his instructors, but, as he explains, +he is "a native of Connecticut, and Connecticut, I +suppose, is capable of producing any unholy human phenomenon." +Speaking of a beautiful and well mannered +Greek girl whom he had met, he says: "The little creature +might be taken for a Southern girl, but never for a Yankee. +She has an easy manner and even an air of gentility about +her that doesn't appear north of Mason and Dixon's Line. +Indeed, however much the Southern race (I say race intentionally: +Yankeedom is the home of another race +from us) however much the Southern race owes its +strength to Anglo-Saxon blood, it owes its beauty and +gracefulness to the Southern climate and culture. Who +says that we are not an improvement on the English? +An improvement in a happy combination of mental graces +and Saxon force?" This sort of thing is especially entertaining +in the youthful Page, for it is precisely against +this kind of complacency that, as a mature man, he +directed his choicest ridicule. As an editor and writer +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-29" id="page1-29"></a>[pg I-29]</span> +his energies were devoted to reconciling North and South, +and Johns Hopkins itself had much to do with opening +his eyes. Its young men and its professors were gathered +from all parts of the country; a student, if his mind was +awake, learned more than Greek and mathematics; he +learned much about that far-flung nation known as the +United States.</p> + +<p>And Page did not confine his work exclusively to the +curriculum. He writes that he is regularly attending +a German Sunday School, not, however, from religious +motives, but from a desire to improve his colloquial +German. "Is this courting the Devil for knowledge?" +he asks. And all this time he was engaging in a delightful +correspondence—from which these quotations are taken—with +a young woman in North Carolina, his cousin. +About this time this cousin began spending her summers +in the Page home at Cary; her great interest in books made +the two young people good friends and companions. It was +she who first introduced Page to certain Southern writers, +especially Timrod and Sidney Lanier, and, when Page +left for Johns Hopkins, the two entered into a compact +for a systematic reading and study of the English poets. +According to this plan, certain parts of Tennyson or +Chaucer would be set aside for a particular week's reading; +then both would write the impressions gained and the +criticisms which they assumed to make, and send the +product to the other. The plan was carried out more +faithfully than is usually the case in such arrangements; a +large number of Page's letters survive and give a complete +history of his mental progress. There are lengthy disquisitions +on Wordsworth, Browning, Byron, Shelley, +Matthew Arnold, and the like. These letters also show +that Page, as a relaxation from Greek roots and syntax, +was indulging in poetic flights of his own; his efforts, which +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-30" id="page1-30"></a>[pg I-30]</span> +he encloses in his letters, are mainly imitations of the +particular poet in whom he was at the moment interested. +This correspondence also takes Page to Germany, in +which country he spent the larger part of the summer +of 1877. This choice of the Fatherland as a place of +pilgrimage was probably merely a reflection of the enthusiasm +for German educational methods which then +prevailed in the United States, especially at Johns Hopkins. +Page's letters are the usual traveller's descriptions +of unfamiliar customs, museums, libraries, and the like; +so far as enlarging his outlook was concerned the experience +does not seem to have been especially profitable.</p> + +<p>He returned to Baltimore in the autumn of 1877, but +only for a few months. He had pretty definitely abandoned +his plan of devoting his life to Greek scholarship. +As a mental stimulus, as a recreation from the cares of +life, his Greek authors would always be a first love, as +they proved to be; but he had abandoned his early ambition +of making them his everyday occupation and means +of livelihood. Of course there was only one career for a +man of his leanings, and, more and more, his mind was +turning to journalism. For only one brief period did he +again listen to the temptations of a scholar's existence. +The university of his native state invited him to lecture +in the summer school of 1878; he took Shakespeare for +his subject, and made so great a success that there was +some discussion of his settling down permanently at +Chapel Hill in the chair of Greek. Had the offer definitely +been made Page would probably have accepted, +but difficulties arose. Page was no longer orthodox in +his religious views; he had long outgrown dogma and +could only smile at the recollection that he had once +thought of becoming a clergyman. But a rationalist +at the University of North Carolina in 1878 could hardly +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-31" id="page1-31"></a>[pg I-31]</span> +be endured. The offer, therefore, fortunately was not +made. Afterward Page was much criticized for having +left his native state at a time when it especially needed +young men of his type. It may therefore be recorded +that, if there were any blame at all, it rested upon North +Carolina. He refers to his disappointment in a letter in +February, 1879—a letter that proved to be a prophecy. +"I shall some day buy a home," he says, "where I was not +allowed to work for one, and be laid away in the soil that +I love. I wanted to work for the old state; it had no need +for it, it seems."</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p class="center">FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> From "The Southerner," Chapter I. The first chapter in +this novel is practically autobiographical, though fictitious names +have been used.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> "The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths." (1902.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> "The Southerner," Chapter I.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-32" id="page1-32"></a>[pg I-32]</span> +</div><h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II" />CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>JOURNALISM</h3> + +<h3>I</h3> + + +<p>The five years from 1878 to 1883 Page spent in various +places, engaged, for the larger part of the time, in +several kinds of journalistic work. It was his period of +struggle and of preparation. Like many American public +men he served a brief apprenticeship—in his case, a very +brief one—as a pedagogue. In the autumn of 1878 he +went to Louisville, Kentucky, and taught English for a +year at the Boys' High School. But he presently found +an occupation in this progressive city which proved far +more absorbing. A few months before his arrival certain +energetic spirits had founded a weekly paper, the <i>Age</i>, +a journal which, they hoped, would fill the place in the +Southern States which the very successful New York +<i>Nation</i>, under the editorship of Godkin, was then occupying +in the North. Page at once began contributing leading +articles on literary and political topics to this +publication; the work proved so congenial that he purchased—on +notes—a controlling interest in the new venture +and became its directing spirit. The <i>Age</i> was in +every way a worthy enterprise; in the dignity of its make-up +and the high literary standards at which it aimed it +imitated the London <i>Spectator</i>. Perhaps Page obtained +a thousand dollars' worth of fun out of his investment; if +so, that represented his entire profit. He now learned +a lesson which was emphasized in his after career as editor +and publisher, and that was that the Southern States provided +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-33" id="page1-33"></a>[pg I-33]</span> +a poor market for books or periodicals. The net +result of the proceeding was that, at the age of twenty-three, +he found himself out of a job and considerably in +debt.</p> + +<p>He has himself rapidly sketched his varied activities +of the next five years:</p> + +<p>"After trying in vain," he writes, "to get work to do +on any newspaper in North Carolina, I advertised for a +job in journalism—any sort of a job. By a queer accident—a +fortunate one for me—the owner of the St. Joseph, Missouri, +<i>Gazette</i>, answered the advertisement. Why he did it, +I never found out. He was in the same sort of desperate +need of a newspaper man as I was in desperate need of a +job. I knew nothing about him: he knew nothing about +me. I knew nothing about newspaper work. I had done +nothing since I left the University but teach English in the +Louisville, Kentucky, High School for boys one winter +and lecture at the summer school at Chapel Hill one summer. +I made up my mind to go into journalism. But +journalism didn't seem in any hurry to make up its mind +to admit me. Not only did all the papers in North Carolina +decline my requests for work, but such of them in +Baltimore and Louisville as I tried said 'No.' So I borrowed +$50 and set out to St. Joe, Missouri, where I didn't +know a human being. I became a reporter. At first +I reported the price of cattle—went to the stockyards, etc. +My salary came near to paying my board and lodging, but +it didn't quite do it. But I had a good time in St. Joe +for somewhat more than a year. There were interesting +people there. I came to know something about Western +life. Kansas was across the river. I often went there. +I came to know Kansas City, St. Louis—a good deal of +the West. After a while I was made editor of the paper. +What a rousing political campaign or two we had! +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-34" id="page1-34"></a>[pg I-34]</span> +Then—I had done that kind of a job as long as I cared +to. Every swashbuckling campaign is like every other +one. Why do two? Besides, I knew my trade. I had +done everything on a daily paper from stockyard reports +to political editorials and heavy literary articles. In the +meantime I had written several magazine articles and +done other such jobs. I got leave of absence for a month +or two. I wrote to several of the principal papers in +Chicago, New York, and Boston and told them that I +was going down South to make political and social studies +and that I was going to send them my letters. I hoped +they'd publish them.</p> + +<p>"That's all I could say. I could make no engagement; +they didn't know me. I didn't even ask for an engagement. +I told them simply this: that I'd write letters and +send them; and I prayed heaven that they'd print them +and pay for them. Then off I went with my little money +in my pocket—about enough to get to New Orleans. I +travelled and I wrote. I went all over the South. I sent +letters and letters and letters. All the papers published all +that I sent them and I was rolling in wealth! I had money +in my pocket for the first time in my life. Then I went +back to St. Joe and resigned; for the (old) New York <i>World</i> +had asked me to go to the Atlanta Exposition as a correspondent. +I went. I wrote and kept writing. How +kind Henry Grady was to me! But at last the Exposition +ended. I was out of a job. I applied to the +<i>Constitution</i>. No, they wouldn't have me. I never got +a job in my life that I asked for! But all my life better +jobs have been given me than I dared ask for. Well—I +was at the end of my rope in Atlanta and I was trying to +make a living in any honest way I could when one day a +telegram came from the New York <i>World</i> (it was the old +<i>World</i>, which was one of the best of the dailies in its +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-35" id="page1-35"></a>[pg I-35]</span> +literary quality) asking me to come to New York. I had +never seen a man on the paper—had never been in New +York except for a day when I landed there on a return +voyage from a European trip that I took during one vacation +when I was in the University. Then I went to New +York straight and quickly. I had an interesting experience +on the old <i>World</i>, writing literary matter chiefly, an editorial +now and then, and I was frequently sent as a correspondent +on interesting errands. I travelled all over the +country with the Tariff Commission. I spent one winter +in Washington as a sort of editorial correspondent while +the tariff bill was going through Congress. Then, one +day, the <i>World</i> was sold to Mr. Pulitzer and all the staff +resigned. The character of the paper changed."</p> + +<p>What better training could a journalist ask for than +this? Page was only twenty-eight when these five years +came to an end; but his life had been a comprehensive +education in human contact, in the course of which he had +picked up many things that were not included in the routine +of Johns Hopkins University. From Athens to St. +Joe, from the comedies of Aristophanes to the stockyards +and political conventions of Kansas City—the transition +may possibly have been an abrupt one, but it is not likely +that Page so regarded it. For books and the personal +relation both appealed to him, in almost equal proportions, +as essentials to the fully rounded man. Merely from the +standpoint of geography, Page's achievement had been an +important one; how many Americans, at the age of +twenty-eight, have such an extensive mileage to their +credit? Page had spent his childhood—and his childhood +only—in North Carolina; he had passed his youth in +Virginia and Maryland; before he was twenty-three he had +lived several months in Germany, and, on his return +voyage, he had sailed by the white cliffs of England, and, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-36" id="page1-36"></a>[pg I-36]</span> +from the deck of his steamer, had caught glimpses of that +Isle of Wight which then held his youthful favourite Tennyson. +He had added to these experiences a winter in +Kentucky and a sojourn of nearly two years in Missouri. +His Southern trip, to which Page refers in the above, had +taken him through Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, +Georgia, and Louisiana; he had visited the West again in +1882, spending a considerable time in all the large cities, +Chicago, Omaha, Denver, Leadville, Salt Lake, and from +the latter point he had travelled extensively through +Mormondom. The several months spent in Atlanta had +given the young correspondent a glimpse into the new +South, for this energetic city embodied a Southern spirit +that was several decades removed from the Civil War. +After this came nearly two years in New York and Washington, +where Page gained his first insight into Federal +politics; in particular, as a correspondent attached to the +Tariff Commission—an assignment that again started +him on his travels to industrial centres—he came into contact, +for the first time, with the mechanism of framing the +great American tariff. And during this period Page was +not only forming a first-hand acquaintance with the passing +scene, but also with important actors in it. The mere +fact that, on the St. Joseph <i>Gazette</i>, he succeeded Eugene +Field—"a good fellow named Page is going to take my +desk," said the careless poet, "I hope he will succeed to +my debts too"—always remained a pleasant memory. +He entered zealously into the life of this active community; +his love of talk and disputation, his interest in politics, +his hearty laugh, his vigorous handclasp, his animation of +body and of spirit, and his sunny outlook on men and +events—these are the traits that his old friends in this +town, some of whom still survive, associate with the +juvenile editor. In his Southern trip Page called—self-invited—upon +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-37" id="page1-37"></a>[pg I-37]</span> +Jefferson Davis and was cordially received. +At Atlanta, as he records above, he made friends +with that chivalric champion of a resurrected South, +Henry Grady; here also he obtained fugitive glimpses +of a struggling and briefless lawyer, who, like Page, was +interested more in books and writing than in the humdrum +of professional life, and who was then engaged +in putting together a brochure on <i>Congressional Government</i> +which immediately gave him a national standing. +The name of this sympathetic acquaintance was Woodrow +Wilson.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="i1050" id="i1050" /> +<a href="images/1050.jpg"><img src= +"images/1050.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br /> +<b>Walter H. Page in 1876, when he was a Fellow of Johns +Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.</b><br /> +<br /> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="i1051" id="i1051" /> +<a href="images/1051.jpg"><img src= +"images/1051.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br /> +<b>Basil L. Gildersleeve, Professor of Greek, Johns Hopkins +University, 1876-1915</b><br /> +<br /> +</div> + +<p>Another important event had taken place, for, at St. +Louis, on November 15, 1880, Page had married Miss +Willia Alice Wilson. Miss Wilson was the daughter of a +Scotch physician, Dr. William Wilson, who had settled +in Michigan, near Detroit, in 1832. When she was a +small child she went with her sister's family—her father +had died seven years before—to North Carolina, near +Cary; and she and Page had been childhood friends and +schoolmates. At the time of the wedding, Page was +editor of the St. Joseph <i>Gazette</i>; the fact that he had +attained this position, five months after starting at the +bottom, sufficiently discloses his aptitude for journalistic +work.</p> + +<p>Page had now outgrown any Southern particularism +with which he may have started life. He no longer found +his country exclusively in the area south of the Potomac; +he had made his own the West, the North—New York, +Chicago, Denver, as well as Atlanta and Raleigh. It is +worth while insisting on this fact, for the cultivation of a +wide-sweeping Americanism and a profound faith in democracy +became the qualities that will loom most largely in +his career from this time forward. It is necessary only to +read the newspaper letters which he wrote on his Southern +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-38" id="page1-38"></a>[pg I-38]</span> +trip in 1881 to understand how early his mind seized this +new point of view. Many things which now fell under +his observant eye in the Southern States greatly irritated +him and with his characteristic impulsiveness he pictured +these traits in pungent phrase. The atmosphere of +shiftlessness that too generally prevailed in some localities; +the gangs of tobacco-chewing loafers assembled around railway +stations; the listless Negroes that seemed to overhang +the whole country like a black cloud; the plantation mansions +in a sad state of disrepair; the old unoccupied slave +huts overgrown with weeds; the unpainted and broken-down +fences; the rich soil that was crudely and wastefully cultivated +with a single crop—the youthful social philosopher +found himself comparing these vestigia of a half-moribund +civilization with the vibrant cities of the North, the beautiful +white and green villages of New England, and the +fertile prairie farms of the West. "Even the dogs," +he said, "look old-fashioned." Oh, for a change in his +beloved South—a change of almost any kind! "Even +a heresy, if it be bright and fresh, would be a relief. You +feel as if you wished to see some kind of an effort put +forth, a discussion, a fight, a runaway, anything to make +the blood go faster." Wherever Page saw signs of a new +spirit—and he saw many—he recorded them with an +eagerness which showed his loyalty to the section of his +birth. The splitting up of great plantations into small +farms he put down as one of the indications of a new +day. A growing tendency to educate, not only the +white child, but the Negro, inspired a similar tribute. +But he rejoiced most over the decreasing bitterness of the +masses over the memories of the Civil War, and discovered, +with satisfaction, that any remaining ill-feeling +was a heritage left not by the Union soldier, but by +the carpetbagger.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-39" id="page1-39"></a>[pg I-39]</span> +</div><p>And one scene is worth preserving, for it illustrates not +only the zeal of Page himself for the common country, but +the changing attitude of the Southern people. It was +enacted at Martin, Tennessee, on the evening of July 2, +1881. Page was spending a few hours in the village +grocery, discussing things in general with the local yeomanry, +when the telegraph operator came from the post +office with rather more than his usual expedition and excitement. +He was frantically waving a yellow slip which +bore the news that President Garfield had been shot. +Garfield had been an energetic and a successful general +in the war and his subsequent course in Congress, where +he had joined the radical Republicans, had not caused the +South to look upon him as a friend. But these farmers +responded to this shock, not like sectionalists, but like +Americans. "Every man of them," Page records, "expressed +almost a personal sorrow. Little was said of +politics or of parties. Mr. Garfield was President of the +United States—that was enough. A dozen voices spoke +the great gratification that the assassin was not a +Southern man. It was an affecting scene to see weather-beaten +old countrymen so profoundly agitated—men +who yesterday I should have supposed hardly knew +and certainly did not seem to care who was President. +The great centres of population, of politicians, and of +thought may be profoundly agitated to-night, but no +more patriotic sorrow and humiliation is felt anywhere +by any men than by these old backwoods ex-Confederates."</p> + +<p>Page himself was so stirred by the news that he ascended +a cracker barrel, and made a speech to the assembled +countrymen, preaching to responsive ears the +theme of North and South, now reunited in a common +sorrow. Thus, by the time he was twenty-six, Page, at +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-40" id="page1-40"></a>[pg I-40]</span> +any rate in respect to his Americanism, was a full-grown +man.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>A few years afterward Page had an opportunity of discussing +this, his favourite topic, with the American whom +he most admired. Perhaps the finest thing in the career of +Grover Cleveland was the influence which he exerted upon +young men. After the sordid political transactions of the +reconstruction period and after the orgy of partisanship +which had followed the Civil War, this new figure, acceding +to the Presidency in 1885, came as an inspiration to millions +of zealous and intelligent young college-bred Americans. +One of the first to feel the new spell was Walter Page; +Mr. Cleveland was perhaps the most important influence +in forming his public ideals. Of everything that Cleveland +represented—civil service reform; the cleansing of +politics, state and national; the reduction in the tariff; +a foreign policy which, without degenerating into truculence, +manfully upheld the rights of American citizens; +a determination to curb the growing pension evil; the +doctrine that the Government was something to be served +and not something to be plundered—Page became an +active and brilliant journalistic advocate. It was therefore +a great day in his life when, on a trip to Washington +in the autumn of 1885, he had an hour's private conversation +with President Cleveland, and it was entirely characteristic +of Page that he should make the conversation +take the turn of a discussion of the so-called Southern +question.</p> + +<p>"In the White House at Washington," Page wrote +about this visit, "is an honest, plain, strong man, a man +of wonderfully broad information and of most uncommon +industry. He has always been a Democrat. He is a distinguished +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-41" id="page1-41"></a>[pg I-41]</span> +lawyer and a scholar on all public questions. +He is as frank and patriotic and sincere as any man that +ever won the high place he holds. Within less than a +year he has done so well and so wisely that he has disappointed +his enemies and won their admiration. He is +as unselfish as he is great. He is one of the most industrious +men in the world. He rises early and works +late and does not waste his time—all because his time is +now not his own but the Republic's, whose most honoured +servant he is. I count it among the most inspiring experiences +in my life that I had the privilege, at the suggestion +of one of his personal friends, of talking with him +one morning about the complete reuniting of the two +great sections of our Republic by his election. I told +him, and I know I told him the truth, when I said that +every young man in the Southern States who, without +an opportunity to share either the glory or the defeat of +the late Confederacy, had in spite of himself suffered the +disadvantages of the poverty and oppression that followed +war, took new hope for the full and speedy realization +of a complete union, of unparalleled prosperity +and of broad thinking and noble living from his elevation +to the Presidency. I told him that the men of North +Carolina were not only patriotic but ambitious as well; +and that they were Democrats and proud citizens of the +State and the Republic not because they wanted offices +or favours, but because they loved freedom and wished +the land that had been impoverished by war to regain +more than it had lost. 'I have not called, Mr. President, +to ask for an office for myself or for anybody else,' I remarked; +'but to have the pleasure of expressing my gratification, +as a citizen of North Carolina, at the complete +change in political methods and morals that I believe +will date from your Administration.' He answered that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-42" id="page1-42"></a>[pg I-42]</span> +he was glad to see all men who came in such a spirit and +did not come to beg—especially young men of the South +of to-day; and he talked and encouraged me to talk +freely as if he had been as small a man as I am, or I as +great a man as he is.</p> + +<p>"From that day to this it has been my business to +watch every public act that he does, to read every public +word he speaks, and it has been a pleasure and a benefit +to me (like the benefit that a man gets from reading a +great history—for he is making a great history) to study +the progress of his Administration; and at every step he +seems to me to warrant the trust that the great Democratic +party put in him."</p> + +<p>The period to which Page refers in this letter represented +the time when he was making a serious and harassing +attempt to establish himself in his chosen profession +in his native state. He went south for a short visit +after resigning his place on the New York <i>World</i>, and +several admirers in Raleigh persuaded him to found a +new paper, which should devote itself to preaching the +Cleveland ideals, and, above all, to exerting an influence +on the development of a new Southern spirit. No task +could have been more grateful to Page and there was +no place in which he would have better liked to undertake +it than in the old state which he loved so well. The +result was the <i>State Chronicle</i> of Raleigh, practically a +new paper, which for a year and a half proved to be +the most unconventional and refreshing influence that +North Carolina had known in many a year. Necessarily +Page found himself in conflict with his environment. He +had little interest in the things that then chiefly interested +the state, and North Carolina apparently had little interest +in the things that chiefly occupied the mind of the +youthful journalist. Page was interested in Cleveland, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-43" id="page1-43"></a>[pg I-43]</span> +in the reform of the civil service; the Democrats of North +Carolina little appreciated their great national leader +and were especially hostile to his belief that service to a +party did not in itself establish a qualification for public +office. Page was interested in uplifting the common +people, in helping every farmer to own his own acres, and +in teaching the most modern and scientific way of cultivating +them; he was interested in giving every boy and +girl at least an elementary education, and in giving a +university training to such as had the aptitude and the +ambition to obtain it; he believed in industrial training—and +in these things the North Carolina of those days +had little concern. Page even went so far as to take an +open stand for the pitiably neglected black man: he insisted +that he should be taught to read and write, and +instructed in agriculture and the manual trades. A man +who advocated such revolutionary things in those days +was accused—and Page was so accused—of attempting to +promote the "social equality" of the two races. Page +also declaimed in favour of developing the state industrially; +he called attention to the absurdity of sending +Southern cotton to New England spinning mills, and he +pointed out the boundless but unworked natural resources +of the state, in minerals, forests, waterpower, and lands.</p> + +<p>North Carolina, he informed his astonished compatriots, +had once been a great manufacturing colony; why could +the state not become one again? But the matter in which +the buoyant editor and his constituents found themselves +most at variance was the spirit that controlled North +Carolina life. It was a spirit that found comfort for its +present poverty and lack of progress in a backward look +at the greatness of the state in the past and the achievements +of its sons in the Civil War. Though Page believed +that the Confederacy had been a ghastly error, and though +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-44" id="page1-44"></a>[pg I-44]</span> +he abhorred the institution of slavery and attributed to +it all the woes, economic and social, from which his section +suffered, he rendered that homage to the soldiers of the +South which is the due of brave, self-sacrificing and +conscientious men; yet he taught that progress lay in regarding +the four dreadful years of the Civil War as the +closed chapter of an unhappy and mistaken history and +in hastening the day when the South should resume its +place as a living part of the great American democracy. +All manifestations of a contrary spirit he ridiculed in +language which was extremely readable but which at +times outraged the good conservative people whom he +was attempting to convert. He did not even spare the +one figure which was almost a part of the Southerner's +religion, the Confederate general, especially that particular +type who used his war record as a stepping stone +to public office, and whose oratory, colourful and turgid +in its celebrations of the past, Page regarded as somewhat +unrelated, in style and matter, to the realities of the +present. The image-breaking editor even asserted that +the Daughters of the Confederacy were not entirely a +helpful influence in Southern regeneration; for they, too, +were harping always upon the old times and keeping alive +sectional antagonisms and hatreds. This he regarded +as an unworthy occupation for high-minded Southern +women, and he said so, sometimes in language that made +him very unpopular in certain circles.</p> + +<p>Altogether it was a piquant period in Page's life. He +found that he had suddenly become a "traitor" to his +country and that his experiences in the North had completely +"Yankeeized" him. Even in more mature days, +Page's pen had its javelin-like quality; and in 1884, possessed +as he was of all the fury of youth, he never hesitated +to return every blow that was rained upon his head. As +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-45" id="page1-45"></a>[pg I-45]</span> +a matter of fact he had a highly enjoyable time. The +<i>State Chronicle</i> during his editorship is one of the most +cherished recollections of older North Carolinians to-day. +Even those who hurled the liveliest epithets in his direction +have long since accepted the ideas for which Page +was then contending; "the only trouble with him," they +now ruefully admit, "was that he was forty years ahead +of his time." They recall with satisfaction the satiric +accounts which Page used to publish of Democratic Conventions—solemn, +long-winded, frock-coated, white-neck-tied +affairs that displayed little concern for the reform of +the tariff or of the civil service, but an energetic interest in +pensioning Confederate veterans and erecting monuments +to the Southern heroes of the Civil War. One editorial +is joyfully recalled, in which Page referred to a public +officer who was distinguished for his dignity and his +family tree, but not noted for any animated administration +of his duties, as "Thothmes II." When this bewildered +functionary searched the Encyclopædia and +learned that "Thothmes II" was an Egyptian king of the +XVIIIth dynasty, whose dessicated mummy had recently +been disinterred from the hot sands of the desert, +he naturally stopped his subscription to the paper. +The metaphor apparently tickled Page, for he used it in +a series of articles which have become immortal in the +political annals of North Carolina. These have always +been known as the "Mummy letters." They furnished +a vivid but rather aggravating explanation for the +existing backwardness and chauvinism of the commonwealth. +All the trouble, it seems, was caused by the +"mummies." "It is an awfully discouraging business," +Page wrote, "to undertake to prove to a mummy that it +is a mummy. You go up to it and say, 'Old fellow, the +Egyptian dynasties crumbled several thousand years ago: +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-46" id="page1-46"></a>[pg I-46]</span> +you are a fish out of water. You have by accident or the +Providence of God got a long way out of your time. This +is America.' The old thing grins that grin which death +set on its solemn features when the world was young; and +your task is so pitiful that even the humour of it is gone. +Give it up."</p> + +<p>Everything great in North Carolina, Page declared, belonged +to a vanished generation. "Our great lawyers, great +judges, great editors, are all of the past. . . . In +the general intelligence of the people, in intellectual force +and in cultivation, we are doing nothing. We are not +doing or getting more liberal ideas, a broader view of this +world. . . . The presumptuous powers of ignorance, +heredity, decayed respectability and stagnation that control +public action and public expression are absolutely +leading us back intellectually."</p> + +<p>But Page did more than berate the mummified aristocracy +which, he declared, was driving the best talent and +initiative from the state; he was not the only man in +Raleigh who expressed these unpopular views; at that time, +indeed, he was the centre and inspiration of a group of +young progressive spirits who held frequent meetings to devise +ways of starting the state on the road to a new existence. +Page then, as always, exercised a great fascination +over young men. The apparently merciless character of +his ridicule might at first convey the idea of intolerance; +the fact remains, however, that he was the most tolerant +of men; he was almost deferential to the opinions of others, +even the shallow and the inexperienced; and nothing +delighted him more than an animated discussion. His +liveliness of spirits, his mental and physical vitality, the +constant sparkle of his talk, the sharp edge of his humour, +naturally drew the younger men to his side. The result +was the organization of the Wautauga Club, a gathering +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-47" id="page1-47"></a>[pg I-47]</span> +which held monthly meetings for the discussion of ways +and means of improving social and educational conditions +in North Carolina. The very name gives the key +to its mental outlook. The Wautauga colony was one of +the last founded in North Carolina—in the extreme west, +on a plateau of the Great Smoky Mountains; it was +always famous for the energy and independence of its +people. The word "Wautauga" therefore suggested the +breaker of tradition; and it provided a stimulating name +for Page's group of young spiritual and economic pathfinders. +The Wautauga Club had a brief existence of a +little more than two years, the period practically covering +Page's residence in the state; but its influence is an important +fact at the present time. It gave the state ideas +that afterward caused something like a revolution in its +economic and educational status. The noblest monument +to its labours is the State College in Raleigh, an institution +which now has more than a thousand students, for the +most part studying the mechanic arts and scientific agriculture. +To this one college most North Carolinians +to-day attribute the fact that their state in appreciable +measure is realizing its great economic and industrial +opportunities. From it in the last thirty years thousands +of young men have gone: in all sections of the commonwealth +they have caused the almost barren acres to yield +fertile and diversified crops; they have planted everywhere +new industries; they have unfolded unsuspected +resources and everywhere created wealth and spread +enlightenment. This institution is a direct outcome of +Page's brief sojourn in his native state nearly forty years +ago. The idea originated in his brain; the files of the +<i>State Chronicle</i> tell the story of his struggle in its behalf; +the activities of the Wautauga Club were largely concentrated +upon securing its establishment.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-48" id="page1-48"></a>[pg I-48]</span> +</div><p>The State College was a great victory for Page, but +final success did not come until three years after he had +left the state. For a year and a half of hard newspaper +work convinced Page that North Carolina really had no +permanent place for him. The <i>Chronicle</i> was editorially a +success: Page's articles were widely quoted, not only +in his own state but in New England and other parts of +the Union. He succeeded in stirring up North Carolina +and the South generally, but popular support for the +<i>Chronicle</i> was not forthcoming in sufficient amount to +make the paper a commercial possibility. Reluctantly and +sadly Page had to forego his hope of playing an active +part in rescuing his state from the disasters of the Civil +War. Late in the summer of 1885, he again left for the +North, which now became his permanent home.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>And with this second sojourn in New York Page's +opportunity came. The first two years he spent in newspaper +work, for the most part with the <i>Evening Post</i>, but, +one day in November, 1887, a man whom he had never seen +came into his office and unfolded a new opportunity. Two +years before a rather miscellaneous group had launched +an ambitious literary undertaking. This was a monthly +periodical, which, it was hoped, would do for the United +States what such publications as the <i>Fortnightly</i> and the +<i>Contemporary</i> were doing for England. The magazine was +to have the highest literary quality and to be sufficiently +dignified to attract the finest minds in America as contributors; +its purpose was to exercise a profound influence +in politics, literature, science, and art. The projectors +had selected for this publication a title that was +almost perfection—the <i>Forum</i>—but which, after nearly +two years' experimentation, represented about the limit of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-49" id="page1-49"></a>[pg I-49]</span> +their achievement. The <i>Forum</i> had hardly made an +impression on public thought and had attracted very few +readers, although it had lost large sums of money for its +progenitors. These public-spirited gentlemen now turned +to Page as the man who might rescue them from their +dilemma and achieve their purpose. He accepted the +engagement, first as manager and presently as editor, +and remained the guiding spirit of the <i>Forum</i> for eight +years, until the summer of 1895.</p> + +<p>That the success of a publication is the success of its +editors, and not of its business managers and its "backers," +is a truth that ought to be generally apparent; never +has this fact been so eloquently illustrated as in the case +of the <i>Forum</i> under Page. Before his accession it had had +not the slightest importance; for the period of his editorship +it is doubtful if any review published in English +exercised so great an influence, and certainly none ever +obtained so large a circulation. From almost nothing the +<i>Forum</i>, in two or three years, attracted 30,000 +subscribers—something without precedent for a publication +of this character. It had accomplished this great result +simply because of the vitality and interest of its +contents. The period covered was an important one, +in the United States and Europe; it was the time of Cleveland's +second administration in this country, and of +Gladstone's fourth administration in England; it was a +time of great controversy and of a growing interest in +science, education, social reform and a better political +order. All these great matters were reflected in the +pages of the <i>Forum</i>, whose list of contributors contained +the most distinguished names in all countries. Its purpose, +as Page explained it, was "to provoke discussion about +subjects of contemporary interest, in which the magazine +is not a partisan, but merely the instrument." In +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-50" id="page1-50"></a>[pg I-50]</span> +the highest sense, that is, its purpose was journalistic; +practically everything that it printed was related to the +thought and the action of the time. So insistent was +Page on this programme that his pages were not "closed" +until a week before the day of issue. Though the <i>Forum</i> +dealt constantly in controversial subjects it never did so in +a narrow-minded spirit; it was always ready to hear both +sides of a question and the magazine "debate," in which +opposing writers handled vigorously the same theme, was +a constant feature.</p> + +<p>Page, indeed, represented a new type of editor. Up to +that time this functionary had been a rather solemn, inaccessible +high priest; he sat secluded in his sanctuary, and +weeded out from the mass of manuscripts dumped upon +his desk the particular selections which seemed to be +most suited to his purpose. To solicit contributions +would have seemed an entirely undignified proceeding; in +all cases contributors must come to him. According to +Page, however, "an editor must know men and be out +among men." His system of "making up" the magazine +at first somewhat astounded his associates. A +month or two in advance of publication day he would +draw up his table of contents. This, in its preliminary +stage, amounted to nothing except a list of the main +subjects which he aspired to handle in that number. It +was a hope, not a performance. The subjects were commonly +suggested by the happenings of the time—an +especially outrageous lynching, the trial of a clergyman +for heresy, a new attack upon the Monroe Doctrine, the +discovery of a new substance such as radium, the publication +of an epoch-making book. Page would then fix upon +the inevitable men who could write most readably and +most authoritatively upon these topics, and "go after" +them. Sometimes he would write one of his matchless +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-51" id="page1-51"></a>[pg I-51]</span> +editorial letters; at other times he would make a personal +visit; if necessary, he would use any available friends +in a wire-pulling campaign. At all odds he must "get" +his man; once he had fixed upon a certain contributor +nothing could divert him from the chase. Nor did the +negotiations cease after he had "landed" his quarry. He +had his way of discussing the subject with his proposed +writer, and he discussed it from every possible point of +view. He would take him to lunch or to dinner; in his +quiet way he would draw him out, find whether he really +knew much about the subject, learn the attitude that he +was likely to take, and delicately slip in suggestions of +his own. Not infrequently this preliminary interview +would disclose that the much sought writer, despite +appearances, was not the one who was destined for that +particular job; in this case Page would find some way of +shunting him in favour of a more promising candidate. +But Page was no mere chaser of names; there was nothing +of the literary tuft-hunter about his editorial methods. +He liked to see such men as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow +Wilson, William Graham Sumner, Charles W. Eliot, +Frederic Harrison, Paul Bourget, and the like upon his +title page—and here these and many other similarly +distinguished authors appeared—but the greatest name +could not attain a place there if the letter press that followed +were unworthy. Indeed Page's habit of throwing +out the contributions of the great, after paying a stiff +price for them, caused much perturbation in his counting +room. One day he called in one of his associates.</p> + +<p>"Do you see that waste basket?" he asked, pointing +to a large receptacle filled to overflowing with manuscripts. +"All our Cleveland articles are there!"</p> + +<p>He had gone to great trouble and expense to obtain +a series of six articles from the most prominent publicists +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-52" id="page1-52"></a>[pg I-52]</span> +and political leaders of the country on the first year of +Mr. Cleveland's second administration. It was to be the +"feature" of the number then in preparation.</p> + +<p>"There isn't one of them," he declared, "who has got +the point. I have thrown them all away and I am going +to try to write something myself."</p> + +<p>And he spent a couple of days turning out an article +which aroused great public interest. When Page commissioned +an article, he meant simply that he would pay +full price for it; whether he would publish it depended +entirely upon the quality of the material itself. But +Page was just as severe upon his own writings as upon +those of other men. He wrote occasionally—always under +a nom-de-plume; but he had great difficulty in satisfying +his own editorial standards. After finishing an article +he would commonly send for one of his friends and read +the result.</p> + +<p>"That is superb!" this admiring associate would sometimes +say.</p> + +<p>In response Page would take the manuscript and, +holding it aloft in two hands, tear it into several bits, and +throw the scraps into the waste basket.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I can do better than that," he would laugh and in +another minute he was busy rewriting the article, from +beginning to end.</p> + +<p>Page retired from the editorship of the <i>Forum</i> in 1895. +The severance of relations was half a comedy, half a +tragedy. The proprietors had only the remotest relation +to literature; they had lost much money in the enterprise +before Page became editor and only the fortunate accident +of securing his services had changed their losing venture +into a financial success. In a moment of despair, before the +happier period had arrived, they offered to sell the property +to Page and his friends. Page quickly assembled a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-53" id="page1-53"></a>[pg I-53]</span> +new group to purchase control, when, much to the amazement +of the old owners, the <i>Forum</i> began to make money. +Instead of having a burden on their hands, the proprietors +suddenly discovered that they had a gold mine. They +therefore refused to deliver their holdings and an inevitable +struggle ensued for control. Page could edit a magazine +and turn a shipwrecked enterprise into a profitable +one; but, in a tussle of this kind, he was no match for the +shrewd business men who owned the property. When the +time came for counting noses Page and his friends found +themselves in a minority. Of course his resignation as +editor necessarily followed this little unpleasantness. +And just as inevitably the <i>Forum</i> again began to lose +money, and soon sank into an obscurity from which it has +never emerged.</p> + +<p>The <i>Forum</i> had established Page's reputation as an +editor, and the competition for his services was lively. +The distinguished Boston publishing house of Houghton, +Mifflin & Company immediately invited him to become +a part of their organization. When Horace E. Scudder, +in 1898, resigned the editorship of the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, +Page succeeded him. Thus Page became the successor of +James Russell Lowell, James T. Fields, William D. Howells, +and Thomas Bailey Aldrich as the head of this famous +periodical. This meant that he had reached the top of +his profession. He was now forty-three years old.</p> + +<p>No American publication had ever had so brilliant a +history. Founded in 1857, in the most flourishing period +of the New England writers, its pages had first published +many of the best essays of Emerson, the second series of +the Biglow papers as well as many other of Lowell's +writings, poems of Longfellow and Whittier, such great +successes as Holmes's "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," +Mrs. Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic," and the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-54" id="page1-54"></a>[pg I-54]</span> +early novels of Henry James. If America had a literature, +the <i>Atlantic</i> was certainly its most successful periodical +exponent. Yet, in a sense, the <i>Atlantic</i>, by the time Page +succeeded to the editorship, had become the victim of +its dazzling past. Its recent editors had lived too exclusively +in their back numbers. They had conducted +the magazine too much for the restricted audience of +Boston and New England. There was a time, indeed, +when the business office arranged the subscribers in two +classes—"Boston" and "foreign"; "Boston" representing +their local adherents, and "foreign" the loyal readers who +lived in the more benighted parts of the United States. +One of its editors had been heard to boast that he never +solicited a contribution; it was not his business to be +a literary drummer! Let the truth be fairly spoken: +when Page made his first appearance in the <i>Atlantic</i> +office, the magazine was unquestionably on the decline. +Its literary quality was still high; the momentum that +its great contributors had given it was still keeping the +publication alive; entrance into its columns still represented +the ultimate ambition of the aspiring American +writer; but it needed a new spirit to insure its future. +What it required was the kind of editing that had suddenly +made the <i>Forum</i> one of the greatest of English-written +reviews. This is the reason why the canny Yankee proprietors +had reached over to New York and grasped Page +as quickly as the capitalists of the <i>Forum</i> let him slip +between their fingers.</p> + +<p>Page's sense of humour discovered a certain ironic +aspect in his position as the dictator of this famous New +England magazine. The fact that his manner was impatiently +energetic and somewhat startling to the placid +atmosphere of Park Street was not the thing that really +signified its break with its past. But here was a Southerner +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-55" id="page1-55"></a>[pg I-55]</span> +firmly entrenched in a headquarters that had long +been sacred to the New England abolitionists. One +of the first sights that greeted Page, as he came into the +office, was the angular and spectacled countenance of +William Lloyd Garrison, gazing down from a steel engraving +on the wall. One of Garrison's sons was a colleague, +and the anterooms were frequently cluttered with +dusky gentlemen patiently waiting for interviews with +this benefactor of their race. Page once was careless +enough to inform Mr. Garrison that "one of your niggers" +was waiting outside for an audience. "I very much regret, +Mr. Page," came the answer, "that you should insist +on spelling 'Negro' with two 'g's'." Despite the +mock solemnity of this rebuke, perennial good-nature and +raillery prevailed between the son of Garrison and his +disrespectful but ever sympathetic Southern friend. +Indeed, one of Page's earliest performances was to introduce +a spirit of laughter and genial coöperation into a +rather solemn and self-satisfied environment. Mr. Mifflin, +the head of the house, even formally thanked Page "for +the hearty human way in which you take hold of life." +Mr. Ellery Sedgwick, the present editor of the <i>Atlantic</i>, has +described the somewhat disconcerting descent of Page +upon the editorial sanctuary of James Russell Lowell:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Were a visitant from another sphere to ask me for the +incarnation of those qualities we love to call American, I +should turn to a familiar gallery of my memory and point +to the living portrait that hangs there of Walter Page. A +sort of foursquareness, bluntness, it seemed to some; an uneasy, +often explosive energy; a disposition to underrate fine +drawn nicenesses of all sorts; ingrained Yankee common +sense, checking his vaulting enthusiasm; enormous +self-confidence, impatience of failure—all of these were +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-56" id="page1-56"></a>[pg I-56]</span> +in him; and he was besides affectionate to a fault, devoted +to his country, his family, his craft—a strong, bluff, tender +man.</p> + +<p>"Those were the decorous days of the old tradition, and +Page's entrance into the 'atmosphere' of Park Street has +taken on the dignity of legend. There were all kinds of +signs and portents, as the older denizens will tell you. +Strange breezes floated through the office, electric emanations, +and a pervasive scent of tobacco, which—so the local +historian says—had been unknown in the vicinity +since the days of Walter Raleigh, except for the literary +aroma of Aldrich's quarantined sanctum upstairs. Page's +coming marked the end of small ways. His first requirement +was, in lieu of a desk, a table that might have served +a family of twelve for Thanksgiving dinner. No one +could imagine what that vast, polished tableland could +serve for until they watched the editor at work. Then +they saw. Order vanished and chaos reigned. Huge +piles of papers, letters, articles, reports, books, pamphlets, +magazines, congregated themselves as if by magic. To +work in such confusion seemed hopeless, but Page eluded +the congestion by the simple expedient of moving on. +He would light a fresh cigar, give the editorial chair a +hitch, and begin his work in front of a fresh expanse of +table, with no clutter of the past to disturb the new day's +litter.</p> + +<p>"The motive power of his work was enthusiasm. Never +was more generous welcome given to a newcomer than +Page held out to the successful manuscript of an unknown. +I remember, though I heard the news second hand at the +time, what a day it was in the office when the first manuscript +from the future author of 'To Have and To Hold,' +came in from an untried Southern girl. He walked up and +down, reading paragraphs aloud and slapping the crisp +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-57" id="page1-57"></a>[pg I-57]</span> +manuscript to enforce his commendation. To take a +humbler instance, I recall the words of over generous +praise with which he greeted the first paper I ever sent +to an editor quite as clearly as I remember the monstrous +effort which had brought it into being. Sometimes he +would do a favoured manuscript the honour of taking it +out to lunch in his coat-pocket, and an associate vividly +recalls eggs, coffee, and pie in a near-by restaurant, while, +in a voice that could be heard by the remotest lunchers, +Page read passages which many of them were too startled +to appreciate. He was not given to overrating, but it +was not in his nature to understate. 'I tell you,' said he, +grumbling over some unfortunate proof-sheets from Manhattan, +'there isn't one man in New York who can write +English—not from the Battery to Harlem Heights.' And +if the faults were moral rather than literary, his disapproval +grew in emphasis. There is more than tradition +in the tale of the Negro who, presuming on Page's deep +interest in his race, brought to his desk a manuscript +copied word for word from a published source. Page +recognized the deception, and seizing the rascal's collar +with a firm editorial grip, rejected the poem, and ejected +the poet, with an energy very invigorating to the ancient +serenities of the office.</p> + +<p>"Page was always effervescent with ideas. Like an +editor who would have made a good fisherman, he used to +say that you had to cast a dozen times before you could +get a strike. He was forever in those days sending out +ideas and suggestions and invitations to write. The result +was electric, and the magazine became with a suddenness +(of which only an editor can appreciate the wonder) +a storehouse of animating thoughts. He avoided the +mistake common to our craft of editing a magazine for +the immediate satisfaction of his colleagues. 'Don't +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-58" id="page1-58"></a>[pg I-58]</span> +write for the office,' he would say. 'Write for outside,' +and so his magazine became a living thing. His phrase +suggests one special gift that Page had, for which his profession +should do him especial honour. He was able, +quite beyond the powers of any man of my acquaintance, +to put compendiously into words the secrets of successful +editing. It was capital training just to hear him talk. +'Never save a feature,' he used to say. 'Always work for +the next number. Forget the others. Spend everything +just on that.' And to those who know, there is divination +in the principle. Again he understood instinctively +that to write well a man must not only have something +to say, but must long to say it. A highly intelligent +representative of the coloured race came to him with a +philosophic essay. Page would have none of it. 'I know +what you are thinking of,' said Page. 'You are thinking +of the barriers we set up against you, and the handicap +of your lot. If you will write what it feels like to be a +Negro, I will print that.' The result was a paper which has +seemed to me the most moving expression of the hopeless +hope of the race I know of.</p> + +<p>"Page was generous in his coöperation. He never drew +a rigid line about his share in any enterprise, but gave and +took help with each and all. A lover of good English, +with an honest passion for things tersely said, Page esteemed +good journalism far above any second-rate manifestation +of more pretentious forms; but many of us will +regret that he was not privileged to find some outlet for +his energies in which aspiration for real literature might +have played an ampler part. For the literature of the +past Page had great respect, but his interest was ever in +the present and the future. He was forever fulminating +against bad writing, and hated the ignorant and slipshod +work of the hack almost as much as he despised the sham +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-59" id="page1-59"></a>[pg I-59]</span> +of the man who affected letters, the dabbler and the poetaster. +His taste was for the roast beef of literature, not +for the side dishes and the trimmings, and his appreciation +of the substantial work of others was no surer than his +instinct for his own performance. He was an admirable +writer of exposition, argument, and narrative—solid and +thoughtful, but never dull. . . . I came into close +relations with him and from him I learned more of my +profession than from any one I have ever known. Scores +of other men would say the same."</p></div> + +<p>But the fact that a new hand had seized the <i>Atlantic</i> was +apparent in other places than in the <i>Atlantic</i> office itself. +One of Page's contributors of the <i>Forum</i> days, Mr. +Courtney DeKalb, happened to be in St. Louis when the +first number of the magazine under its new editor made its +appearance. Mr. DeKalb had been out of the country for +some time and knew nothing of the change. Happening +accidentally to pick up the <i>Atlantic</i>, the table of contents +caught his eye. It bore the traces of an unmistakable +hand. Only one man, he said to himself, could assemble +such a group as that, and above all, only Page could give +such an enticing turn of the titles. He therefore sat +down and wrote his old friend congratulating him on his +accession to the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>. The change that now +took place was indeed a conspicuous, almost a startling +one. The <i>Atlantic</i> retained all its old literary flavour, for +to its traditions Page was as much devoted as the highest +caste Bostonian; it still gave up much of its space to a +high type of fiction, poetry, and reviews of contemporary +literature, but every number contained also an assortment +of articles which celebrated the prevailing activities of +men and women in all worth-while fields of effort. There +were discussions of present-day politics, and these even +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-60" id="page1-60"></a>[pg I-60]</span> +became personal dissections of presidential candidates; +there were articles on the racial characters of the American +population: Theodore Roosevelt was permitted to discuss +the New York police; Woodrow Wilson to pass in review +the several elements that made the Nation; Booker T. +Washington to picture the awakening of the Negro; John +Muir to enlighten Americans upon a national beauty and +wealth of which they had been woefully ignorant, their +forests; William Allen White to describe certain aspects of +his favourite Kansas; E.L. Godkin to review the dangers +and the hopes of American democracy; Jacob Rüs to tell +about the Battle with the Slum; and W.G. Frost to reveal +for the first time the archaic civilization of the Kentucky +mountaineers. The latter article illustrated Page's genius +at rewriting titles. Mr. Frost's theme was that these +Kentucky mountaineers were really Elizabethan survivals; +that their dialect, their ballads, their habits were +really a case of arrested development; that by studying +them present-day Americans could get a picture of their +distant forbears. Page gave vitality to the presentation +by changing a commonplace title to this one: "Our Contemporary +Ancestors."</p> + +<p>There were those who were offended by Page's willingness +to seek inspiration on the highways and byways and +even in newspapers, for not infrequently he would find +hidden away in a corner an idea that would result in +valuable magazine matter. On one occasion at least this +practice had important literary consequences. One day +he happened to read that a Mrs. Robert Hanning had died +in Toronto, the account casually mentioning the fact that +Mrs. Hanning was the youngest sister of Thomas Carlyle. +Page handed this clipping to a young assistant, and told +him to take the first train to Canada. The editor could +easily divine that a sister of Carlyle, expatriated for forty-six +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-61" id="page1-61"></a>[pg I-61]</span> +years on this side of the Atlantic, must have received +a large number of letters from her brother, and it was +safe to assume that they had been carefully preserved. +Such proved to be the fact; and a new volume of Carlyle +letters, of somewhat more genial character than the other +collections, was the outcome of this visit<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4" /><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a>. And another +fruit of this journalistic habit was "The Memoirs of a +Revolutionist," by Prince Peter Kropotkin. In 1897 +the great Russian nihilist was lecturing in Boston. Page +met him, learned from his own lips his story, and persuaded +him to put it in permanent form. This willingness +of Page to admit such a revolutionary person into +the pages of the <i>Atlantic</i> caused some excitement in +conventional circles. In fact, it did take some courage, +but Page never hesitated; the man was of heroic mould, +he had a great story to tell, he wielded an engaging pen, +and his purposes were high-minded. A great book of +memoirs was the result.</p> + +<p>Mr. Sedgwick refers above to Page's editorial fervour +when Miss Mary Johnston's "Prisoners of Hope" first +fell out of the blue sky into his Boston office. Page's +joy was not less keen because the young author was a +Virginia girl, and because she had discovered that the early +period of Virginia history was a field for romance. When, a +few months afterward, Page was casting about for an +<i>Atlantic</i> serial, Miss Johnston and this Virginia field +seemed to be an especially favourable prospect. "Prisoners +of Hope" had been published as a book and had +made a good success, but Miss Johnston's future still +lay ahead of her. With Page to think meant to act, and +so, instead of writing a formal letter, he at once jumped on +a train for Birmingham, Alabama, where Miss Johnston +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-62" id="page1-62"></a>[pg I-62]</span> +was then living. "I remember quite distinctly that first +meeting," writes Miss Johnston. "The day was rainy. +Standing at my window I watched Mr. Page—a characteristic +figure, air and walk—approach the house. When +a few minutes later I met him he was simplicity and kindliness +itself. This was my first personal contact with +publishers (my publishers) or with editors of anything +so great as the <i>Atlantic</i>. My heart beat! But he was +friendly and Southern. I told him what I had done upon +a new story. He was going on that night. Might he +take the manuscript with him and read it upon the train? +It might—he couldn't say positively, of course—but it +might have serial possibilities. I was only too glad +for him to have the manuscript. I forget just how many +chapters I had completed. But it was not quite in order. +Could I get it so in a few hours? In that case he would +send a messenger for it from the hotel. Yes, I could. +Very good! A little further talk and he left with a strong +handshake. Three or four hours later he had the manuscript +and took it with him from Birmingham that night."</p> + +<p>Page's enterprising visit had put into his hands the +half-finished manuscript of a story, "To Have and to +Hold," which, when printed in the <i>Atlantic</i>, more than +doubled its circulation, and which, when made into a book, +proved one of the biggest successes since "Uncle Tom's +Cabin."</p> + +<p>Page's most independent stroke in his <i>Atlantic</i> days +came with the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. +Boston was then the headquarters of a national mood +which has almost passed out of popular remembrance. +Its spokesmen called themselves anti-imperialists. The +theory back of their protest was that the American declaration +of war on Spain was not only the wanton attack of +a great bully upon a feeble little country: it was something +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-63" id="page1-63"></a>[pg I-63]</span> +that was bound to have deplorable consequences. The +United States was breaking with its past and engaging +in European quarrels; as a consequence of the war it +would acquire territories and embark on a career of +"imperialism." Page was impatient at this kind of +twaddle. He declared that the Spanish War was a +"necessary act of surgery for the health of civilization." +He did not believe that a nation, simply because it was +small, should be permitted to maintain indefinitely a +human slaughter house at the door of the United States. +The <i>Atlantic</i> for June, 1898, gave the so-called +anti-imperialists a thrill of horror. On the cover appeared +the defiantly flying American flag; the first article was a +vigorous and approving presentation of the American case +against Spain; though this was unsigned, its incisive style +at once betrayed the author. The <i>Atlantic</i> had printed +the American flag on its cover during the Civil War; +but certain New Englanders thought that this latest +struggle, in its motives and its proportions, was hardly +entitled to the distinction. Page declared, however, that +the Spanish War marked a new period in history; and he +endorsed the McKinley Administration, not only in the +war itself, but in its consequences, particularly the annexation +of the Philippine Islands.</p> + +<p>Page greatly enjoyed life in Boston and Cambridge. +The <i>Atlantic</i> was rapidly growing in circulation and in +influence, and the new friends that its editor was making +were especially to his taste. He now had a family of four +children, three boys and one girl—and their bringing up +and education, as he said at this time, constituted his +real occupation. So far as he could see, in the summer +of 1899, he was permanently established in life. But +larger events in the publishing world now again pulled him +back to New York.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p class="center">FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> "Letters of Thomas Carlyle to his Youngest Sister." Edited +by Charles Townsend Copeland. Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1899.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-64" id="page1-64"></a>[pg I-64]</span> +</div><h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III" />CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>"THE FORGOTTEN MAN"</h3> + +<h3>I</h3> + + +<p>In July, 1899, the publishing community learned that +financial difficulties were seriously embarrassing the +great house of Harper. For nearly a century this establishment +had maintained a position almost of preëminence +among American publishers. Three generations +of Harpers had successively presided over its destinies; +its magazines and books had become almost a household +necessity in all parts of the United States, and its authors +included many of the names most celebrated in American +letters. The average American could no more associate +the idea of bankruptcy with this great business than with +the federal Treasury itself. Yet this incredible disaster +had virtually taken place. At this time the public knew +nothing of the impending ruin; the fact was, however, +that, in July, 1899, the banking house of J.P. Morgan & +Company practically controlled this property. This was +the situation which again called Page to New York.</p> + +<p>In the preceding year Mr. S.S. McClure, whose recent +success as editor and publisher had been little less than a +sensation, had joined forces with Mr. Frank N. Doubleday, +and organized the new firm of Doubleday & McClure. +This business was making rapid progress; and +that it would soon become one of the leading American +publishing houses was already apparent. It was perhaps +not unnatural, therefore, that Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, +scanning the horizon for the men who might rescue the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-65" id="page1-65"></a>[pg I-65]</span> +Harper concern from approaching disaster, should have +had his attention drawn to Mr. McClure and Mr. Doubleday. +"The failure of Harper & Brothers," Mr. Morgan +said in a published statement, "would be a national calamity." +One morning, therefore, a member of the Harper +firm called upon Mr. McClure. Without the slightest +hesitation he unfolded the Harper situation to his +astonished contemporary. The solution proposed was +more astonishing still. This was that Mr. Doubleday and +Mr. McClure should amalgamate their young and vigorous +business with the Harper enterprise and become the +active managers of the new corporation. Both Mr. McClure +and Mr. Doubleday were comparatively young men, +and the magnitude of the proposed undertaking at first +rather staggered them. It was as though a small independent +steel maker should suddenly be invited to take +over the United States Steel Corporation. Mr. McClure, +characteristically impetuous and daring, wished to accept +the invitation outright; Mr. Doubleday, however, suggested +a period of probation. The outcome was that the +two men offered to take charge of Harper & Brothers +for a few months, and then decide whether they wished +to make the association a permanent one. One thing was +immediately apparent; Messrs. Doubleday and McClure, +able as they were, would need the help of the best talent +available in the work that lay ahead. The first man +to whom they turned was Page, who presently left Boston +and took up his business abode at Franklin Square. The +rumble of the elevated road was somewhat distracting +after the four quiet years in Park Street, but the +new daily routine was not lacking in interest. The +Harper experiment, however, did not end as Mr. Morgan +had hoped. After a few months Messrs. Doubleday, +Page and McClure withdrew, and left the work of rescue +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-66" id="page1-66"></a>[pg I-66]</span> +to be performed by Mr. George Harvey, who, curiously +enough, succeeded Page, twenty-one years afterward, in +an even more important post—that of ambassador to +the Court of St. James's. The one important outcome of +the Harper episode, so far as Page was concerned, was the +forming of a close business and personal association with +Mr. Frank N. Doubleday. As soon as the two men definitely +decided not to assume the Harper responsibility, +therefore, they joined forces and founded the firm of +Doubleday, Page & Company. Page now had the opportunity +which he had long wished for; the mere editing +of magazines, even magazines of such an eminent character +as the <i>Forum</i> and the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, could hardly +satisfy his ambition; he yearned to possess something +which he could call his own, at least in part.</p> + +<p>The life of an editor has its unsatisfactory aspect, unless +the editor himself has an influential ownership in his +periodical. Page now found his opportunity to establish +a monthly magazine which he could regard as his own in +both senses. He was its untrammelled editor, and also, +in part, its proprietor. All editors and writers will sympathize +with the ideas expressed in a letter written about +this time to Page's friend, Mr. William Roscoe Thayer, +already distinguished as the historian of Italian unity and +afterward to win fame as the biographer of Cavour and +John Hay. When the first number of the <i>World's Work</i> +appeared Mr. Thayer wrote, expressing a slight disappointment +that its leading tendency was journalistic +rather than literary and intellectual. "When you edited +the <i>Forum</i>," wrote Mr. Thayer, "I perceived that no +such talent for editing had been seen in America before, +and when, a little later, you rejuvenated the <i>Atlantic</i>, +making it for a couple of years the best periodical printed +in English, I felt that you had a great mission before you +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-67" id="page1-67"></a>[pg I-67]</span> +as evoker and editor of the best literary work and weightiest +thought on important topics of our foremost men." +He had hoped to see a magnified <i>Atlantic</i>, and the new +publication, splendid as it was, seemed to be of rather +more popular character than the publications with which +Page had previously been associated. Page met this +challenge in his usual hearty fashion.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To William Roscoe Thayer</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">34 Union Square East, New York,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">December 5, 1900.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>My Dear Thayer:</p> + +<p>The <i>World's Work</i> has brought me nothing so good as +your letter of yesterday. When Mrs. Page read it, +she shouted "Now that's it!" For "it" read "truth," +and you will have her meaning and mine. My thanks +you may be sure you have, in great and earnest abundance.</p> + +<p>You surprise me in two ways—(1) that you think as +well of the magazine as you do. If it have half the force +and earnestness that you say it has, how happy I shall be, +for then it will surely bring something to pass. The +other way in which you surprise me is by the flattering +things that you say about my conduct of the <i>Atlantic</i>. +Alas! it was not what you in your kind way say—no, +no.</p> + +<p>Of course the <i>World's Work</i> is not yet by any means what +I hope to make it. But it has this incalculable advantage +(to me) over every other magazine in existence: it is mine +(mine and my partners', i.e., partly mine), and I shall not +work to build up a good piece of machinery and then +be turned out to graze as an old horse is. This of course, +is selfish and personal—not wholly selfish either, I think. +I threw down the <i>Atlantic</i> for this reason: (Consider the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-68" id="page1-68"></a>[pg I-68]</span> +history of its editors) Lowell<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5" /><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> complained bitterly that he +was never rewarded properly for the time and work he did; +Fields was (in a way) one of its owners; it was sold out +from under Howells, etc., etc. I might (probably should) +have been at the mercy completely of owners some day who +would have dismissed me for a younger man. Nearly all +hired editors suffer this fate. My good friends in Boston +were sincere in thinking that my day of doom would +never come; but they didn't offer me any guarantee—part +ownership, for instance; and the years go swiftly. I +could afford, of my own volition, to leave the <i>Atlantic</i>. I +couldn't afford to take permanently the risks that a hired +editor must take. Nor should I ever again have turned +my hand to such a task except on a magazine of my own. +I should have sought other employment. There are many +easier and better and more influential things to do—yet; +ten years hence I might have been too old. Harry Houghton<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6" /><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> +has an old horse thirty years old. I used to see him +grazing sometimes and hear his master's self-congratulatory +explanation of his own kindness to that faithful +beast. In the office of Houghton, Mifflin & Company +there is an old man whom I used to see every day—pensioned, +grazing. Then I would go home and see four +bright children. Three of them are now away from home +at school; and the four cost a pretty penny to educate. +My income had been the same for ten years-or very +nearly the same. If I was a "magic" editor, I confess I +didn't see the magic; and there is no power under Heaven +or in it that can prove to me that I ought to keep on making +magazines as a hired man—without the common +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-69" id="page1-69"></a>[pg I-69]</span> +security of permanent service for lack of which nearly all +my predecessors lost their chance.</p> + +<p>But this is not all, nor half. A man ought to express +himself, ought to live his own life, say his own little say, +before silence comes. The "say" may be bad—a mere +yawp, and silence might be more becoming. But the +same argument would make a man dissatisfied with his +own nose if it happened to be ugly. It's <i>his</i> nose, and he +must content himself. So it's <i>his</i> yawp and he must let +it go.</p> + +<p>I'm not going to make the new magazine my own megaphone—you +may be sure of that. It will nevertheless +contain my general interpretation of things, in which I +swear I do believe! The first thing, of course, is to establish +it. Then it can be shaped more nearly into what +I wish it to become. If it seem unmannerly, aggressive, +I know no other way to make it heard. If it died, then +the game would be up. Well, we seem to have established +it at once. It promises not to cost us a penny of investment.</p> + +<p>Now, the magazines need new topics. They have all +threshed over old straw for many years. There is <i>one</i> new +subject, to my thinking worth all the old ones: the new +impulse in American life, the new feeling of nationality, +our coming to realize ourselves. To my mind there is +greater promise in democracy than men of any preceding +period ever dared dream of—aggressive democracy—growth +by action. Our writers (the few we have) are yet +in the pre-democratic era. When men's imaginations lay +hold on the things that already begin to appear above the +horizon, we shall have something worth reading. At +present I can do no more than bawl out, "See! here are +new subjects." One of these days somebody will come +along who can write about them. I have started out +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-70" id="page1-70"></a>[pg I-70]</span> +without a writer. Fiske is under contract, James would +give nothing more to the <i>Atlantic</i>, you were ill (I thank +Heaven you are no longer so) the second-and third-rate +essayists have been bought by mere Wall Street publishers. +Beyond these are the company of story tellers +and beyond them only a dreary waste of dead-level unimaginative +men and women. I can (soon) get all that +I could ever have got in the <i>Atlantic</i> and new ones (I +know they'll come) whom I could never have got there.</p> + +<p>You'll see—within a year or two—by far a better magazine +than I have ever made; and you and I will differ in +nothing unless you feel despair about the breakdown of +certain democratic theories, which I think were always +mere theories. Let 'em go! The real thing, which is life +and action, is better.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Heartily and always your grateful friend,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 16.5em;">Walter H. Page</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Thus the fact that Page's new magazine was intended +for a popular audience was not the result of accident, but +of design. It represented a periodical plan which had long +been taking shape in Page's mind. The things that he +had been doing for the <i>Forum</i> and the <i>Atlantic</i> he aspired +to do for a larger audience than that to which publications +of this character could appeal. Scholar though Page was, +and lover of the finest things in literature that he had always +been, yet this sympathy and interest had always lain +with the masses. Perhaps it is impossible to make literature +democratic, but Page believed that he would be +genuinely serving the great cause that was nearest his heart +if he could spread wide the facts of the modern world, especially +the facts of America, and if he could clothe +the expression in language which, while always dignified +and even "literary," would still be sufficiently touched +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-71" id="page1-71"></a>[pg I-71]</span> +with the vital, the picturesque, and the "human," to +make his new publication appeal to a wide audience of +intelligent, everyday Americans. It was thus part of +his general programme of improving the status of the +average man, and it formed a logical part of his philosophy +of human advancement. For the only acceptable +measure of any civilization, Page believed, was the +extent to which it improved the condition of the common +citizen. A few cultured and university-trained men at +the top; a few ancient families living in luxury; a few +painters and poets and statesmen and generals; these +things, in Page's view, did not constitute a satisfactory +state of society; the real test was the extent to which the +masses participated in education, in the necessities and +comforts of existence, in the right of self-evolution and +self-expression, in that "equality of opportunity," which, +Page never wearied of repeating, "was the basis of social +progress." The mere right to vote and to hold office was +not democracy; parliamentary majorities and political +caucuses were not democracy—at the best these things were +only details and not the most important ones; democracy +was the right of every man to enjoy, in accordance +with his aptitudes of character and mentality, the material +and spiritual opportunities that nature and science had +placed at the disposition of mankind. This democratic +creed had now become the dominating interest of Page's +life. From this time on it consumed all his activities. +His new magazine set itself first of all to interpret the +American panorama from this point of view; to describe +the progress that the several parts of the country were +making in the several manifestations of democracy—education, +agriculture, industry, social life, politics—and +the importance that Page attached to them was +practically in the order named. Above all it concerned +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-72" id="page1-72"></a>[pg I-72]</span> +itself with the men and women who were accomplishing +most in the definite realization of this great end.</p> + +<p>And now also Page began to carry his activities far beyond +mere print. In his early residence in New York, from +1885 to 1895, he had always taken his part in public movements; +he had been a vital spirit in the New York Reform +Club, which was engaged mainly in advocating the Cleveland +tariff; he had always shown a willingness to experiment +with new ideas; at one time he had mingled with +Socialists and he had been quite captivated by the personal +and literary charm of Henry George. After 1900, however, +Page became essentially a public man, though not in +the political sense. His work as editor and writer was +merely one expression of the enthusiasms that occupied +his mind. From 1900 until 1913, when he left for England, +life meant for him mainly an effort to spread the democratic +ideal, as he conceived it; concretely it represented a +constant campaign for improving the fundamental opportunities +and the everyday social advantages of the masses.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>Inevitably the condition of the people in his own homeland +enlisted Page's sympathy, for he had learned of their +necessities at first hand. The need of education had +powerfully impressed him even as a boy. At twenty-three +he began writing articles for the Raleigh <i>Observer</i>, +and practically all of them were pleas for the education of +the Southern child. His subsequent activities of this +kind, as editor of the <i>State Chronicle</i>, have already been +described. The American from other parts of the country +is rather shocked when he first learns of the backwardness +of education in the South a generation ago. In any real +sense there was no publicly supported system for training +the child. A few wretched hovels, scattered through a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-73" id="page1-73"></a>[pg I-73]</span> +sparsely settled country, served as school houses; a few +uninspiring and neglected women, earning perhaps $50 +or $75 a year, did weary duty as teachers; a few groups +of anemic and listless children, attending school for only +forty days a year—such was the preparation for life which +most Southern states gave the less fortunate of their +citizens. The glaring fact that emphasized the outcome +of this official carelessness was an illiteracy, among white +men and women, of 26 per cent. Among the Negroes it +was vastly larger.</p> + +<p>The first exhortation to reform came from the Wautauga +Club, which Page had organized in Raleigh in 1884. +After Page had left his native state, other men began +preaching the same crusade. Perhaps the greatest of +those advocates whom the South loves to refer to as +"educational statesmen" was Dr. Charles D. McIver, +of Greensboro, N.C. McIver's personality and career +had an heroic quality all their own. Back in the 'eighties +McIver and Edwin A. Alderman, now President of the +University of Virginia, endured all kinds of hardships and +buffetings in the cause of popular education; they stumped +the state, much like political campaigners, preaching the +strange new gospel in mountain cabin, in village church, +at the cart's tail—all in an attempt to arouse their +lethargic countrymen to the duty of laying a small tax +to save their children from illiteracy. Some day the story +of McIver and Alderman will find its historian; when it +does, he will learn that, in those dark ages, one of their +greatest sources of inspiration was Walter Page. McIver, +a great burly boy, physically and intellectually, so full +of energy that existence for him was little less than +an unending tornado, so full of zeal that any other occupation +than that of training the neglected seemed a +trifling with life, so sleepless in his efforts that, at the age +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-74" id="page1-74"></a>[pg I-74]</span> +of forty-five, he one day dropped dead while travelling +on a railroad train; Alderman, a man of finer culture, +quieter in his methods, an orator of polish and restraint, +but an advocate vigorous in the prosecution of the great +end; and Page, living faraway in the North, but pumping +his associates full of courage and enthusiasm—these were +the three guardsmen of this new battle for the elevation +of the white and black men of the South. McIver's +great work was the State Normal College for Women, +which, amid unparalleled difficulties, he founded for +teaching the teachers of the new Southern generation. It +was at this institution that Page, in 1897, delivered the +address which gave the cause of Southern education that +one thing which is worth armies to any struggling reform—a +phrase; and it was a phrase that lived in the +popular mind and heart and summed up, in a way that +a thousand speeches could never have done, the great +purpose for which the best people in the state were striving.</p> + +<p>His editorial gift for title-making now served Page in +good stead. "The Forgotten Man," which was the heading +of his address, immediately passed into the common +speech of the South and even at this day inevitably appears +in all discussions of social progress. It was again +Page's familiar message of democracy, of improving the +condition of the everyday man, woman, and child; and +the message, as is usually the case in all incitements to +change, involved many unpleasant facts. Page had first +of all to inform his fellow Southerners that it was only in +the South that "The Forgotten Man" was really an outstanding +feature. He did not exist in New England, in +the Middle States, in the Mississippi Valley, or in the +West, or existed in these regions to so slight an extent that +he was not a grave menace to society. But in the South +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-75" id="page1-75"></a>[pg I-75]</span> +the situation was quite different. And for this fact the +explanation was found in history. The South certainly +could not fix the blame upon Nature. In natural wealth—in +forests, mines, quarries, rich soil, in the unlimited +power supplied by water courses—the Southern States +formed perhaps the richest region in the country. These +things North Carolina and her sister communities had +not developed; more startling still, they had not developed +a source of wealth that was infinitely greater than all these +combined; they had not developed their men and their +women. The Southern States represented the purest +"Anglo-Saxon" strain in the United States; to-day in +North Carolina only one person in four hundred is of "foreign +stock," and a voting list of almost any town contains +practically nothing except the English and Scotch names +that were borne by the original settlers. Yet here democracy, +in any real sense, had scarcely obtained a footing. +The region which had given Thomas Jefferson and George +Washington to the world was still, in the year 1897, +organized upon an essentially aristocratic basis. The conception +of education which prevailed in the most hide-bound +aristocracies of Europe still ruled south of the +Potomac. There was no acceptance of that fundamental +American doctrine that education was the function of the +state. It was generally regarded as the luxury of the rich +and the socially high placed; it was certainly not for the +poor; and it was a generally accepted view that those who +enjoyed this privilege must pay for it out of their own +pockets. Again Page returned to the "mummy" theme—the +fact that North Carolina, and the South generally, +were too much ruled by "dead men's" hands. The +state was ruled by a "little aristocracy, which, in its +social and economic character, made a failure and left +a stubborn crop of wrong social notions behind it—especially +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-76" id="page1-76"></a>[pg I-76]</span> +about education." The chief backward influences +were the stump and the pulpit. "From the days +of King George to this day, the politicians of North Carolina +have declaimed against taxes, thus laying the foundation +of our poverty. It was a misfortune for us that +the quarrel with King George happened to turn upon +the question of taxation—so great was the dread of +taxation that was instilled into us." What had the upper +classes done for the education of the average man? +The statistics of illiteracy, the deplorable economic and +social conditions of the rural population—and most of +the population of North Carolina was rural—furnished +the answer.</p> + +<p>Thus the North Carolina aristocracy had failed in +education and the failure of the Church had been as complete +and deplorable. The preachers had established +preparatory schools for boys and girls, but these were +under the control of sects; and so education was either a +class or an ecclesiastical concern. "The forgotten man +remained forgotten. The aristocratic scheme of education +had passed him by. To a less extent, but still to the +extent of hundreds of thousands, the ecclesiastical scheme +had passed him by." But even the education which these +institutions gave was inferior. Page told his North Carolina +audience that the University of which they were so +proud did not rank with Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and +other universities of the North. The state had not produced +great scholars nor established great libraries. In +the estimation of publishers North Carolina was unimportant +as a book market. "By any test that may be made, +both these systems have failed even with the classes that +they appealed to." The net result was that "One in every +four was wholly forgotten"—that is, was unable to read and +write. And the worst of it all was that the victim of this +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-77" id="page1-77"></a>[pg I-77]</span> +neglect was not disturbed over his situation. "The forgotten +man was content to be forgotten. He became not +only a dead weight, but a definite opponent of social progress. +He faithfully heard the politician on the stump +praise him for virtues that he did not have. The politicians +told him that he lived in the best state in the Union; +told him that the other politicians had some hare-brained +plan to increase his taxes, told him as a consolation for his +ignorance how many of his kinsmen had been killed in the +war, told him to distrust any one who wished to change +anything. What was good enough for his fathers was +good enough for him. Thus the 'forgotten man' became +a dupe, became thankful for being neglected. And the +preacher told him that the ills and misfortunes of this life +were blessings in disguise, that God meant his poverty as +a means of grace, and that if he accepted the right creed +all would be well with him. These influences encouraged +inertia. There could not have been a better means to +prevent the development of the people."</p> + +<p>Even more tragic than these "forgotten men" were the +"forgotten women." "Thin and wrinkled in youth from +ill-prepared food, clad without warmth or grace, living in +untidy houses, working from daylight till bedtime at the +dull round of weary duties, the slaves of men of equal +slovenliness, the mothers of joyless children—all uneducated +if not illiterate." "This sight," Page told his +hearers, "every one of you has seen, not in the countries +whither we send missionaries, but in the borders of the +State of North Carolina, in this year of grace."</p> + +<p>"Our civilization," he declared, "has been a failure." +Both the politicians and the preacher had failed to lift +the masses. "It is a time for a wiser statesmanship and +a more certain means of grace." He admitted that there +had been recent progress in North Carolina, owing largely +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-78" id="page1-78"></a>[pg I-78]</span> +to the work of McIver and Alderman, but taxes for educational +purposes were still low. What was the solution? +"A public school system generously supported by +public sentiment and generously maintained by both +state and local taxation, is the only effective means to +develop the forgotten man and even more surely the +only means to develop the forgotten woman. . . ." +"If any beggar for a church school oppose a local tax +for schools or a higher school tax, take him to the huts +of the forgotten women and children, and in their hopeless +presence remind him that the church system of education +has not touched tens of thousands of these lives +and ask him whether he thinks it wrong that the commonwealth +should educate them. If he think it wrong ask +him and ask the people plainly, whether he be a worthy +preacher of the gospel that declares one man equal to +another in the sight of God? . . . The most sacred +thing in the commonwealth and to the commonwealth +is the child, whether it be your child or the child of the +dull-faced mother of the hovel. The child of the dull-faced +mother may, as you know, be the most capable +child in the state. . . . Several of the strongest +personalities that were ever born in North Carolina were +men whose very fathers were unknown. We have all +known two such, who held high places in Church and +State. President Eliot said a little while ago that the +ablest man that he had known in his many years' connection +with Harvard University was the son of a brick +mason."</p> + +<p>In place of the ecclesiastical creed that had guided +North Carolina for so many generations Page proposed +his creed of democracy. He advised that North Carolina +commit this to memory and teach it to its children. It +was as follows:</p> + + +<div class="blockquot"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-79" id="page1-79"></a>[pg I-79]</span><p>"I believe in the free public training of both the hands +and the mind of every child born of woman.</p> + +<p>"I believe that by the right training of men we add to +the wealth of the world. All wealth is the creation of +man, and he creates it only in proportion to the trained +uses of the community; and the more men we train the +more wealth everyone may create.</p> + +<p>"I believe in the perpetual regeneration of society, and +in the immortality of democracy and in growth everlasting."</p></div> + +<p>Thus Page nailed his theses upon the door of his native +state, and mighty was the reverberation. In a few weeks +Page's Greensboro address had made its way all over the +Southern States, and his melancholy figure, "the forgotten man" +had become part of the indelible imagery +of the Southern people. The portrait etched itself +deeply into the popular consciousness for the very good +reason that its truth was pretty generally recognized. +The higher type of newspaper, though it winced somewhat +at Page's strictures, manfully recognized that the +best way of meeting his charge was by setting to work and +improving conditions. The fact is that the better conscience +of North Carolina welcomed this eloquent description +of unquestioned evils; but the gentlemen whom +Page used to stigmatize as "professional Southerners"—the +men who commercialized class and sectional prejudice +to their own political and financial or ecclesiastical profit—fell +foul of this "renegade," this "Southern Yankee" +this sacrilegious "intruder" who had dared to visit his +old home and desecrate its traditions and its religion. +This clerical wrath was kindled into fresh flame when +Page, in an editorial in his magazine, declared that these +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-80" id="page1-80"></a>[pg I-80]</span> +same preachers, ignoring their real duties, were content +"to herd their women and children around the stagnant +pools of theology." For real religion Page had the +deepest reverence, and he had great respect also for the +robust evangelical preachers whose efforts had contributed +so much to the opening up of the frontier. In +his Greensboro address Page had given these men high +praise. But for the assiduous idolaters of stratified dogma +he entertained a contempt which he was seldom at pains +to conceal. North Carolina had many clergymen of the +more progressive type; these men chuckled at Page's +vigorous characterization of the brethren, but those +against whom it had been aimed raged with a fervour +that was almost unchristian. This clerical excitement, +however, did not greatly disturb the philosophic Page. +The hubbub lasted for several years—for Page's Greensboro +speech was only the first of many pronouncements +of the same kind—but he never publicly referred to the +attacks upon him. Occasionally in letters to his friends +he would good-naturedly discuss them. "I have had +several letters," he wrote to Professor Edwin Mims, of +Trinity College, North Carolina, "about an 'excoriation' +(Great Heavens! What a word!) that somebody in +North Carolina has been giving me. I never read these +things and I don't know what it's all about—nor do I +care. But perhaps you'll be interested in a letter that I +wrote an old friend (a lady) who is concerned about +it. I enclose a copy of it. I shall never notice any +'excoriator.' But if you wish to add to the gaiety of +nations, give this copy to some newspaper and let it +loose in the state—if you care to do so. We must have +patience with these puny and peevish brethren. They've +been trained to a false view of life. Heaven knows I +bear them no ill-will."</p> + +<p>The letter to which Page referred follows:</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-81" id="page1-81"></a>[pg I-81]</span> +</div><div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR FRIEND:</p> + +<p>I have your letter saying that some of the papers in +North Carolina are again "jumping on" me. I do not +know which they are, and I am glad that you did not +tell me. I had heard of it before. A preacher wrote me +the other day that he approved of every word of an "excoriation" +that some religious editor had given me. A +kindly Christian act—wasn't it, to send a stranger word +that you were glad that he had been abused by a religious +editor? I wrote him a gentle letter, telling him that I +hoped he'd have a long and happy life preaching a gospel +of friendliness and neighbourliness and good-will, and +that I cared nothing about "excoriations." Why should +he, then, forsake his calling and take delight in disseminating +personal abuse?</p> + +<p>And why do you not write me about things that I +really care for in the good old country—the budding trees, +the pleasant weather, news of old friends, gossip of good +people—cheerful things? I pray you, don't be concerned +about what any poor whining soul may write about me. +I don't care for myself: I care only for him; for the writer +of personal abuse always suffers from it—never the man +abused.</p> + +<p>I haven't read what my kindly clerical correspondent +calls an "excoriation" for ten years, and I never shall +read one if I know what it is beforehand. Why should +I or anybody read such stuff? I can't find time to do +half the positive things that I should like to do for the +broadening of my own character and for the encouragement +of others. Why should I waste a single minute +in such a negative and cheerless way as reading anybody's +personal abuse of anybody else—least of all myself?</p> + +<p>These silly outbursts never reach me and they never +can; and they, therefore, utterly fail, and always will fail, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-82" id="page1-82"></a>[pg I-82]</span> +of their aim; yet, my dear friend, there is nevertheless a +serious side to such folly. For it shows the need of education, +education, education. The religious editor and +the preacher who took joy in his abuse of me have such +a starved view of life that they cannot themselves, perhaps, +ever be educated into kindliness and dignity of +thought. But their children may be—must be. Think +of beautiful children growing up in a home where "excoriating" +people who differ with you is regarded as a +manly Christian exercise! It is pitiful beyond words. +There is no way to lift up life that is on so low a level except +by the free education of all the people. Let us work +for that and, when the growlers are done growling and +forgotten, better men will remember us with gratitude.</p> + +<p>I felt greatly complimented and pleased to receive an +invitation the other day to attend the North Carolina +Teachers' Assembly in June. I have many things to do +in June, but I am going—going with great pleasure. I +hope to see you there. I know of no other company of +people that I should be so glad to meet. They are doing +noble work—the most devoted and useful work in this +whole wide world. They are the true leaders of the +people. I often wish that I were one of them. They +inspire me as nobody else does. They are the army of +our salvation.</p> + +<p>Write me what they are doing. Write me about the +wonderful educational progress. And write me about the +peach trees and the budding imminence of spring; and +about the children who now live all day outdoors and +grow brown and plump. And never mind that queer +sect, "The Excoriators." They and their stage thunder +will be forgotten to-morrow. Meantime let us live and +work for things nobler than any controversies, for things +that are larger than the poor mission of any sect; and let +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-83" id="page1-83"></a>[pg I-83]</span> +us have charity and a patient pity for those that think +they serve God by abusing their fellow-men. I wish I +saw some way to help them to a broader and a higher life.</p> + +<p>Faithfully yours,</p> + +<p>WALTER H. PAGE.</p></div> + + + +<h3>III</h3> + + +<p>That Page should have little interest in "excoriators" +at the time this letter was written—in April, 1902—was +not surprising, for his educational campaign and that of +his friends was now bearing fruit. "Write me about +the wonderful educational progress," he says to this +correspondent; and, indeed, the change that was coming +over North Carolina and the South generally seemed to +be tinged with the miraculous. The "Forgotten Man" +and the "Forgotten Woman" were rapidly coming into +their own. Two years after the delivery of Page's +Greensboro address, a small group of educational enthusiasts +met at Capon Springs, West Virginia, to discuss +the general situation in the South. The leader of +this little gathering was Robert C. Ogden, a great New +York merchant who for many years had been President +of the Board of Hampton Institute. Out of this meeting +grew the Southern Educational Conference, which +was little more than an annual meeting for advertising +broadcast the educational needs of the South. Each +year Mr. Ogden chartered a railroad train; a hundred +or so of the leading editors, lawyers, bankers, and the +like became his guests; the train moved through the +Southern States, pausing now and then to investigate +some particular institution or locality; and at some +Southern city, such as Birmingham or Atlanta or Winston-Salem, +a stop of several days would be made, a public +building engaged, and long meetings held. In all these +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-84" id="page1-84"></a>[pg I-84]</span> +proceedings Page was an active figure, as he became in +the Southern Education Board, which directly resulted +from Mr. Ogden's public spirited excursions. Like the +Conference, the Southern Education Board was a purely +missionary organization, and its most active worker was +Page himself. He was constantly speaking and writing +on his favourite subject; he printed article after article, +not only in his own magazine, but in the <i>Atlantic</i>, in +the <i>Outlook</i>, and in a multitude of newspapers, such as +the Boston <i>Transcript</i>, the New York <i>Times</i>, and the +Kansas City <i>Star</i>. And always through his writings, +and, indeed, through his life, there ran, like the motif of +an opera, that same perpetual plea for "the forgotten +man"—the need of uplifting the backward masses +through training, both of the mind and of the hand.</p> + +<p>The day came when this loyal group had other things to +work with than their voices and their pens; their efforts +had attracted the attention of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, who +brought assistance of an extremely substantial character. +In 1902 Mr. Rockefeller organized the General Education +Board. Of the ten members six were taken from the +Southern Education Board; other members represented +general educational interests and especially the Baptist +interests to which Mr. Rockefeller had been contributing +for years. In a large sense, therefore, especially in its +membership, the General Education Board was a development +of the Ogden organization; but it was much broader +in its sweep, taking under its view the entire nation and +all forms of educational effort. It immediately began +to interest itself in the needs of the South. In 1902 +Mr. Rockefeller gave this new corporation $1,000,000; +in 1905 he gave it $10,000,000; in 1907 he astonished the +Nation by giving $32,000,000, and, in 1909, another +$10,000,000; the whole making a total of $53,000,000, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-85" id="page1-85"></a>[pg I-85]</span> +the largest sum ever given by a single man, up to that +time, for social or philanthropic purposes. The General +Education Board now became the chief outside interest +of Page's life. He was made a member of the Executive +Committee, faithfully attended all its sessions, and +participated intimately in every important plan. All +such bodies have their decorative members and their +working members; Page belonged emphatically in the +latter class. Not only was he fertile in suggestions, but +his ready mind could give almost any proposal its proper +emphasis and clearly set forth its essential details. Between +Page and Dr. Buttrick, Secretary and now President +of the Board, a close personal intimacy grew up. Dr. +Buttrick moved to Teaneck Road, Englewood, where Page +had his home, and many a long evening did the two men +spend together, many a long walk did they take in the +surrounding country, always discussing education, especially +Southern education. A letter to the present writer +from Dr. Abraham Flexner, the present Secretary of the +Board, perhaps sums up the matter. "Page was one of +the real educational statesmen of this country," says Dr. +Flexner, "probably the greatest that we have had since +the Civil War."</p> + +<p>And this Rockefeller support came at a time when +that movement known as the "educational awakening" +had started in the South. In 1900 North Carolina elected +its greatest governor since the Civil War—Charles B. +Aycock. A much repeated anecdote attributes Lincoln's +detestation of slavery to a slave auction that he witnessed +as a small boy; Aycock's first zeal as an educational +reformer had an origin that was even more pathetic, +for he always carried in his mind his recollection of his own +mother signing an important legal document with a cross. +As a young man fresh from the university Aycock also +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-86" id="page1-86"></a>[pg I-86]</span> +came under the influence of Page. An old letter, preserved +among Page's papers, dated February 26, 1886, +discloses that he was a sympathizing reader of the +"mummy" controversy; when the brickbats began flying +in Page's direction Aycock wrote, telling Page that +"fully three fourths of the people are with you and wish +you Godspeed in your effort to awaken better work, +greater activity, and freer opinion in the state." And +now under Aycock's governorship North Carolina began +to tackle the educational problem with a purpose. School +houses started up all over the state at the rate of one a +day—many of them beautiful, commodious, modern structures, +in every way the equals of any in the North or +West; high schools, normal schools, trade schools made +their appearance wherever the need was greatest; and +in other parts of the South the response was similarly +energetic. The reform is not yet complete, but the +description that Page gave of Southern education in +1897, accurate in all its details as it was then, has now +become ancient history.</p> + + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>And in occupations of this kind Page passed his years +of maturity. His was not a spectacular life; his family +for the most part still remained his most immediate +interest; the daily round of an editor has its imaginative +quality, but in the main it was for Page a quiet, even a +cloistered existence; the work that an editor does, the +achievements that he can put to his credit, are usually +anonymous; and the American public little understood +the extent to which Page was influencing many of the +most vital forces of his time. The business association +that he had formed with Mr. Doubleday turned out +most happily. Their publishing house, in a short time, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-87" id="page1-87"></a>[pg I-87]</span> +attained a position of great influence and prosperity. +The two men, on both the personal and the business +side, were congenial and complementary; and the +love that both felt for country life led to the establishment +of a publishing and printing plant of unusual +beauty. In Garden City, Long Island, a great brick structure +was built, somewhat suggestive in its architecture of +Hampton Court, surrounded by pools and fountains, Italian +gardens, green walks and pergolas, gardens blooming in appropriate +seasons with roses, peonies, rhododendrons, chrysanthemums, +and the like, and parks of evergreen, fir, +cedar, and more exotic trees and shrubs. Certainly fate +could have designed no more fitting setting for Page's +favourite activities than this. In assembling authors, +in instigating the writing of books, in watching the +achievements and the tendencies of American life, in the +routine of editing his magazine—all this in association with +partners whose daily companionship was a delight and a +stimulation—Page spent his last years in America.</p> + +<p>Page's independence as an editor, sufficiently indicated +in the days of his vivacious youth, became even more emphatic +in his maturer years. In his eyes, merely inking over +so many pages of good white paper was not journalism; +conviction, zeal, honesty—these were the important +points. Almost on the very day that his appointment as +Ambassador to Great Britain was announced his magazine +published an editorial from his pen, which contained +not especially complimentary references to his new chief, +Mr. Bryan, the Secretary of State; naturally the newspapers +found much amusement in these few sentences; +but the thing was typical of Page's whole career as an +editor. He held to the creed that an editor should +divorce himself entirely from prejudices, animosities, +and predilections; this seems an obvious, even a trite +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-88" id="page1-88"></a>[pg I-88]</span> +thing to say, yet there are so few men who can leave +personal considerations aside in writing of men and +events that it is worth while pointing out that Page was +such a man. When his firm was planning to establish +its magazine, his partner, Mr. Doubleday, was approached +by a New York politician of large influence but +shady reputation who wished to be assured that it would +reflect correct political principles. "You should see Mr. +Page about that," was the response. "No, this is a business +matter," the insinuating gentleman went on, and +then he proceeded to show that about twenty-five thousand +subscribers could be obtained if the publication +preached orthodox standpat doctrine. "I don't think +you had better see Mr. Page," said Mr. Doubleday, dismissing +his caller.</p> + +<p>Many incidents which illustrate this independence +could be given; one will suffice. In 1907 and 1908, +Page's magazine published the "Random Reminiscences of +John D. Rockefeller." While the articles were appearing, +the Hearst newspapers obtained a large number of +letters that, some years before, had passed between +Mr. John D. Archbold, President of the Standard Oil +Company and one of Mr. Rockefeller's business associates +from the earliest days, and Senator Joseph B. Foraker, of +Ohio. These letters uncovered one of the gravest scandals +that had ever involved an American public man; +they instantaneously destroyed Senator Foraker's political +career and hastened his death. They showed that +this brilliant man had been obtaining large sums of +money from the Standard Oil Company while he was +filling the post of United States Senator and that at the +same time he was receiving suggestions from Mr. Archbold +about pending legislation. Mr. Rockefeller was not +personally involved, for he had retired from active business +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-89" id="page1-89"></a>[pg I-89]</span> +many years before these things had been done; but +the Standard Oil Company, with which his name was +intimately associated, was involved and in a way that +seemed to substantiate the worst charges that had been +made against it. At this time Page, as a member of the +General Education Board, was doing his part in helping +to disperse the Rockefeller millions for public purposes; +his magazine was publishing Mr. Rockefeller's reminiscences; +there are editors who would have felt a certain +embarrassment in commenting on the Archbold transaction. +Page, however, did not hesitate. Mr. Archbold, +hearing that he intended to treat the subject fully, +asked him to come and see him. Page replied that he +would be glad to have Mr. Archbold call upon him. +The two men were brought together by friendly intermediaries +in a neutral place; but the great oil magnate's +explanation of his iniquities did not satisfy Page. The +November, 1908, issue of the magazine contained, in one +section, an interesting chapter by Mr. Rockefeller, describing +the early days of the Standard Oil Company, and, +in another, ten columns by Page, discussing the Archbold +disclosures in language that was discriminating and well +tempered, but not at all complimentary to Mr. Archbold +or to the Standard Oil Company.</p> + +<p>Occasionally Page was summoned for services of a +public character. Thus President Roosevelt, whose friendship +he had enjoyed for many years, asked him to +serve upon his Country Life Commission—a group of +men called by the President to study ways of improving +the surroundings and extending the opportunities +of American farmers. Page's interest in Negro +education led to his appointment to the Jeanes Board. +He early became an admirer of Booker Washington, and +especially approved his plan for uplifting the Negro +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-90" id="page1-90"></a>[pg I-90]</span> +by industrial training. One of the great services that +Page rendered literature was his persuasion of Washington +to write that really great autobiography, "Up +from Slavery," and another biography in a different +field, for which he was responsible, was Miss Helen +Keller's "Story of My Life." And only once, amid these +fine but not showy activities, did Page's life assume +anything in the nature of the sensational. This was in +1909, when he published his one effort at novel writing, +"The Southerner." To write novels had been an early +ambition with Page; indeed his papers disclose that he +had meditated several plans of this kind; but he never +seriously settled himself to the task until the year 1906. +In July of that year the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i> began publishing +a serial entitled "The Autobiography of a Southerner +Since the Civil War," by Nicholas Worth. The +literary matter that appeared under this title most +readers accepted as veracious though anonymous autobiography. +It related the life adventures of a young man, +born in the South, of parents who had had little sympathy +with the Confederate cause, attempting to carve out his +career in the section of his birth and meeting opposition +and defeat from the prejudices with which he constantly +found himself in conflict. The story found its main +theme and background in the fact that the Southern +States were so exclusively living in the memories of the +Civil War that it was impossible for modern ideas to +obtain a foothold. "I have sometimes thought," said the +author, and this passage may be taken as embodying the +leading point of the narrative, "that many of the men +who survived that unnatural war unwittingly did us a +greater hurt than the war itself. It gave everyone of +them the intensest experience of his life and ever afterward +he referred every other experience to this. Thus +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-91" id="page1-91"></a>[pg I-91]</span> +it stopped the thought of most of them as an earthquake +stops a clock. The fierce blow of battle paralyzed the +mind. Their speech was a vocabulary of war, their +loyalties were loyalties, not to living ideas or duties, but +to old commanders and to distorted traditions. They +were dead men, most of them, moving among the living +as ghosts; and yet, as ghosts in a play, they held the +stage." In another passage the writer names the "ghosts" +which are chiefly responsible for preventing Southern +progress. They are three: "The Ghost of the Confederate +dead, the Ghost of religious orthodoxy, the Ghost +of Negro domination." Everywhere the hero finds his +progress blocked by these obstructive wraiths of the past. +He seeks a livelihood in educational work—becomes a local +superintendent of Public Instruction, and loses his place +because his religious views are unorthodox, because he +refuses to accept the popular estimate of Confederate +statesmen, and because he hopes to educate the black +child as well as the white one. He enters politics and +runs for public office on the platform of the new day, is +elected, and then finds himself counted out by political +ringsters. Still he does not lose faith, and finally settles +down in the management of a cotton mill, convinced that +the real path of salvation lies in economic effort. This +mere skeleton of a story furnishes an excuse for rehearsing +again the ideas that Page had already made familiar +in his writings and in his public addresses. This time +the lesson is enlivened by the portrayal of certain typical +characters of the post-bellum South. They are +all there—the several types of Negro, ranging all the +way from the faithful and philosophic plantation retainer +to the lazy "Publican" office-seeker; the political +colonel, to whom the Confederate veterans and +the "fair daughters of the South (God bless 'em)" are +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-92" id="page1-92"></a>[pg I-92]</span> +the mainstays of "civerlerzation" and indispensable instrumentalities +in the game of partisan politics; the evangelical +clergymen who cared more for old-fashioned creeds +than for the education of the masses; the disreputable editor +who specialized in Negro crime and constantly preached +the doctrine of the "white man's country"; the Southern +woman who, innocently and sincerely and even charmingly, +upheld the ancient tradition and the ancient feud. +On the other hand, Page's book portrays the buoyant +enthusiast of the new day, the reformer who was seeking +to establish a public school system and to strengthen +the position of woman; and, above all, the quiet, hard-working +industrialist who cared nothing for stump speaking +but much for cotton mills, improved methods of +farming, the introduction of diversified crops, the tidying +up of cities and the country.</p> + +<p>These chapters, extensively rewritten, were published +as a book in 1909. Probably Page was under no illusion +that he had created a real romance when he described +his completed work as a "novel." The <i>Atlantic</i> autobiography +had attracted wide attention, and the identification +of the author had been immediate and accurate. +Page's friends began calling his house on the telephone and +asking for "Nicholas" and certain genial spirits addressed +him in letters as "Marse Little Nick"—the name under +which the hero was known to the old Negro family servant, +Uncle Ephraim—perhaps the best drawn character +in the book. Page's real purpose in calling the book a +"novel" therefore, was to inform the public that the +story, so far as its incidents and most of its characters +were concerned, was pure fiction. Certain episodes, such +as those describing the hero's early days, were, in the +main, veracious transcripts from Page's own life, but the +rest of the book bears practically no relation to his career. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-93" id="page1-93"></a>[pg I-93]</span> +The fact that he spent his mature years in the North, +editing magazines and publishing, whereas Nicholas +Worth spends his in the South, engaged in educational +work and in politics and industry, settles this point. +The characters, too, are rather types than specific individuals, +though one or two of them, particularly Professor +Billy Bain, who is clearly Charles D. McIver, may +be accepted as fairly accurate portraits. But as a work +of fiction "The Southerner" can hardly be considered +a success; the love story is too slight, the women not well +done, most of the characters rather personified qualities +than flesh and blood people. Its strength consists in +the picture that it gives of the so-called "Southern +problem," and especially of the devastating influence of +slavery. From this standpoint the book is an autobiography, +for the ideas and convictions it presents had +formed the mental life of Page from his earliest days.</p> + +<p>And these were the things that hurt. Yet the stories of +the anger caused by "The Southerner" have been much +exaggerated. It is said that a certain distinguished Southern +senator declared that, had he known that Page was the +author of "The Southerner," he would have blocked his +nomination as Ambassador to Great Britain; certain Southern +newspapers also severely denounced the volume; even +some of Page's friends thought that it was a little unkind +in spots; yet as a whole the Southern people accepted it +as a fair, and certainly as an honest, treatment of a +very difficult subject. Possibly Page was a little hard +upon the Confederate veteran, and did not sufficiently +portray the really pathetic aspects of his character; any +shortcomings of this sort are due, not to any failing +in sympathy, but to the fact that Page's zeal was +absorbingly concentrated upon certain glaring abuses. +And as to the accuracy of his vision in these respects +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-94" id="page1-94"></a>[pg I-94]</span> +there could be no question. The volume was a welcome +antidote to the sentimental Southern novels that +had contented themselves with glorifying a vanished +society which, when the veil is stripped, was not heroic +in all its phases, for it was based upon an institution so +squalid as human slavery, and to those even more pernicious +books which, by luridly portraying the unquestioned +vices of reconstruction and the frightful consequences +which resulted from giving the Negro the ballot, simply +aroused useless passions and made the way out of the +existing wilderness still more difficult. So the best public +opinion, North and South, regarded "The Southerner," +and decided that Page had performed a service to the +section of his birth in writing it. Indeed the fair-minded +and intelligent spirit with which the best elements in +the South received "The Southerner" in itself demonstrated +that this great region had entered upon a new day.</p> + + +<h3>V</h3> + +<p>Nor was Page's work for the South yet ended. In the +important five years from 1905 to 1910 he performed two +services of an extremely practical kind. In 1906 the +problem of Southern education assumed a new phase. +Dr. Wallace Buttrick, the Secretary of the General +Education Board, had now decided that the fundamental +difficulty was economic. By that time the Southern +people had revised their original conception that education +was a private and not a public concern; there was +now a general acceptance of the doctrine that the mental +and physical training of every child, white and black, +was the responsibility of the state; Aycock's campaign +had worked such a popular revolution on this subject +that no politician who aspired to public office would dare +to take a contrary view. Yet the economic difficulty +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-95" id="page1-95"></a>[pg I-95]</span> +still remained. The South was poor; whatever might be +the general desire, the taxable resources were not sufficient +to support such a comprehensive system of +popular instruction as existed in the North and West. +Any permanent improvement must therefore be based +upon the strengthening of the South's economic position. +Essentially the task was to build up Southern agriculture, +which for generations had been wasteful, unintelligent +and consequently unproductive. Such a far-reaching +programme might well appall the most energetic +reformer, but Dr. Buttrick set to work. He saw little +light until his attention was drawn to a quaint and +philosophic gentleman—a kind of bucolic Ben Franklin—who +was then obscurely working in the cotton lands of +Louisiana, making warfare on the boll weevil in a way +of his own. At that time Dr. Seaman A. Knapp had +made no national reputation; yet he had evolved a plan +for redeeming country life and making American farms +more fruitful that has since worked marvellous results. +There was nothing especially sensational about its details. +Dr. Knapp had made the discovery in relation to farms +that the utilitarians had long since made with reference +to other human activities: that the only way to improve +agriculture was not to talk about it, but to go and do it. +During the preceding fifty years agricultural colleges had +sprung up all over the United States—Dr. Knapp had +been president of one himself; practically every Southern +state had one or more; agricultural lecturers covered +thousands of miles annually telling their yawning audiences +how to farm; these efforts had scattered broadcast +much valuable information about the subject, but the difficulty +lay in inducing the farmers to apply it. Dr. +Knapp had a new method. He selected a particular +farmer and persuaded him to work his fields for a period +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-96" id="page1-96"></a>[pg I-96]</span> +according to methods which he prescribed. He told his +pupil how to plough, what seed to plant, how to space his +rows, what fertilizers to use, and the like. If a selected +acreage yielded a profitable crop which the farmer could +sell at an increased price Dr. Knapp had sufficient faith +in human nature to believe that that particular farmer +would continue to operate his farm on the new method +and that his neighbours, having this practical example of +growing prosperity, would imitate him.</p> + +<p>Such was the famous "Demonstration Work" of Dr. +Seaman A. Knapp; this activity is now a regular branch +of the Department of Agriculture, employing thousands +of agents and spending not far from $18,000,000 a year. +Its application to the South has made practically a new +and rich country, and it has long since been extended to +other regions. When Dr. Buttrick first met Knapp, however, +there were few indications of this splendid future. +He brought Dr. Knapp North and exhibited him to +Page. This was precisely the kind of man who appealed +to Page's sympathies. His mind was always keenly on +the scent for the new man—the original thinker who had +some practical plan for uplifting humankind and making +life more worth while. And Dr. Knapp's mission was +one that had filled most of his thoughts for many years; +its real purpose was the enrichment of country life. +Page therefore took to Dr. Knapp with a mighty zest. +He supported him on all occasions; he pled his cause with +great eloquence before the General Education Board, +whose purse strings were liberally unloosed in behalf of +the Knapp work; in his writings, in speeches, in letters, +in all forms of public advocacy, he insisted that Dr. +Knapp had found the solution of the agricultural problem. +The fact is that Page regarded Knapp as one of the greatest +men of the time. His feeling came out with characteristic +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-97" id="page1-97"></a>[pg I-97]</span> +intensity on the occasion of the homely reformer's +funeral. "The exercises," Page once told a friend, "were +held in a rather dismal little church on the outskirts of +Washington. The day was bleak and chill, the attendants +were few—chiefly officials of the Department of +Agriculture. The clergyman read the service in the most +perfunctory way. Then James Wilson, the Secretary of +Agriculture, spoke formally of Dr. Knapp as a faithful +servant of the Department who always did well what he +was told to do, commending his life in an altogether commonplace +fashion. By that time my heart was pretty hot. +No one seemed to divine that in the coffin before them +was the body of a really great man, one who had hit upon +a fruitful idea in American agriculture—an idea that +was destined to cover the nation and enrich rural life +immeasurably." Page was so moved by this lack of appreciation, +so full of sorrow at the loss of one of his +dearest friends, that, when he rose to speak, his appraisment +took on a certain indignation. Their dead associate, +Page declared, would outrank the generals and the politicians +who received the world's plaudits, for he had devoted +his life to a really great purpose; his inspiration had +been the love of the common people, his faith, his sympathy +had all been expended in an effort to brighten the +life of the too frequently neglected masses. Page's address +on this occasion was entirely extemporaneous; no +record of it was ever made, but those who heard it still +carry the memory of an eloquent and fiery outburst that +placed Knapp's work in its proper relation to American +history and gave an unforgettable picture of a patient, +idealistic, achieving man whose name will loom large in +the future.</p> + +<p>During this same period Page, always on the outlook +for the exceptional man, made another discovery +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-98" id="page1-98"></a>[pg I-98]</span> +which has had world-wide consequences. As a member +of President Roosevelt's Country Life Commission Page +became one of the committee assigned to investigate conditions +in the Southern States. The sanitarian of this +commission was Dr. Charles W. Stiles, a man who held +high rank as a zoölogist, and who, as such, had for many +years done important work with the Department of +Agriculture. Page had hardly formed Dr. Stiles's acquaintance +before he discovered that, at that time, he +was a man of one idea. And this one idea had for years +brought upon his head much good-natured ridicule. +For Dr. Stiles had his own explanation for much of the +mental and physical sluggishness that prevailed in the +rural sections of the Southern States. Yet he could not +mention this without exciting uproarious laughter—even +in the presence of scientific men. Several years +previously Dr. Stiles had discovered that a hitherto unclassified +species of a parasite popularly known as the hookworm +prevailed to an astonishing extent in all the Southern +States. The pathological effects of this creature had +long been known; it localized in the intestines, there secreted +a poison that destroyed the red blood corpuscles, +and reduced its victims to a deplorable state of anæmia, +making them constantly ill, listless, mentally dull—in +every sense of the word useless units of society. The +encouraging part of this discovery was that the patients +could quickly be cured and the hookworm eradicated by +a few simple improvements in sanitation. Dr. Stiles had +long been advocating such a campaign as an indispensable +preliminary to improving Southern life. But the humorous +aspect of the hookworm always interfered with +his cause; the microbe of laziness had at last been found!</p> + +<p>It was not until Dr. Stiles, in the course of this Southern +trip, cornered Page in a Pullman car, that he finally found +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-99" id="page1-99"></a>[pg I-99]</span> +an attentive listener. Page, of course, had his preliminary +laugh, but then the hookworm began to work on his +imagination. He quickly discovered that Dr. Stiles was +no fool; and before the expedition was finished, he had +become a convert and, like most converts, an extremely +zealous one. The hookworm now filled his thoughts as +completely as it did those of his friend; he studied it, he +talked about it; and characteristically he set to work to +see what could be done. How much Southern history +did the thing explain? Was it not forces like this, and +not statesmen and generals, that really controlled the destinies +of mankind? Page's North Carolina country people +had for generations been denounced as "crackers," and as +"hill-billies," but here was the discovery that the great +mass of them were ill—as ill as the tuberculosis patients in +the Adirondacks. Free these masses from the enervating +parasite that consumed all their energies—for Dr. Stiles +had discovered that the disease afflicted the great majority +of the rural classes—and a new generation would result. +Naturally the cause strongly touched Page's sympathies. +He laid the case before the ever sympathetic +Dr. Buttrick, but here again progress was slow. By +hard hammering, however, he half converted Dr. Buttrick, +who, in turn, took the case of the hookworm to his +old associate, Dr. Frederick T. Gates. What Page was +determined to obtain was a million dollars or so from +Mr. John D. Rockefeller, for the purpose of engaging in +deadly warfare upon this pest. This was the proper way +to produce results: first persuade Dr. Buttrick, then +induce him to persuade Dr. Gates, who, if convinced, +had ready access to the great treasure house. But Dr. +Gates also began to smile; even the combined eloquence +of Page and Dr. Buttrick could not move him. +So the reform marked time until one day Dr. Buttrick, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-100" id="page1-100"></a>[pg I-100]</span> +Dr. Gates, and Dr. Simon Flexner, the Director of the +Rockefeller institute, happened to be fellow travellers—again +on a Pullman car.</p> + +<p>"Dr. Flexner," said Dr. Buttrick—this for the benefit +of his incredulous friend—"what is the scientific standing +of Dr. Charles W. Stiles?"</p> + +<p>"Very, very high," came the immediate response, and +at this Dr. Gates pricked up his ears. Yet the subsequent +conversation disclosed that Dr. Flexner was unfamiliar +with the Stiles hookworm work. He, too, smiled +at the idea, but, like Page his smile was not one of +ridicule.</p> + +<p>"If Dr. Stiles believes this," was his dictum, "it is +something to be taken most seriously."</p> + +<p>As Dr. Flexner is probably the leading medical scientist +in the United States, his judgment at once lifted the hookworm +issue to a new plane. Dr. Gates ceased laughing +and events now moved rapidly. Mr. Rockefeller gave a +million dollars to a sanitary commission for the eradication +of the hookworm in the Southern States, and of this +Page became a charter member. In this way an enterprise +that is the greatest sanitary and health reform of modern +times had its beginnings. So great was the success of the +Hookworm Commission in the South, so many thousands +were almost daily restored to health and usefulness, that +Mr. Rockefeller extended its work all over the world—to +India, Egypt, China, Australia, to all sections that fall +within the now accurately located "hookworm belt." +Out of it grew the great International Health Commission, +also endowed with unlimited millions of Rockefeller money, +which is engaged in stamping out disease and promoting +medical education in all quarters of the globe. Dr. Stiles +and Page's associates on the General Education Board attribute +the origin of this work to the simple fact that Page, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-101" id="page1-101"></a>[pg I-101]</span> +great humourist that he was, could temper his humour +with intelligence, and could therefore perceive the point +at which a joke ceased to be a joke and actually concealed +a truth of the most far-reaching importance to mankind.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="i1116" id="i1116" /> +<a href="images/1116.jpg"><img src= +"images/1116.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br /> +<b>Walter H. Page (1899), from a photograph taken when he +was editor of the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i></b><br /> +<br /> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="i1117" id="i1117" /> +<a href="images/1117.jpg"><img src= +"images/1117.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br /> +<b>Dr. Wallace Buttrick, President of the General Education Board</b><br /> +<br /> +</div> + +<p>Page enjoyed the full results of this labour one night in +the autumn of 1913, when Dr. Wickliffe Rose, the head of +the International Health Board, came to London to discuss +the possibility of beginning hookworm work in the British +Empire, especially in Egypt and India. Page, as Ambassador, +arranged a dinner at the Marlborough Club, +attended by the leading medical scientists of the kingdom +and several members of the Cabinet. Dr. Rose's description +of his work made a deep impression. He was +informed that the British Government was only too ready +to coöperate with the Health Board. When the discussion +was ended the Right Honourable Lewis Harcourt, +the Secretary of State for the Colonies, concluded an +eloquent address with these words:</p> + +<p>"The time will come when we shall look back on this +evening as the beginning of a new era in British colonial +administration."</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p class="center">FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> A memorandum of an old <i>Atlantic</i> balance sheet discloses +that James Russell Lowell's salary as editor was $1,500 a year.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6" /><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> A member of the firm of Houghton, Mifflin & Company.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-102" id="page1-102"></a>[pg I-102]</span> +</div><h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV" />CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>THE WILSONIAN ERA BEGINS</h3> + +<h3>I</h3> + + +<p>It was Page's interest in the material and spiritual +elevation of the masses that first directed his attention +to the Presidential aspirations of Woodrow Wilson. So +much history has been made since 1912 that the public +questions which then stirred the popular mind have +largely passed out of recollection. Yet the great rallying +cry of that era was democracy, spelled with a small "d." +In the fifty years since the Civil War only one Democratic +President had occupied the White House. The +Republicans' long lease of power had produced certain +symptoms which their political foes now proceeded to +describe as great public abuses. The truth of the matter, +of course, is that neither political virtue nor political +depravity was the exclusive possession of either of the +great national organizations. The Republican party, +especially under the enlightened autocracy of Roosevelt, +had started such reforms as conservation, the improvement +of country life, the regulation of the railroads, and +the warfare on the trusts, and had shown successful interest +in such evidences of the new day as child labour laws, +employer's liability laws, corrupt practice acts, direct +primaries and the popular election of United States Senators—not +all perhaps wise as methods, but all certainly +inspired with a new conception of democratic government. +Roosevelt also had led in the onslaught on that corporation +influence which, after all, constituted the great +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-103" id="page1-103"></a>[pg I-103]</span> +problem of American politics. But Mr. Taft's administration +had impressed many men, and especially Page, as +a discouraging slump back into the ancient system. Page +was never blind to the inadequacies of his own party; +the three campaigns of Bryan and his extensive influence +with the Democratic masses at times caused him deep +despair; that even the corporations had extended their +tentacles into the ranks of Jefferson was all too obvious +a fact; yet the Democratic party at that time Page +regarded as the most available instrument for embodying +in legislation and practice the new things in which +he most believed. Above all, the Democratic party in +1912 possessed one asset to which the Republicans could +lay no claim—a new man, a new leader, the first statesman +who had crossed its threshold since Grover Cleveland.</p> + +<p>Like many scholarly Americans, Page had been charmed +by the intellectual brilliancy of Woodrow Wilson. The +utter commonplaceness of much of what passes for political +thinking in this country had for years discouraged +him. American political life may have possessed energy, +character, even greatness; but it was certainly lacking in +distinction. It was this new quality that Wilson +brought, and it was this that attracted thousands of +cultivated Americans to his standard, irrespective of +party. The man was an original thinker; he exercised the +priceless possession of literary style. He entertained; +he did not weary; even his temperamental deficiencies, +which were apparent to many observers in 1912, had +at least the advantage that attaches to the interesting and +the unusual.</p> + +<p>What Page and thousands of other public-spirited men +saw in Wilson was a leader of fine intellectual gifts who +was prepared to devote his splendid energies to making +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-104" id="page1-104"></a>[pg I-104]</span> +life more attractive and profitable to the "Forgotten +Man." Here was the opportunity then, to embody in +one imaginative statesman all the interest which for a +generation had been accumulating in favour of the +democratic revival. At any rate, after thirty years of +Republican half-success and half-failure, here was the +chance for a new deal. Amid a mob of shopworn public +men, here was one who had at least the charm of +novelty.</p> + +<p>Page had known Mr. Wilson for thirty years, and all +this time the Princeton scholar had seemed to him to be +one of the most helpful influences at work in the United +States. As already noted Page had met the future President +when he was serving a journalistic apprenticeship +in Atlanta, Georgia. Wilson was then spending his days +in a dingy law office and was putting to good use the time +consumed in waiting for the clients who never came by +writing that famous book on "Congressional Government" +which first lifted his name out of obscurity. This work, +the product of a man of twenty-nine, was perhaps the +first searching examination to which the American Congressional +system had ever been subjected. It brought +Wilson a professorship at the newly established Bryn +Mawr College and drew to him other growing minds like +Page's. "Watch that man!" was Page's admonition to +his friends. Wilson then went into academic work and +Page plunged into the exactions of daily and periodical +journalism, but Page's papers show that the two men had +kept in touch with each other during the succeeding thirty +years. These papers include a collection of letters from +Woodrow Wilson, the earliest of which is dated October +30, 1885, when the future President was beginning his +career at Bryn Mawr. He was eager to come to New +York, Wilson said, and discuss with Page "half a hundred +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-105" id="page1-105"></a>[pg I-105]</span> +topics" suggested by "Congressional Government." The +atmosphere at Bryn Mawr was evidently not stimulating. +"Such a talk would give me a chance to let off some of the +enthusiasm I am just now painfully stirring up in enforced +silence." The <i>Forum</i> and the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, when +Page was editor, showed many traces of his interest in +Wilson, who was one of his most frequent contributors. +When Wilson became President of Princeton, he occasionally +called upon his old <i>Atlantic</i> friend for advice. He +writes to Page on various matters—to ask for suggestions +about filling a professorship or a lectureship; and there +are also references to the difficulties Wilson is having with +the Princeton trustees.</p> + +<p>Page's letters also portray the new hopes with which +Wilson inspired him. One of his best loved correspondents +was Henry Wallace, editor of <i>Wallace's Farmer</i>, a +homely and genial Rooseveltian. Page was one of those +who immensely admired Roosevelt's career; but he regarded +him as a man who had finished his work, at least +in domestic affairs, and whose great claim upon posterity +would be as the stimulator of the American conscience. +"I see you are coming around to Wilson," Page writes, +"and in pretty rapid fashion. I assure you that that is +the solution of the problem. I have known him since we +were boys, and I have been studying him lately with a +great deal of care. I haven't any doubt but that is the +way out. The old labels 'Democrat' and 'Republican' +have ceased to have any meaning, not only in my mind +and in yours, but I think in the minds of nearly all the +people. Don't you feel that way?"</p> + +<p>The campaign of 1912 was approaching its end when +this letter was written; and no proceeding in American +politics had so aroused Page's energies. He had himself +played a part in Wilson's nomination. He was one of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-106" id="page1-106"></a>[pg I-106]</span> +first to urge the Princeton President to seize the great opportunity +that was rising before him. These suggestions +were coming from many sources in the summer of 1910; +Mr. Wilson was about to retire from the Presidency of +Princeton; the movement had started to make him Governor +of New Jersey, and it was well understood that this +was merely intended as the first step to the White House. +But Mr. Wilson was himself undecided; to escape the +excitement of the moment he had retired to a country +house at Lyme, Connecticut. In this place, in response +to a letter, Page now sought him out. His visit was a +plea that Mr. Wilson should accept his proffered fate; +the Governorship of New Jersey, then the Presidency, +and the opportunity to promote the causes in which +both men believed.</p> + +<p>"But do you think I can do it, Page?" asked the hesitating +Wilson.</p> + +<p>"I am sure you can": and then Page again, with his +customary gusto, launched into his persuasive argument. +His host at one moment would assent; at another present +the difficulties; it was apparent that he was having trouble +in reaching a decision. To what extent Page's conversation +converted him the record does not disclose; it is +apparent, however, that when, in the next two years, +difficulties came, his mind seemed naturally to turn in +Page's direction. Especially noticeable is it that he appeals +to Page for help against his fool friends. An indiscreet +person in New Jersey is booming Mr. Wilson for the +Presidency; the activity of such a man inevitably brings +ridicule upon the object of his attention; cannot Page find +some kindly way of calling him off? Mr. Wilson asks +Page's advice about a campaign manager, and incidentally +expresses his own aversion to a man of "large calibre" +for this engagement. There were occasional conferences +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-107" id="page1-107"></a>[pg I-107]</span> +with Mr. Wilson on his Presidential prospects, one of +which took place at Page's New York apartment. Page +was also the man who brought Mr. Wilson and Colonel +House together; this had the immediate result of placing +the important state of Texas on the Wilson side, and, as +its ultimate consequence, brought about one of the most +important associations in the history of American politics. +Page had known Colonel House for many years and was +the advocate who convinced the sagacious Texan that +Woodrow Wilson was the man. Wilson also acquired the +habit of referring to Page men who offered themselves to +him as volunteer workers in his cause. "Go and see +Walter Page" was his usual answer to this kind of an approach. +But Page was not a collector of delegates to +nominating conventions; not his the art of manipulating +these assemblages in the interest of a favoured man; yet +his services to the Wilson cause, while less demonstrative, +were almost as practical. His talent lay in exposition; +and he now took upon himself the task of spreading +Wilson's fame. In his own magazine and in books published +by his firm, in letters to friends, in personal conferences, +he set forth Wilson's achievements. Page also +persuaded Wilson to make his famous speechmaking +trip through the Western States in 1911 and this was perhaps +his largest definite contribution to the Wilson campaign. +It was in the course of this historic pilgrimage that +the American masses obtained their first view of a previously +too-much hidden figure.</p> + +<p>On election day Page wrote the President-elect a letter +of congratulation which contains one item of the greatest +interest. When the time came for the new President to +deliver his first message to Congress, he surprised the +country by abandoning the usual practice of sending a +long written communication to be droned out by a reading +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-108" id="page1-108"></a>[pg I-108]</span> +clerk to a yawning company of legislators. He appeared +in person and read the document himself. As +President Harding has followed his example it seems likely +that this innovation, which certainly represents a great +improvement over the old routine, has become the established +custom. The origin of the idea therefore has +historic value.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Woodrow Wilson</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">Garden City, N.Y.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Election Day, 1912. [Nov. 5]</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT-ELECT:</p> + +<p>Before going into town to hear the returns, I write you +my congratulations. Even if you were defeated, I should +still congratulate you on putting a Presidential campaign +on a higher level than it has ever before reached since +Washington's time. Your grip became firmer and your +sweep wider every week. It was inspiring to watch the +unfolding of the deep meaning of it and to see the people's +grasp of the main idea. It was fairly, highly, freely, won, +and now we enter the Era of Great Opportunity. It +is hard to measure the extent or the thrill of the new interest +in public affairs and the new hope that you have +aroused in thousands of men who were becoming hopeless +under the long-drawn-out reign of privilege.</p> + +<p>To the big burden of suggestions that you are receiving, +may I add these small ones?</p> + +<p>1. Call Congress in extra session mainly to revise the +tariff and incidentally to prepare the way for rural credit +societies.</p> + +<p>Mr. Taft set the stage admirably in 1909 when he +promptly called an extra session; but then he let the +villain run the play. To get the main job in hand at +once will be both dramatic and effective and it will save +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-109" id="page1-109"></a>[pg I-109]</span> +time. Moreover, it will give you this great tactical advantage—you +can the better keep in line those who have +debts or doubts before you have answered their importunities +for offices and for favours.</p> + +<p>The time is come when the land must be developed by +the new agriculture and farming made a business. This +calls for money. Every acre will repay a reasonable loan +on long time at a fair interest rate, and group-borrowing +develops the men quite as much as the men will develop +the soil. It saved the German Empire and is remaking +Italy. And this is the proper use of much of the money +that now flows into the reach of the credit barons. This +building up of farm life will restore the equilibrium of +our civilization and, besides, will prove to be one half the +solution of our currency and credit problem. . . .</p> + +<p>2. Set your trusted friends immediately to work, every +man in the field he knows best, to prepare briefs for you +on such great subjects and departments as the Currency, +the Post Office, Conservation, Rural Credit, the Agricultural +Department, which has the most direct power +for good to the most people—to make our farmers as +independent as Denmark's and to give our best country +folk the dignity of the old-time English gentleman—this +expert, independent information to compare with +your own knowledge and with official reports.</p> + +<p>3. The President reads (or speaks) his Inaugural to the +people. Why not go back to the old custom of himself +delivering his Messages to Congress? Would that not +restore a feeling of comradeship in responsibility and +make the Legislative branch feel nearer to the Executive? +Every President of our time has sooner or later got away +with Congress.</p> + +<p>I cannot keep from saying what a new thrill of hope and +tingle of expectancy I feel—as of a great event about to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-110" id="page1-110"></a>[pg I-110]</span> +happen for our country and for the restoration of popular +government; for you will keep your rudder true.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">Most heartily yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To Governor Wilson,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Princeton, N.J.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Page was one of the first of Mr. Wilson's friends to +discuss with the President-elect the new legislative +programme. The memorandum which he made of this +interview shows how little any one, in 1912, appreciated +the tremendous problems that Mr. Wilson would have to +face. Only domestic matters then seemed to have the +slightest importance. Especially significant is the fact +that even at this early date, Page was chiefly impressed +by Mr. Wilson's "loneliness."</p> + + +<p><i>Memorandum dated November 15, 1912</i></p> + +<p>To use the Government, especially the Department of +Agriculture and the Bureau of Education, to help actively +in the restoration of country life—that's the great chance +for Woodrow Wilson, ten days ago elected President. +Precisely how well he understands this chance, how well, +for example, he understands the grave difference between +the Knapp Demonstration method of teaching farmers +and the usual Agricultural College method of lecturing to +them, and what he knows about the rising movement for +country schools of the right sort, and agricultural credit +societies—how all this great constructive problem of +Country Life lies in his mind, who knows? I do not. +If I do not know, who does know? The political managers +who have surrounded him these six months have +now done their task. <i>They</i> know nothing of this Big +Chance and Great Outlook. And for the moment they +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-111" id="page1-111"></a>[pg I-111]</span> +have left him alone. In two days he will go to Bermuda +for a month to rest and to meditate. He ought to meditate +on this Constructive programme. It seemed my duty +to go and tell him about it. I asked for an interview and +he telegraphed to go to-day at five o'clock.</p> + +<p>Arthur and I drove in the car and reached Princeton +just before five—a beautiful drive of something less than +four hours from New York. Presently we arrived at the +Wilson house.</p> + +<p>"The Governor is engaged," I was informed by the +man who opened the door. "He can see nobody. He +is going away to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"I have an appointment with him," said I, and I gave +him my card.</p> + +<p>"I know he can't see anybody."</p> + +<p>"Will you send my card in?"</p> + +<p>We waited at the door till the maid took it in and +returned to say the Governor would presently come +down.</p> + +<p>The reception room had a desk in the corner, and on a +row of chairs across the whole side of the room were +piles of unopened letters. It is a plain, modestly but +decently furnished room, such as you would expect to +find in the modest house of a professor at Princeton. +During his presidency of the college, he had lived in the +President's house in the college yard. This was his own +house of his professorial days.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Page, come out here: I am glad to see you." +There he stood in a door at the back of the room, which +led to his library and work room. "Come back here."</p> + +<p>"In the best of all possible worlds, the right thing does +sometimes happen," said I.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"And a great opportunity."</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-112" id="page1-112"></a>[pg I-112]</span> +</div><p>He smiled and was cordial and said some pleasant +words. But he was weary. "I have cobwebs in my +head." He was not depressed but oppressed—rather +shy, I thought, and I should say rather lonely. The +campaign noise and the little campaigners were hushed +and gone. There were no men of companionable size +about him, and the Great Task lay before him. The +Democratic party has not brought forward large men in +public life during its long term of exclusion from the +Government; and the newly elected President has had +few opportunities and a very short time to make acquaintances +of a continental kind. This little college town, this +little hitherto corrupt state, are both small.</p> + +<p>I went at my business without delay. The big country-life +idea, the working of great economic forces to put its +vitalization within sight, the coming equilibrium by the +restoration of country life—all coincident with his coming +into the Presidency. His Administration must fall in +with it, guide it, further it. The chief instruments are +the Agricultural Department, the Bureau of Education, +and the power of the President himself to bring about +Rural Credit Societies and similar organized helps. He +quickly saw the difference between Demonstration Work +by the Agricultural Department and the plan to vote +large sums to agricultural colleges and to the states to +build up schools.</p> + +<p>"Who is the best man for Secretary of Agriculture?"</p> + +<p>I ought to have known, but I didn't. For who is?</p> + +<p>"May I look about and answer your question later?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I will thank you."</p> + +<p>"I wish to find the very best men for my Cabinet, regardless +of consequences. I do not forget the party as +an instrument of government, and I do not wish to do +violence to it. But I must have the best men in the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-113" id="page1-113"></a>[pg I-113]</span> +Nation"—with a very solemn tone as he sat bolt upright, +with a stern look on his face, and a lonely look.</p> + +<p>I told him my idea of the country school that must be +and talked of the Bureau of Education. He saw quickly +and assented to all my propositions.</p> + +<p>And then we talked somewhat more conservatively of +Conservation, about which he knows less.</p> + +<p>I asked if he would care to have me make briefs about +the Agricultural Department, the Bureau of Education, +the Rural Credit Societies, and Conservation. "I shall +be very grateful, if it be not too great a sacrifice."</p> + +<p>I had gained that permission, which (if he respect my +opinion) ought to guide him somewhat toward a real +understanding of how the Government may help toward +our Great Constructive Problem.</p> + +<p>I gained also the impression that he has no sympathy +with the idea of giving government grants to schools and +agricultural colleges—a very distinct impression.</p> + +<p>I had been with him an hour and had talked (I fear) +too much. But he seemed hearty in his thanks. He +came to the front door with me, insisted on helping me +on with my coat, envied me the motor-car drive in the +night back to New York, spoke to eight or ten reporters +who had crowded into the hall for their interview—a +most undignified method, it seemed to me, for a President-elect +to reach the public; I stepped out on the muddy +street, and, as I walked to the Inn, I had the feeling of +the man's oppressive loneliness as he faced his great task. +There is no pomp of circumstance, nor hardly dignity +in this setting, except the dignity of his seriousness and +his loneliness.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>There was a general expectation that Page would become +a member of President Wilson's Cabinet, and the place +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-114" id="page1-114"></a>[pg I-114]</span> +for which he seemed particularly suited was the Secretaryship +of Agriculture. The smoke of battle had hardly +passed away, therefore, when Page's admirers began +bringing pressure to bear upon the President-elect. +There was probably no man in the United States who had +such completely developed views about this Department +as Page; and it is not improbable that, had circumstances +combined to offer him this position, he would have accepted +it. But fate in matters of this sort is sometimes +kinder than a man's friends. Page had a great horror of +anything which suggested office-seeking, and the campaign +which now was started in his interest greatly +embarrassed him. He wrote Mr. Wilson, disclaiming +all responsibility and begging him to ignore these +misguided efforts. As the best way of checking the +movement, Page now definitely answered Mr. Wilson's +question: Who was the best man for the Agricultural +Department? It is interesting to note that the candidate +whom Page nominated in this letter—a man who had +been his friend for many years and an associate on the +Southern Education Board—was the man whom Mr. +Wilson chose.</p> + + +<p><i>To Woodrow Wilson</i></p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Garden City, N.Y.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">November 27, 1912.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">MY DEAR WILSON:</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I send you (wrongly, perhaps, when you are trying to +rest) the shortest statement that I could make about the +demonstration field-work of the Department of Agriculture. +This is the best tool yet invented to shape country +life. Other (and shorter) briefs will be ready in a little +while.</p> + +<p>You asked me who I thought was the best man for Secretary +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-115" id="page1-115"></a>[pg I-115]</span> +of Agriculture. Houston<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7" /><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>, I should say, of the men +that I know. You will find my estimate of him in the +little packet of memoranda. Van Hise<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8" /><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> may be as good or +even better if he be young in mind and adaptable enough. +But he seems to me a man who may already have done +his big job.</p> + +<p>I answer the other questions you asked at Princeton +and I have taken the liberty to send some memoranda +about a few other men—on the theory that every friend +of yours ought now to tell you with the utmost frankness +about the men he knows, of whom you may be thinking.</p> + +<p>The building up of the countryman is the big constructive +job of our time. When the countryman comes +to his own, the town man will no longer be able to tax, +and to concentrate power, and to bully the world.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Very heartily yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + + +<p><i>To Henry Wallace</i></p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Garden City, N.Y.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">11 March, 1913.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">MY DEAR UNCLE HENRY:</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>What a letter yours is! By George! we must get on the +job, you and I, of steering the world—get on it a little +more actively. Else it may run amuck. We have +frightful responsibilities in this matter. The subject +weighs the more deeply and heavily on me because I am +just back from a month's vacation in North Carolina, +where I am going to build me a winter and old-age bungalow. +No; you would be disappointed if you went out of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-116" id="page1-116"></a>[pg I-116]</span> +your way to see my boys. Moreover, they are now +merely clearing land. They sold out the farm they put +in shape, after two years' work, for just ten times what +it had cost, and they are now starting another one <i>de +novo</i>. About a year hence, they'll have something to +show. And next winter, when my house is built down +there, I want you to come and see me and see that country. +I'll show you one of the most remarkable farmers' +clubs you ever saw and many other interesting things as +well—many, very many. I'm getting into this farm +business in dead earnest. That's the dickens of it: how +can I do my share in our partnership to run the universe +if I give my time to cotton-growing problems? It's a +tangled world.</p> + +<p>Well, bless your soul! You and the younger Wallaces +(my regards to every one of them) and Poe<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9" /><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>—you are all +very kind to think of me for that difficult place—too difficult +by far, for me. Besides, it would have cost me my +life. If I were to go into public life, I should have had +to sell my whole interest here. This would have meant +that I could never make another dollar. More than that, +I'd have thrown away a trade that I've learned and gone +at another one that I know little about—a bad change, +surely. So, you see, there never was anything serious +in this either in my mind or in the President's. Arthur +hit it off right one day when somebody asked him:</p> + +<p>"Is your father going to take the Secretaryship of +Agriculture?"</p> + +<p>He replied: "Not seriously."</p> + +<p>Besides, the President didn't ask me! He knew too +much for that.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="i1134" id="i1134" /> +<a href="images/1134.jpg"><img src= +"images/1134.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br /> +<b>Charles D. McIver of Greensboro, North Caroline, a +leader in the cause of Southern Education</b><br /> +<br /> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="i1135" id="i1135" /> +<a href="images/1135.jpg"><img src= +"images/1135.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br /> +<b>Woodrow Wilson in 1912</b><br /> +<br /> +</div> + +<p>But he did ask me who would be a good man and I +said "Houston." You are not quite fair to him in your +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-117" id="page1-117"></a>[pg I-117]</span> +editorial. He does know—knows much and well and is +the strongest man in the Cabinet—in promise. The +farmers don't yet know him: that's the only trouble. +Give him a chance.</p> + +<p>I've "put it up" to the new President and to the new +Secretary to get on the job immediately of <i>organizing +country life</i>. I've drawn up a scheme (a darned good one, +too) which they have. I have good hope that they'll +get to it soon and to the thing that we have all been +working toward. I'm very hopeful about this. I told +them both last week to get their minds on this before the +wolves devour them. Don't you think it better to work +with the Government and to try to steer it right than to +go off organizing other agencies?</p> + +<p>God pity our new masters! The President is all right. +He's sound, earnest, courageous. But his party! I still +have some muscular strength. In certain remote regions +they still break stones in the road by hand. Now I'll +break stones before I'd have a job at Washington now. +I spent four days with them last week—the new crowd. +They'll try their best. I think they'll succeed. But, if +they do succeed and survive, they'll come out of the +scrimmage bleeding and torn. We've got to stand off and +run 'em, Uncle Henry. That's the only hope I see for the +country. Don't damn Houston, then, beforehand. He's +a real man. Let's get on the job and tell 'em how.</p> + +<p>Now, when you come East, come before you need to +get any of your meetings and strike a bee-line for Garden +City; and don't be in a hurry when you get here. If a +Presbyterian meeting be necessary for your happiness, +I'll drum up one on the Island for you. And, of course, +you must come to my house and pack up right and get +your legs steady sometime before you sail—you and +Mrs. Wallace: will she not go with you?</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-118" id="page1-118"></a>[pg I-118]</span> +</div><p>In the meantime, don't be disgruntled. We can steer +the old world right, if you'll just keep your shoulder to +the wheel. We'll work it all out here in the summer and +verify it all (including your job of setting the effete +kingdoms of Europe all right)—we'll verify it all next +winter down in North Carolina. I think things have +got such a start that they'll keep going in some fashion, +till we check up the several items, political, ethical, +agricultural, journalistic, and international. God bless us +all!</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Most heartily always yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Though Mr. Wilson did not offer Page the Agricultural +Department, he much desired to have him in his Cabinet, +and had already decided upon him for a post which the +new President probably regarded as more important—the +Interior. The narrow margin with which Page +escaped this responsibility illustrates again the slender +threads upon which history is constructed. The episode +is also not without its humorous side. For there was +only one reason why Page did not enter the Cabinet as +Secretary of the Interior; and that is revealed in the above +letter to "Uncle Henry"; he was so busy planning his +new house in the sandhills of North Carolina that, while +cabinets were being formed and great decisions taken, +he was absent from New York. A short time before the +inauguration, Mr. Wilson asked Colonel House to arrange +a meeting with Page in the latter's apartment. +Mr. Wilson wished to see him on a Saturday; the purpose +was to offer him the Secretaryship of the Interior. +Colonel House called up Page's office at Garden City and +was informed that he was in North Carolina. Colonel +House then telegraphed asking Page to start north immediately, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-119" id="page1-119"></a>[pg I-119]</span> +and suggesting the succeeding Monday as a +good time for the interview. A reply was at once received +from Page that he was on his way.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile certain of Mr. Wilson's advisers had heard +of the plan and were raising objections. Page was a +Southerner; the Interior Department has supervision +over the pension bureau, with its hundreds of thousands +of Civil War veterans as pensioners; moreover, Page was +an outspoken enemy of the whole pension system and +had led several "campaigns" against it. The appointment +would never do! Mr. Wilson himself was persuaded +that it would be a mistake.</p> + +<p>"But what are we going to do about Page?" asked +Colonel House. "I have summoned him from North +Carolina on important business. What excuse shall I +give for bringing him way up here?"</p> + +<p>But the President-elect was equal to the emergency.</p> + +<p>"Here's the cabinet list," he drily replied. "Show it +to Page. Tell him these are the people I have about decided +to appoint and ask him what he thinks of them. +Then he will assume that we summoned him to get his +advice."</p> + +<p>When Page made his appearance, therefore, Colonel +House gave him the list of names and solemnly asked him +what he thought of them. The first name that attracted +Page's attention was that of Josephus Daniels, as Secretary +of the Navy. Page at once expressed his energetic +dissent.</p> + +<p>"Why, don't you think he is Cabinet timber?" asked +Colonel House.</p> + +<p>"Timber!" Page fairly shouted. "He isn't a splinter! +Have you got a time table? When does the next train +leave for Princeton?"</p> + +<p>In a couple of hours Page was sitting with Mr. Wilson, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-120" id="page1-120"></a>[pg I-120]</span> +earnestly protesting against Mr. Daniels's appointment. +But Mr. Wilson said that he had already offered Mr. +Daniels the place.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>About the time of Wilson's election a great calamity +befell one of Page's dearest friends. Dr. Edwin A. Alderman, +the President of the University of Virginia, one of +the pioneer educational forces in the Southern States, +and for years an associate of Page on the General Education +Board, was stricken with tuberculosis. He was +taken to Saranac, and here a patient course of treatment +happily restored him to health. One of the dreariest +aspects of such an experience is its tediousness and loneliness. +Yet the maintenance of one's good spirits and +optimism is an essential part of the treatment. And it +was in this work that Page now proved an indispensable +aid to the medical men. As soon as Dr. Alderman found +himself stretched out, a weak and isolated figure, cut off +from those activities and interests which had been his +inspiration for forty years, with no companions except +his own thoughts and a few sufferers like himself, letters +began to arrive with weekly regularity from the man +whom he always refers to as "dear old Page." The +gayety and optimism of these letters, the lively comments +which they passed upon men and things, and their +wholesome and genial philosophy, were largely instrumental, +Dr. Alderman has always believed, in his recovery. +Their effect was so instant and beneficial that +the physicians asked to have them read to the other +patients, who also derived abounding comfort and joy +from them. The whole episode was one of the most +beautiful in Page's life, and brings out again that gift +for friendship which was perhaps his finest quality. For +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-121" id="page1-121"></a>[pg I-121]</span> +this reason it is a calamity that most of these letters have +not been preserved. The few that have survived are +interesting not only in themselves; they reveal Page's +innermost thoughts on the subject of Woodrow Wilson. +That he admired the new President is evident, yet these +letters make it clear that, even in 1912 and 1913, there +was something about Mr. Wilson that caused him to +hesitate, to entertain doubts, to wonder how, after all, +the experiment was to end.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To Edwin A. Alderman</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Garden City, L.I.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">December 31, 1912.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN:</p> + +<p>I have a new amusement, a new excitement, a new +study, as you have and as we all have who really believe +in democracy—a new study, a new hope, and sometimes +a new fear; and its name is Wilson. I have for many +years regarded myself as an interested, but always a +somewhat detached, outsider, believing that the democratic +idea was real and safe and lifting, if we could ever +get it put into action, contenting myself ever with such +patches of it as time and accident and occasion now and +then sewed on our gilded or tattered garments. But now +it is come—the real thing; at any rate a man somewhat +like us, whose thought and aim and dream are our thought +and aim and dream. That's enormously exciting! I +didn't suppose I'd ever become so interested in a general +proposition or in a governmental hope.</p> + +<p>Will he do it? Can he do it? Can anybody do it? +How can we help him do it? Now that the task is on +him, does he really understand? Do I understand him +and he me? There's a certain unreality about it.</p> + +<p>The man himself—I find that nobody quite knows him +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-122" id="page1-122"></a>[pg I-122]</span> +now. Alas! I wonder if he quite knows himself. Temperamentally +very shy, having lived too much alone and +far too much with women (how I wish two of his daughters +were sons!) this Big Thing having descended on him +before he knew or was quite prepared for it, thrust into a +whirl of self-seeking men even while he is trying to think +out the theory of the duties that press, knowing the +necessity of silence, surrounded by small people—well, I +made up my mind that his real friends owed it to him and +to what we all hope for, to break over his reserve and to +volunteer help. He asks for conferences with official folk—only, +I think. So I began to write memoranda about +those subjects of government about which I know something +and have opinions and about men who are or who +may be related to them. It has been great sport to +set down in words without any reserve precisely what +you think. It is imprudent, of course, as most things +worth doing are. But what have I to lose, I who have +my life now planned and laid out and have got far beyond +the reach of gratitude or hatred or praise or blame or +fear of any man? I sent him some such memoranda. +Here came forthwith a note of almost abject thanks. I +sent more. Again, such a note—written in his own hand. +Yet not a word of what he thinks. The Sphinx was garrulous +in comparison. Then here comes a mob of my +good friends crying for office for me. So I sent a ten-line +note, by the hand of my secretary, saying that this +should not disturb my perfect frankness nor (I knew it +would not) his confidence. Again, a note in his own +hand, of perfect understanding and with the very glow of +gratitude. And he talks—generalities to the public. +Perhaps that's all he can talk now. Wise? Yes. But +does he know the men about him? Does he really know +men? Nobody knows. Thus 'twixt fear and hope I +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-123" id="page1-123"></a>[pg I-123]</span> +see—suspense. I'll swear I can't doubt, I can't believe. +Whether it is going to work out or not—whether he or +anybody can work it out of the haze of theory—nobody +knows; and nobody's speculation is better than mine and +mine is worthless.</p> + +<p>This is the game, this is the excitement, this is the +doubthope and the hopedoubt. I send this word about +it to you (I could and would to nobody else: you're snowbound, +you see, and don't write much and don't see many +people: restrain your natural loquacity!) But for the +love of heaven tell me if you see any way <i>very clearly</i>. +It's a kind of misty dream to me.</p> + +<p>I ask myself why should I concern myself about it? +Of course the answer's easy and I think creditable: I do +profoundly hold this democratic faith and believe that +it can be worked into action among men; and it may be +I shall yet see it done. That's the secret of my interest. +But when this awful office descends on a man, it oppresses +him, changes him, you are not quite so sure of +him, you doubt whether he knows himself or you in the +old way.</p> + +<p>And I find among men the very crudest ideas of government +or of democracy. They have not thought the +thing out. They hold no ordered creed of human organization +or advancement. They leave all to chance and +think, when they think at all, that chance determines it. +And yet the Great Hope persists, and I think I have +grown an inch by it.</p> + +<p>I wonder how it seems, looked at from the cold mountains +of Lake Saranac?</p> + +<p>It's the end of the year. Mrs. Page and I (alone!) +have been talking of democracy, of these very things +I've written. The bell-ringing and the dancing and +the feasting are not, on this particular year, to our liking. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-124" id="page1-124"></a>[pg I-124]</span> +We see all our children gone—half of them to nests of +their own building, the rest on errands of their own +pleasure, and we are left, young yet, but the main job +of life behind us! We're going down to a cottage in +southern North Carolina (with our own cook and motor +car, praise God!) for February, still further to think +this thing out and incidentally to build us a library, in +which we'll live when we can. That, for convention's +sake, we call a Vacation.</p> + +<p>Your brave note came to-day. Of course, you'll +"get" 'em—those small enemies. The gain of twelve +pounds tells the story. The danger is, your season of +philosophy and reverie will be too soon ended. Don't +fret; the work and the friends will be here when you come +down. There's many a long day ahead; and there may +not be so many seasons of rest and meditation. You are +the only man I know who has time enough to think out a +clear answer to this: "What ought to be done with +Bryan?" What <i>can</i> be done with Bryan? When you +find the answer, telegraph it to me.</p> + +<p>I've a book or two more to send you. If they interest +you, praise the gods. If they bore you, fling 'em in the +snow and think no worse of me. You can't tell what a +given book may be worth to a given man in an unknown +mood. They've become such a commodity to me that +I thank my stars for a month away from them when I +may come at 'em at a different angle and really need a +few old ones—Wordsworth, for instance. When you get +old enough, you'll wake up some day with the feeling +that the world is much more beautiful than it was when +you were young, that a landscape has a closer meaning, +that the sky is more companionable, that outdoor colour +and motion are more splendidly audacious and beautifully +rhythmical than you had ever thought. That's +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-125" id="page1-125"></a>[pg I-125]</span> +true. The gently snow-clad little pines out my window +are more to me than the whole Taft Administration. +They'll soon be better than the year's dividends. And +the few great craftsmen in words who can confirm this +feeling—they are the masters you become grateful for. +Then the sordidness of the world lies far beneath you +and your great democracy is truly come—the democracy +of Nature. To be akin to a tree, in this sense, is as good +as to be akin to a man. I have a grove of little long-leaf +pines down in the old country and I know they'll have +some consciousness of me after all men have forgotten +me: I've saved 'em, and they'll sing a century of gratitude +if I can keep 'em saved. Joe Holmes gave me a dissertation +on them the other day. He was down there +"on a little Sunday jaunt" of forty miles—the best legs +and the best brain that ever worked together in one +anatomy.</p> + +<p>A conquering New Year—that's what you'll find, begun +before this reaches you, carrying all good wishes from</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Yours affectionately,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To Edwin A. Alderman</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Garden City, New York,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">January 26, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN:</p> + +<p>This has been "Board" <a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10" /><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> week, as you know. The +men came from all quarters of the land, and we had a +good time. New work is opening; old work is going well; +the fellowship ran in good tide—except that everybody +asked everybody else: "What do you know about +Alderman?" Everybody who had late news of you gave +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-126" id="page1-126"></a>[pg I-126]</span> +a good report. The Southern Board formally passed a +resolution to send affectionate greetings to you and +high hope and expectation, and I was commissioned to +frame the message. This is it. I shall write no formal +resolution, for that wasn't the spirit of it. The fellows +all asked me, singly and collectively, to send their love. +And we don't put that sort of a message under <i>whereases</i> +and <i>wherefores</i>. There they were, every one of them, except +Peabody and Bowie. Mr. Ogden in particular was +anxious for his emphatic remembrance and good wishes +to go. The dear old man is fast passing into the last +stage of his illness and he knows it and he soon expects +the end, in a mood as brave and as game as he ever was. +I am sorry to tell you he suffers a good deal of pain.</p> + +<p>What a fine thing to look back over—this Southern +Board's work! Here was a fine, zealous merchant twenty +years ago, then fifty-seven years old, who saw this big +job as a modest layman. If he had known more about +"Education" or more about "the South, bygawd, sir!" +he'd never have had the courage to tackle the job. But with +the bravery of ignorance, he turned out to be the wisest +man on that task in our generation. He has united every +real, good force, and he showed what can be done in a +democracy even by one zealous man. I've sometimes +thought that this is possibly the wisest single piece of +work that I have ever seen done—<i>wisest</i>, not smartest. +I don't know what can be done when he's gone. His +phase of it is really done. But, if another real leader +arise, there will doubtless be another phase.</p> + +<p>The General Board doesn't find much more college-endowing +to do. We made only one or two gifts. But +we are trying to get the country school task rightly focussed. +We haven't done it yet; but we will. Buttrick +and Rose will work it out. I wish to God I could throw +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-127" id="page1-127"></a>[pg I-127]</span> +down my practical job and go at it with 'em. Darned if +I couldn't get it going! though <i>I</i> say it, as shouldn't. +And we are going pretty soon to begin with the medical +colleges; that, I think, is good—very.</p> + +<p>But the most efficient workmanlike piece of organization +that my mortal eyes have ever seen is Rose's hookworm +worm work. We're going soon to organize country life +in a sanitary way, the county health officer being the +biggest man on the horizon. Stiles has moved his marine +hospital and his staff to Wilmington, North Carolina, and +he and the local health men are quietly going to make New +Hanover the model county for sanitary condition and +efficiency. You'll know what a vast revolution that denotes!—And +Congress seems likely to charter the big +Rockefeller Foundation, which will at once make five +millions available for chasing the hookworm off the face of +the earth. Rose will spread himself over Honduras, etc., +etc., and China, and India! This does literally beat the +devil; for, if the hookworm isn't the devil, what is?</p> + +<p>I'm going to farming. I've two brothers and two sons, +all young and strong, who believe in the game. We have +land without end, thousands of acres; engines to pull +stumps, to plough, to plant, to reap. The nigger go hang! +A white boy with an engine can outdo a dozen of 'em. +Cotton and corn for staple crops; peaches, figs, scuppernongs, +vegetables, melons for incidental crops; God's +good air in North Carolina; good roads, too—why, man, +Moore County has authorized the laying out of a strip +of land along all highways to be planted in shrubbery +and fruit trees and kept as a park, so that you will motor +for 100 miles through odorous bloom in spring!—I mean +I am going down there to-morrow for a month, one day for +golf at Pinehurst, the next day for clearing land with an +oil locomotive, ripping up stumps! Every day for life +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-128" id="page1-128"></a>[pg I-128]</span> +out-of-doors and every night, too. I'm going to grow +dasheens. You know what a dasheen is? It's a Trinidad +potato, which keeps and tastes like a sweet potato +stuffed with chestnuts. There are lots of things to learn +in this world.</p> + +<p>God bless us all, old man. It's a pretty good world, +whether seen from the petty excitements of reforming the +world and dreaming of a diseaseless earth in New York, +or from the stump-pulling recreation of a North Carolina +wilderness.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Health be with you!</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To Edwin A. Alderman</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Garden City, L.I.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">March 10, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN:</p> + +<p>I'm home from a month of perfect climate in the sandhills +of North Carolina, where I am preparing a farm and +building a home at least for winter use; and I had the +most instructive and interesting month of my life there. +I believe I see, even in my life-time, the coming of a kind +of man and a kind of life that shall come pretty near to +being the model American citizen and the model American +way to live. Half of it is climate; a fourth of it occupation; +the other fourth, companionship. And the climate +(with what it does) is three fourths companionship.</p> + +<p>Then I came to Washington and saw Wilson made President—a +very impressive experience indeed. The future—God +knows; but I believe in Wilson very thoroughly. +Men fool him yet. Men fool us all. He has already +made some mistakes. But he's sound. And, if we have +moral courage enough to beat back the grafters, little and +big—I mean if we, the people, will vote two years and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-129" id="page1-129"></a>[pg I-129]</span> +four years hence, to keep them back, I think that we shall +now really work toward a democratic government. I +have a stronger confidence in government now as an instrument +of human progress than I have ever had before. +And I find it an exhilarating and exciting experience.</p> + +<p>I have seen many of your good friends in North Carolina, +Virginia, and Washington. How we all do love you, +old man! Don't forget that, in your successful fight. +And, with my affectionate greetings to Mrs. Alderman, ask +her to send me the news of your progress.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Always affectionately yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Edwin A. Alderman</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">On the <i>Baltic</i>, New York to Liverpool,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">May 19, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN:</p> + +<p>It was the best kind of news I heard of you during my +last weeks at home—every day of which I wished to go to +Briarcliff to see you. At a distance, it seems absurd to +say that it was impossible to go. But it was. I set down +five different days in my calendar for this use; and somehow +every one of them was taken. Two were taken by +unexpected calls to Washington. Another was taken by +my partners who arranged a little good-bye dinner. Another +was taken by the British Ambassador—and so on. +Absurd—of course it was absurd, and I feel now as if it +approached the criminal. But every stolen day I said, +"Well, I'll find another." But another never came.</p> + +<p>But good news of you came by many hands and mouths. +My congratulations, my cheers, my love, old man. Now +when you do take up work again, don't take up all the +work. Show the fine virtue called self-restraint. We +work too much and too hard and do too many things even +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-130" id="page1-130"></a>[pg I-130]</span> +when we are well. There are three titled Englishmen who +sit at the table with me on this ship—one a former Lord +Mayor of London, another a peer, and the third an M.P. +Damn their self-sufficiencies! They do excite my envy. +<i>They</i> don't shoulder the work of the world: they shoulder +the world and leave the work to be done by somebody else. +Three days' stories and political discussion with them have +made me wonder why the devil I've been so industrious +all my life. They know more than I know; they are +richer than I am; they have been about the world more +than I have; they are far more influential than I am; and +yet one of them asked me to-day if George Washington +was a born American! I said to him, "Where the devil +do you suppose he came from—Hades?" And he laughed +at himself as heartily as the rest of us laughed at him, +and didn't care a hang!</p> + +<p>If that's British, I've a mind to become British; and, +the point is, you must, too. Work is a curse. There was +some truth in that old doctrine. At any rate a little of it +must henceforth go a long way with you.</p> + +<p>A sermon? Yes. But, since it's a good one, I know +you'll forgive me; for it is preached in love, my dear boy, +and accompanied with the hearty and insistent hope that +you'll write to me.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Affectionately,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>This last letter apparently anticipates the story. A +few weeks before it was written President Wilson had +succeeded in carrying out his determination to make Page +an important part of his Administration. One morning +Page's telephone rang and Colonel House's well-known +and well-modulated voice came over the wire.</p> + +<p>"Good morning, Your Excellency," was his greeting.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-131" id="page1-131"></a>[pg I-131]</span> +</div><p>"What the devil are you talking about?" asked Page.</p> + +<p>Then Colonel House explained himself. The night +before, he said, he had dined at the White House. In a +pause of the conversation the President had quietly remarked:</p> + +<p>"I've about made up my mind to send Walter Page +to England. What do you think of that?"</p> + +<p>Colonel House thought very well of it indeed and the +result of his conversation was this telephone call, in which +he was authorized to offer Page the Ambassadorship to +Great Britain.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p class="center">FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7" /><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Mr. David F. Houston, ex-President of the University of +Texas, and in 1912 Chancellor of the Washington University of St. +Louis.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8" /><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Charles R. Van Hise, President of the University of +Wisconsin.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9" /><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Clarence Poe, editor of <i>The Progressive Farmer</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10" /><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> The reference is to the meeting of the Southern and the +General Education Boards.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-132" id="page1-132"></a>[pg I-132]</span> +</div><h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V" />CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>ENGLAND BEFORE THE WAR</h3> + + +<p>The London Embassy is the greatest diplomatic gift +at the disposal of the President, and, in the minds of +the American people, it possesses a glamour and an historic +importance all its own. Page came to the position, +as his predecessors had come, with a sense of awe; the great +traditions of the office; the long line of distinguished men, +from Thomas Pinckney to Whitelaw Reid, who had filled +it; the peculiar delicacy of the problems that then existed +between the two countries; the reverent respect which +Page had always entertained for English history, English +literature, and English public men—all these considerations +naturally quickened the new ambassador's imagination +and, at the same time, made his arrival in England +a rather solemn event. Yet his first days in London +had their grotesque side as well. He himself has recorded +his impressions, and, since they contain an important +lesson for the citizens of the world's richest and most +powerful Republic, they should be preserved. When the +ambassador of practically any other country reaches +London, he finds waiting for him a spacious and beautiful +embassy, filled with a large corps of secretaries and +servants—everything ready, to the minutest detail, for the +beginning of his labours. He simply enters these elaborate +state-owned and state-supported quarters and starts +work. How differently the mighty United States welcomes +its ambassadors let Page's memorandum tell:</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-133" id="page1-133"></a>[pg I-133]</span> +</div><p>The boat touched at Queenstown, and a mass of Irish +reporters came aboard and wished to know what I thought +of Ireland. Some of them printed the important announcement +that I was quite friendly to Ireland! At Liverpool +was Mr. Laughlin<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11" /><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>, Chargé d'Affaires in London since Mr. +Reid's death, to meet me, and of course the consul, Mr. +Washington. . . . On our arrival in London, Laughlin +explained that he had taken quarters for me at the Coburg +Hotel, whither we drove, after having fought my way +through a mob of reporters at the station. One fellow told +me that since I left New York the papers had published a +declaration by me that I meant to be very "democratic" +and would under no conditions wear "knee breeches"; and +he asked me about that report. I was foolish enough to +reply that the existence of an ass in the United States ought +not necessarily to require the existence of a corresponding +ass in London. He printed that! I never knew the origin +of this "knee breeches" story.</p> + +<p>That residence at the Coburg Hotel for three months +was a crowded and uncomfortable nightmare. The +indignity and inconvenience—even the humiliation—of an +ambassador beginning his career in an hotel, especially +during the Court season, and a green ambassador at +that! I hope I may not die before our Government +does the conventional duty to provide ambassadors' residences.</p> + +<p>The next morning I went to the Chancery (123, Victoria +Street) and my heart sank. I had never in my life +been in an American Embassy. I had had no business +with them in Paris or in London on my previous visits. +In fact I had never been in any embassy except the +British Embassy at Washington. But the moment I +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-134" id="page1-134"></a>[pg I-134]</span> +entered that dark and dingy hall at 123, Victoria Street, +between two cheap stores—the same entrance that the +dwellers in the cheap flats above used—I knew that Uncle +Sam had no fit dwelling there. And the Ambassador's +room greatly depressed me—dingy with twenty-nine years +of dirt and darkness, and utterly undignified. And the +rooms for the secretaries and attachés were the little bedrooms, +kitchen, etc., of that cheap flat; that's all it was. +For the place we paid $1,500 a year. I did not understand +then and I do not understand yet how Lowell, Bayard, +Phelps, Hay, Choate, and Reid endured that cheap hole. +Of course they stayed there only about an hour a day; +but they sometimes saw important people there. And, +whether they ever saw anybody there or not, the offices of +the United States Government in London ought at least to +be as good as a common lawyer's office in a country town +in a rural state of our Union. Nobody asked for anything +for an embassy: nobody got anything for an embassy. I +made up my mind in ten minutes that I'd get out of this +place<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12" /><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a>.</p> + +<p>At the Coburg Hotel, we were very well situated; but +the hotel became intolerably tiresome. Harold Fowler +and Frank and I were there until W.A.W.P.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13" /><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> and Kitty<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14" /><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> +came (and Frances Clark came with them). Then we were +just a little too big a hotel party. Every morning I drove +down to the old hole of a Chancery and remained about +two hours. There wasn't very much work to do; and +my main business was to become acquainted with the +work and with people—to find myself with reference to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-135" id="page1-135"></a>[pg I-135]</span> +this task, with reference to official life and to London life +in general.</p> + +<p>Every afternoon people came to the hotel to see me—some +to pay their respects and to make life pleasant, some +out of mere curiosity, and many for ends of their own. I +confess that on many days nightfall found me completely +worn out. But the evenings seldom brought a chance to +rest. The social season was going at its full gait; and the +new ambassador (any new ambassador) would have been +invited to many functions. A very few days after my arrival, +the Duchess of X invited Frank and me to dinner. +The powdered footmen were the chief novelty of the occasion +for us. But I was much confused because nobody +introduced anybody to anybody else. If a juxtaposition, +as at the dinner table, made an introduction imperative, +the name of the lady next you was so slurred that you +couldn't possibly understand it.</p> + +<p>Party succeeded party. I went to them because they +gave me a chance to become acquainted with people.</p> + +<p>But very early after my arrival, I was of course summoned +by the King. I had presented a copy of my credentials +to the Foreign Secretary (Sir Edward Grey) and +the real credentials—the original in a sealed envelope— +I must present to His Majesty. One morning the King's +Master of the Ceremonies, Sir Arthur Walsh, came to +the hotel with the royal coaches, four or five of them, and +the richly caparisoned grooms. The whole staff of the +Embassy must go with me. We drove to Buckingham +Palace, and, after waiting a few moments, I was ushered +into the King's presence. He stood in one of the drawing +rooms on the ground floor looking out on the garden. +There stood with him in uniform Sir Edward Grey. I +entered and bowed. He shook my hand, and I spoke my +little piece of three or four sentences.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-136" id="page1-136"></a>[pg I-136]</span> +</div><p>He replied, welcoming me and immediately proceeded to +express his surprise and regret that a great and rich country +like the United States had not provided a residence for +its ambassadors. "It is not fair to an ambassador," +said he; and he spoke most earnestly.</p> + +<p>I reminded him that, although the lack of a home was an +inconvenience, the trouble or discomfort that fell on an +ambassador was not so bad as the wrong impression +which I feared was produced about the United States +and its Government, and I explained that we had had +so many absorbing domestic tasks and, in general, so +few absorbing foreign relations, that we had only begun +to develop what might be called an international consciousness.</p> + +<p>Sir Edward was kind enough the next time I saw him to +remark that I did that very well and made a good impression +on the King.</p> + +<p>I could now begin my ambassadorial career proper—call +on the other ambassadors and accept invitations to +dinners and the like.</p> + +<p>I was told after I came from the King's presence that +the Queen would receive me in a few minutes. I was +shown upstairs, the door opened, and there in a small +drawing room, stood the Queen alone—a pleasant woman, +very royal in appearance. The one thing that sticks in +my memory out of this first conversation with her Majesty +was her remark that she had seen only one man who +had been President of the United States—Mr. Roosevelt. +She hoped he was well. I felt moved to remark that +she was not likely to see many former Presidents because +the office was so hard a task that most of them did not +long survive.</p> + +<p>"I'm hoping that office will not soon kill the King," +she said.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-137" id="page1-137"></a>[pg I-137]</span> +</div><p>In time Page obtained an entirely adequate and dignified +house at 6 Grosvenor Square, and soon found that the +American Ambassadorship had compensations which were +hardly suggested by his first glimpse of the lugubrious +Chancery. He brought to this new existence his plastic +and inquisitive mind, and his mighty gusto for the interesting +and the unusual; he immensely enjoyed his meetings +with the most important representatives of all types +of British life. The period of his arrival marked a crisis +in British history; Mr. Lloyd George was supposed to be +taxing the aristocracy out of existence; Mr. Asquith was +accused of plotting the destruction of the House of Lords; +the tide of liberalism, even of radicalism, was running +high, and, in the judgment of the conservative forces, +England was tottering to its fall; the gathering mob was +about to submerge everything that had made it great. +And the Irish question had reached another crisis with +the passage of the Home Rule Bill, which Sir Edward +Carson was preparing to resist with his Irish "volunteers."</p> + +<p>All these matters formed the staple of talk at dinner +tables, at country houses and at the clubs; and Page found +constant entertainment in the variegated pageant. There +were important American matters to discuss with the +Foreign Office—more important than any that had arisen +in recent years—particularly Mexico and the Panama +Tolls. Before these questions are considered, however, +it may be profitable to print a selection from the many +letters which Page wrote during his first year, giving his +impressions of this England which he had always loved +and which a closer view made him love and admire still +more. These letters have the advantage of presenting a +frank and yet sympathetic picture of British society and +British life as it was just before the war.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-138" id="page1-138"></a>[pg I-138]</span> +</div><p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Frank N Doubleday</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The Coburg Hotel,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Carlos Place, Grosvenor Square,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, W.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR EFFENDI:<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15" /><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p> + +<p>You can't imagine the intensity of the party feeling +here. I dined to-night in an old Tory family. They had +just had a "division" an hour or two before in the House +of Lords on the Home Rule Bill. Six Lords were at the +dinner and their wives. One was a Duke, two were +Bishops, and the other three were Earls. They expect a +general "bust-up." If the King does so and so, off with +the King! That's what they fear the Liberals will do. +It sounds very silly to me; but you can't exaggerate their +fear. The Great Lady, who was our hostess, told me, +with tears in her voice, that she had suspended all social +relations with the Liberal leaders.</p> + +<p>At lunch—just five or six hours before—we were at +the Prime Minister's, where the talk was precisely on the +other side. Gladstone's granddaughter was there and +several members of the Cabinet.</p> + +<p>Somehow it reminds me of the tense days of the slavery +controversy just before the Civil War.</p> + +<p>Yet in the everyday life of the people, you hear nothing +about it. It is impossible to believe that the ordinary +man cares a fig!</p> + +<p>Good-night. You don't care a fig for this. But I'll +get time to write you something interesting in a little +while.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-139" id="page1-139"></a>[pg I-139]</span> +</div><p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Herbert S. Houston</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">American Embassy</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Sunday, 24 Aug., 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR H.S.H.:</p> + +<p>. . . You know there's been much discussion of the +decadence of the English people. I don't believe a word +of it. They have an awful slum, I hear, as everybody +knows, and they have an idle class. Worse, from an +equal-opportunity point-of-view, they have a very large +servant-class, and a large class that depends on the nobility +and the rich. All these are economic and social +drawbacks. But they have always had all these—except +that the slum has become larger in modern years. +And I don't see or find any reason to believe in the theory +of decadence. The world never saw a finer lot of men +than the best of their ruling class. You may search the +world and you may search history for finer men than +Lord Morley, Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Harcourt, and other +members of the present Cabinet. And I meet such +men everywhere—gently bred, high-minded, physically +fit, intellectually cultivated, patriotic. If the devotion +to old forms and the inertia which makes any change almost +impossible strike an American as out-of-date, you +must remember that in the grand old times of England, +they had all these things and had them worse than they +are now. I can't see that the race is breaking down or +giving out. Consider how their political morals have +been pulled up since the days of the rotten boroughs; +consider how their court-life is now high and decent, and +think what it once was. British trade is larger this year +than it ever was, Englishmen are richer then they ever +were and more of them are rich. They write and speak +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-140" id="page1-140"></a>[pg I-140]</span> +and play cricket, and govern, and fight as well as they +have ever done—excepting, of course, the writing of +Shakespeare.</p> + +<p>Another conclusion that is confirmed the more you +see of English life is their high art of living. When they +make their money, they stop money-making and cultivate +their minds and their gardens and entertain their +friends and do all the high arts of living—to perfection. +Three days ago a retired soldier gave a garden-party in +my honour, twenty-five miles out of London. There +was his historic house, a part of it 500 years old; there were +his ten acres of garden, his lawn, his trees; and they walk +with you over it all; they sit out-of-doors; they serve tea; +they take life rationally; they talk pleasantly (not jocularly, +nor story-telling); they abhor the smart in talk or +in conduct; they have gentleness, cultivation, the best +manners in the world; and they are genuine. The hostess +has me take a basket and go with her while she cuts it full +of flowers for us to bring home; and, as we walk, she tells +the story of the place. She is a tenant-for-life; it is +entailed. Her husband was wounded in South Africa. +Her heir is her nephew. The home, of course, will remain +in the family forever. No, they don't go to London +much in recent years: why should they? But they travel +a month or more. They give three big tea-parties—one +when the rhododendrons bloom and the others at stated +times. They have friends to stay with them half the +time, perhaps—sometimes parties of a dozen. England +never had a finer lot of folk than these. And you see +them everywhere. The art of living sanely they have +developed to as high a level, I think, as you will find at +any time in any land.</p> + +<p>The present political battle is fiercer than you would +ever guess. The Lords feel that they are sure to be +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-141" id="page1-141"></a>[pg I-141]</span> +robbed: they see the end of the ordered world. Chaos +and confiscation lie before them. Yet that, too, has +nearly always been so. It was so in the Reform Bill days. +Lord Morley said to me the other day that when all the +abolitions had been done, there would be fewer things +abolished than anybody hopes or fears, and that there +would be the same problems in some form for many +generations. I'm beginning to believe that the Englishman +has always been afraid of the future—that's what's +keeps him so alert. They say to me: "You have frightful +things happen in the United States—your Governor of +New York<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16" /><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a>, your Thaw case, your corruption, etc., etc.; +and yet you seem sure and tell us that your countrymen +feel sure of the safety of your government." In the +newspaper comments on my Southampton<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17" /><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> speech the +other day, this same feeling cropped up; the American +Ambassador assures us that the note of hope is the dominant +note of the Republic—etc., etc. Yes, they are +dull, <i>in a way</i>—not dull, so much as steady; and yet +they have more solid sense than any other people.</p> + +<p>It's an interesting study—the most interesting in the +world. The genuineness of the courtesy, the real kindness +and the hospitality of the English are beyond praise +and without limit. In this they show a strange contradiction +to their dickering habits in trade and their "unctuous +rectitude" in stealing continents. I know a place +in the world now where they are steadily moving their +boundary line into other people's territory. I guess they +really believe that the earth belongs to them.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Sincerely,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-142" id="page1-142"></a>[pg I-142]</span> +</div><p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To Arthur W. Page<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18" /><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Gordon Arms Hotel, Elgin, Scotland.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">September 6, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Arthur:</p> + +<p>Your mother and Kitty<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19" /><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> and I are on our way to see +Andy<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20" /><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a>. Had you any idea that to motor from London +to Skibo means driving more than eight hundred miles? +Our speedometer now shows more than seven hundred +and we've another day to go—at least one hundred and +thirty miles. And we haven't even had a tire accident. +We're having a delightful journey—only this country +yields neither vegetables nor fruits, and I have to live on +oatmeal. They spell it p-o-r-r-i-d-g-e, and they call it +puruge. But they beat all creation as carnivorous folk. +We stayed last night at a beautiful mountain hotel at +Braemar (the same town whereat Stevenson wrote "Treasure +Island") and they had nine kinds of meat for dinner +and eggs in three ways, and no vegetables but potatoes. +But this morning we struck the same thin oatbread that +you ate at Grandfather Mountain.</p> + +<p>I've never understood the Scotch. I think they are, +without doubt, the most capable race in the world—away +from home. But how they came to be so and how +they keep up their character and supremacy and keep +breeding true needs explanation. As you come through +the country, you see the most monotonous and dingy +little houses and thousands of robust children, all dirtier +than niggers. In the fertile parts of the country, the +fields are beautifully cultivated—for Lord This-and-T'Other +who lives in London and comes up here in summer +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-143" id="page1-143"></a>[pg I-143]</span> +to collect his rents and to shoot. The country people +seem desperately poor. But they don't lose their robustness. +In the solid cities—the solidest you ever saw, +all being of granite—such as Edinburgh and Aberdeen, +where you see the prosperous class, they look the sturdiest +and most independent fellows you ever saw. As they +grow old they all look like blue-bellied Presbyterian +elders. Scotch to the marrow—everybody and everything +seem—bare knees alike on the street and in the +hotel with dress coats on, bagpipes—there's no sense in +these things, yet being Scotch they live forever. The +first men I saw early this morning on the street in front +of the hotel were two weather-beaten old chaps, with +gray beards under their chins. "Guddddd Murrrrninggggg, +Andy," said one. "Guddddd murrninggggg, +Sandy," said the other; and they trudged on. They'd +dethrone kings before they'd shave differently or drop +their burrs and gutturals or cover their knees or cease +lying about the bagpipe. And you can't get it out of +the blood. Your mother<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21" /><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> becomes provoked when I say +these things, and I shouldn't wonder if you yourself +resent them and break out quoting Burns. Now the +Highlands can't support a population larger than the +mountain counties of Kentucky. Now your Kentucky +feud is a mere disgrace to civilization. But your Highland +feud is celebrated in song and story. Every clan +keeps itself together to this day by its history and by its +plaid. At a turn in the road in the mountains yesterday, +there stood a statue of Rob Roy painted every stripe to +life. We saw his sword and purse in Sir Walter's house +at Abbotsford. The King himself wore the kilt and one +of the plaids at the last court ball at Buckingham Palace, +and there is a man who writes his name and is called +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-144" id="page1-144"></a>[pg I-144]</span> +"The Macintosh of Macintosh," and that's a prouder +title than the King's. A little handful of sheep-stealing +bandits got themselves immortalized and heroized, and +they are now all Presbyterian elders. They got <i>their</i> +church "established" in Scotland, and when the King +comes to Scotland, by Jehoshaphat! he is obliged to +become a Presbyterian. Yet your Kentucky feudist— +poor devil—he comes too late. The Scotchman has pre-empted +that particular field of glory. And all such comparisons +make your mother fighting mad. . . .</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Affectionately,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To the President</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">American Embassy, London.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">October 25, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Mr. President:</p> + +<p>I am moved once in a while to write you privately, not +about any specific piece of public business, but only, if I +can, to transmit something of the atmosphere of the +work here. And, since this is meant quite as much for +your amusement as for any information it may carry, +don't read it "in office hours."</p> + +<p>The future of the world belongs to us. A man needs +to live here, with two economic eyes in his head, a very +little time to become very sure of this. Everybody will +see it presently. These English are spending their +capital, and it is their capital that continues to give them +their vast power. Now what are we going to do with +the leadership of the world presently when it clearly falls +into our hands<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22" /><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a>? And how can we use the English for the +highest uses of democracy?</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-145" id="page1-145"></a>[pg I-145]</span> +</div><p>You see their fear of an on-sweeping democracy in +their social treatment of party opponents. A Tory lady +told me with tears that she could no longer invite her +Liberal friends to her house: "I have lost them—they +are robbing us, you know." I made the mistake of saying +a word in praise of Sir Edward Grey to a duke. "Yes, +yes, no doubt an able man; but you must understand, sir, +that I don't train with that gang." A bishop explained +to me at elaborate length why the very monarchy is +doomed unless something befalls Lloyd George and his +programme. Every dinner party is made up with +strict reference to the party politics of the guests. Sometimes +you imagine you see something like civil war; and +money is flowing out of the Kingdom into Canada in the +greatest volume ever known and I am told that a number +of old families are investing their fortunes in African +lands.</p> + +<p>These and such things are, of course, mere chips which +show the direction the slow stream runs. The great +economic tide of the century flows our way. <i>We</i> shall +have the big world questions to decide presently. Then +we shall need world policies; and it will be these old-time +world leaders that we shall then have to work with, more +closely than now.</p> + +<p>The English make a sharp distinction between the +American people and the American Government—a distinction +that they are conscious of and that they themselves +talk about. They do not think of our <i>people</i> as +foreigners. I have a club book on my table wherein the +members are classified as British, Colonial, American, +and Foreign—quite unconsciously. But they do think +of our Government as foreign, and as a frontier sort of +thing without good manners or good faith. This distinction +presents the big task of implanting here a real +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-146" id="page1-146"></a>[pg I-146]</span> +respect for our Government. People often think to +compliment the American Ambassador by assuming that +he is better than his Government and must at times be +ashamed of it. Of course the Government never does +this—never—but persons in unofficial life; and I have +sometimes hit some hard blows under this condescending +provocation. This is the one experience that I have +found irritating. They commiserate me on having a +Government that will not provide an Ambassador's +residence—from the King to my servants. They talk about +American lynchings. Even the <i>Spectator,</i> in an early +editorial about you, said that we should now see what +stuff there is in the new President by watching whether +you would stop lynchings. They forever quote Bryce +on the badness of our municipal government. They +pretend to think that the impeachment of governors is +common and ought to be commoner. One delicious +M.P. asked me: "Now, since the Governor of New +York is impeached, who becomes Vice-President<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23" /><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a>?" +Ignorance, unfathomable ignorance, is at the bottom of +much of it; if the Town Treasurer of Yuba Dam gets a +$100 "rake off" on a paving contract, our city government +is a failure.</p> + +<p>I am about to conclude that our yellow press does us +more harm abroad than at home, and many of the American +correspondents of the English papers send exactly +the wrong news. The whole governing class of England +has a possibly exaggerated admiration for the American +people and something very like contempt for the American +Government.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-147" id="page1-147"></a>[pg I-147]</span> +</div><p>If I make it out right two causes (in addition to their +ignorance) of their dislike of our Government are (1) its +lack of manners in the past, and (2) its indiscretions of +publicity about foreign affairs. We ostentatiously stand +aloof from their polite ways and courteous manners in +many of the every-day, ordinary, unimportant dealings +with them—aloof from the common amenities of long-organized +political life. . . .</p> + +<p>Not one of these things is worth mentioning or remembering. +But generations of them have caused our +Government to be regarded as thoughtless of the fine +little acts of life—as rude. The more I find out about +diplomatic customs and the more I hear of the little-big +troubles of others, the more need I find to be careful +about details of courtesy.</p> + +<p>Thus we are making as brave a show as becomes us. +I no longer dismiss a princess after supper or keep the +whole diplomatic corps waiting while I talk to an interesting +man till the Master of Ceremonies comes up and +whispers: "Your Excellency, I think they are waiting for +you to move." But I am both young and green, and +even these folk forgive much to green youth, if it show a +willingness to learn.</p> + +<p>But our Government, though green, isn't young enough +to plead its youth. It is time that it, too, were learning +Old World manners in dealing with Old World peoples. +I do not know whether we need a Bureau, or a Major-Domo, +or a Master of Ceremonies at Washington, but we +need somebody to prompt us to act as polite as we really +are, somebody to think of those gentler touches that we +naturally forget. Some other governments have such +officers—perhaps all. The Japanese, for instance, are +newcomers in world politics. But this Japanese Ambassador +and his wife here never miss a trick; and they +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-148" id="page1-148"></a>[pg I-148]</span> +come across the square and ask us how to do it! All +the other governments, too, play the game of small +courtesies to perfection—the French, of course, and the +Spanish and—even the old Turk.</p> + +<p>Another reason for the English distrust of our Government +is its indiscretions in the past of this sort: one of +our Ministers to Germany, you will recall, was obliged +to resign because the Government at Washington inadvertently +published one of his confidential despatches; +Griscom saved his neck only by the skin, when he was in +Japan, for a similar reason. These things travel all +round the world from one chancery to another and all +governments know them. Yesterday somebody in Washington +talked about my despatch summarizing my talk +with Sir Edward Grey about Mexico, and it appeared in +the papers here this morning that Sir Edward had told +me that the big business interests were pushing him hard. +This I sent as only <i>my</i> inference. I had at once to disclaim +it. This leaves in his mind a doubt about our care +for secrecy. They have monstrous big doors and silent +men in Downing Street; and, I am told, a stenographer +sits behind a big screen in Sir Edward's room while an +Ambassador talks<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24" /><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a>! I wonder if my comments on certain +poets, which I have poured forth there to provoke his, +are preserved in the archives of the British Empire. The +British Empire is surely very welcome to them. I have +twice found it useful, by the way, to bring up Wordsworth +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-149" id="page1-149"></a>[pg I-149]</span> +when he has begun to talk about Panama tolls. Then +your friend Canon Rawnsley<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25" /><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> has, without suspecting it, +done good service in diplomacy.</p> + +<p>The newspaper men here, by the way, both English +and American, are disposed to treat us fairly and to be +helpful. The London <i>Times</i>, on most subjects, is very +friendly, and I find its editors worth cultivating for their +own sakes and because of their position. It is still the +greatest English newspaper. Its general friendliness to +the United States, by the way, has started a rumour that +I hear once in a while—that it is really owned by +Americans—nonsense yet awhile. To the fairness and helpfulness +of the newspaper men there are one or two exceptions, +for instance, a certain sneaking whelp who writes for +several papers. He went to the Navy League dinner +last night at which I made a little speech. When I sat +down, he remarked to his neighbour, with a yawn, "Well, +nothing in it for me. The Ambassador, I am afraid, said +nothing for which I can demand his recall." They, of +course, don't care thrippence about me; it's you they hope +to annoy.</p> + +<p>Then after beating them at their own game of daily +little courtesies, we want a fight with them—a good stiff +fight about something wherein we are dead right, to remind +them sharply that we have sand in our craw<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26" /><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a>. I +pray every night for such a fight; for they like fighting +men. Then they'll respect our Government as they already +respect us—if we are dead right.</p> + +<p>But I've little hope for a fight of the right kind with +Sir Edward Grey. He is the very reverse of insolent—fair, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-150" id="page1-150"></a>[pg I-150]</span> +frank, sympathetic, and he has so clear an understanding +of our real character that he'd yield anything +that his party and Parliament would permit. He'd make +a good American with the use of very little sandpaper. +Of course I know him better than I know any other +member of the Cabinet, but he seems to me the best-balanced +man of them all.</p> + +<p>I can assure you emphatically that the tariff act<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27" /><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> does +command their respect and is already having an amazing +influence on their opinion of our Government. Lord +Mersey, a distinguished law lord and a fine old fellow of +the very best type of Englishman, said to me last Sunday, +"I wish to thank you for stopping half-way in reducing +your tariff; that will only half ruin us." A lady of a +political family (Liberal) next whom I sat at dinner the +other night (and these women know their politics as no +class of women among us do) said: "Tell me something +about your great President. We hadn't heard much +about him nor felt his hand till your tariff bill passed. +He seems to have real power in the Government. You +know we do not always know who has power in your +Government." Lord Grey, the one-time Governor-General +of Canada, stopped looking at the royal wedding +presents the other evening long enough to say: "The +United States Government is waking up—waking up."</p> + +<p>I sum up these atmospheric conditions—I do not presume +to call them by so definite a name as recommendations:</p> + +<p>We are in the international game—not in its Old World +intrigues and burdens and sorrows and melancholy, but +in the inevitable way to leadership and to cheerful mastery +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-151" id="page1-151"></a>[pg I-151]</span> +in the future; and everybody knows that we are in it +but us. It is a sheer blind habit that causes us to continue +to try to think of ourselves as aloof. They think in +terms of races here, and we are of their race, and we shall +become the strongest and the happiest branch of it.</p> + +<p>While we play the game with them, we shall play it +better by playing it under their long-wrought-out rules +of courtesy in everyday affairs.</p> + +<p>We shall play it better, too, if our Government play it +quietly—except when the subject demands publicity. +I have heard that in past years the foreign representatives +of our Government have reported too few things and +much too meagrely. I have heard since I have been +here that these representatives become timid because +Washington has for many a year conducted its foreign +business too much in the newspapers; and the foreign +governments themselves are always afraid of this.</p> + +<p>Meantime I hardly need tell you of my appreciation of +such a chance to make so interesting a study and to +enjoy so greatly the most interesting experience, I really +believe, in the whole world. I only hope that in time I +may see how to shape the constant progression of incidents +into a constructive course of events; for we are soon +coming into a time of big changes.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Most heartily yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To David F. Houston</i><a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28" /><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">American Embassy, London [undated].</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR HOUSTON:</p> + +<p>You're doing the bigger job: as the world now is, there +is no other job so big as yours or so well worth doing; but +I'm having more fun. I'm having more fun than anybody +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-152" id="page1-152"></a>[pg I-152]</span> +else anywhere. It's a large window you look +through on the big world—here in London; and, while I +am for the moment missing many of the things that I've +most cared about hitherto (such as working for the +countryman, guessing at American public opinion, coffee +that's fit to drink, corn bread, sunshine, and old faces) +big new things come on the horizon. Yet a man's personal +experiences are nothing in comparison with the +large job that our Government has to do in its Foreign +Relations. I'm beginning to begin to see what it is. +The American people are taken most seriously here. I'm +sometimes almost afraid of the respect and even awe in +which they hold us. But the American Government is a +mere joke to them. They don't even believe that we +ourselves believe in it. We've had no foreign policy, +no continuity of plan, no matured scheme, no settled way +of doing things and we seem afraid of Irishmen or Germans +or some "element" when a chance for real action +comes. I'm writing to the President about this and telling +him stories to show how it works.</p> + +<p>We needn't talk any longer about keeping aloof. If +Cecil Spring Rice would tell you the complaints he has +already presented and if you saw the work that goes on +here—more than in all the other posts in Europe—you'd +see that all the old talk about keeping aloof is Missouri +buncombe. We're very much "in," but not frankly in.</p> + +<p>I wish you'd keep your eye on these things in cabinet +meetings. The English and the whole English world are +ours, if we have the courtesy to take them—fleet and trade +and all; and we go on pretending we are afraid of "entangling +alliances." What about disentangling alliances?</p> + +<p>We're in the game. There's no use in letting a few +wild Irish or cocky Germans scare us. We need courtesy +and frankness, and the destinies of the world will be in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-153" id="page1-153"></a>[pg I-153]</span> +our hands. They'll fall there anyhow after we are dead; +but I wish to see them come, while my own eyes last. +Don't you?</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Heartily yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Robert N. Page</i><a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29" /><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, December 22, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR BOB:</p> + +<p>. . . We have a splendid, big old house—not in any +way pretentious—a commonplace house in fact for fashionable +London and the least showy and costly of the Embassies. +But it does very well—it's big and elegantly +plain and dignified. We have fifteen servants in the house. +They do just about what seven good ones would do in the +United States, but they do it a great deal better. They +pretty nearly run themselves and the place. The servant +question is admirably solved here. They divide the work +according to a fixed and unchangeable system and they +do it remarkably well—in their own slow English way. +We simply let them alone, unless something important +happens to go wrong. Katharine simply tells the butler +that we'll have twenty-four people to dinner to-morrow +night and gives him a list of them. As they come in, the +men at the door address every one correctly—Your +Lordship or Your Grace, or what not. When they are +all in, the butler comes to the reception room and announces +dinner. We do the rest. As every man goes +out, the butler asks him if he`ll have a glass of water or of +grog or a cigar; he calls his car, puts him in it, and that's +the end of it. Bully good plan. But in the United +States that butler, whose wages are less than the ramshackle +nigger I had at Garden City to keep the place +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-154" id="page1-154"></a>[pg I-154]</span> +neat, would have a business of his own. But here he is a +sort of duke downstairs. He sits at the head of the servants' +table and orders them around and that's worth +more than money to an Old World servile mind.</p> + +<p>The "season" doesn't begin till the King comes back +and Parliament opens, in February. But every kind of +club and patriotic and educational organization is giving +its annual dinner now. I've been going to them and +making after-dinner speeches to get acquainted and also +to preach into them some little knowledge of American +ways and ideals. They are very nice—very. You could +not suggest or imagine any improvement in their kindness +and courtesy. They do all these things in some ways +better than we. They have more courtesy. They make +far shorter speeches. But they do them all too much +alike. Still they do get much pleasure out of them and +much instruction too.</p> + +<p>Then we are invited to twice as many private dinners +and luncheons as we can attend. At these, these people are +at their best. But it is yet quite confusing. A sea of +friendly faces greets you—you can't remember the names. +Nobody ever introduces anybody to anybody; and if by +accident anybody ever tries, he simply says "Uh-o-oh-Lord +Xzwwxkmpt." You couldn't understand it if you +had to be hanged.</p> + +<p>But we are untangling some of this confusion and coming +to make very real and very charming friends.</p> + +<p>About December 20, everybody who is anybody leaves +London. They go to their country places for about a +fortnight or they go to the continent. Almost everything +stops. It has been the only dull time at the Embassy that +I've had. Nothing is going on now. But up to two days +ago, it kept a furious gait. I'm glad of a little rest.</p> + +<p>Dealing with the Government doesn't present the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-155" id="page1-155"></a>[pg I-155]</span> +difficulties that I feared. Sir Edward Grey is in the main +responsible for the ease with which it is done. He is a +frank and fair and truthful man. You will find him the +day after to-morrow precisely where you left him the day +before yesterday. We get along very well indeed. I +think we should get along if we had harder tasks one with +the other. And the English people are even more friendly +than the Government. You have no idea of their respect +for the American Nation. Of course there is much ignorance, +sometimes of a surprising sort. Very many +people, for instance, think that all the Americans are rich. +A lady told me the other night how poor she is—she is +worth only $1,250,000—"nothing like all you Americans." +She was quite sincere. In fact the wealth of the world +(and the poverty, too) is centred here in an amazing way. +You can`t easily take it in—how rich or how many rich +English families there are. They have had wealth for +generation after generation, and the surprising thing is, +they take care of it. They spend enormously—seldom +ostentatiously—but they are more than likely to add +some of their income every year to their principal. They +have better houses in town and in the country than I had +imagined. They spend vast fortunes in making homes +in which they expect to live forever—generation after +generation.</p> + +<p>To an American democrat the sad thing is the servile +class. Before the law the chimney sweep and the peer +have exactly the same standing. They have worked +that out with absolute justice. But there it stops. The +serving class is what we should call abject. It does not +occur to them that they might ever become—or that +their descendants might ever become—ladies and gentlemen.</p> + +<p>The "courts" are a very fine sight. The diplomatic +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-156" id="page1-156"></a>[pg I-156]</span> +ladies sit on a row of seats on one side the throne room, +the Duchesses on a row opposite. The King and Queen +sit on a raised platform with the royal family. The +Ambassadors come in first and bow and the King shakes +hands with them. Then come the forty or more Ministers—no +shake for them. In front of the King are +a few officers in gaudy uniform, some Indians of high +rank (from India) and the court officials are all round +about, with pages who hold up the Queen's train. Whenever +the Queen and King move, two court officials back +before them, one carrying a gold stick and the other a +silver stick.</p> + +<p>The ladies to be presented come along. They curtsy +to the King, then to the Queen, and disappear in the rooms +farther on. The Ambassadors (all in gaudy uniforms but +me) stand near the throne—stand through the whole performance. +One night after an hour or two of ladies coming +along and curtsying and disappearing, I whispered to +the Spanish Ambassador, "There must be five hundred +of these ladies." "U-m," said he, as he shifted his weight +to the other foot, "I'm sure there are five thousand!" +When they've all been presented, the King and Queen go +into a room where a stand-up supper is served. The royalty +and the diplomatic folks go into that room, too; and their +Majesties walk around and talk with whom they please. +Into another and bigger room everybody else goes and gets +supper. Then we all flock back to the throne room; and +preceded by the backing courtiers, their Majesties come +out into the floor and bow to the Ambassadors, then to +the Duchesses, then to the general diplomatic group and +they go out. The show is ended. We come downstairs +and wait an hour for our car and come home about midnight. +The uniforms on the men and the jewels on the +ladies (by the ton) and their trains—all this makes a very +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-157" id="page1-157"></a>[pg I-157]</span> +brilliant spectacle. The American Ambassador and his +Secretaries and the Swiss and the Portuguese are the only +ones dressed in citizens' clothes.</p> + +<p>At a levee, the King receives only gentlemen. Here +they come in all kinds of uniforms. If you are not entitled +to wear a uniform, you have a dark suit, knee +breeches, and a funny little tin sword. I'm going to +adopt the knee breeches part of it for good when I go +home—golf breeches in the day time and knee breeches +at night. You've no idea how nice and comfortable +they are—though it is a devil of a lot of trouble to put +'em on. Of course every sort of man here but the +Americans wears some sort of decorations around his neck +or on his stomach, at these functions. For my part, I +like it—here. The women sparkle with diamonds, the men +strut; the King is a fine man with a big bass voice and +he talks very well and is most agreeable; the Queen is very +gracious; the royal ladies (Queen Victoria's daughters, +chiefly) are nice; you see all the big Generals and all +the big Admirals and the great folk of every sort—fine +show.</p> + +<p>You've no idea how much time and money they spend +on shooting. The King has been shooting most of the +time for three months. He's said to be a very good shot. +He has sent me, on different occasions, grouse, a haunch +of venison, and pheasants.</p> + +<p>But except on these occasions, you never think about +the King. The people go about their business as if he +didn't exist, of course. They begin work much later than +we do. You'll not find any of the shops open till about +ten o'clock. The sun doesn't shine except once in a while +and you don't know it's daylight till about ten. You +know the House of Commons has night sessions always. +Nobody is in the Government offices, except clerks and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-158" id="page1-158"></a>[pg I-158]</span> +secretaries, till the afternoon. We dine at eight, and, +when we have a big dinner, at eight thirty.</p> + +<p>I like these people (most of 'em) immensely. They +are very genuine and frank, good fighters and folk of +our own sort—after you come to know them. At first +they have no manners and don't know what to do. +But they warm up to you later. They have abundant +wit, but much less humour than we. And they know how +to live.</p> + +<p>Except that part of life which is ministered to in +mechanical ways, they resist conveniences. They don't +really like bathrooms yet. They prefer great tin tubs, +and they use bowls and pitchers when a bathroom is next +door. The telephone—Lord deliver us!—I've given it up. +They know nothing about it. (It is a government concern, +but so is the telegraph and the post-office, and they +are remarkably good and swift.) You can't buy a newspaper +on the street, except in the afternoon. Cigar-stores +are as scarce as hen's teeth. Barber-shops are all +"hairdressers"—dirty and wretched beyond description. You +can't get a decent pen; their newspapers are as big as tablecloths. +In this aquarium in which we live (it rains every +day) they have only three vegetables and two of them are +cabbages. They grow all kinds of fruit in hothouses, and +(I can't explain this) good land in admirable cultivation +thirty miles from London sells for about half what good +corn land in Iowa brings. Lloyd George has scared the +land-owners to death.</p> + +<p>Party politics runs so high that many Tories will not +invite Liberals to dinner. They are almost at the point +of civil war. I asked the Prime Minister the other day +how he was going to prevent war. He didn't give any +clear answer. During this recess of Parliament, though +there's no election pending, all the Cabinet are all the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-159" id="page1-159"></a>[pg I-159]</span> +time going about making speeches on Ireland. They talk +to me about it.</p> + +<p>"What would you do?"</p> + +<p>"Send 'em all to the United States," say I.</p> + +<p>"No, no."</p> + +<p>They have had the Irish question three hundred years +and they wouldn't be happy without it. One old Tory +talked me deaf abusing the Liberal Government.</p> + +<p>"You do this way in the United States—hate one another, +don't you?"</p> + +<p>"No," said I, "we live like angels in perfect harmony +except a few weeks before election."</p> + +<p>"The devil you do! You don't hate one another? +What do you do for enemies? I couldn't get along without +enemies to swear at."</p> + +<p>If you think it's all play, you fool yourself; I mean this +job. There's no end of the work. It consists of these +parts: Receiving people for two hours every day, some on +some sort of business, some merely "to pay respects," +attending to a large (and exceedingly miscellaneous) +mail; going to the Foreign Office on all sorts of errands; +looking up the oddest assortment of information that +you ever heard of; making reports to Washington on all +sorts of things; then the so-called social duties—giving +dinners, receptions, etc., and attending them. I hear the +most important news I get at so-called social functions. +Then the court functions; and the meetings and speeches! +The American Ambassador must go all over England and +explain every American thing. You'd never recover from +the shock if you could hear me speaking about Education, +Agriculture, the observance of Christmas, the Navy, the +Anglo-Saxon, Mexico, the Monroe Doctrine, Co-education, +Woman Suffrage, Medicine, Law, Radio-Activity, +Flying, the Supreme Court, the President as a Man of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-160" id="page1-160"></a>[pg I-160]</span> +letters, Hookworm, the Negro—just get down the Encyclopædia +and continue the list. I've done this every +week-night for a month, hand running, with a few afternoon +performances thrown in! I have missed only one +engagement in these seven months; and that was merely +a private luncheon. I have been late only once. I +have the best chauffeur in the world—he deserves credit +for much of that. Of course, I don't get time to read +a book. In fact, I can't keep up with what goes on at +home. To read a newspaper eight or ten days old, when +they come in bundles of three or four—is impossible. +What isn't telegraphed here, I miss; and that means I +miss most things.</p> + +<p>I forgot, there are a dozen other kinds of activities, such +as American marriages, which they always want the Ambassador +to attend; getting them out of jail, when they +are jugged (I have an American woman on my hands now, +whose four children come to see me every day); looking +after the American insane; helping Americans move the +bones of their ancestors; interpreting the income-tax law; +receiving medals for Americans; hearing American fiddlers, +pianists, players; sitting for American sculptors and +photographers; sending telegrams for property owners in +Mexico; reading letters from thousands of people who +have shares in estates here; writing letters of introduction; +getting tickets to the House Gallery; getting seats in the +Abbey; going with people to this and that and t'other; +getting tickets to the races, the art-galleries, the House of +Lords; answering fool questions about the United States +put by Englishmen. With a military attaché, a naval +attaché, three secretaries, a private secretary, two automobiles, +Alice's private secretary, a veterinarian, an immigration +agent, consuls everywhere, a despatch agent, +lawyers, doctors, messengers—they keep us all busy. A +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-161" id="page1-161"></a>[pg I-161]</span> +woman turned up dying the other day. I sent for a big +doctor. She got well. As if that wasn't enough, both +the woman and the doctor had to come and thank me +(fifteen minutes each). Then each wrote a letter! Then +there are people who are going to have a Fair here; others +who have a Fair coming on at San Francisco; others at +San Diego; secretaries and returning and outgoing diplomats +come and go (lunch for 'em all); niggers come up +from Liberia; Rhodes Scholars from Oxford; Presidential +candidates to succeed Huerta; people who present books; +women who wish to go to court; Jews who are excited +about Rumania; passports, passports to sign; peace committees +about the hundred years of peace; opera singers +going to the United States; artists who have painted some +American's portrait—don't you see? I haven't said a +word about reporters and editors: the city's full of them.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">A Happy New Year.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Affectionately,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WAT.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Ralph W. Page</i><a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30" /><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, December 23, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR RALPH:</p> + +<p>. . . The game is pretty much as it has been. I +can't think of any new kinds of things to write you. The +old kinds simply multiply and repeat themselves. But we +are beginning now really to become acquainted, and some +life friendships will grow out of our experience. And +there's no doubt about its being instructive. I get +glimpses of the way in which great governments deal with +one another, in ways that our isolated, and, therefore, +safe government seldom has any experience of. For +instance, one of the Lords of the Admiralty told me the +other night that he never gets out of telephone reach of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-162" id="page1-162"></a>[pg I-162]</span> +the office—not even half an hour. "The Admiralty," +said he, "never sleeps." He has a telephone by his bed +which he can hear at any moment in the night. I don't +believe that they really expect the German fleet to attack +them any day or night. But they would not be at all +surprised if it did so to-night. They talk all the time of +the danger and of the probability of war; they don't expect +it; but most wars have come without warning, and they +are all the time prepared to begin a fight in an hour.</p> + +<p>They talk about how much Germany must do to +strengthen her frontier against Russia and her new +frontier on the Balkan States. They now have these +problems in hand and therefore they are for the moment +not likely to provoke a fight. But they might.</p> + +<p>It is all pitiful to see them thinking forever about danger +and defense. The controversy about training boys for the +army never ends. We don't know in the United States +what we owe to the Atlantic Ocean—safe separation from +all these troubles. . . .</p> + +<p>But I've often asked both Englishmen and Americans +in a dining room where there were many men of each +country, whether they could look over the company and +say which were English and which were Americans. +Nobody can tell till—they begin to talk.</p> + +<p>The ignorance of the two countries, each of the other, +is beyond all belief. A friend of Kitty's—an American—received +a letter from the United States yesterday. The +maid noticed the stamp, which had the head of George +Washington on it. Every stamp in this kingdom bears the +image of King George. She asked if the American stamp +had on it the head of the American Ambassador! I've +known far wiser people to ask far more foolish questions.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Affectionately,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-163" id="page1-163"></a>[pg I-163]</span> +</div><p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Mrs. Ralph W. Page</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, Christmas-is-coming, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR LEILA:</p> + +<p>. . . Her work [Mrs. Walter H. Page's] is all the +work of going and receiving and—of reading. She reads +incessantly and enormously; and, when she gets tired, +she goes to bed. That's all there is about it. Lord! +I wish I could. But, when I get tired, I have to go and +make another speech. They think the American Ambassador +has omniscience for a foible and oratory as a +pastime.</p> + +<p>In some ways my duties are very instructive. We get +different points of view on many things, some better than +we had before had, some worse. For instance, life is +pretty well laid out here in water-tight compartments; +and you can't let a stream in from one to another without +danger of sinking the ship. Four reporters have been +here to-day because Mr. and Mrs. Sayre<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31" /><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> arrived this +morning. Every one of 'em asked the same question, +"Who met them at the station?" That's the chief thing +they wished to know. When I said "I did"—that fixed +the whole thing on the highest peg of dignity. They +could classify the whole proceeding properly, and they +went off happy. Again: You've got to go in to dinner +in the exact order prescribed by the constitution; +and, if you avoid that or confuse that, you'll never be able +to live it down. And so about Government, Literature, +Art—everything. Don't you forget your water-tight +compartments. If you do, you are gone! They have the +same toasts at every public dinner. One is to "the +guests." Now you needn't say a word about the guests +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-164" id="page1-164"></a>[pg I-164]</span> +when you respond. But they've been having toasts to +the guests since the time of James I and they can't change +it. They had me speak to "the guests" at a club last +night, when they wanted me to talk about Mexico! The +winter has come—the winter months at least. But they +have had no cold weather—not so cold as you have in +Pinehurst. But the sun has gone out to sea—clean gone. +We never see it. A damp darkness (semi-darkness at +least) hangs over us all the time. But we manage to feel +our way about.</p> + +<p>A poor photograph goes to you for Xmas—a poor thing +enough surely. But you get Uncle Bob<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32" /><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> busy on the job +of paying for an Ambassador's house. Then we'll bring +Christmas presents home for you. What a game we are +playing, we poor folks here, along with Ambassadors +whose governments pay them four times what ours pays. +But we don't give the game away, you bet! We throw +the bluff with a fine, straight poker face.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Affectionately,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Frank N. Doubleday and Others</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, Sunday, December 28, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR COMRADES:</p> + +<p>I was never one of those abnormal creatures who got +Christmas all ready by the Fourth of July. The true +spirit of the celebration has just now begun to work on me—three +days late. In this respect the spirit is very like +Christmas plum-pudding. Moreover, we've just got the +patriotic fervour flowing at high tide this morning. This +is the President's birthday. We've put up the Stars and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-165" id="page1-165"></a>[pg I-165]</span> +Stripes on the roof; and half an hour ago the King's Master +of Ceremonies drove up in a huge motor car and, being +shown into my presence in the state drawing room, held +his hat in his hand and (said he):</p> + +<p>"Your Excellency: I am commanded by the King to +express to you His Majesty's congratulations on the +birthday of the President, to wish him a successful +administration and good health and long life and to convey +His Majesty's greetings to Your Excellency: and His +Majesty commands me to express the hope that you will +acquaint the President with His Majesty's good wishes."</p> + +<p>Whereto I made just as pretty a little speech as your +'umble sarvant could. Then we sat down, I called in +Mrs. Page and my secretary and we talked like human +beings.</p> + +<p>Having worked like the devil, upon whom, I imagine, +at this bibulous season many heavy duties fall—having thus +toiled for two months—the international docket is clean, +I've got done a round of twenty-five speeches (O Lord!) +I've slept three whole nights, I've made my dinner-calls—you +see I'm feeling pretty well, in this first period of quiet +life I've yet found in this Babylon. Praise Heaven! +they go off for Christmas. Everything's shut up tight. +The streets of London are as lonely and as quiet as the +road to Oyster Bay while the Oyster is in South America. +It's about as mild here as with you in October and as +damp as Sheepshead's Bay in an autumn storm. But +such people as you meet complain of the c-o-l-d—the +c-o-l-d; and they run into their heatless houses and put +on extra waistcoats and furs and throw shawls over their +knees and curse Lloyd George and enjoy themselves. +They are a great people—even without mint juleps in +summer or eggnog in winter; and I like them. The old +gouty Lords curse the Americans for the decline of drinking. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-166" id="page1-166"></a>[pg I-166]</span> +And you can't live among them without laughing +yourself to death and admiring them, too. It's a fine race +to be sprung from.</p> + +<p>All this field of international relations—you fellows +regard it as a bore. So it used to be before my entrance +into the game! But it's everlastingly interesting. Just +to give him a shock, I asked the Foreign Secretary the +other day what difference it would make if the Foreign Offices +were all to go out of business and all the Ambassadors +were to be hanged. He thought a minute and said: +"Suppose war kept on in the Balkans, the Russians killed +all their Jews, Germany took Holland and sent an air-fleet +over London, the Japanese landed in California, the English +took all the oil-wells in Central and South America +and—"</p> + +<p>"Good Lord!" said I, "do you and I prevent all these +calamities? If so, we don't get half the credit that is due +us—do we?"</p> + +<p>You could ask the same question about any group or +profession of men in the world; and on a scratch, I imagine +that any of them would be missed less than they think. +But the realness and the bigness of the job here in London +is simply oppressive. We don't even know what it is +in the United States and, of course, we don't go about +doing it right. If we did, we shouldn't pick up a green +fellow on the plain of Long Island and send him here: +we'd train the most capable male babies we have from the +cradle. But this leads a long way.</p> + +<p>As I look back over these six or seven months, from +the pause that has come this week, I'm bound to say +(being frank, not to say vain) that I had the good fortune +to do one piece of work that was worth the effort and +worth coming to do—about that infernal Mexican situation. +An abler man would have done it better; but, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-167" id="page1-167"></a>[pg I-167]</span> +as it was, I did it; and I have a most appreciative letter +about it from the President.</p> + +<p>By thunder, he's doing <i>his</i> job, isn't he? Whether +you like the job or not, you've got to grant that. When +I first came over here, I found a mild curiosity about Wilson—only +mild. But now they sit up and listen and ask +most eager questions. He has pressed his personality +most strongly on the governing class here.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Yours heartily,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To the President</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">American Embassy, London</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">[May 11, 1914.]</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:</p> + +<p>The King of Denmark (I always think of Hamlet) +having come to make his royal kinsman of these Isles a +visit, his royal kinsman to-night gave a state dinner at +the palace whereto the Ambassadors of the eight Great +Powers were, of course, invited. Now I don't know how +other kings do, but I'm willing to swear by King George +for a job of this sort. The splendour of the thing is truly +regal and the friendliness of it very real and human; +and the company most uncommon. Of course the Ambassadors +and their wives were there, the chief rulers of +the Empire and men and women of distinction and most of +the royal family. The dinner and the music and the plate +and the decorations and the jewels and the uniforms—all +these were regal; but there is a human touch about it that +seems almost democratic.</p> + +<p>All for His Majesty of Denmark, a country with fewer +people and less wealth than New Jersey. This whole +royal game is most interesting. Lloyd George and H.H. +Asquith and John Morley were there, all in white knee +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-168" id="page1-168"></a>[pg I-168]</span> +breeches of silk, and swords and most gaudy coats—these +that are the radicals of the Kingdom, in literature and in +action. Veterans of Indian and South African wars stood +on either side of every door and of every stairway, dressed +as Sir Walter Raleigh dressed, like so many statues, never +blinking an eye. Every person in the company is printed, +in all the papers, with every title he bears. Crowds lined +the streets in front of the palace to see the carriages go +in and to guess who was in each. To-morrow the Diplomatic +Corps calls on King Christian and to-morrow night +King George commands us to attend the opera as his +guests.</p> + +<p>Whether it's the court, or the honours and the orders and +all the social and imperial spoils, that keep the illusion up, +or whether it is the Old World inability to change anything, +you can't ever quite decide. In Defoe's time they +put pots of herbs on the desks of every court in London +to keep the plague off. The pots of herbs are yet put +on every desk in every court room in London. Several +centuries ago somebody tried to break into the Bank of +England. A special guard was detached—a little company +of soldiers—to stand watch at night. The bank has +twice been moved and is now housed in a building that +would stand a siege; but that guard, in the same uniform +goes on duty every night. Nothing is ever abolished, +nothing ever changed. On the anniversary of King +Charles's execution, his statue in Trafalgar Square is +covered with flowers. Every month, too, new books +appear about the mistresses of old kings—as if they, too, +were of more than usual interest: I mean serious, historical +books. From the King's palace to the humblest house +I've been in, there are pictures of kings and queens. In +every house, too (to show how nothing ever changes), the +towels are folded in the same peculiar way. In every +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-169" id="page1-169"></a>[pg I-169]</span> +grate in the kingdom the coal fire is laid in precisely the +same way. There is not a salesman in any shop on Piccadilly +who does not, in the season, wear a long-tail coat. +Everywhere they say a second grace at dinner—not at the +end—but before the dessert, because two hundred years +ago they dared not wait longer lest the parson be under the +table: the grace is said to-day <i>before</i> dessert! I tried three +months to persuade my "Boots" to leave off blacking the +soles of my shoes under the instep. He simply couldn't +do it. Every "Boots" in the Kingdom does it. A man +of learning had an article in an afternoon paper a few +weeks ago which began thus: "It is now universally +conceded by the French and the Americans that the +decimal system is a failure," and he went on to concoct +a scheme for our money that would be more "rational" +and "historical." In this hot debate about Ulster a frequent +phrase used is, "Let us see if we can't find the right +formula to solve the difficulty"; their whole lives are +formulas. Now may not all the honours and garters and +thistles and O.M.'s and K.C.B.'s and all manner of gaudy +sinecures be secure, only because they can't abolish anything? +My servants sit at table in a certain order, and +Mrs. Page's maid wouldn't yield her precedence to a mere +housemaid for any mortal consideration—any more than a +royal person of a certain rank would yield to one of a +lower rank. A real democracy is as far off as doomsday. +So you argue, till you remember that it is these same +people who made human liberty possible—to a degree—and +till you sit day after day and hear them in the House +of Commons, mercilessly pounding one another. Then +you are puzzled. Do they keep all these outworn things +because they are incapable of changing anything, or do +these outworn burdens keep them from becoming able to +change anything? I daresay it works both ways. Every +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-170" id="page1-170"></a>[pg I-170]</span> +venerable ruin, every outworn custom, makes the King +more secure; and the King gives veneration to every ruin +and keeps respect for every outworn custom.</p> + +<p>Praise God for the Atlantic Ocean! It is the geographical +foundation of our liberties. Yet, as I've often written, +there are men here, real men, ruling men, mighty men, +and a vigorous stock.</p> + +<p>A civilization, especially an old civilization, isn't an +easy nut to crack. But I notice that the men of vision +keep their thought on us. They never forget that we +are 100 million strong and that we dare do new things; +and they dearly love to ask questions about—Rockefeller! +Our power, our adaptability, our potential wealth they +never forget. They'll hold fast to our favour for reasons +of prudence as well as for reasons of kinship. And, whenever +we choose to assume the leadership of the world, +they'll grant it—gradually—and follow loyally. They +cannot become French, and they dislike the Germans. +They must keep in our boat for safety as well as for +comfort.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Yours heartily,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The following extracts are made from other letters +written at this time:</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>. . . To-night I had a long talk with the Duchess +of X, a kindly woman who spends much time and money +in the most helpful "uplift" work; that's the kind of +woman she is.</p> + +<p>Now she and the Duke are invited to dine at the French +Ambassador's to-morrow night. "If the Duke went into +any house where there was any member of this Government," +said she, "he'd turn and walk out again. We +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-171" id="page1-171"></a>[pg I-171]</span> +thought we'd better find out who the French Ambassador's +guests are. We didn't wish to ask him nor to have +correspondence about it. Therefore the Duke sent his +Secretary quietly to ask the Ambassador's Secretary—before +we accepted."</p> + +<p>This is now a common occurrence. We had Sir Edward +Grey to dinner a little while ago and we had to make sure +we had no Tory guests that night.</p> + +<p>This same Duchess of X sat in the Peeresses' gallery of +the House of Lords to-night till 7 o'clock. "I had to sit in +plain sight of the wives of two members of the Cabinet +and of the wife and daughter of the Prime Minister. I +used to know them," she said, "and it was embarrassing."</p> + +<p>Thus the revolution proceeds. For that's what it is.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>. . . On the other hand the existing order is the +most skilfully devised machinery for perpetuating itself +that has ever grown up among civilized men. Did you +ever see a London directory? It hasn't names alphabetically; +but one section is "Tradesmen," another +"The City," etc., etc., and another "The Court." Any +one who has ever been presented at Court is in the +"Court" section, and you must sometimes look in several +sections to find a man. Yet everybody so values these +distinctions that nobody complains of the inconvenience. +When the Liberal party makes Liberals Peers in order to +have Liberals in the House of Lords, lo! they soon turn +Conservative after they get there. The system perpetuates +itself and stifles the natural desire for change that +most men in a state of nature instinctively desire in order +to assert their own personalities. . . .</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>. . . All this social life which engages us at this +particular season, sets a man to thinking. The mass of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-172" id="page1-172"></a>[pg I-172]</span> +the people are very slow—almost dull; and the privileged +are most firmly entrenched. The really alert people are +the aristocracy. They see the drift of events. "What is +the pleasantest part of your country to live in?" Dowager +Lady X asked me on Sunday, more than half in earnest. +"My husband's ancestors sat in the House of Lords +for six hundred years. My son sits there now—a dummy. +They have taken all power from the Lords; they are taxing +us out of our lands; they are saving the monarchy for +destruction last. England is of the past—all is going. +God knows what is coming." . . .</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>. . . And presently the presentations come. +Lord! how sensible American women scramble for this +privilege! It royally fits a few of them. Well, I've made +some rules about presentations myself, since it's really +a sort of personal perquisite of the Ambassador. One +rule is, I don't present any but handsome women. +Pretty girls: that's what you want when you are getting +up a show. Far too many of ours come here and marry +Englishmen. I think I shall make another rule and exact +a promise that after presentation they shall go home. +But the American women do enliven London. . . .</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>That triumph with the tariff is historic. I wrote to the +President: "Score one!" And I have been telling the +London writers on big subjects, notably the editor of the +<i>Economist</i>, that this event, so quiet and undramatic, +will mark a new epoch in the trade history of the world. . . . +This island is a good breeding place for men +whose children find themselves and develop into real men +in freer lands. All that is needed to show the whole +world that the future is ours is just this sort of an act of +self-confidence. You know the old story of the Negro who +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-173" id="page1-173"></a>[pg I-173]</span> +saw a ghost—"Git outen de way, Mr. Rabbit, and let +somebody come who <i>kin</i> run!" Score one! We're +making History, and these people here know it. The +trade of the world, or as much of it as is profitable, we +may take as we will. The over-taxed, under-productive, +army-burdened men of the Old World—alas! I read +a settled melancholy in much of their statesmanship and +in more of their literature. The most cheerful men in +official life here are the High Commissioners of Canada, +Australia, New Zealand, and such fellows who know what +the English race is doing and can do freed from uniforms +and heavy taxes and class feeling and such like. . . .</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>. . . The two things that this island has of eternal +value are its gardens and its men. Nature sprinkles it +almost every day and holds its moisture down so that +every inch of it is forever green; and somehow men thrive +as the lawns do—the most excellent of all races for +progenitors. You and I<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33" /><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> can never be thankful enough +that our ancestors came of this stock. Even those that +have stayed have cut a wide swath, and they wield good +scythes yet. But I have moods when I pity them—for +their dependence, for instance, on a navy (2 keels to 1) +for their very bread and meat. They frantically resent +conveniences. They build their great law court building +(the architecture ecclesiastical) so as to provide an entrance +hall of imposing proportions which they use once a +year; and to get this fine hall they have to make their +court rooms, which they must use all the time, dark and +small and inaccessible. They think as much of that once-a-year +ceremony of opening their courts as they think of +the even justice that they dispense; somehow they feel +that the justice depends on the ceremony.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-174" id="page1-174"></a>[pg I-174]</span> +</div><p>This moss that has grown all over their lives (some of +it very pretty and most of it very comfortable—it's soft +and warm) is of no great consequence—except that they +think they'd die if it were removed. And this state of +mind gives us a good key to their character and habits.</p> + +<p>What are we going to do with this England and this +Empire, presently, when economic forces unmistakably +put the leadership of the race in our hands? How can +we lead it and use it for the highest purposes of the world +and of democracy? We can do what we like if we go +about it heartily and with good manners (any man prefers +to yield to a gentleman rather than to a rustic) and throw +away—gradually—our isolating fears and alternate boasting +and bashfulness. "What do we most need to learn +from you?" I asked a gentle and bejewelled nobleman +the other Sunday, in a country garden that invited confidences. +"If I may speak without offence, modesty." +A commoner in the company, who had seen the Rocky +Mountains, laughed, and said: "No; see your chance and +take it: that's what we did in the years when we made +the world's history." . . .</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p class="center">FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11" /><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Mr. Irwin Laughlin, first secretary of the American +Embassy in London.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12" /><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> In about a year Page moved the Chancery to the present +satisfactory quarters at No. 4 Grosvenor Gardens.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13" /><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Mrs. Walter H. Page.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14" /><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Miss Katharine A. Page, the Ambassador's daughter.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15" /><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> "Effendi" is the name by which Mr. F.N. Doubleday, Page's +partner, is known to his intimates. It is obviously suggested by the +initials of his name.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16" /><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> A reference to William Sulzer, Governor of New York, who +at this time was undergoing impeachment.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17" /><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> See Chapter VIII, page 258.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18" /><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> The Ambassador's son.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19" /><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Miss Katharine A. Page.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20" /><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Mr. Andrew Carnegie.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21" /><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Mrs. Walter H. Page is the daughter of a Scotchman from +Ayrshire.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22" /><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> The astonishing thing about Page's comment on the +leadership of the United States—if it would only take this +leadership—is that these letters were written in 1913, a year before +the outbreak of the war, and eight years before the Washington +Disarmament Conference of 1921-22.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23" /><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Just what this critical Briton had in mind, in thinking +that the removal of a New York governor created a vacancy in the +Vice-Presidency, is not clear. Possibly, however, he had a cloudy +recollection of the fact that Theodore Roosevelt, after serving as +Governor of New York State, became Vice-President, and may have +concluded from this that the two offices were held by the same man.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24" /><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> For years this idea of the stenographer back of a screen +in the Foreign Office has been abroad, but it is entirely unfounded. +Several years ago a Foreign Secretary, perhaps Lord Salisbury, put a +screen behind his desk to keep off the draughts and from this precaution +the myth arose that it shielded a stenographer who took a complete +record of ambassadorial conversations. After an ambassador leaves, the +Foreign Secretary, however, does write out the important points in the +conversation. Copies are made and printed, and sent to the King, the +Prime Minister, the British Ambassador in the country to which the +interview relates, and occasionally to others. All these records are, of +course, carefully preserved in the archives of the Foreign Office.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25" /><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> The Rev. Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley, the well-known Vicar +of Crosthwaite, Keswick, poet and student of Wordsworth. President +Wilson, who used occasionally to spend his vacation in the Lake region, +was one of his friends.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26" /><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> It is perhaps unnecessary to say that the Ambassador was +thinking only of a diplomatic "fight."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27" /><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> The Underwood Bill revising the tariff "downward" became a +law October, 1913. It was one of the first important measures of the new +Wilson Administration.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28" /><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Secretary of Agriculture in President Wilson's Cabinet.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29" /><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Of Aberdeen, North Carolina, the Ambassador's brother.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30" /><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> Of Pinehurst, North Carolina, the Ambassador's eldest +son.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31" /><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> Mr. and Mrs. Francis B. Sayre, son-in-law and daughter of +President Wilson, at that time on their honeymoon trip in Europe.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32" /><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> Mr. Robert N. Page, the Ambassador's brother, was at this +time a Congressman from North Carolina.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33" /><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> This is from a letter to President Wilson.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-175" id="page1-175"></a>[pg I-175]</span> +</div><h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI" />CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<h3>"POLICY" AND "PRINCIPLE" IN MEXICO</h3> + +<h3>I</h3> + + +<p>The last days of February, 1913, witnessed one of +those sanguinary scenes in Mexico which for generations +had accompanied changes in the government of that +distracted country. A group of revolutionists assailed +the feeble power of Francisco Madero and virtually imprisoned +that executive and his forces in the Presidential +Palace. The Mexican army, whose most influential +officers were General Blanquet and General Victoriano +Huerta, was hastily summoned to the rescue of the Government; +instead of relieving the besieged officials, however, +these generals turned their guns upon them, and so +assured the success of the uprising. The speedy outcome +of these transactions was the assassination of President +Madero and the seizure of the Presidency by General +Huerta. Another outcome was the presentation to Page +of one of the most delicate problems in the history of +Anglo-American relations.</p> + +<p>At almost any other time this change in the Mexican +succession would have caused only a momentary disturbance. +There was nothing new in the violent overthrow of +government in Latin-America; in Mexico itself no president +had ever risen to power except by revolution. The +career of Porfirio Diaz, who had maintained his authority +for a third of a century, had somewhat obscured this +fundamental fact in Mexican politics, but Diaz had dominated +Mexico for seven presidential terms, not because his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-176" id="page1-176"></a>[pg I-176]</span> +methods differed from the accepted methods of his country, +but because he was himself an executive of great force and +a statesman of genius, and could successfully hold his own +against any aspiring antagonist. The civilized world, +including the United States, had long since become +reconciled to this situation as almost a normal one. In +recognizing momentarily successful adventurers, Great +Britain and the United States had never considered such +details as justice or constitutionalism: the legality of the +presidential title had never been the point at issue; +the only question involved was whether the successful +aspirant actually controlled the country, whether he had +established a state of affairs that approximately represented +order, and whether he could be depended upon to +protect life and property. During the long dictatorship of +Porfirio Diaz, however, certain events had taken place +which had awakened the minds of Americans to the possibility +of a new international relationship with all backward +peoples. The consequences of the Spanish War +had profoundly impressed Page. This conflict had left +the United States a new problem in Cuba and the Philippines. +Under the principles that for generations had governed +the Old World there would have been no particular +difficulty in meeting this problem. The United States +would have candidly annexed the islands, and exploited +their resources and their peoples; we should have concerned +ourselves little about any duties that might be +owed to the several millions of human beings who inhabited +them. Indeed, what other alternatives were +there?</p> + +<p>One was to hand the possessions back to Spain, +who in a four hundred years' experiment had demonstrated +her unfitness to govern them; another was to give +the islands their independence, which would have meant +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-177" id="page1-177"></a>[pg I-177]</span> +merely an indefinite continuance of anarchy. It is one +of the greatest triumphs of American statesmanship that +it discovered a more satisfactory solution. Essentially, +the new plan was to establish in these undeveloped +and politically undisciplined regions the fundamental +conditions that may make possible the ultimate creation of +democratic, self-governing states. It was recognized that +constitutions and election ballots in themselves did not +necessarily imply a democratic order. Before these there +must come other things that were far more important, such +as popular education, scientific agriculture, sanitation, public +highways, railroads, and the development of the resources +of nature. If the backward peoples of the world +could be schooled in such a preliminary apprenticeship, +the time might come when the intelligence and the conscience +of the masses would be so enlightened that they +could be trusted with independence. The labour of +Leonard Wood in Cuba, and of other Americans in the +Philippines, had apparently pointed the way to the only +treatment of such peoples that was just to them and +safe for mankind.</p> + +<p>With the experience of Cuba and the Philippines as +a guide, it is not surprising that the situation in Mexico +appealed to many Americans as opening a similar opportunity +to the United States. The two facts that outstood +all others were that Mexico, in her existing condition +of popular ignorance, could not govern herself, and that +the twentieth century could not accept indefinitely a +condition of disorder and bloodshed that had apparently +satisfied the nineteenth. The basic difficulty in this +American republic was one of race and of national +character. The fact that was constantly overlooked was +that Mexico was not a Caucasian country: it was a great +shambling Indian Republic. Of its 15,000,000 people less +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-178" id="page1-178"></a>[pg I-178]</span> +than 3,000,000 were of unmixed white blood, about 35 per +cent. were pure Indian, and the rest represented varying +mixtures of white and aboriginal stock. The masses had +advanced little in civilization since the days of Cortez. +Eighty per cent. were illiterate; their lives for the most +part were a dull and squalid routine; protection against +disease was unknown; the agricultural methods were +most primitive; the larger number still spoke the native +dialects which had been used in the days of Montezuma; +and over good stretches of the country the old tribal +régime still represented the only form of political +organization. The one encouraging feature was that these +Mexican Indians, backward as they might be, were far +superior to the other native tribes of the North American +Continent; in ancient times, they had developed +a state of society far superior to that of the traditional +Redskin. Nevertheless, it was true that the progress of +Mexico in the preceding fifty years had been due almost entirely +to foreign enterprise. By 1913, about 75,000 Americans +were living in Mexico as miners, engineers, merchants, +and agriculturists; American investments amounted to +about $1,200,000,000—a larger sum than that of all the +other foreigners combined. Though the work of European +countries, particularly Great Britain, was important, yet +Mexico was practically an economic colony of the United +States. Most observers agree that these foreign activities +had not only profited the foreigners, but that they had +greatly benefited the Mexicans themselves. The enterprise +of Americans had disclosed enormous riches, had +given hundreds of thousands employment at very high +wages, had built up new Mexican towns on modern American +lines, had extended the American railway system +over a large part of the land, and had developed street +railways, electric lighting, and other modern necessities +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-179" id="page1-179"></a>[pg I-179]</span> +in all sections of the Republic. The opening up of Mexican +oil resources was perhaps the most typical of these +achievements, as it was certainly the most adventurous. +Americans had created this, perhaps the greatest of Mexican +industries, and in 1913, these Americans owned nearly +80 per cent. of Mexican oil. Their success had persuaded +several Englishmen, the best known of whom was Lord +Cowdray, to enter this same field. The activities of the +Americans and the British in oil had an historic significance +which was not foreseen in 1913, but which assumed +the greatest importance in the World War; for the oil +drawn from these Mexican fields largely supplied the +Allied fleets and thus became an important element in the +defeat of the Central Powers. In 1913, however, American +and British oil operators were objects of general suspicion +in both continents. They were accused of participating +too actively in Mexican politics and there were +those who even held them responsible for the revolutionary +condition of the country. One picturesque legend insisted +that the American oil interests looked with jealous +hostility upon the great favours shown by the Diaz Administration +to Lord Cowdray's company, and that they +had instigated the Madero revolution in order to put in +power politicians who would be more friendly to themselves. +The inevitable complement to this interpretation +of events was a prevailing suspicion that the Cowdray +interests had promoted the Huerta revolt in order to turn +the tables on "Standard Oil," to make safe the "concessions" +already obtained from Diaz and to obtain still +more from the new Mexican dictator.</p> + +<p>To determine the truth in all these allegations, which +were freely printed in the American press of the time, +would demand more facts than are at present available; +yet it is clear that these oil and other "concessions" presented +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-180" id="page1-180"></a>[pg I-180]</span> +the perpetual Mexican problem in a new and difficult +light. The Wilson Administration came into power +a few days after Huerta had seized the Mexican Government. +The first difficulty presented to the State Department +was to determine its attitude toward this usurper.</p> + +<p>A few days after President Wilson's inauguration Mr. +Irwin Laughlin, then Chargé d'Affaires in London—this +was several weeks before Page's arrival—was instructed +to ask the British Foreign Office what its attitude would +be in regard to the recognition of President Huerta. Mr. +Laughlin informed the Foreign Office that he was not instructed +that the United States had decided on any policy, +but that he felt sure it would be to the advantage of both +countries to follow the same line. The query was not an +informal one; it was made in definite obedience to instructions +and was intended to elicit a formal commitment. +The unequivocal answer that Mr. Laughlin received was +that the British Government would not recognize Huerta, +either formally or tacitly.</p> + +<p>Mr. Laughlin sent his message immediately to Washington, +where it apparently made a favourable impression. +The Administration then let it be known that the United +States would not recognize the new Mexican régime. +Whether Mr. Wilson would at this time have taken such a +position, irrespective of the British attitude, is not known, +but at this stage of the proceedings Great Britain and the +United States were standing side by side.</p> + +<p>About three weeks afterward Mr. Laughlin heard that +the British Foreign Office was about to recognize Huerta. +Naturally the report astonished him; he at once called +again on the Foreign Office, taking with him the despatch +that he had recently sent to Washington. Why had the +British Government recognized Huerta when it had given +definite assurances to Washington that it had no intention +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-181" id="page1-181"></a>[pg I-181]</span> +of doing so? The outcome of the affair was that Sir Cecil +Spring Rice, British Ambassador in Washington, was instructed +to inform the State Department that Great +Britain had changed its mind. France, Germany, Spain, +and most other governments followed the British example +in recognizing the new President of Mexico.</p> + +<p>It is thus apparent that the initial mistake in the Huerta +affair was made by Great Britain. Its action produced +the most unpleasant impression upon the new Administration. +Mr. Wilson, Mr. Bryan, and their associates in +the cabinet easily found an explanation that was satisfactory +to themselves and to the political enthusiasms +upon which they had come into power. They believed +that the sudden change in the British attitude was the result +of pressure from British commercial interests which +hoped to profit from the Huerta influence. Lord Cowdray +was a rich and powerful Liberal; he had great concessions +in Mexico which had been obtained from President +Diaz; it was known that Huerta aimed to make his +dictatorship a continuation of that of Diaz, to rule Mexico +as Diaz had ruled it, that is, by force, and to extend a +welcoming hand to foreign capitalists. An important consideration +was that the British Navy had a contract with +the Cowdray Company for oil, which was rapidly becoming +indispensable as a fuel for warships, and this fact +necessarily made the British Government almost a champion +of the Cowdray interests. It was not necessary to +believe all the rumours that were then afloat in the American +press to conclude that a Huerta administration would +be far more acceptable to the Cowdray Company than +any headed by one of the military chieftains who were +then disputing the control of Mexico. Mr. Wilson and +Mr. Bryan believed that these events proved that certain +"interests," similar to the "interests" which, in their view, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-182" id="page1-182"></a>[pg I-182]</span> +had exercised so baleful an influence on American politics, +were also active in Great Britain. The Wilson election +in 1912 had been a protest against the dominance of "Wall +Street" in American politics; Mr. Bryan's political stock-in-trade +for a generation had consisted of little except a +campaign against these forces; naturally, therefore, the +suspicion that Great Britain was giving way to a British +"Standard Oil" was enough to arm these statesmen +against the Huerta policy, and to intensify that profound +dislike of Huerta himself that was soon to become almost +an obsession.</p> + +<p>With this as a starting point President Wilson presently +formulated an entirely new principle for dealing with +Latin-American republics. There could be no permanent +order in these turbulent countries and nothing approaching +a democratic system until the habit of revolution +should he checked. One of the greatest encouragements +to revolution, said the President, was the willingness +of foreign governments to recognize any politician who +succeeded in seizing the executive power. He therefore +believed that a refusal to recognize any government +"founded upon violence" would exercise a wholesome influence +in checking this national habit; if Great Britain +and the United States and the other powers would set +the example by refusing to have any diplomatic dealings +with General Huerta, such an unfriendly attitude would +discourage other forceful intriguers from attempting to +repeat his experiment. The result would be that the +decent elements in Mexico and other Latin-American +countries would at last assert themselves, establish a +constitutional system, and select their governments by +constitutional means. At the bottom of the whole business +were, in the President's and Mr. Bryan's opinion, +the "concession" seekers, the "exploiters," who were constantly +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-183" id="page1-183"></a>[pg I-183]</span> +obtaining advantages at the hands of these +corrupt governments and constantly stirring up revolutions +for their financial profit. The time had now come to +end the whole miserable business. "We are closing one +chapter in the history of the world," said Mr. Wilson, +"and opening another of unimaginable significance. . . . +It is a very perilous thing to determine the foreign +policy of a nation in the terms of material interests. . . . +We have seen such material interests threaten +constitutional freedom in the United States. Therefore +we will now know how to sympathize with those in the +rest of America who have to contend with such powers, +not only within their borders, but from outside their borders."</p> + +<p>In this way General Huerta, who, in his own eyes, was +merely another in the long succession of Mexican revolutionary +chieftains, was translated into an epochal figure +in the history of American foreign policy; he became a +symbol in Mr. Wilson's new scheme of things—the representative +of the order which was to come to an end, the +man who, all unwittingly, was to point the new way not +only in Mexico, but in all Latin-American countries. +The first diplomatic task imposed upon Page therefore +was one that would have dismayed a more experienced +ambassador. This was to persuade Great Britain to +retrace its steps, to withdraw its recognition of Huerta, +and to join hands with the United States in bringing +about his downfall. The new ambassador sympathized +with Mr. Wilson's ideas to a certain extent; the point +at which he parted company with the President's Mexican +policy will appear in due course. He therefore began +zealously to preach the new Latin-American doctrine to +the British Foreign Office, with results that appear in his +letters of this period.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-184" id="page1-184"></a>[pg I-184]</span> +</div><p><i>To the President</i></p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">6 Grosvenor Square, London,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Friday night, October 24, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:</p> + +<p>In this wretched Mexican business, about which I have +read columns and columns and columns of comment these +two days and turned every conceivable proposition back +and forth in my mind—in this whole wretched waste of +comment, I have not seen even an allusion to any moral +principle involved nor a word of concern about the Mexican +people. It is all about who is the stronger, Huerta +or some other bandit, and about the necessity of order +for the sake of financial interests. Nobody recalls our +action in giving Cuba to the Cubans or our pledge to the +people of the Philippine Islands. But there is reference +to the influence of Standard Oil in the American policy. +This illustrates the complete divorce of European politics +from fundamental morals, and it shocks even a man who +before knew of this divorce.</p> + +<p>In my last talk with Sir Edward Grey I drove this home +by emphasizing strongly the impossibility of your playing +primary heed to any American business interest in Mexico—even +the immorality of your doing so; there are many +things that come before business and there are some things +that come before order. I used American business interests +because I couldn't speak openly of British business +interests and his Government. I am sure he saw the +obvious inference. But not even from him came a word +about the moral foundation of government or about the +welfare of the Mexican people. These are not in the +European governing vocabulary.</p> + +<p>I have been trying to find a way to help this Government +to wake up to the effect of its pro-Huerta position +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-185" id="page1-185"></a>[pg I-185]</span> +and to give them a chance to refrain from repeating that +mistake—and to save their faces; and I have telegraphed +one plan to Mr. Bryan to-day. I think they ought now +to be forced to show their hand without the possibility of +evasion. They will not risk losing our good-will—if it +seem wise to you to put them to a square test.</p> + +<p>It's a wretched business, and the sordid level of European +statecraft is sad.</p> + +<p>I ran across the Prime Minister at the royal wedding +reception<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34" /><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> the other day.</p> + +<p>"What do you infer from the latest news from Mexico?" +he asked.</p> + +<p>"Several things."</p> + +<p>"Tell me the most important inference you draw."</p> + +<p>"Well, the danger of prematurely making up one's +mind about a Mexican adventurer."</p> + +<p>"Ah!" and he moved on.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Very heartily yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To the President</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, Sunday, Nov. 16, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>. . . About the obligations and inferences of democracy, +they are dense. They don't really believe in it; +and they are slow to see what good will come of ousting +Huerta unless we know beforehand who will succeed +him. Sir Edward Grey is not dense, but in this matter +even he is slow fully to understand. The Lord knows +I've told him plainly over and over again and, I fear, even +preached to him. At first he couldn't see the practical +nature of so "idealistic" a programme. I explained to +him how the immemorial "policy" that we all followed of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-186" id="page1-186"></a>[pg I-186]</span> +recognizing momentarily successful adventurers in Latin-America +had put a premium on revolution; that you had +found something better than a policy, namely, a principle; +that policies change, but principles do not; that he need +not he greatly concerned about the successor to Huerta; +that this is primarily and ultimately an American problem; +that Great Britain's interest being only commercial +is far less than the interest of the United States, which +is commercial and also ethical; and so on and so on. His +sympathies and his friendliness are all right. But +Egypt and India were in his mind. He confessed to me +that he was much impressed—"if you can carry it +through." Many men are seeing the new idea (I wonder +if you are conscious how new it is and how incredible to +the Old World mind?) and they express the greatest and +sincerest admiration for "your brave new President"; +and a wave of friendliness to the United States swept over +the Kingdom when the Government took its open stand. +At the annual dinner of the oldest and richest of the +merchants' guilds at which they invited me to respond +to a toast the other night they proposed your health most +heartily and, when I arose, they cheered longer and louder +than I had before heard men cheer in this kingdom. +There is, I am sure, more enthusiasm for the United +States here, by far, than for England in the United +States. They are simply dense about any sort of government +but their own—particularly dense about the +application of democracy to "dependencies" and inferior +peoples. I have a neighbour who spent many years as +an administrator in India. He has talked me deaf about +the inevitable failure of this "idealistic" Mexican programme. +He is wholly friendly, and wholly incredulous. +And for old-time Toryism gone to seed commend me to +the <i>Spectator</i>. Not a glimmering of the idea has entered +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-187" id="page1-187"></a>[pg I-187]</span> +Strachey's head. The <i>Times</i>, however, now sees it pretty +clearly. I spent Sunday a few weeks ago with two of its +editors in the country, and they have come to see me +several times since and written fairly good "leaders" +out of my conversation with them. So much for this +head. For the moment at least that is satisfactory. You +must not forget that they can't all at once take it in, for +they do not really know what democracy is or whither it +leads and at bottom they do not really believe in it as a +scheme of government—not even this Liberal Cabinet.</p> + +<p>The British concern for commercial interests, which +never sleeps, will, I fear, come up continuously. But +we shall simply do justice and stand firm, when this +phase of the subject comes forward.</p> + +<p>It's amusing, when you forget its sadness, that their +first impulse is to regard an unselfish international act +as what Cecil Rhodes called the English "unctuous rectitude." +But this experience that we are having with +them will be worth much in future dealings. They already +feel very clearly that a different hand has the helm +in Washington; and we can drive them hard, if need be, +for they will not forfeit our friendship.</p> + +<p>It is worth something to discover that Downing Street +makes many mistakes. Infallibility dwells a long way +from them. In this matter they have made two terrible +blunders—the recognition of Huerta (they know that +now) and the sending of Carden (they may already suspect +that: they'll know it presently).</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Yours always faithfully,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>P.S. By Jove, I didn't know that I'd ever have to put +the British Government through an elementary course in +Democracy!</p> + +<p>To the President.</p></div> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-188" id="page1-188"></a>[pg I-188]</span> +</div><p>Occasionally Page discussed with Sir Edward Grey an +alternative American policy which was in the minds of +most people at that time:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>To the President</i></p> + +<p>. . . The foregoing I wrote before this Mexican +business took its present place. I can't get away from +the feeling that the English simply do not and will not +believe in any unselfish public action—further than the +keeping of order. They have a mania for order, sheer +order, order for the sake of order. They can't see how +anything can come in any one's thought before order or +how anything need come afterward. Even Sir Edward +Grey jocularly ran me across our history with questions +like this:</p> + +<p>"Suppose you have to intervene, what then?"</p> + +<p>"Make 'em vote and live by their decisions."</p> + +<p>"But suppose they will not so live?"</p> + +<p>"We'll go in again and make 'em vote again."</p> + +<p>"And keep this up 200 years?" asked he.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said I. "The United States will he here two +hundred years and it can continue to shoot men for that +little space till they learn to vote and to rule themselves."</p> + +<p>I have never seen him laugh so heartily. Shooting +men into self-government! Shooting them into orderliness—he +comprehends that; and that's all right. But +that's as far as his habit of mind goes. At Sheffield last +night, when I had to make a speech, I explained "idealism" +(they always quote it) in Government. They listened +attentively and even eagerly. Then they came up +and asked if I really meant that Government should concern +itself with idealistic things—beyond keeping order. +Ought they to do so in India?—I assure you they don't +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-189" id="page1-189"></a>[pg I-189]</span> +think beyond order. A nigger lynched in Mississippi +offends them more than a tyrant in Mexico.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, November 2, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR HOUSE:</p> + +<p>I've been writing to the President that the Englishman +has a mania for order, order for order's sake, and for—trade. +He has reduced a large part of the world to order. +He is the best policeman in creation; and—he has the +policeman's ethics! Talk to him about character as a +basis of government or about a moral basis of government +in any outlying country, he'll think you daft. Bah! +what matter who governs or how he governs or where he +got his authority or how, so long as he keeps order. He +won't see anything else. The lesson of our dealing with +Cuba is lost on him. He doesn't believe <i>that</i>. We may +bring this Government in line with us on Mexico. But +in this case and in general, the moral uplift of government +must be forced by us—I mean government in outlying +countries.</p> + +<p>Mexico is only part of Central America, and the only +way we can ever forge a Central and South American +policy that will endure is <i>this</i> way, precisely, by saying +that your momentarily successful adventurer can't count +on us anywhere; the man that rules must govern for the +governed. Then we have a policy; and nobody else has +that policy. This Mexican business is worth worlds to +us—to establish this.</p> + +<p>We may have a diplomatic fight here; and I'm ready! +Very ready on this, for its own sake and for reasons that +follow, to wit:</p> + +<p>Extraordinary and sincere and profound as is the respect +of the English for the American people, they hold +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-190" id="page1-190"></a>[pg I-190]</span> +the American Government in contempt. It shifts and +doesn't keep its treaty, etc., etc.—They are right, too. +But they need to feel the hand that now has the helm.</p> + +<p>But one or two things have first to be got out of the +way. That Panama tolls is the worst. We are dead +wrong in that, as we are dead right on the Mexican +matter. If it were possible (I don't know that it is) for +the President to say (quietly, not openly) that he agrees +with us—if he do—then the field would be open for a fight +on Mexico; and the reënforcement of our position would +he incalculable.</p> + +<p>Then we need in Washington some sort of Bureau or +Master of Courtesies for the Government, to do and to +permit us to do those little courtesies that the English +spend half their time in doing—this in the course of our +everyday life and intercourse. For example: When I was +instructed to inform this Government that our fleet would +go to the Mediterranean, I was instructed also to say that +they mustn't trouble to welcome us—don't pay no 'tention +to us! Well, that's what they live for in times of +peace—ceremonies. We come along and say, "We're +comin' but, hell! don't kick up no fuss over us, we're from +Missouri, we are!" And the Briton shrugs his shoulders +and says, "Boor!" These things are happening all the +time. Of course no one nor a dozen nor a hundred count; +but generations of 'em have counted badly. A Government +without manners.</p> + +<p>If I could outdo these folk at their game of courtesy, +and could keep our treaty faith with 'em, then I could lick +'em into the next century on the moral aspects of the +Mexican Government, and make 'em look up and salute +every time the American Government is mentioned. +See?—Is there any hope?—Such is the job exactly. And +you know what it would lead to—even in our lifetime—<i>to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-191" id="page1-191"></a>[pg I-191]</span> +the leadership of the world</i>: and we should presently be +considering how we may best use the British fleet, the +British Empire, and the English race for the betterment +of mankind.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Yours eagerly,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>A word of caution is necessary to understand Page's +references to the British democracy. That the parliamentary +system is democratic in the sense that it is responsive +to public opinion he would have been the first to +admit. That Great Britain is a democracy in the sense +that the suffrage is general is also apparent. But, in +these reflections on the British commonwealth, the Ambassador +was thinking of his old familiar figure, the +"Forgotten Man"—the neglected man, woman, and child +of the masses. In an address delivered, in June, 1914, +before the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Page gave +what he regarded as the definition of the American +ideal. "The fundamental article in the creed of the +American democracy—you may call it the fundamental +dogma if you like—is the unchanging and unchangeable +resolve that every human being shall have his opportunity +for his utmost development—his chance to become and +to do the best that he can." Democracy is not only a +system of government—"it is a scheme of society." +Every citizen must have not only the suffrage, he must +likewise enjoy the same advantages as his neighbour for +education, for social opportunity, for good health, for +success in agriculture, manufacture, finance, and business +and professional life. The country that most successfully +opened all these avenues to every boy or girl, exclusively +on individual merit, was in Page's view the most +democratic. He believed that the United States did this +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-192" id="page1-192"></a>[pg I-192]</span> +more completely than Great Britain or any other country; +and therefore he believed that we were far more democratic. +He had not found in other countries the splendid +phenomenon presented by America's great agricultural +region. "The most striking single fact about the United +States is, I think, this spectacle, which, so far as I know, +is new in the world: On that great agricultural area are +about seven million farms of an average size of about 140 +acres, most of which are tilled by the owners themselves, +a population that varies greatly, of course, in its thrift +and efficiency, but most of which is well housed, in houses +they themselves own, well clad, well fed, and a population +that trains practically all its children in schools maintained +by public taxation." It was some such vision as +this that Page hoped to see realized ultimately in Mexico. +And some such development as this would make +Mexico a democracy. It was his difficulty in making +the British see the Mexican problem in this light that +persuaded him that, in this comprehensive meaning of +the word, the democratic ideal had made an inappreciable +progress in Europe—and even in Great Britain itself.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>These letters are printed somewhat out of their chronological +order because they picture definitely the two +opposing viewpoints of Great Britain and the United +States on Mexico and Latin-America generally. Here, +then, was the sharp issue drawn between the Old World +and the New—on one side the dreary conception of outlying +countries as fields to be exploited for the benefit of +"investors," successful revolutionists to be recognized in +so far as they promoted such ends, and no consideration +to be shown to the victims of their rapacity; and the +new American idea, the idea which had been made reality +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-193" id="page1-193"></a>[pg I-193]</span> +in Cuba and the Philippines, that the enlightened and +successful nations stood something in the position of +trustees to such unfortunate lands and that it was their +duty to lead them along the slow pathway of progress +and democracy. So far the Wilsonian principle could be +joyfully supported by the Ambassador. Page disagreed +with the President, however, in that he accepted the +logical consequences of this programme. His formula of +"shooting people into self-government," which had so +entertained the British Foreign Secretary, was a +characteristically breezy description of the alternative that +Page, in the last resort, was ready to adopt, but which +President Wilson and Secretary Bryan persistently refused +to consider. Page was just as insistent as the +Washington Administration that Huerta should resign +and that Great Britain should assist the United States +in accomplishing his dethronement, and that the Mexican +people should have a real opportunity of setting up for +themselves. He was not enough of an "idealist," however, +to believe that the Mexicans, without the assistance +of their powerful neighbours, could succeed in establishing +a constitutional government. In early August, 1913, +President Wilson sent Mr. John Lind, ex-Governor of +Minnesota, to Mexico as his personal representative. +His mission was to invite Huerta to remove himself +from Mexican politics, and to permit the Mexican people +to hold a presidential election at which Huerta would +himself agree not to be a candidate. Mr. Lind presented +these proposals on August 15th, and President Huerta rejected +every one of them with a somewhat disconcerting +promptitude.</p> + +<p>That Page was prepared to accept the consequences of +this failure appears in the following letter. The lack of +confidence which it discloses in Secretary Bryan was a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-194" id="page1-194"></a>[pg I-194]</span> +feeling that became stronger as the Mexican drama unfolded.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, August 25, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR HOUSE:</p> + +<p>. . . If you find a chance, get the substance of this +memorandum into the hands of two men: the President +and the Secretary of Agriculture. Get 'em in Houston's +at once—into the President's whenever the time is ripe. +I send the substance to Washington and I send many +other such things. But I never feel sure that they reach +the President. The most confidential letter I have +written was lost in Washington, and there is pretty good +testimony that it reached the Secretary's desk. He does +not acknowledge the important things, but writes me +confidentially to inquire if the office of the man who +attends to the mail pouches (the diplomatic and naval +despatches in London<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35" /><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a>) is not an office into which he +might put a Democrat.—But I keep at it. It would he +a pleasure to know that the President knows what I +am trying to do. . . .</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Yours heartily,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Following is the memorandum:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>In October the provisional recognition of Huerta by +England will end. Then this Government will be free. +Then is the time for the United States to propose to +England joint intervention merely to reduce this turbulent +scandal of a country to order—on an agreement, of +course, to preserve the territorial integrity of Mexico. +It's a mere police duty that all great nations have to do—as +they did in the case of the Boxer riots in China. Of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-195" id="page1-195"></a>[pg I-195]</span> +course Germany and France, etc., ought to be invited—on +the same pledge: the preservation of territorial integrity. +If Germany should come in, she will thereby +practically acknowledge the Monroe Doctrine, as England +has already done. If Germany stay out, then she can't +complain. England and the United States would have +only to announce their intention: there'd be no need to +fire a gun. Besides settling the Mexican trouble, we'd +gain much—having had England by our side in a praise-worthy +enterprise. That, and the President's visit<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36" /><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> +would give the world notice to whom it belongs, and +cause it to be quiet and to go about its proper business of +peaceful industry.</p> + +<p>Moreover, it would show all the Central and South +American States that we don't want any of their territory, +that we will not let anybody else have any, but that they, +too, must keep orderly government or the great Nations +of the earth, will, at our bidding, forcibly demand quiet in +their borders. I believe a new era of security would come +in all Spanish America. Investments would be safer, +governments more careful and orderly. And—we would +not have made any entangling alliance with anybody. All +this would prevent perhaps dozens of little wars. It's +merely using the English fleet and ours to make the world +understand that the time has come for orderliness and +peace and for the honest development of backward, turbulent +lands and peoples.</p> + +<p>If you don't put this through, tell me what's the +matter with it. I've sent it to Washington after talking +and being talked to for a month and after the hardest +kind of thinking. Isn't this constructive? Isn't it using +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-196" id="page1-196"></a>[pg I-196]</span> +the great power lying idle about the world, to do the thing +that most needs to be done?</p></div> + +<p>Colonel House presented this memorandum to the +President, but events sufficiently disclosed that it had no +influence upon his Mexican policy. Two days after it +was written Mr. Wilson went before Congress, announced +that the Lind Mission had failed, and that conditions in +Mexico had grown worse. He advised all Americans to +leave the country, and declared that he would lay an +embargo on the shipment of munitions—an embargo +that would affect both the Huerta forces and the revolutionary +groups that were fighting them.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Great Britain had taken another step that +made as unpleasant an impression on Washington as had +the recognition of Huerta. Sir Lionel Edward Gresley +Carden had for several years been occupying British +diplomatic posts in Central America, in all of which he +had had disagreeable social and diplomatic relations with +Americans. Sir Lionel had always shown great zeal in +promoting British commercial interests, and, justly or +unjustly, had acquired the fame of being intensely +anti-American. From 1911 to 1913 Carden had served as +British Minister to Cuba; here his anti-Americanism had +shown itself in such obnoxious ways that Mr. Knox, +Secretary of State under President Taft, had instructed +Ambassador Reid to bring his behaviour to the attention +of the British Foreign Office. These representations took +practically the form of requesting Carden's removal from +Cuba. Perhaps the unusual relations that the United +States bore toward Cuba warranted Mr. Knox in making +such an approach; yet the British refused to see the matter +in that light; not only did they fail to displace Carden, +but they knighted him—the traditional British way of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-197" id="page1-197"></a>[pg I-197]</span> +defending a faithful public servant who has been attacked. +Sir Lionel Carden refused to mend his ways; +he continued to indulge in what Washington regarded as +anti-American propaganda; and a second time Secretary +Knox intimated that his removal would he acceptable to +this country, and a second time this request was refused. +With this preliminary history of Carden as a background, +and with the British-American misunderstanding over +Huerta at its most serious stage, the emotions of Washington +may well be imagined when the news came, in July, +1913, that this same gentleman had been appointed +British Minister to Mexico. If the British Government +had ransacked its diplomatic force to find the one man +who would have been most objectionable to the United +States, it could have made no better selection. The +President and Mr. Bryan were pretty well persuaded that +the "oil concessionaires" were dictating British-Mexican +policy, and this appointment translated their suspicion +into a conviction. Carden had seen much service in +Mexico; he had been on the friendliest terms with Diaz; +and the newspapers openly charged that the British oil +capitalists had dictated his selection. All these assertions +Carden and the oil interests denied; yet Carden's +behaviour from the day of his appointment showed great +hostility to the United States. A few days after he had +reached New York, on his way to his new post, the New +York <i>World</i> published an interview with Carden in which +he was reported as declaring that President Wilson knew +nothing about the Mexican situation and in which he +took the stand that Huerta was the man to handle +Mexico at this crisis. His appearance in the Mexican +capital was accompanied by other highly undiplomatic +publications. In late October President Huerta arrested +all his enemies in the Mexican Congress, threw them +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-198" id="page1-198"></a>[pg I-198]</span> +into jail, and proclaimed himself dictator. Washington +was much displeased that Sir Lionel Carden should have +selected the day of these high-handed proceedings to +present to Huerta his credentials as minister; in its sensitive +condition, the State Department interpreted this +act as a reaffirmation of that recognition that had already +caused so much confusion in Mexican affairs.</p> + +<p>Carden made things worse by giving out more newspaper +interviews, a tendency that had apparently grown +into a habit. "I do not believe that the United States +recognizes the seriousness of the situation here. . . . I +see no reason why Huerta should be displaced by another +man whose abilities are yet to be tried. . . . Safety +in Mexico can be secured only by punitive and remedial +methods, and a strong man;"—such were a few of the reflections +that the reporters attributed to this astonishing +diplomat. Meanwhile, the newspapers were filled with +reports that the British Minister was daily consorting +with Huerta, that he was constantly strengthening that +chieftain's backbone in opposition to the United States +and that he was obtaining concessions in return for this +support. To what extent these press accounts rested on +fact cannot be ascertained definitely at this time; yet it +is a truth that Carden's general behaviour gave great +encouragement to Huerta and that it had the deplorable +effect of placing Great Britain and the United States in +opposition. The interpretation of the casual reader was +that Great Britain was determined to seat Huerta in the +Presidency against the determination of the United +States to keep him out. The attitude of the Washington +cabinet was almost bitter at this time against the British +Government. "There is a feeling here," wrote Secretary +Lane to Page, "that England is playing a game unworthy +of her."</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-199" id="page1-199"></a>[pg I-199]</span> +</div><p>The British Government promptly denied the authenticity +of the Carden interview, but that helped matters +little, for the American public insisted on regarding such +denials as purely diplomatic. Something of a storm +against Carden arose in England itself, where it was +believed that his conception of his duties was estranging +two friendly countries. Probably the chief difficulty was +that the British Foreign Office could see no logical sequence +in the Washington policy. Put Huerta out—yes, +by all means: but what then? Page's notes of his visit +to Sir Edward Grey a few days after the latest Carden +interview confirm this:</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>I have just come from an hour's talk with Grey about +Mexico. He showed me his telegram to Carden, asking +about Carden's reported interview criticizing the United +States, and Carden's flat denial. He showed me another +telegram to Carden about Huerta's reported boast that +he would have the backing of London, Paris, and Berlin +against the United States, in which Grey advised Carden +that British policy should be to keep aloof from Huerta's +boasts and plans. Carden denied that Huerta made such +a boast in his statement to the Diplomatic Gorps. Grey +wishes the President to know of these telegrams.</p> + +<p>Talk then became personal and informal. I went over +the whole subject again, telling how the Press and people +of the United States were becoming critical of the British +Government; that they regarded the problem as wholly +American; that they resented aid to Huerta, whom they +regarded as a mere tyrant; that they suspected British +interests of giving financial help to Huerta; that many +newspapers and persons refused to believe Carden's denial; +that the President's policy was not academic but +was the only policy that would square with American +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-200" id="page1-200"></a>[pg I-200]</span> +ideals and that it was unchangeable. I cited our treatment +of Cuba. I explained again that I was talking unofficially +and giving him only my own interpretation of +the people's mood. He asked, if the British Government +should withdraw the recognition of Huerta, what would +happen.</p> + +<p>"In my opinion," I replied, "he would collapse."</p> + +<p>"What would happen then—worse chaos?"</p> + +<p>"That is impossible," I said. "There is no worse +chaos than deputies in jail, the dictatorial doubling of the +tariff, the suppression of opinion, and the practical banishment +of independent men. If Huerta should fall, +there is hope that suppressed men and opinion will set up +a successful government."</p> + +<p>"Suppose that fail," he asked—"what then?"</p> + +<p>I replied that, in case of continued and utter failure, +the United States might feel obliged to repeat its dealings +with Cuba and that the continued excitement of opinion +in the United States might precipitate this.</p> + +<p>Grey protested that he knew nothing of what British +interests had done or were doing, that he wished time to +think the matter out and that he was glad to await the +President's communication. He thanked me cordially +for my frank statements and declared that he understood +perfectly their personal nature. I impressed him with +the seriousness of American public opinion.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The last thing that the British Government desired +at this time was a serious misunderstanding with the +United States, on Mexico or any other matter. Yet the +Mexican situation, in early November, 1913, clearly demanded +a complete cleaning up. The occasion soon presented +itself. Sir William Tyrrell, the private secretary +of Sir Edward Grey sailed, in late October, for the United +States. The purpose of his visit was not diplomatic, but +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-201" id="page1-201"></a>[pg I-201]</span> +Page evidently believed that his presence in the United +States offered too good an opportunity to be lost.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To Edward M. House</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Newton Hall, Newton, Cambridge.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Sunday, October 26, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR HOUSE:</p> + +<p>Sir William Tyrrell, the secretary of Sir Edward Grey—himself, +I think, an M.P.—has gone to the United States +to visit his friend, Sir Cecil Spring Rice. He sailed yesterday, +going first to Dublin, N.H., thence with the Ambassador +to Washington. He has never before been to +the United States, and he went off in high glee, alone, +to see it. He's a good fellow, a thoroughly good fellow, +and he's an important man. He of course has Sir Edward's +complete confidence, but he's also a man on +his own account. I have come to reckon it worth +while to get ideas that I want driven home into his +head. It's a good head and a good place to put good +ideas.</p> + +<p>The Lord knows you have far too much to do; but in +this juncture I should count it worth your while to pay +him some attention. I want him to get the President's +ideas about Mexico, good and firm and hard. They are +so far from altruistic in their politics here that it would +be a good piece of work to get our ideas and aims into +this man's head. His going gives you and the President +and everybody a capital chance to help me keep our good +American-English understanding.</p> + +<p>Whatever happen in Mexico, I'm afraid there will be +a disturbance of the very friendly feeling between the +American people and the English. I am delivering a +series of well-thought-out discourses to Sir Edward—with +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-202" id="page1-202"></a>[pg I-202]</span> +what effect, I don't know. If the American press +could be held in a little, that would be as good as it is +impossible.</p> + +<p>I'm now giving the Foreign Office the chance to refrain +from more premature recognizing.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Very hastily yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Sir William Tyrrell, to whom Page refers so pleasantly, +was one of the most engaging men personally in the +British Foreign Office, as well as one of the most influential. +Though he came to America on no official mission +to our Government, he was exceptionally qualified to +discuss Mexico and other pending questions with the +Washington Administration. He had an excellent background, +and a keen insight into the human aspects +of all problems, but perhaps his most impressive physical +trait was a twinkling eye, as his most conspicuous +mental quality was certainly a sense of humour. +Constant association with Sir Edward Grey had given his +mind a cast not dissimilar to that of his chief—a belief +in ordinary decency in international relations, an enthusiasm +for the better ordering of the world, a sincere admiration +for the United States and a desire to maintain +British-American friendship. In his first encounter with +official Washington Sir William needed all that sense of +the ludicrous with which he is abundantly endowed. +This took the form of a long interview with Secretary +Bryan on the foreign policy of Great Britain. The +Secretary harangued Sir William on the wickedness of +the British Empire, particularly in Egypt and India and +in Mexico. The British oil men, Mr. Bryan declared, was +nothing but the "paymasters" of the British Cabinet.</p> + +<p>"You are wrong," replied the Englishman, who saw +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-203" id="page1-203"></a>[pg I-203]</span> +that the only thing to do on an occasion of this kind was +to refuse to take the Secretary seriously. "Lord Cowdray +hasn't money enough. Through a long experience with +corruption the Cabinet has grown so greedy that Cowdray +hasn't the money necessary to reach their price."</p> + +<p>"Ah," said Mr. Bryan, triumphantly, accepting Sir +William's bantering answer as made in all seriousness. +"Then you admit the charge."</p> + +<p>From this he proceeded to denounce Great Britain in +still more unmeasured terms. The British, he declared, +had only one interest in Mexico, and that was oil. The +Foreign Office had simply handed its Mexican policy +over to the "oil barons" for predatory purposes.</p> + +<p>"That's just what the Standard Oil people told me in +New York," the British diplomat replied. "Mr. Secretary, +you are talking just like a Standard Oil man. The +ideas that you hold are the ones which the Standard Oil +is disseminating. You are pursuing the policy which +they have decided on. Without knowing it you are +promoting the interest of Standard Oil."</p> + +<p>Sir William saw that it was useless to discuss Mexico +with Mr. Bryan—that the Secretary was not a thinker +but an emotionalist. However, despite their differences, +the two men liked each other and had a good time. As +Sir William was leaving, he bowed deferentially to the +Secretary of State and said:</p> + +<p>"You have stripped me naked, Mr. Secretary, but I +am unashamed."</p> + +<p>With President Wilson, however, the Englishman had +a more satisfactory experience. He was delighted by +the President's courtesy, charm, intelligence, and conversational +powers. The impression which Sir William +obtained of the American President on this occasion remained +with him for several years and was itself an +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-204" id="page1-204"></a>[pg I-204]</span> +important element in British-American relations after the +outbreak of the World War. And the visit was a profitable +one for Mr. Wilson, since he obtained a clear understanding +of the British policy toward Mexico. Sir William +succeeded in persuading the President that the so-called +oil interests were not dictating the policy of Sir Edward +Grey. That British oil men were active in Mexico was apparent; +but they were not using a statesman of so high a +character as Sir Edward Grey for their purposes and would +not be able to do so. The British Government entertained +no ambitions in Mexico that meant unfriendliness to the +United States. In no way was the policy of Great Britain +hostile to our own. In fact, the British recognized the +predominant character of the American interest in Mexico and +were willing to accept any policy in which Washington +would take the lead. All it asked was that British property +and British lives be protected; once these were +safeguarded Great Britain was ready to stand aside and let +the United States deal with Mexico in its own way.</p> + +<p>The one disappointment of this visit was that Sir +William Tyrrell was unable to obtain from President +Wilson any satisfactory statement of his Mexican policy.</p> + +<p>"When I go back to England," said the Englishman, +as the interview was approaching an end, "I shall be +asked to explain your Mexican policy. Can you tell me +what it is?"</p> + +<p>President Wilson looked at him earnestly and said, in +his most decisive manner:</p> + +<p>"I am going to teach the South American Republics to +elect good men!"</p> + +<p>This was excellent as a purpose, but it could hardly be +regarded as a programme.</p> + +<p>"Yes," replied Sir William, "but, Mr. President, I +shall have to explain this to Englishmen, who, as you +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-205" id="page1-205"></a>[pg I-205]</span> +know, lack imagination. They cannot see what is the +difference between Huerta, Carranza, and Villa."</p> + +<p>The only answer he could obtain was that Carranza +was the best of the three and that Villa was not so bad as +he had been painted. But the phrase that remained +with the British diplomat was that one so characteristically +Wilsonian: "I propose to teach the South American +Republics to elect good men." In its attitude, its phrasing, +it held the key to much Wilson history.</p> + +<p>Additional details of this historic interview are given +in Colonel House's letters:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">From Edward M. House</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">145 East 35th Street,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">New York City.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">November 4, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>Your cablegram, telling me of the arrival of Sir William +Tyrrell on the <i>Imperator</i>, was handed me on my way to +the train as I left for Washington.</p> + +<p>The President talked with me about the Mexican situation +and it looks as if something positive will be done in a +few days unless Huerta abdicates.</p> + +<p>It is to be the policy of this Administration henceforth +not to recognize any Central American government that +is not formed along constitutional lines. Anything else +would be a makeshift policy. As you know, revolutions +and assassinations in order to obtain control of governments +are instituted almost wholly for the purpose of +loot and when it is found that these methods will not +bring the desired results, they will cease.</p> + +<p>The President also feels strongly in regard to foreign +financial interests seeking to control those unstable governments +through concessions and otherwise. This, too, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-206" id="page1-206"></a>[pg I-206]</span> +he is determined to discourage as far as it is possible to +do so.</p> + +<p>This was a great opportunity for England and America +to get together. You know how strongly we both feel +upon this subject and I do not believe that the President +differed greatly from us, but the recent actions of the +British Government have produced a decided irritation, +which to say the least is unfortunate.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. HOUSE.</span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11.5em;">145 East 35th Street,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 16em;">New York City.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 15.5em;">November 14, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>Things have happened quickly since I last wrote to you. +I went to Washington Monday night as the guest of +the Bryans. They have been wanting me to come to +them and I thought this a good opportunity.</p> + +<p>I talked the Mexican situation out thoroughly with +him and one of your dispatches came while I was there. +I found that he was becoming prejudiced against the +British Government, believing that their Mexican policy +was based purely upon commercialism, that they were +backing Huerta quietly at the instance of Lord Cowdray, +and that Cowdray had not only already obtained concessions +from the Huerta Government, but expected to +obtain others. Sir Lionel Carden was also all to the bad.</p> + +<p>I saw the President and his views were not very different +from those of Mr. Bryan. I asked the President +to permit me to see Sir William Tyrrell and talk to him +frankly and to attempt to straighten the tangle out. He +gave me a free hand.</p> + +<p>I lunched with Sir William at the British Embassy although +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-207" id="page1-207"></a>[pg I-207]</span> +Sir Cecil Spring Rice was not well enough to be +present. I had a long talk with Sir William after lunch +and found that our suspicions were unwarranted and that +we could get together without any difficulty whatever.</p> + +<p>I told him very frankly what our purpose was in Mexico +and that we were determined to carry it through if it +was within our power to do so. That being so I suggested +that he get his government to coöperate cordially with +ours rather than to accept our policy reluctantly.</p> + +<p>I told him that you and I had dreamed of a sympathetic +alliance between the two countries and that it seemed to +me that this dream might come true very quickly because +of the President and Sir Edward Grey. He expressed a +willingness to coöperate freely and I told him I would +arrange an early meeting with the President. I thought it +better to bring the President into the game rather than +Mr. Bryan. I told him of the President's attitude upon +the Panama toll question but I touched upon that lightly +and in confidence, preferring for the President himself to +make his own statement.</p> + +<p>I left the Bryans in the morning of the luncheon with +Sir William, intending to take an afternoon train for New +York, but the President wanted me to stay with him at the +White House over night and meet Sir William with him +at half past nine the following morning. He was so tired +that I did not have the heart to urge a meeting that night.</p> + +<p>From half past nine until half past ten the President +and Sir William repeated to each other what they had +said separately to me, and which I had given to each, +and then the President elaborated upon the toll question +much to the satisfaction of Sir William.</p> + +<p>He explained the matter in detail and assured him of +his entire sympathy and purpose to carry out our treaty +obligations, both in the letter and the spirit.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-208" id="page1-208"></a>[pg I-208]</span> +</div><p>Sir William was very happy after the interview and +when the President left us he remained to talk to me and +to express his gratification. He cleared up in the President's +mind all suspicion, I think, in regard to concessions +and as to the intentions and purposes of the British Government. +He assured the President that his government +would work cordially with ours and that they would do +all that they could to bring about joint pressure through +Germany and France for the elimination of Huerta.</p> + +<p>We are going to give them a chance to see what they +can do with Huerta before moving any further. Sir +William thinks that if we are willing to let Huerta save +his face he can be got out without force of arms.</p> + +<p>Sir William said that if foreign diplomats could have +heard our conversation they would have fallen in a faint; +it was so frankly indiscreet and undiplomatic. I did not +tell him so, but I had it in the back of my mind that +where people wanted to do right and had the power to +carry out their intentions there was no need to cloak their +thoughts in diplomatic language.</p> + +<p>All this makes me very happy for it looks as if we are in +sight of the promised land.</p> + +<p>I am pleased to tell you of the compliments that have +been thrown at you by the President, Mr. Bryan, and +Sir William. They were all enthusiastic over your work +in London and expressed the keenest appreciation of the +way in which you have handled matters. Sir William +told me that he did not remember an American Ambassador +that was your equal.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. HOUSE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>So far as a meeting between a British diplomat and the +President of the United States could solve the Mexican +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-209" id="page1-209"></a>[pg I-209]</span> +problem, that problem was apparently solved. The +dearest wish of Mr. Wilson, the elimination of Huerta, +seemed to be approaching realization, now that he had +persuaded Great Britain to support him in this enterprise. +Whether Sir William Tyrrell, or Sir Edward +Grey, had really become converted to the President's +"idealistic" plans for Mexico is an entirely different +question. At this time there was another matter in +which Great Britain's interest was even greater than in +Mexico. These letters have already contained reference to +tolls on the Panama Canal. Colonel House's letter shows +that the President discussed this topic with Sir William +Tyrrell and gave him assurances that this would be +settled on terms satisfactory to Great Britain. It cannot +be maintained that that assurance was really the +consideration which paved the way to an understanding +on Huerta. The conversation was entirely informal; +indeed, it could not be otherwise, for Sir William Tyrrell +brought no credentials; there could be no definite bargain +or agreement, but there is little question that Mr. Wilson's +friendly disposition toward British shipping through the +Panama Canal made it easy for Great Britain to give him +a free hand in Mexico.</p> + +<p>A few days after this White House interview Sir +Lionel Carden performed what must have been for him +an uncongenial duty. This loquacious minister led a +procession of European diplomats to General Huerta, +formally advised that warrior to yield to the American +demands and withdraw from the Presidency of Mexico. +The delegation informed the grim dictator that their +governments were supporting the American policy and +Sir Lionel brought him the unwelcome news that he could +not depend upon British support. About the same time +Premier Asquith made conciliatory remarks on Mexico +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-210" id="page1-210"></a>[pg I-210]</span> +at the Guildhall banquet. He denied that the British +Government had undertaken any policy "deliberately +opposed to that of the United States. There is no vestige +of foundation for such a rumour." These events changed +the atmosphere at Washington, which now became almost +as cordial to Great Britain as it had for several +months been suspicious.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;"><i>To Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;">London, November 15, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR HOUSE:</p> + +<p>All's well here. The whole trouble was caused not +here but in Mexico City; and that is to be remedied yet. +And it will be! For the moment it is nullified. But you +need give yourself no concern about the English Government +or people, in the long run. It is taking them some +time to see the vast difference between acting by a +principle and acting by what they call a "policy." They +and we ourselves too have from immemorial time been +recognizing successful adventurers, and they didn't instantly +understand this new "idealistic" move; they +didn't know the man at the helm! I preached many +sermons to our friend, I explained the difference to many +private groups, I made after-dinner speeches leading right +up to the point—as far as I dared, I inspired many newspaper +articles; and they see it now and have said it and +have made it public; and the British people are enthusiastic +as far as they understand it.</p> + +<p>And anybody concerned here understands the language +that the President speaks now. You mustn't forget that +in all previous experiences in Latin America we ourselves +have been as much to blame as anybody else. Now we +have a clear road to travel, a policy based on character +to follow forever—a new era. Our dealing with Cuba was +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-211" id="page1-211"></a>[pg I-211]</span> +a new chapter in the history of the world. Our dealing +with Mexico is Chapter II of the same Revelation. Tell +'em this in Washington.</p> + +<p>The remaining task will be done too and I think pretty +soon. For that I need well-loaded shells. I'll supply +the gunpowder.</p> + +<p>And don't you concern yourself about the English. +They're all right—a little slow, but all right.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Heartily yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;"><i>To Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;">Newtimber Place, Hassocks, Sussex,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11.5em;">Sunday, November 23, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR HOUSE:</p> + +<p>Your letter telling me about Tyrrell and the President +brought me great joy. Tyrrell is in every way a square +fellow, much like his Chief; and, you may depend on it, +they are playing fair—in their slow way. They always +think of India and of Egypt—never of Cuba. Lord! +Lord! the fun I've had, the holy joy I am having (I never +expected to have such exalted and invigorating felicity) +in delivering elementary courses of instruction in democracy +to the British Government. Deep down at the +bottom, they don't know what Democracy means. +Their Empire is in the way. Their centuries of land-stealing +are in the way. Their unsleeping watchfulness +of British commerce is in the way. "You say you'll +shoot men into self-government," said Sir Edward. +"Doesn't that strike you as comical?" And I answered, +"It is comical only to the Briton and to others who have +associated shooting with subjugation. We associate +shooting with freedom." Half this blessed Sunday at +this country house I have been ramming the idea down +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-212" id="page1-212"></a>[pg I-212]</span> +the throat of the Lord Chancellor<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37" /><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a>. <i>He</i> sees it, too, being +a Scotchman. I take the members of the Government, +as I get the chance or can make it, and go over with them +the A B C of the President's principle: no territorial +annexation; no trafficking with tyrants; no stealing of +American governments by concession or financial thimble-rigging. +They'll not recognize another Huerta—they're +sick of that. And they'll not endanger our friendship. +They didn't see the idea in the beginning. Of course +the real trouble has been in Mexico City—Carden. They +don't know yet just what he did. But they will, if <i>I</i> +can find out. I haven't yet been able to make them tell +me at Washington. Washington is a deep hole of silence +toward ambassadors. By gradual approaches, I'm going +to prove that Carden can do—and in a degree has already +done—as much harm as Bryce did good—and all +about a paltry few hundreds of million dollars' worth of +oil. What the devil does the oil or the commerce of +Mexico or the investments there amount to in comparison +with the close friendship of the two nations? +Carden can't be good long: he'll break out again presently. +He has no political imagination. That's a rather +common disease here, too. Few men have. It's good +fun. I'm inviting the Central and South American +Ministers to lunch with me, one by one, and I'm incidentally +loading them up. I have all the boys in the +Embassy full of zeal and they are tackling the Secretaries +of the Central and South American legations. We've +got a <i>principle</i> now to deal by with them. They'll see +after a while.</p> + +<p>English people are all right, too—except the Doctrinaires. +They write much rank ignorance. But the +learned men learn things last of all.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-213" id="page1-213"></a>[pg I-213]</span> +</div><p>I thank you heartily for your good news about Tyrrell, +about the President (but I'm sorry he's tired: make him +quit eating meat and play golf); about the Panama tolls; +about the Currency Bill (my love to McAdoo); about my +own little affairs.—We are looking with the very greatest +pleasure to the coming of the young White House couple. +I've got two big dinners for them—Sir Edward, the Lord +Chancellor, a duchess or two, some good folk, Ruth +Bryan, a couple of ambassadors, etc., etc., etc. Then +we'll take 'em to a literary speaking-feast or two, have +'em invited to a few great houses; then we'll give 'em +another dinner, and then we'll get a guide for them to +see all the reforming institutions in London, to their +hearts' content—lots of fun.</p> + +<p>Lots of fun: I got the American Society for its Thanksgiving +dinner to invite the Lord Chancellor to respond +to a toast to the President. He's been to the United +States lately and he is greatly pleased. So far, so good. +Then I came down here—where he, too, is staying. After +five or six hours' talk about everything else he said, +"By the way, your countrymen have invited me," etc., +etc. "Now what would be appropriate to talk about?" +Then I poured him full of the New Principle as regards +Central and South America; for, if he will talk on that, +what he says will be reported and read on both continents. +He's a foxy Scot, and he didn't say he would, but +he said that he'd consider it. "Consider it" means that +he will confer with Sir Edward. I'm beginning to learn +their vocabulary. Anyhow the Lord Chancellor is in +line.</p> + +<p>It's good news you send always. Keep it up—keep +it up. The volume of silence that I get is oppressive. +You remember the old nigger that wished to pick a quarrel +with another old nigger? Nigger No. 1 swore and stormed +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-214" id="page1-214"></a>[pg I-214]</span> +at nigger No. 2, and kept on swearing and storming, +hoping to provoke him. Nigger No. 2 said not a word, +but kept at his work. Nigger No. 1 swore and stormed +more. Nigger No. 2 said not a word. Nigger No. 1 +frothed still more. Nigger No. 2, still silent. Nigger +No. 1 got desperate and said: "Look here, you kinky-headed, +flat-nosed, slab-footed nigger, I warns you 'fore +God, don't you keep givin' me none o' your damned +silence!" I wish you'd tell all my friends that story.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Always heartily yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p class="center">FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34" /><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Prince Arthur of Connaught and the Duchess of Fife were +married in the Chapel Royal, October 16, 1913.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35" /><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> See the Appendix (at end of Vol. II) for this episode in +detail.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36" /><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> There was a suggestion, which the Ambassador endorsed, +that President Wilson should visit England to accept, in the name of the +United States, Sulgrave Manor, the ancestral hone, of the Washingtons. +See Chapter IX, page 274.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37" /><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> Viscount Haldane, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain +since 1912.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-215" id="page1-215"></a>[pg I-215]</span> +</div><h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII" />CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<h3>PERSONALITIES OF THE MEXICAN PROBLEM</h3> + + +<p>Page's remarks about the "trouble in Mexico City" +and the "remaining task" refer, of course, to Sir +Lionel Carden. "As I make Carden out," he wrote about +this time, "he's a slow-minded, unimaginative, commercial +Briton, with as much nimbleness as an elephant. +British commerce is his deity, British advantage his duty +and mission; and he goes about his work with blunt dullness +and ineptitude. That's his mental calibre as I read +him—a dull, commercial man."</p> + +<p>Although Sir Lionel Carden had been compelled to +harmonize himself with the American policy, Page regarded +his continued presence in Mexico City as a standing +menace to British-American relations. He therefore +set himself to accomplish the minister's removal. +The failure of President Taft's attempt to obtain Carden's +transfer from Havana, in 1912, showed that Page's +new enterprise was a delicate and difficult one; yet he +did not hesitate.</p> + +<p>The part that the wives of diplomats and statesmen +play in international relations is one that few Americans +understand. Yet in London, the Ambassador's wife is +almost as important a person as the Ambassador himself. +An event which now took place in the American +Embassy emphasized this point. A certain lady, well +known in London, called upon Mrs. Page and gave her +a message on Mexican affairs for the Ambassador's +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-216" id="page1-216"></a>[pg I-216]</span> +benefit. The purport was that the activities of certain +British commercial interests in Mexico, if not checked, +would produce a serious situation between Great Britain +and the United States. The lady in question was herself +a sincere worker for Anglo-American amity, and this +was the motive that led her to take an unusual step.</p> + +<p>"It's all being done for the benefit of one man," she +said.</p> + +<p>The facts were presented in the form of a memorandum, +which Mrs. Page copied and gave the Ambassador. This, +in turn, Page sent to President Wilson.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, November 26, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR HOUSE:</p> + +<p>Won't you read the enclosed and get it to the President? +It is somewhat extra-official but it is very confidential, +and I have a special reason for wishing it to go through +your hands. Perhaps it will interest you.</p> + +<p>The lady that wrote it is one of the very best-informed +women I know, one of those active and most influential +women in the high political society of this Kingdom, +at whose table statesmen and diplomats meet and important +things come to pass. . . .</p> + +<p>I am sure she has no motive but the avowed one. +She has taken a liking to Mrs. Page and this is merely a +friendly and patriotic act.</p> + +<p>I had heard most of the things before as gossip—never +before as here put together by a responsible hand.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Page went to see her and, as evidence of our appreciation +and safety, gave the original back to her. +We have kept no copy, and I wish this burned, if you +please. It would raise a riot here, if any breath of it +were to get out, that would put bedlam to shame.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-217" id="page1-217"></a>[pg I-217]</span> +</div><p>Lord Cowdray has been to see me for four successive +days. I have a suspicion (though I don't know) that, +instead of his running the Government, the Government +has now turned the tables and is running him. His +government contract is becoming a bad thing to sleep +with. He told me this morning that he (through Lord +Murray) had withdrawn the request for any concession +in Colombia<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38" /><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a>. I congratulated him. "That, Lord Cowdray, +will save you as well as some other people I know +a good deal of possible trouble." I have explained to +him the whole New Principle <i>in extenso</i>, "so that you +may see clearly where the line of danger runs." Lord! +how he's changed! Several weeks ago when I ran across +him accidentally he was humorous, almost cynical. Now +he's very serious. I explained to him that the only thing +that had kept South America from being parcelled out as +Africa has been is the Monroe Doctrine and the United +States behind it. He granted that.</p> + +<p>"In Monroe's time," said I, "the only way to take a +part of South America was to take land. Now finance +has new ways of its own!"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," said he.</p> + +<p>"Right there," I answered, "where you put your +'perhaps,' I put a danger signal. That, I assure you, +you will read about in the histories as 'The Wilson +Doctrine'!"</p> + +<p>You don't know how easy it all is with our friend and +leader in command. I've almost grown bold. You feel +steady ground beneath you. They are taking to their +tents.</p> + +<p>"What's going to happen in Mexico City?"</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-218" id="page1-218"></a>[pg I-218]</span> +</div><p>"A peaceful tragedy, followed by emancipation."</p> + +<p>"And the great industries of Mexico?"</p> + +<p>"They will not have to depend on adventurers' favours!"</p> + +<p>"But in the meantime, what?"</p> + +<p>"Patience, looking towards justice!"</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Yours heartily and in health (you bet!)</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">145 East 35th Street,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">New York City.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">December 12, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>Your budget under dates, November 15th, 23rd, and +26th came to me last week, just after the President had +been here. I saved the letters until I went to Washington, +from which place I have just returned.</p> + +<p>The President has been in bed for nearly a week and +Doctor Grayson permitted no one to see him but me. +Yesterday before I left he was feeling so well that I +asked him if he did not want to feel better and then I +read him your letters. Mrs. Wilson was present.</p> + +<p>I cannot tell you how pleased he was. He laughed repeatedly +at the different comments you made and he was +delighted with what you had to say concerning Lord +Cowdray. We do not love him for we think that between +Cowdray and Carden a large part of our troubles in +Mexico has been made. Your description of his attitude +at the beginning and his present one pleased us much.</p> + +<p>After I had read the confidential letter the President +said "now let me see if I have the facts." He then recited +them in consecutive order just as the English lady +had written them, almost using the same phrases, showing +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-219" id="page1-219"></a>[pg I-219]</span> +the well-trained mind that he has. I then dropped the +letter in the grate.</p> + +<p>He enjoyed heartily the expression "Washington is a +deep hole of silence towards ambassadors," and again +"The volume of silence that I get is oppressive," and of +course the story apropos of this last remark.</p> + +<p>I was with him for more than an hour and he was distinctly +better when I left. I hated to look at him in +bed for I could not help realizing what his life means to +the Democratic Party, to the Nation and almost to the +world.</p> + +<p>Of course you know that I only read your letters to +him. Mr. Bryan was my guest on Wednesday and I +returned to Washington with him but I made no mention +of our correspondence and I never have. The President +seems to like our way of doing things and further than +that I do not care.</p> + +<p>Upon my soul I do not believe the President could be +better pleased than he is with the work you are doing.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. HOUSE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>From now on the Ambassador exerted a round-about +pressure—the method of "gradual approach" already referred +to—upon the Foreign Office for Carden's removal. +An extract from a letter to the President gives a hint +concerning this method:</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>I have already worked upon Sir Edward's mind about +his Minister to Mexico as far as I could. Now that the +other matter is settled and while Carden is behaving, I +go at it. Two years ago Mr. Knox made a bad blunder +in protesting against Carden's "anti-Americanism" in +Cuba. Mr. Knox sent Mr. Reid no definite facts nor even +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-220" id="page1-220"></a>[pg I-220]</span> +accusations to base a protest on. The result was a failure—a +bad failure. I have again asked Mr. Bryan for all +the definite reports he has heard about Carden. That +man, in my judgment, has caused nine tenths of the +trouble here.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Naturally Page did not ask the Minister's removal +directly—that would have been an unpardonable blunder. +His meetings during this period with Sir Edward +were taking place almost every day, and Carden, in +one way or another, kept coming to the front in their +conversation. Sir Edward, like Page, would sacrifice +much in the cause of Anglo-American relations; Page +would occasionally express his regret that the British +Minister to Mexico was not a man who shared +their enthusiasm on this subject; in numerous other ways +the impression was conveyed that the two countries +could solve the Mexican entanglement much better if a +more congenial person represented British interests in +the Southern Republic. This reasoning evidently produced +the desired results. In early January, 1914, a +hint was unofficially conveyed to the American Ambassador +that Carden was to be summoned to London for +a "conversation" with Sir Edward Grey, and that his +return to Mexico would depend upon the outcome of that +interview. There was a likelihood that, in future, Sir +Lionel Carden would represent the British Empire in +Brazil.</p> + +<p>This news, sent in discreet cipher to Washington, delighted +the Administration. "It is fine about Carden," +wrote Colonel House on January 10th. "I knew you had +done it when I saw it in the papers, but I did not know just +how. You could not have brought it about in a more +diplomatic and effectual way."</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-221" id="page1-221"></a>[pg I-221]</span> +</div><p>And the following came from the President:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">From President Wilson</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Pass Christian,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">January 6, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>I have your letter of December twenty-first, which I +have greatly enjoyed.</p> + +<p>Almost at the very time I was reading it, the report +came through the Associated Press from London that +Carden was to be transferred immediately to Brazil. +If this is true, it is indeed a most fortunate thing and I +feel sure it is to be ascribed to your tactful and yet very +plain representations to Sir Edward Grey. I do not +think you realize how hard we worked to get from either +Lind or O'Shaughnessy<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39" /><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> definite items of speech or conduct +which we could furnish you as material for what you +had to say to the Ministers about Carden. It simply +was not obtainable. Everything that we got was at +second or third hand. That he was working against +us was too plain for denial, and yet he seems to have done +it in a very astute way which nobody could take direct +hold of. I congratulate you with all my heart on his +transference.</p> + +<p>I long, as you do, for an opportunity to do constructive +work all along the line in our foreign relations, particularly +with Great Britain and the Latin-American states, +but surely, my dear fellow, you are deceiving yourself in +supposing that constructive work is not now actually going +on, and going on at your hands quite as much as at ours. +The change of attitude and the growing ability to understand +what we are thinking about and purposing on the +part of the official circle in London is directly attributable +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-222" id="page1-222"></a>[pg I-222]</span> +to what you have been doing, and I feel more and more +grateful every day that you are our spokesman and interpreter +there. This is the only possible constructive +work in foreign affairs, aside from definite acts of policy. +So far as the policy is concerned, you may be sure I +will strive to the utmost to obtain both a repeal of the +discrimination in the matter of tolls and a renewal of the +arbitration treaties, and I am not without hope that I +can accomplish both at this session. Indeed this is the +session in which these things must be done if they are to +be done at all.</p> + +<p>Back of the smile which came to my face when you +spoke of the impenetrable silence of the State Department +toward its foreign representatives lay thoughts of very +serious concern. We must certainly manage to keep our +foreign representatives properly informed. The real +trouble is to conduct genuinely confidential correspondence +except through private letters, but surely the thing +can be changed and it will be if I can manage it.</p> + +<p>We are deeply indebted to you for your kindness and +generous hospitality to our young folks<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40" /><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> and we have +learned with delight through your letters and theirs of +their happy days in England.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">With deep regard and appreciation,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Cordially and faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WOODROW WILSON.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">HON. WALTER H. PAGE,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">American Embassy,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, England.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Yet for the American Ambassador the experience was +not one of unmixed satisfaction. These letters have +contained references to the demoralized condition of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-223" id="page1-223"></a>[pg I-223]</span> +State Department under Mr. Bryan and the succeeding +ones will contain more; the Carden episode portrayed the +stupidity and ignorance of that Department at their +worst. By commanding Carden to cease his anti-American +tactics and to support the American policy the +Foreign Office had performed an act of the utmost +courtesy and consideration to this country. By quietly +"promoting" the same minister to another sphere, +several thousand miles away from Mexico and Washington, +it was now preparing to eliminate all possible causes +of friction between the two countries. The British, that +is, had met the wishes of the United States in the two +great matters that were then making serious trouble—Huerta +and Carden. Yet no government, Great Britain +least of all, wishes to be placed in the position of moving +its diplomats about at the request of another Power. +The whole deplorable story appears in the following +letter.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">January 8th, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR HOUSE:</p> + +<p>Two days ago I sent a telegram to the Department +saying that I had information from a private, <i>unofficial</i> +source that the report that Carden would be transferred +was true, and from another source that Marling would +succeed him. The Government here has given out +nothing. I know nothing from official sources. Of +course the only decent thing to do at Washington was to +sit still till this Government should see fit to make an +announcement. But what do they do? Give my telegram +to the press! It appears here almost verbatim in +this morning's <i>Mail</i>.—I have to make an humiliating +explanation to the Foreign Office. This is the third +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-224" id="page1-224"></a>[pg I-224]</span> +time I've had to make such an humiliating explanation +to Sir Edward. It's getting a little monotonous. He's +getting tired, and so am I. They now deny at the Foreign +Office that anything has been decided about Carden, and +this meddling by us (as they look at it) will surely cause +a delay and may even cause a change of purpose.</p> + +<p>That's the practical result of their leaking at Washington. +On a previous occasion they leaked the same way. +When I telegraphed a remonstrance, they telegraphed +back to me that the leak had been <i>here</i>! That was the +end of it—except that I had to explain to Sir Edward the +best I could. And about a lesser matter, I did the same +thing a third time, in a conversation. Three times this +sort of thing has happened.—On the other hand, the +King's Master of Ceremonies called on me on the President's +Birthday and requested for His Majesty that I +send His Majesty's congratulations. Just ten days +passed before a telegraphic answer came! The very +hour it came, I was myself making up an answer for the +President that I was going to send, to save our face.</p> + +<p>Now, I'm trying with all my might to do this job. I +spend all my time, all my ingenuity, all my money at it. +I have organized my staff as a sort of Cabinet. We meet +every day. We go over everything conceivable that we +may do or try to do. We do good team work. I am not +sure but I doubt whether these secretaries have before +been taken into just such a relation to their chief. They +are enthusiastic and ambitious and industrious and—<i>safe</i>. +There's no possibility of any leak. We arrange +our dinners with reference to the possibility of getting +information and of carrying points. Mrs. Page gives and +accepts invitations with the same end in view. We're on +the job to the very limit of our abilities.</p> + +<p>And I've got the Foreign Office in such a relation that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-225" id="page1-225"></a>[pg I-225]</span> +they are frank and friendly. (I can't keep 'em so, if +this sort of thing goes on.)</p> + +<p>Now the State Department seems (as it touches us) to +be utterly chaotic—silent when it ought to respond, +loquacious when it ought to be silent. There are questions +that I have put to it at this Government's request +to which I can get no answer.</p> + +<p>It's hard to keep my staff enthusiastic under these +conditions. When I reached the Chancery this morning, +they were in my room, with all the morning papers +marked, on the table, eagerly discussing what we ought +to do about this publication of my dispatch. The enthusiasm +and buoyancy were all gone out of them. By +their looks they said, "Oh! what's the use of our bestirring +ourselves to send news to Washington when they use it to +embarrass us?"—While we are thus at work, the only +two communications from the Department to-day are +two letters from two of the Secretaries about—presenting +"Democratic" ladies from Texas and Oklahoma at court! +And Bryan is now lecturing in Kansas.</p> + +<p>Since I began to write this letter, Lord Cowdray came +here to the house and stayed two and a half hours, talking +about possible joint intervention in Mexico. Possibly +he came from the Foreign Office. I don't know whether +to dare send a despatch to the State Department, telling +what he told me, for fear they'd leak. And to leak this—Good +Lord! Two of the Secretaries were here to dinner, +and I asked them if I should send such a despatch. They +both answered instantly: "No, sir, don't dare: <i>write</i> it +to the President." I said: "No, I have no right to +bother the President with regular business nor with frequent +letters." To that they agreed; but the interesting +and somewhat appalling thing is, they're actually afraid to +have a confidential despatch go to the State Department.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-226" id="page1-226"></a>[pg I-226]</span> +</div><p>I see nothing to do but to suggest to the President to +put somebody in the Department who will stay there and +give intelligent attention to the diplomatic telegrams +and letters—some conscientious assistant or clerk. For +I hear mutterings, somewhat like these mutterings of +mine, from some of the continental embassies.—The whole +thing is disorganizing and demoralizing beyond description.</p> + +<p>All these and more are <i>my</i> troubles. I'll take care of +them. But remember what I am going to write on the +next sheet. For here may come a trouble for <i>you:</i></p> + +<p>Mrs. Page has learned something more about Secretary +Bryan's proposed visit here in the spring. He's coming to +talk his peace plan which, you know, is a sort of grape-juice +arbitration—a distinct step backward from a real +arbitration treaty. Well, if he comes with <i>that</i>, when you +come to talk about reducing armaments, you'll wish +you'd never been born. Get your ingenuity together, +then, and prevent that visit<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41" /><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a>.</p> + +<p>Not the least funny thing in the world is—Senator X +turned up to-day. As he danced around the room begging +everybody's pardon (nobody knew what for) he +complimented everybody in sight, explained the forged +letter, dilated on state politics, set the Irish question on +the right end, cleared Bacon<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42" /><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> of all hostility to me, declined +tea because he had insomnia and explained just +how it works to keep you awake, danced more and declared +himself happy and bowed himself out—well +pleased. He's as funny a cuss as I've seen in many a day. +Lord Cowdray, who was telling Mexican woes to Katharine +in the corner, looked up and asked, "Who's the little +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-227" id="page1-227"></a>[pg I-227]</span> +dancing gentleman?" Suppose X had known he was +dancing for—Lord Cowdray's amusement, what do y' suppose +he'd've thought? There are some strange combinations +in our house on Mrs. Page's days at home. +Cowdray has, I am sure, lost (that is, failed to make) a +hundred million dollars that he had within easy reach by +this Wilson Doctrine, but he's game. He doesn't lie +awake. He's a dead-game sport, and he knows he's +knocked out in that quarter and he doesn't squeal. His +experiences will serve us many a good turn in the future—as +a warning. I rather like him. He eats out of my +hand in the afternoon and has one of his papers jump on +me in the morning. Some time in the twenty-four hours, +he must attain about the normal temperature—say +about noon. He admires the President greatly—sincerely. +Force meets force, you see. With the President +behind me I could really enjoy Cowdray centuries after +X had danced himself into oblivion.</p> + +<p>By the way, Cowdray said to me to-day: "Whatever +the United States and Great Britain agree on the world +must do." He's right. (1) The President must come +here, perhaps in his second term; (2) these two Governments +must enter a compact for peace and for gradual +disarmament. Then we can go about our business for +(say) a hundred years.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Heartily,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>In spite of the continued pressure of the United States +and the passive support of its anti-Huerta policy by +Great Britain, the Mexican usurper refused to resign. +President Wilson now began to espouse the interests of +Villa and Carranza. His letters to Page indicate that +he took these men at their own valuation, believed that +they were sincere patriots working for the cause of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-228" id="page1-228"></a>[pg I-228]</span> +"democracy" and "constitutionalism" and that their triumph +would usher in a day of enlightenment and progress +for Mexico. It was the opinion of the Foreign Office +that Villa and Carranza were worse men than Huerta +and that any recognition of their revolutionary activities +would represent no moral gain.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From President Wilson</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The White House, Washington,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">May 18, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>. . . As to the attitude of mind on that side of the +water toward the Constitutionalists, it is based upon prejudices +which cannot be sustained by the facts. I am enclosing +a copy of an interview by a Mr. Reid<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43" /><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> which appeared +in one of the afternoon papers recently and which sums up +as well as they could be summed up my own conclusions +with regard to the issues and the personnel of the pending +contest in Mexico. I can verify it from a hundred +different sources, most of them sources not in the least +touched by predilections for such men as our friends in +London have supposed Carranza and Villa to be.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Cordially and faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WOODROW WILSON.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">HON. WALTER H. PAGE,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">U.S. Embassy,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, England.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The White House, Washington,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">June 1, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>. . . The fundamental thing is that they (British +critics of Villa) are all radically mistaken. There has +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-229" id="page1-229"></a>[pg I-229]</span> +been less disorder and less danger to life where the Constitutionalists +have gained control than there has been +where Huerta is in control. I should think that if they +are getting correct advices from Tampico, people in +England would be very much enlightened by what has +happened there. Before the Constitutionalists took the +place there was constant danger to the oil properties +and to foreign residents. Now there is no danger +and the men who felt obliged to leave the oil wells to +their Mexican employees are returning, to find, by +the way, that their Mexican employees guarded them +most faithfully without wages, and in some instances +almost without food. I am told that the Constitutionalists +cheered the American flag when they entered Tampico.</p> + +<p>I believe that Mexico City will be much quieter and a +much safer place to live in after the Constitutionalists +get there than it is now. The men who are approaching +and are sure to reach it are much less savage and much +more capable of government than Huerta.</p> + +<p>These, I need not tell you, are not fancies of mine but +conclusions I have drawn from facts which are at last +becoming very plain and palpable, at least to us on this +side of the water. If they are not becoming plain in +Great Britain, it is because their papers are not serving +them with the truth. Our own papers were prejudiced +enough in all conscience against Villa and Carranza and +everything that was happening in the north of Mexico, +but at last the light is dawning on them in spite of themselves +and they are beginning to see things as they really +are. I would be as nervous and impatient as your +friends in London are if I feared the same things that they +fear, but I do not. I am convinced that even Zapata +would restrain his followers and leave, at any rate, all +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-230" id="page1-230"></a>[pg I-230]</span> +foreigners and all foreign property untouched if he were +the first to enter Mexico City.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Cordially and faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WOODROW WILSON.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">HON. WALTER H. PAGE,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">American Embassy,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, England.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>On this issue, however, the President and his Ambassador +to Great Britain permanently disagreed. The +events which took place in April, 1914—the insult to the +American flag at Tampico, the bombardment and capture +of Vera Cruz by American forces—made stronger Page's +conviction, already set forth in this correspondence, that +there was only one solution of the Mexican problem.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">April 27, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR HOUSE:</p> + +<p>. . . And, as for war with Mexico—I confess I've +had a continually growing fear of it for six months. I've +no confidence in the Mexican leaders—none of 'em. We +shall have to Cuba-ize the country, which means thrashing +'em first—I fear, I fear, I fear; and I feel sorry for us +all, the President in particular. It's inexpressibly hard +fortune for him. I can't tell you with what eager fear +we look for despatches every day and twice a day hurry +to get the newspapers. All England believes we've got +to fight it out.</p> + +<p>Well, the English are with us, you see. Admiral +Cradock, I understand, does not approve our policy, but +he stands firmly with us whatever we do. The word to +stand firmly with us has, I am very sure, been passed +along the whole line—naval, newspaper, financial, diplomatic. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-231" id="page1-231"></a>[pg I-231]</span> +Carden won't give us any more trouble during +the rest of his stay in Mexico. The yellow press's abuse +of the President and me has actually helped us here.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Heartily yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p class="center">FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38" /><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> This was another manifestation of British friendliness. +When the American excitement was most acute, it became known that +British capitalists had secured oil concessions in Colombia. At the +demand of the British Government they gave them up.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39" /><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Mr. Nelson O'Shaughnessy, Chargé d'Affaires in Mexico.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40" /><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Mr. and Mrs. Francis B. Sayre.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41" /><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Colonel House succeeded in preventing it.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42" /><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Senator Augustus O. Bacon, of Georgia who was reported to +nourish ill-feeling toward Page for his authorship of "The Southerner."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43" /><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> Probably an error for John Reed, at that time a newspaper +correspondent in Mexico—afterward well known as a champion of the +Bolshevist régime in Russia.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-232" id="page1-232"></a>[pg I-232]</span> +</div><h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII" />CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<h3>HONOUR AND DISHONOUR IN PANAMA</h3> + + +<p>In the early part of January, 1914, Colonel House +wrote Page, asking whether he would consider favourably +an offer to enter President Wilson's Cabinet, as +Secretary of Agriculture. Mr. David F. Houston, who +was then most acceptably filling that position, was also +an authority on banking and finance; the plan was to +make him governor of the new Federal Reserve Board, +then in process of formation, and to transfer Page to the +vacant place in the Cabinet. The proposal was not +carried through, but Page's reply took the form of a review +of his ambassadorship up to date, of his vexations, +his embarrassments, his successes, and especially of the +very important task which still lay before him. There +were certain reasons, it will appear, why he would have +liked to leave London; and there was one impelling reason +why he preferred to stay. From the day of his arrival +in England, Page had been humiliated, and his work had +been constantly impeded, by the almost studied neglect +with which Washington treated its diplomatic service. +The fact that the American Government provided no +official residence for its Ambassador, and no adequate +financial allowance for maintaining the office, had made +his position almost an intolerable one. All Page's +predecessors for twenty-five years had been rich men who +could advance the cost of the Embassy from their own +private purses; to meet these expenses, however, Page +had been obliged to encroach on the savings of a lifetime, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-233" id="page1-233"></a>[pg I-233]</span> +and such liberality on his part necessarily had its +limitations.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, England,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">February 13, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR HOUSE:</p> + +<p>. . . Of course I am open to the criticism of having +taken the place at all. But I was both uninformed and +misinformed about the cost as well as about the frightful +handicap of having no Embassy. It's a kind of scandal +in London and it has its serious effect. Everybody talks +about it all the time: "Will you explain to me why it is +that your great Government has no Embassy: it's very +odd!" "What a frugal Government you have!" "It's a +damned mean outfit, your American Government." Mrs. +Page collapses many an evening when she gets to her room. +"If they'd only quit talking about it!" The other Ambassadors, +now that we're coming to know them fairly well, +commiserate us. It's a constant humiliation. Of course +this aspect of it doesn't worry me much—I've got hardened +to it. But it is a good deal of a real handicap, and +it adds that much dead weight that a man must overcome; +and it greatly lessens the respect in which our +Government and its Ambassador are held. If I had +known this fully in advance, I should not have had the +courage to come here. Now, of course, I've got used +to it, have discounted it, and can "bull" it through—could +"bull" it through if I could afford to pay the bill. +But I shouldn't advise any friend of mine to come here +and face this humiliation without realizing precisely what +it means—wholly apart, of course, from the cost of +it. . . .</p> + +<p>My dear House, on the present basis much of the diplomatic +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-234" id="page1-234"></a>[pg I-234]</span> +business is sheer humbug. It will always be so +till we have our own Embassies and an established position +in consequence. Without a home or a house or a +fixed background, every man has to establish his own position +for himself; and unless he be unusual, this throws +him clean out of the way of giving emphasis to the right +things. . . .</p> + +<p>As for our position, I think I don't fool myself. The +job at the Foreign Office is easy because there is no real +trouble between us, and because Sir Edward Grey is +pretty nearly an ideal man to get on with. I think he +likes me, too, because, of course, I'm straightforward and +frank with him, and he likes the things we stand for. +Outside this official part of the job, of course, we're +commonplace—a successful commonplace, I hope. But that's +all. We don't know how to try to be anything but what +we naturally are. I dare say we are laughed at here and +there about this and that. Sometimes I hear criticisms, +now and then more or less serious ones. Much of it +comes of our greenness; some of it from the very nature +of the situation. Those who expect to find us brilliant +are, of course, disappointed. Nor are we smart, and the +smart set (both American and English) find us uninteresting. +But we drive ahead and keep a philosophical +temper and simply do the best we can, and, you may be +sure, a good deal of it. It <i>is</i> laborious. For instance, +I've made two trips lately to speak before important +bodies, one at Leeds, the other at Newcastle, at both +of which, in different ways, I have tried to explain the +President's principle in dealing with Central American +turbulent states—and, incidentally, the American ideals +of government. The audiences see it, approve it, applaud +it. The newspaper editorial writers never quite +go the length—it involves a denial of the divine right of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-235" id="page1-235"></a>[pg I-235]</span> +the British Empire; at least they fear so. The fewest +possible Englishmen really understand our governmental +aims and ideals. I have delivered unnumbered and innumerable +little speeches, directly or indirectly, about +them; and they seem to like them. But it would take +an army of oratorical ambassadors a lifetime to get the +idea into the heads of them all. In some ways they are +incredibly far back in mediævalism—incredibly.</p> + +<p>If I have to leave in the fall or in December, it will be +said and thought that I've failed, unless there be some +reason that can be made public. I should be perfectly +willing to tell the reason—the failure of the Government +to make it financially possible. I've nothing to conceal—only +definite amounts. I'd never say what it has cost—only +that it costs more than I or anybody but a rich +man can afford. If then, or in the meantime, the President +should wish me to serve elsewhere, that would, of +course, be a sufficient reason for my going.</p> + +<p>Now another matter, with which I shall not bother the +President—he has enough to bear on that score. It was +announced in one of the London papers the other day +that Mr. Bryan would deliver a lecture here, and probably +in each of the principal European capitals, on Peace. +Now, God restrain me from saying, much more from +doing, anything rash. But if I've got to go home at all, +I'd rather go before he comes. It'll take years for the +American Ambassadors to recover what they'll lose if +he carry out this plan. They now laugh at him here. +Only the President's great personality saves the situation +in foreign relations. Of course the public here doesn't +know how utterly unorganized the State Department is—how +we can't get answers to important questions, and +how they publish most secret despatches or allow them to +leak out. But "bad breaks" like this occur. Mr. Z, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-236" id="page1-236"></a>[pg I-236]</span> +of the 100-years'-Peace Committee<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44" /><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a>, came here a week +ago, with a letter from Bryan to the Prime Minister! Z told +me that this 100-year business gave a chance to bind the +nations together that ought not to be missed. Hence Bryan +had asked him to take up the relations of the countries +with the Prime Minister! Bryan sent a telegram to Z +to be read at a big 100-year meeting here. As for the +personal indignity to me—I overlook that. I don't think +he means it. But if he doesn't mean it, what does he mean? +That's what the Prime Minister asks himself. Fortunately +Mr. Asquith and I get along mighty well. He met Bryan +once, and he told me with a smile that he regarded him as +"a peculiar product of your country." But the Secretary +is always doing things like this. He dashes off letters of +introduction to people asking me to present them to Mr. +Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, etc.</p> + +<p>In the United States we know Mr. Bryan. We know +his good points, his good services, his good intentions. +We not only tolerate him; we like him. But when he +comes here as "the American Prime Minister" <a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45" /><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a>—good-bye, +John! All that we've tried to do to gain respect for +our Government (as they respect our great nation) will +disappear in one day. Of course they'll feel obliged to +give him big official dinners, etc. And—</p> + +<p>Now you'd just as well abandon your trip if he comes; +and (I confess) I'd rather be gone. No member of another +government ever came here and lectured. T.R. +did it as a private citizen, and even then he split the +heavens asunder<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46" /><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a>. Most Englishmen will regard it as a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-237" id="page1-237"></a>[pg I-237]</span> +piece of effrontery. Of course, I'm not in the least concerned +about mere matters of taste. It's only the bigger +effects that I have in mind in <i>queering</i> our Government in +their eyes. He must be kept at home on the Mexican +problem, or some other.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Yours faithfully,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>P.S. But, by George, it's a fine game! This Government +and ours are standing together all right, especially +since the President has taken hold of our foreign relations +himself. With such a man at the helm at home, we can +do whatever we wish to do with the English, as I've often +told you. (But it raises doubts every time the shoestring +necktie, broad-brimmed black hat, oratorical, old-time, +River Platte kind of note is heard.) We've come +a long way in a year—a very joyful long way, full of +progress and real understanding; there's no doubt about +that. A year ago they knew very well the failure that +had saddled them with the tolls trouble and the failure +of arbitration, and an unknown President had just come +in. Presently an unknown Ambassador arrived. Mexico +got worse; would we not recognize Huerta? They send +Carden. We had nothing to say about the tolls—simply +asked for time. They were very friendly; but our slang +phrase fits the situation—"nothin' doin'." They declined +San Francisco<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47" /><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a>. Then presently they began to see some +plan in Mexico; they began to see our attitude on the +tolls; they began to understand our attitude toward concessions +and governments run for profit; they began dimly +to see that Carden was a misfit; the Tariff Bill passed; +the Currency Bill; the President loomed up; even the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-238" id="page1-238"></a>[pg I-238]</span> +Ambassador, they said, really believed what he preached; +he wasn't merely making pretty, friendly speeches.—Now, +when we get this tolls job done, we've got 'em where we +can do any proper and reasonable thing we want. It's +been a great three quarters of a year—immense, in fact. +No man has been in the White House who is so regarded +since Lincoln; in fact, they didn't regard Lincoln while he +lived.</p> + +<p>Meantime, I've got to be more or less at home. The +Prime Minister dines with me, the Foreign Secretary, the +Archbishop, the Colonial Secretary—all the rest of 'em; +the King talks very freely; Mr. Asquith tells me some of +his troubles; Sir Edward is become a good personal friend; +Lord Bryce warms up; the Lord Chancellor is chummy; +and so it goes.</p> + +<p>So you may be sure we are all in high feather after all; +and the President's (I fear exaggerated) appreciation of +what I've done is very gratifying indeed. I've got only +one emotion about it all—gratitude; and gratitude begets +eagerness to go on. Of course I can do future jobs better +than I have done any past ones.</p> + +<p>There are two shadows in the background—not disturbing, +but shadows none the less:</p> + +<p>1. The constant reminder that the American Ambassador's +homeless position (to this Government and to +this whole people) shows that the American Government +and the American people know nothing about foreign +relations and care nothing—regard them as not worth +buying a house for. This leaves a doubt about any continuity +of any American policy. It even suggests a sort +of fear that we don't really care.</p> + +<p>The other is (2) the dispiriting experience of writing +and telegraphing about important things and never hearing +a word concerning many of them, and the consequent +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-239" id="page1-239"></a>[pg I-239]</span> +fear of some dead bad break in the State Department. +The clubs are full of stories of the silly and incredible +things that are <i>said</i> to happen there.</p> + +<p>After all, these are old troubles. They are not new—neither +of them. And we are the happiest group you +ever saw.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Page's letters of this period contain many references to +his inability to maintain touch with the State Department. +His letters remained unacknowledged, his telegrams unanswered; +and he was himself left completely in the dark +as to the plans and opinions at Washington.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To Edward M. House</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">February 28, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR HOUSE:</p> + +<p>. . . <i>Couldn't the business with Great Britain be put +into Moore's<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48" /><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> hands</i>? It is surely important enough at +times to warrant separate attention—or (I might say) +attention. You know, after eight or nine months of this +sort of thing, the feeling grows on us all here that perhaps +many of our telegrams and letters may not be read by +anybody at all. You begin to feel that they may not be +deciphered or even opened. Then comes the feeling +(for a moment), why send any more? Why do anything +but answer such questions as come now and then? Corresponding +with Nobody—can you imagine how that +feels?—What the devil do you suppose does become of the +letters and telegrams that I send, from which and about +which I never hear a word? As a mere matter of curiosity +I should like to know who receives them and what +he does with them!</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-240" id="page1-240"></a>[pg I-240]</span> +</div><p>I've a great mind some day to send a despatch saying +that an earthquake has swallowed up the Thames, that +a suffragette has kissed the King, and that the statue of +Cromwell has made an assault on the House of Lords—just +to see if anybody deciphers it.</p> + +<p>Alter the Civil War an old fellow in Virginia was tired +of the world. He'd have no more to do with it. He +cut a slit in a box in his house and nailed up the box. +Whenever a letter came for him, he'd read the postmark +and say "Baltimore—Baltimore—there isn't anybody in +Baltimore that I care to hear from." Then he'd drop +the letter unopened through the slit into the box. "Philadelphia? +I have no friend in Philadelphia"—into the +box, unopened. When he died, the big box was nearly +full of unopened letters. When I get to Washington +again, I'm going to look for a big box that must now be +nearly full of my unopened letters and telegrams.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The real reason why the Ambassador wished to remain +in London was to assist in undoing a great wrong which +the United States had done itself and the world. Page +was attempting to perform his part in introducing new +standards into diplomacy. His discussions of Mexico +had taken the form of that "idealism" which he was apparently +having some difficulty in persuading British +statesmen and the British public to accept. He was +doing his best to help bring about that day when, in +Gladstone's famous words, "the idea of public right would +be the governing idea" of international relations. But +while the American Ambassador was preaching this new +conception, the position of his own country on one important +matter was a constant impediment to his efforts. +Page was continually confronted by the fact that the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-241" id="page1-241"></a>[pg I-241]</span> +United States, high-minded as its foreign policy might +pretend to be, was far from "idealistic" in the observance +of the treaty that it had made with Great Britain concerning +the Panama Canal. There was a certain embarrassment +involved in preaching unselfishness in Mexico +and Central America at a time when the United States +was practising selfishness and dishonesty in Panama. +For, in the opinion of the Ambassador and that of most +other dispassionate students of the Panama treaty, the +American policy on Panama tolls amounted to nothing +less.</p> + +<p>To one unskilled in legal technicalities, the Panama +controversy involved no great difficulty. Since 1850 the +United States and Great Britain had had a written understanding +upon the construction of the Panama Canal. +The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which was adopted that year, +provided that the two countries should share equally in +the construction and control of the proposed waterway +across the Isthmus. This idea of joint control had always +rankled in the United States, and in 1901 the American +Government persuaded Great Britain to abrogate the +Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and agree to another—the Hay-Pauncefote—which +transferred the rights of ownership +and construction exclusively to this country. In consenting +to this important change, Great Britain had made +only one stipulation. "The Canal," so read Article III +of the Convention of 1901, "shall be free and open to +the vessels of commerce and war of all nations observing +these rules, on terms of entire equality, so that there +shall be no discrimination against any such nation, or its +citizens or subjects, in respect of the conditions or charges +of traffic, or otherwise." It would seem as though the +English language could utter no thought more clearly +than this. The agreement said, not inferentially, but in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-242" id="page1-242"></a>[pg I-242]</span> +so many words, that the "charges" levied on the ships +of "all nations" that used the Canal should be the same. +The history of British-American negotiations on the subject +of the Canal had always emphasized this same point. +All American witnesses to drawing the Treaty have testified +that this was the American understanding. The +correspondence of John Hay, who was Secretary of +State at the time, makes it clear that this was the agreement. +Mr. Elihu Root, who, as Secretary of War, sat +next to John Hay in the Cabinet which authorized the +treaty, has taken the same stand. The man who conducted +the preliminary negotiations with Lord Salisbury, +Mr. Henry White, has emphasized the same point. Mr. +Joseph H. Choate, who, as American Ambassador to +Great Britain in 1901, had charge of the negotiations, +has testified that the British and American Governments +"meant what they said and said what they meant."</p> + +<p>In the face of this solemn understanding, the American +Congress, in 1912, passed the Panama Canal Act, which +provided that "no tolls shall be levied upon vessels engaged +in the coastwise trade of the United States." A +technical argument, based upon the theory that "all +nations" did not include the United States, and that, +inasmuch as this country had obtained sovereign rights +upon the Isthmus, the situation had changed, persuaded +President Taft to sign this bill. Perhaps this line of +reasoning satisfied the legal consciences of President +Taft and Mr. Knox, his Secretary of State, but it really +cut little figure in the acrimonious discussion that ensued. +Of course, there was only one question involved; +that was as to whether the exemption violated the Treaty. +This is precisely the one point that nearly all the +controversialists avoided. The statement that the United +States had built the Canal with its own money and its +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-243" id="page1-243"></a>[pg I-243]</span> +own genius, that it had achieved a great success where +other nations had achieved a great failure, and that it +had the right of passing its own ships through its own +highway without assessing tolls—this was apparently argument +enough. When Great Britain protested the exemption +as a violation of the Treaty, there were not lacking +plenty of elements in American politics and journalism +to denounce her as committing an act of high-handed +impertinence, as having intruded herself in matters which +were not properly her concern, and as having attempted +to rob the American public of the fruits of its own enterprise. +That animosity to Great Britain, which is always +present in certain parts of the hyphenated population, +burst into full flame.</p> + +<p>Clear as were the legal aspects of the dispute, the position +of the Wilson Administration was a difficult one. +The Irish-American elements, which have specialized in +making trouble between the United States and Great +Britain, represented a strength to the Democratic Party +in most large cities. The great mass of Democratic +Senators and Congressmen had voted for the exemption +bill. The Democratic platform of 1912 had endorsed +this same legislation. This declaration was the handiwork +of Senator O'Gorman, of New York State, who had +long been a leader of the anti-British crusade in American +politics. More awkward still, President Wilson, in the +course of his Presidential campaign, had himself spoken +approvingly of free tolls for American ships. The probability +is that, when the President made this unfortunate +reference to this clause in the Democratic programme, he +had given the matter little personal investigation; it +must be held to his credit that, when the facts were clearly +presented to him, his mind quickly grasped the real point +at issue—that it was not a matter of commercial advantage +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-244" id="page1-244"></a>[pg I-244]</span> +or disadvantage, but one simply of national honour, +of whether the United States proposed to keep its word or +to break it.</p> + +<p>Page's contempt for the hair-drawn technicalities of +lawyers was profound, and the tortuous effort to make the +Hay-Pauncefote Treaty mean something quite different +from what it said, inevitably moved him to righteous +wrath. Before sailing for England he spent several +days in the State Department studying the several +questions that were then at issue between his country +and Great Britain. A memorandum contains his impressions +of the free tolls contention:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A little later I went to Washington again to acquaint +myself with the business between the United States and +Great Britain. About that time the Senate confirmed +my appointment, and I spent a number of days reading +the recent correspondence between the two governments. +The two documents that stand out in my memory are the +wretched lawyer's note of Knox about the Panama tolls +(I never read a less sincere, less convincing, more purely +artificial argument) and Bryce's brief reply, which did +have the ring of sincerity in it. The diplomatic correspondence +in general seemed to me very dull stuff, and, +after wading through it all day, on several nights as I +went to bed the thought came to me whether this sort of +activity were really worth a man's while."</p></div> + +<p>Anything which affected British shipping adversely +touched Great Britain in a sensitive spot; and Page had +not been long in London before he perceived the acute +nature of the Panama situation. In July, 1913, Col. +Edward M. House reached the British capital. A letter +of Page's to Sir Edward Grey gives such a succinct +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-245" id="page1-245"></a>[pg I-245]</span> +description of this new and influential force in American +public life that it is worth quoting:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To Sir Edward Grey</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Coburg Hotel, London.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">[No date.]</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR SIR EDWARD:</p> + +<p>There is an American gentleman in London, the like +of whom I do not know. Mr. Edward M. House is his +name. He is "the silent partner" of President Wilson—that +is to say, he is the most trusted political adviser and +the nearest friend of the President. He is a private +citizen, a man without personal political ambition, a +modest, quiet, even shy fellow. He helps to make Cabinets, +to shape policies, to select judges and ambassadors +and suchlike merely for the pleasure of seeing that these +tasks are well done.</p> + +<p>He is suffering from over-indulgence in advising, and +he has come here to rest. I cannot get him far outside +his hotel, for he cares to see few people. But he is very +eager to meet you.</p> + +<p>I wonder if you would do me the honour to take luncheon +at the Coburg Hotel with me, to meet him either on +July 1, or 3, or 5—if you happen to be free? I shall +have only you and Mr. House.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Very sincerely yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The chief reason why Colonel House wished to meet +the British Foreign Secretary was to bring him a message +from President Wilson on the subject of the Panama +tolls. The three men—Sir Edward, Colonel House, and +Mr. Page—met at the suggested luncheon on July 3rd. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-246" id="page1-246"></a>[pg I-246]</span> +Colonel House informed the Foreign Secretary that President +Wilson was now convinced that the Panama Act violated +the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty and that he intended to +use all his influence to secure its repeal. The matter, the +American urged, was a difficult one, since it would be +necessary to persuade Congress to pass a law acknowledging +its mistake. The best way in which Great Britain +could aid in the process was by taking no public action. +If the British should keep protesting or discussing the +subject acrimoniously in the press and Parliament, such +a course would merely reënforce the elements that would +certainly oppose the President. Any protests would +give them the opportunity to set up the cry of "British +dictation," and a change in the Washington policy would +subject it to the criticism of having yielded to British +pressure. The inevitable effect would be to defeat the +whole proceeding. Colonel House therefore suggested +that President Wilson be left to handle the matter in his +own way and in his own time, and he assured the British +statesman that the result would be satisfactory to both +countries. Sir Edward Grey at once saw that Colonel +House's statement of the matter was simply common +sense, and expressed his willingness to leave the Panama +matter in the President's hands.</p> + +<p>Thus, from July 3, 1913, there was a complete understanding +between the British Government and the Washington +Administration on the question of the tolls. But +neither the British nor the American public knew that +President Wilson had pledged himself to a policy of +repeal. All during the summer and fall of 1913 this +matter was as generally discussed in England as was +Mexico. Everywhere the Ambassador went—country +houses, London dinner tables, the colleges and the clubs—he +was constantly confronted with what was universally +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-247" id="page1-247"></a>[pg I-247]</span> +regarded as America's great breach of faith. How deeply +he felt in the matter his letters show.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To Edward M. House</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">August 25, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR HOUSE:</p> + +<p>. . . The English Government and the English +people without regard to party—I hear it and feel it +everywhere—are of one mind about this: they think we +have acted dishonourably. They really think so—it +isn't any mere political or diplomatic pretense. We +made a bargain, they say, and we have repudiated it. +If it were a mere bluff or game or party contention—that +would be one thing. We could "bull" it through +or live it down. But they look upon it as we look upon +the repudiation of a debt by a state. Whatever the +arguments by which the state may excuse itself, we never +feel the same toward it—never quite so safe about it. +They say, "You are a wonderful nation and a wonderful +people. We like you. But your Government is not a +government of honour. Your honourable men do not +seem to get control." You can't measure the damage +that this does us. Whatever the United States may +propose till this is fixed and forgotten will be regarded +with a certain hesitancy. They will not fully trust the +honour of our Government. They say, too, "See, you've +preached arbitration and you propose peace agreements, +and yet you will not arbitrate this: you know you are +wrong, and this attitude proves it." Whatever Mr. +Hay might or could have done, he made a bargain. The +Senate ratified it. We accepted it. Whether it were a +good bargain or a bad one, we ought to keep it. The +English feeling was shown just the other week when +Senator Root received an honourary degree at Oxford. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-248" id="page1-248"></a>[pg I-248]</span> +The thing that gave him fame here was his speech on this +treaty<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49" /><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a>. There is no end of ways in which they show +their feeling and conviction.</p> + +<p>Now, if in the next regular session the President takes +a firm stand against the ship subsidy that this discrimination +gives, couldn't Congress be carried to repeal this +discrimination? For this economic objection also exists.</p> + +<p>No Ambassador can do any very large constructive +piece of work so long as this suspicion of the honour of +our Government exists. Sir Edward Grey will take it +up in October or November. If I could say then that +the President will exert all his influence for this repeal—that +would go far. If, when he takes it up, I can say +nothing, it will be practically useless for me to take up +any other large plan. This is the most important thing +for us on the diplomatic horizon.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To the President</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Dornoch, Scotland,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">September 10, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:</p> + +<p>I am spending ten or more of the dog days visiting the +Englishman and the Scotchman in their proper setting—their +country homes—where they show themselves the +best of hosts and reveal their real opinions. There are, +for example, in the house where I happen to be to-day, +the principals of three of the Scotch universities, and a +Member of Parliament, and an influential editor.</p> + +<p>They have, of course—I mean all the educated folk I +meet—the most intelligent interest in American affairs, +and they have an unbounded admiration for the American +people—their energy, their resourcefulness, their wealth, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-249" id="page1-249"></a>[pg I-249]</span> +their economic power and social independence. I think +that no people ever really admired and, in a sense, envied +another people more. They know we hold the keys of +the future.</p> + +<p>But they make a sharp distinction between our people +and our Government. They are sincere, God-fearing +people who speak their convictions. They cite Tammany, +the Thaw case, Sulzer, the Congressional lobby, +and sincerely regret that a democracy does not seem to be +able to justify itself. I am constantly amazed and sometimes +dumbfounded at the profound effect that the yellow +press (including the American correspondents of the +English papers) has had upon the British mind. Here is +a most serious journalistic problem, upon which I have +already begun to work seriously with some of the editors +of the better London papers. But it is more than a +journalistic problem. It becomes political. To eradicate +this impression will take years of well-planned work. +I am going to make this the subject of one of the dozen +addresses that I must deliver during the next six months—"The +United States as an Example of Honest and +Honourable Government."</p> + +<p>And everywhere—in circles the most friendly to us, +and the best informed—I receive commiseration because +of the dishonourable attitude of our Government about +the Panama Canal tolls. This, I confess, is hard to +meet. We made a bargain—a solemn compact—and we +have broken it. Whether it were a good bargain or a +bad one, a silly one or a wise one; that's far from the +point. Isn't it? I confess that this bothers me. . . .</p> + +<p>And this Canal tolls matter stands in the way of everything. +It is in their minds all the time—the minds of +all parties and all sections of opinion. They have no +respect for Mr. Taft, for they remember that he might +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-250" id="page1-250"></a>[pg I-250]</span> +have vetoed the bill; and they ask, whenever they dare, +what you will do about it. They hold our Government +in shame so long as this thing stands.</p> + +<p>As for the folly of having made such a treaty—that's +now passed. As for our unwillingness to arbitrate it—that's +taken as a confession of guilt. . . .</p> + +<p>We can command these people, this Government, this +tight island, and its world-wide empire; they honour us, +they envy us, they see the time near at hand when we +shall command the capital and the commerce of the +world if we unfetter our mighty people; they wish to +keep very close to us. But they are suspicious of our +Government because, they contend, it has violated its +faith. Is it so or is it not?</p> + +<p>Life meantime is brimful of interest; and, despite this +reflex result of the English long-blunder with Ireland +(how our sins come home to roost), the Great Republic +casts its beams across the whole world and I was never +so proud to be an American democrat, as I see it light +this hemisphere in a thousand ways.</p> + +<p>All health and mastery to you!</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The story of Sir William Tyrrell's<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50" /><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> visit to the White +House in November, 1913, has already been told. On +this occasion, it will be recalled, not only was an agreement +reached on Mexico, but President Wilson also +repeated the assurances already given by Colonel House +on the repeal of the tolls legislation. Now that Great +Britain had accepted the President's leadership in Mexico, +the time was approaching when President Wilson +might be expected to take his promised stand on Panama +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-251" id="page1-251"></a>[pg I-251]</span> +tolls. Yet it must be repeated that there had been no +definite diplomatic bargain. But Page was exerting all +his efforts to establish the best relations between the two +countries on the basis of fair dealing and mutual respect. +Great Britain had shown her good faith in the Mexican +matter; now the turn of the United States had come.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To the President</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, 6 Grosvenor Square.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">January 6, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:</p> + +<p>We've travelled a long way since this Mexican trouble +began—a long way with His Majesty's Government. +When your policy was first flung at 'em, they showed +at best a friendly incredulity: what! set up a moral +standard for government in Mexico? Everybody's mind +was fixed merely on the restoring of order—the safety +of investments. They thought of course our army would +go down in a few weeks. I recall that Sir Edward Grey +asked me one day if you would not consult the European +governments about the successor to Huerta, speaking of +it as a problem that would come up next week. And +there was also much unofficial talk about joint intervention.</p> + +<p>Well, they've followed a long way. They apologized +for Carden (that's what the Prime Minister's speech was); +they ordered him to be more prudent. Then the real +meaning of concessions began to get into their heads. +They took up the dangers that lurked in the Government's +contract with Cowdray for oil; and they pulled +Cowdray out of Colombia and Nicaragua—granting the +application of the Monroe Doctrine to concessions that +might imperil a country's autonomy. Then Sir Edward +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-252" id="page1-252"></a>[pg I-252]</span> +asked me if you would not consult him about such concessions—a +long way had been travelled since his other +question! Lord Haldane made the Thanksgiving speech +that I suggested to him. And now they have transferred +Carden. They've done all we asked and more; and, +more wonderful yet, they've come to understand what +we are driving at.</p> + +<p>As this poor world goes, all this seems to me rather +handsomely done. At any rate, it's square and it's +friendly.</p> + +<p>Now in diplomacy, as in other contests, there must be +give and take; it's our turn.</p> + +<p>If you see your way clear, it would help the Liberal +Government (which needs help) and would be much +appreciated if, before February 10th, when Parliament +meets, you could say a public word friendly to our keeping +the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty—on the tolls. You only, +of course, can judge whether you would be justified in +doing so. I presume only to assure you of the most excellent +effect it would have here. If you will pardon me +for taking a personal view of it, too, I will say that such +an expression would cap the climax of the enormously +heightened esteem and great respect in which recent +events and achievements have caused you to be held +here. It would put the English of all parties in the happiest +possible mood toward you for whatever subsequent +dealings may await us. It was as friendly a man as +Kipling who said to me the night I spent with him: "You +know your great Government, which does many great +things greatly, does <i>not</i> lie awake o' nights to keep its +promises."</p> + +<p>It's our turn next, whenever you see your way clear.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Most heartily yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-253" id="page1-253"></a>[pg I-253]</span> +</div><p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">From Edward M. House</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">145 East 35th Street,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">New York City.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">January 24, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>I was with the President for twenty-four hours and we +went over everything thoroughly.</p> + +<p>He decided to call the Senate Committee on Foreign +Relations to the White House on Monday and tell them +of his intentions regarding Panama tolls. We discussed +whether it would be better to see some of them individually, +or to take them collectively. It was agreed that +the latter course was better. It was decided, however, +to have Senator Jones poll the Senate in order to find just +how it stood before getting the Committee together. +The reason for this quick action was in response to +your letter urging that something be done before the 10th +of February. . . .</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. HOUSE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>On March 5th the President made good his promise +by going before Congress and asking the two houses to +repeal that clause in the Panama legislation which granted +preferential treatment to American coastwise shipping. +The President's address was very brief and did not discuss +the matter in the slightest detail. Mr. Wilson made the +question one simply of national honour. The exemption, +he said, clearly violated the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty and +there was nothing left to do but to set the matter right. +The part of the President's address that aroused the greatest +interest was the conclusion:</p> + +<p>"I ask this of you in support of the foreign policy of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-254" id="page1-254"></a>[pg I-254]</span> +the Administration. I shall not know how to deal with +other matters of even greater delicacy and nearer consequence, +if you do not grant it to me in ungrudging measure."</p> + +<p>The impression that this speech made upon the statesman +who then presided over the British Foreign office +is evident from the following letter that he wrote to the +Ambassador in Washington.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Sir Edward Grey to Sir C. Spring Rice</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Foreign Office,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">March 13, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>SIR:</p> + +<p>In the course of a conversation with the American +Ambassador to-day, I took the opportunity of saying +how much I had been struck by President Wilson's +Message to Congress about the Panama Canal tolls. +When I read it, it struck me that, whether it succeeded or +failed in accomplishing the President's object, it was something +to the good of public life, for it helped to lift public +life to a higher plane and to strengthen its morale.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I am, &c.,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E. GREY.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Two days after his appearance before Congress the +President wrote to his Ambassador:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From the President</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The White House, Washington,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">March 7, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>I have your letters of the twenty-second and twenty-fourth +of February and I thank you for them most +warmly. Happily, things are clearing up a little in the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-255" id="page1-255"></a>[pg I-255]</span> +matters which have embarrassed our relations with Great +Britain, and I hope that the temper of public opinion is +in fact changing there, as it seems to us from this distance +to be changing.</p> + +<p>Your letters are a lamp to my feet. I feel as I read that +their analysis is searching and true.</p> + +<p>Things over here go on a tolerably even keel. The +prospect at this moment for the repeal of the tolls exemption +is very good indeed. I am beginning to feel a +considerable degree of confidence that the repeal will go +through, and the Press of the country is certainly standing +by me in great shape.</p> + +<p>My thoughts turn to you very often with gratitude and +affectionate regard. If there is ever at any time anything +specific you want to learn, pray do not hesitate to +ask it of me directly, if you think best.</p> + +<p>Carden was here the other day and I spent an hour +with him, but I got not even a glimpse of his mind. I +showed him all of mine that he cared to see.</p> + +<p>With warmest regards from us all,</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WOODROW WILSON.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The debate which now took place in Congress proved to +be one of the stormiest in the history of that body. The +proceeding did not prove to be the easy victory that +the Administration had evidently expected. The struggle +was protracted for three months; and it signalized Mr. +Wilson's first serious conflict with the Senate—that same +Senate which was destined to play such a vexatious and +destructive rôle in his career. At this time, however, +Mr. Wilson had reached the zenith of his control over +the law-making bodies. It was early in his Presidential +term, and in these early days Senators are likely to be +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-256" id="page1-256"></a>[pg I-256]</span> +careful about quarrelling with the White House—especially +the Senators who are members of the President's political +party. In this struggle, moreover, Mr. Wilson had the +intelligence and the character of the Senate largely on +his side, though, strangely enough, his strongest supporters +were Republicans and his bitterest opponents +were Democrats. Senator Root, Senator Burton, Senator +Lodge, Senator Kenyon, Senator McCumber, all Republicans, +day after day and week after week upheld the +national honour; while Senators O'Gorman, Chamberlain, +Vardaman, and Reed, all members of the President's +party, just as persistently led the fight for the baser +cause. The debate inspired an outburst of Anglophobia +which was most distressing to the best friends of +the United States and Great Britain. The American +press, as a whole, honoured itself by championing the +President, but certain newspapers made the debate an +occasion for unrestrained abuse of Great Britain, and of +any one who believed that the United States should treat +that nation honestly. The Hearst organs, in cartoon +and editorial page, shrieked against the ancient enemy. +All the well-known episodes and characters in American +history—Lexington, Bunker Hill, John Paul Jones, Washington, +and Franklin—were paraded as arguments against +the repeal of an illegal discrimination. Petitions from +the Ancient Order of Hibernians and other Irish societies +were showered upon Congress—in almost unending procession +they clogged the pages of the Congressional +Record; public meetings were held in New York and elsewhere +where denouncing an administration that disgraced the +country by "truckling" to Great Britain. The President +was accused of seeking an Anglo-American Alliance +and of sacrificing American shipping to the glory of +British trade, while the history of our diplomatic relations +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-257" id="page1-257"></a>[pg I-257]</span> +was surveyed in detail for the purpose of proving +that Great Britain had broken every treaty she had ever +made. In the midst of this deafening hubbub the quiet +voice of Senator McCumber—"we are too big in national +power to be too little in national integrity"—and that of +Senator Root, demolishing one after another the pettifogging +arguments of the exemptionists, demonstrated +that, after all, the spirit and the eloquence that had +given the Senate its great fame were still influential +forces in that body.</p> + +<p>In all this excitement, Page himself came in for his +share of hard knocks. Irish meetings "resolved" against +the Ambassador as a statesman who "looks on English +claims as superior to American rights," and demanded +that President Wilson recall him. It has been the fate +of practically every American ambassador to Great +Britain to be accused of Anglomania. Lowell, John +Hay, and Joseph H. Choate fell under the ban of those +elements in American life who seem to think that the +main duty of an American diplomat in Great Britain is +to insult the country of which he has become the guest. +In 1895 the house of Representatives solemnly passed a +resolution censuring Ambassador Thomas F. Bayard for +a few sentiments friendly to Great Britain which he had +uttered at a public banquet. That Page was no undiscriminating +idolater of Great Britain these letters have +abundantly revealed. That he had the profoundest respect +for the British character and British institutions +has been made just as clear. With Page this was no +sudden enthusiasm; the conviction that British conceptions +of liberty and government and British ideals of +life represented the fine flower of human progress was +one that he felt deeply. The fact that these fundamentals +had had the opportunity of even freer development +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-258" id="page1-258"></a>[pg I-258]</span> +in America he regarded as most fortunate both for +the United States and for the world. He had never concealed +his belief that the destinies of mankind depended +more upon the friendly coöperation of the United States +and Great Britain than upon any other single influence. +He had preached this in public addresses, and in his +writings for twenty-five years preceding his mission to +Great Britain. But the mere fact that he should hold +such convictions and presume to express them as American +Ambassador apparently outraged those same elements +in this country who railed against Great Britain in this +Panama Tolls debate.</p> + +<p>On August 16, 1913, the City of Southampton, England, +dedicated a monument in honour of the <i>Mayflower</i> +Pilgrims—Southampton having been their original point +of departure for Massachusetts. Quite appropriately +the city invited the American Ambassador to deliver an +address on this occasion; and quite appropriately the +Ambassador acknowledged the debt that Americans of +to-day owed to the England that had sent these adventurers +to lay the foundations of new communities on +foreign soil. Yet certain historic truths embodied in +this very beautiful and eloquent address aroused considerable +anger in certain parts of the United States. +"Blood," said the Ambassador, "carries with it that +particular trick of thought which makes us all English +in the last resort. . . . And Puritan and Pilgrim +and Cavalier, different yet, are yet one in that they are +English still. And thus, despite the fusion of races and +of the great contributions of other nations to her 100 millions +of people and to her incalculable wealth, the United +States is yet English-led and English-ruled." This was +merely a way of phrasing a great historic truth—that +overwhelmingly the largest element in the American +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-259" id="page1-259"></a>[pg I-259]</span> +population is British in origin<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51" /><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a>; that such vital things as +its speech and its literature are English; and that our +political institutions, our liberty, our law, our conceptions +of morality and of life are similarly derived from +the British Isles. Page applied the word "English" to +Americans in the same sense in which that word is used +by John Richard Green, when he traces the history of +the English race from a German forest to the Mississippi +Valley and the wilds of Australia. But the anti-British +elements on this side of the water, taking "English-led +and English-ruled" out of its context, misinterpreted the +phrase as meaning that the American Ambassador had +approvingly called attention to the fact that the United +States was at present under the political control of Great +Britain! Senator Chamberlain of Oregon presented a +petition from the <i>Staatsverband Deutschsprechender Vereine +von Oregon</i>, demanding the Ambassador's removal, while +the Irish-American press and politicians became extremely +vocal.</p> + +<p>Animated as was this outburst, it was mild compared +with the excitement caused by a speech that Page +made while the Panama debate was raging in Congress. +At a dinner of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, in +early March, the Ambassador made a few impromptu +remarks. The occasion was one of good fellowship and +good humour, and Page, under the inspiration of the +occasion, indulged in a few half-serious, half-jocular +references to the Panama Canal and British-American +good-feeling, which, when inaccurately reported, caused +a great disturbance in the England-baiting press. "I +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-260" id="page1-260"></a>[pg I-260]</span> +would not say that we constructed the Panama Canal +even for you," he said, "for I am speaking with great +frankness and not with diplomatic indirection. We +built it for reasons of our own. But I will say that it +adds to the pleasure of that great work that you will +profit by it. You will profit most by it, for you have +the greatest carrying trade." A few paragraphs on the +Monroe Doctrine, which practically repeated President +Wilson's Mobile speech on that subject, but in which +Mr. Page used the expression, "we prefer that European +Powers shall acquire no more territory on this continent," +alarmed those precisians in language, who pretended to +believe that the Ambassador had used the word "prefer" +in its literal sense, and interpreted the sentence to mean +that, while the United States would "prefer" that +Europe should not overrun North and South America, it +would really raise no serious objection if Europe did so.</p> + +<p>Senator Chamberlain of Oregon, who by this time had +apparently become the Senatorial leader of the anti-Page +propaganda, introduced a resolution demanding that the +Ambassador furnish the Senate a complete copy of this +highly pro-British outgiving. The copy was furnished +forthwith—and with that the tempest subsided.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To the President</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">American Embassy, London,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">March 18, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:</p> + +<p>About this infernal racket in the Senate over my poor +speech, I have telegraphed you all there is to say. Of +course, it was a harmless courtesy—no bowing low to the +British or any such thing—as it was spoken and heard. +Of course, too, nothing would have been said about it +but for the controversy over the Canal tolls. That was +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-261" id="page1-261"></a>[pg I-261]</span> +my mistake—in being betrayed by the friendly dinner +and the high compliments paid to us into mentioning a +subject under controversy.</p> + +<p>I am greatly distressed lest possibly it may embarrass +you. I do hope not.</p> + +<p>I think I have now learned <i>that</i> lesson pretty thoroughly. +These Anglophobiacs—Irish and Panama—hound +me wherever I go. I think I told you of one of their +correspondents, who one night got up and yawned at +a public dinner as soon as I had spoken and said to his +neighbours: "Well, I'll go, the Ambassador didn't say +anything that I can get him into trouble about."</p> + +<p>I shall, hereafter, write out my speeches and have them +gone over carefully by my little Cabinet of Secretaries. +Yet something (perhaps not much) will be lost. For +these people are infinitely kind and friendly and courteous.</p> + +<p>They cannot be driven by anybody to do anything, +but they can be led by us to do anything—by the use of +spontaneous courtesy. It is by spontaneous courtesy +that I have achieved whatever I have achieved, and it is +for this that those like me who do like me. Of course, +what some of the American newspapers have said is true—that +I am too free and too untrained to be a great +Ambassador. But the conventional type of Ambassador +would not be worth his salt to represent the United +States here now, when they are eager to work with us for +the peace of the world, if they are convinced of our honour +and right-mindedness and the genuineness of our friendship.</p> + +<p>I talked this over with Sir Edward Grey the other day, +and after telling me that I need fear no trouble at this +end of the line, he told me how severely he is now criticized +by a "certain element" for "bowing too low to the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-262" id="page1-262"></a>[pg I-262]</span> +Americans." We then each bowed low to the other. +The yellow press and Chamberlain would give a year's +growth for a photograph of us in that posture!</p> + +<p>I am infinitely obliged to you for your kind understanding +and your toleration of my errors.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Yours always heartily,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To the President.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>P.S. The serious part of the speech—made to convince +the financial people, who are restive about Mexico, that +we do not mean to forbid legitimate investments in +Central America—has had a good effect here. I have +received the thanks of many important men.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From the President</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The White House, Washington,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">March 25, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>Thank you for your little note of March thirteenth<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52" /><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a>. +You may be sure that none of us who knew you or read +the speech felt anything but admiration for it. It is +very astonishing to me how some Democrats in the Senate +themselves bring these artificial difficulties on the +Administration, and it distresses me not a little. Mr. +Bryan read your speech yesterday to the Cabinet, who +greatly enjoyed it. It was at once sent to the Senate +and I hope will there be given out for publication in full.</p> + +<p>I want you to feel constantly how I value the intelligent +and effective work you are doing in London. I do not +know what I should do without you.</p> + +<p>The fight is on now about the tolls, but I feel perfectly +confident of winning in the matter, though there +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-263" id="page1-263"></a>[pg I-263]</span> +is not a little opposition in Congress—more in the House, +it strangely turns out, where a majority of the Democrats +originally voted against the exemption, than in the +Senate, where a majority of the Democrats voted for it. +The vicissitudes of politics are certainly incalculable.</p> + +<p>With the warmest regard, in necessary haste,</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Cordially and faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WOODROW WILSON.</span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">HON. WALTER H. PAGE,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">American Embassy,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, England.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To the President</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">American Embassy, London,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">March 2, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:</p> + +<p>I have read in the newspapers here that, after you had +read my poor, unfortunate speech, you remarked to +callers that you regarded it as proper. I cannot withhold +this word of affectionate thanks.</p> + +<p>I do not agree with you, heartily as I thank you. The +speech itself, in the surroundings and the atmosphere, was +harmless and was perfectly understood. But I ought +not to have been betrayed into forgetting that the subject +was about to come up for fierce discussion in Congress. . . .</p> + +<p>Of course, I know that the whole infernal thing is +cooked up to beat you, if possible. But that is the +greater reason why you must win. I am willing to be +sacrificed, if that will help—for forgetting the impending +row or for any reason you will.</p> + +<p>I suppose we've got to go through such a struggle to +pull our Government and our people up to an understanding +of our own place in the world—a place so high +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-264" id="page1-264"></a>[pg I-264]</span> +and big and so powerful that all the future belongs to us. +From an economic point of view, we <i>are</i> the world; and +from a political point of view also. How any man who +sees this can have any feeling but pity for the Old World, +passes understanding. Our rôle is to treat it most +courteously and to make it respect our character—nothing +more. Time will do the rest.</p> + +<p>I congratulate you most heartily on the character of +most of your opposition—the wild Irish (they must be +sat upon some time, why not now?), the Clark<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53" /><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> crowd +(characteristically making a stand on a position of dishonour), +the Hearst press, and demagogues generally. +I have confidence in the people.</p> + +<p>This stand is necessary to set us right before the world, +to enable us to build up an influential foreign policy, to +make us respected and feared, and to make the Democratic +Party the party of honour, and to give it the best +reason to live and to win.</p> + +<p>May I make a suggestion?</p> + +<p>The curiously tenacious hold that Anglophobia has +on a certain class of our people—might it not be worth +your while to make, at some convenient time and in some +natural way, a direct attack on it—in a letter to someone, +which could be published, or in some address, or possibly +in a statement to a Senate committee, which could be +given to the press? Say how big and strong and sure-of-the-future +we are; so big that we envy nobody, and +that those who have Anglophobia or any Europe-phobia +are the only persons who "truckle" to any foreign folk +or power; that in this tolls-fight all the Continental governments +are a unit; that we respect them all, fear none, +have no favours, except proper favours among friendly +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-265" id="page1-265"></a>[pg I-265]</span> +nations, to ask of anybody; and that the idea of a "trade" +with England for holding off in Mexico is (if you will excuse +my French) a common gutter lie.</p> + +<p>This may or may not be wise; but you will forgive me +for venturing to suggest it. It is <i>we</i> who are the proud +and erect and patriotic Americans, fearing nobody; but +the other fellows are fooling some of the people in making +them think that <i>they</i> are.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Yours most gratefully,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>To the President.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From the President</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The White House, Washington,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">April 2, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>Please do not distress yourself about that speech. I +think with you that it was a mistake to touch upon that +matter while it was right hot, because any touch would +be sure to burn the finger; but as for the speech itself, I +would be willing to subscribe to every bit of it myself, +and there can be no rational objection to it. We shall +try to cool the excited persons on this side of the water and +I think nothing further will come of it. In the meantime, +pray realize how thoroughly and entirely you are +enjoying my confidence and admiration.</p> + +<p>Your letter about Cowdray and Murray was very illuminating +and will be very serviceable to me. I have +come to see that the real knowledge of the relations between +countries in matters of public policy is to be gained at +country houses and dinner tables, and not in diplomatic +correspondence; in brief, that when we know the men +and the currents of opinion, we know more than foreign +ministers can tell us; and your letters give me, in a thoroughly +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-266" id="page1-266"></a>[pg I-266]</span> +dignified way, just the sidelights that are necessary +to illuminate the picture. I am heartily obliged to +you.</p> + +<p>All unite with me in the warmest regards as always.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">In haste,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WOODROW WILSON.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">HON. WALTER H. PAGE,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">American Embassy,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, England.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>A note of a conversation with Sir Edward Grey touches +the same point: "April 1, 1914. Sir Edward Grey recalled +to me to-day that he had waited for the President +to take up the Canal tolls controversy at his convenience. +'When he took it up at his own time to suit his own plans, +he took it up in the most admirable way possible.' This +whole story is too good to be lost. If the repeal of the +tolls clause passes the Senate, I propose to make a speech +in the House of Commons on 'The Proper Way for Great +Governments to Deal with One Another,' and use this +experience.</p> + +<p>"Sir Edward also spoke of being somewhat 'depressed' +by the fierce opposition to the President on the tolls +question—the extent of Anglophobia in the United +States.</p> + +<p>"Here is a place for a campaign of education—Chautaqua +and whatnot.</p> + +<p>"The amount of Anglophobia <i>is</i> great. But I doubt +if it be as great as it seems; for it is organized and is very +vociferous. If you collected together or thoroughly organized +all the people in the United States who have +birthmarks on their faces, you'd be 'depressed' by the +number of them."</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-267" id="page1-267"></a>[pg I-267]</span> +</div><p>Nothing could have more eloquently proved the truth +of this last remark than the history of this Panama bill +itself. After all the politicians in the House and Senate +had filled pages of the <i>Congressional Record</i> with denunciations +of Great Britain—most of it intended for the +entertainment of Irish-Americans and German-Americans +in the constituencies—the two Houses proceeded +to the really serious business of voting. The House +quickly passed the bill by 216 to 71, and the Senate by +50 to 35. Apparently the amount of Anglophobia was +not portentous, when it came to putting this emotion to +the test of counting heads. The bill went at once to +the President, was signed—and the dishonour was +atoned for.</p> + +<p>Mr. and Mrs. Page were attending a ball in Buckingham +Palace when the great news reached London. The +gathering represented all that was most distinguished in +the official and diplomatic life of the British capital. +The word was rapidly passed from guest to guest, and +the American Ambassador and his wife soon found themselves +the centre of a company which could hardly restrain +itself in expressing its admiration for the United +States. Never in the history of the country had American +prestige stood so high as on that night. The King and +the Prime Minister were especially affected by this display +of fair-dealing in Washington. The slight commercial +advantage which Great Britain had obtained +was not the thought that was uppermost in everybody's +mind. The thing that really moved these assembled +statesmen and diplomats was the fact that something +new had appeared in the history of legislative +chambers. A great nation had committed an outrageous +wrong—that was something that had happened many +times before in all countries. But the unprecedented +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-268" id="page1-268"></a>[pg I-268]</span> +thing was that this same nation had exposed its fault +boldly to the world—had lifted up its hands and cried, +"We have sinned!" and then had publicly undone its +error. Proud as Page had always been of his country, +that moment was perhaps the most triumphant in his +life. The action of Congress emphasized all that he had +been saying of the ideals of the United States, and gave +point to his arguments that justice and honour and right, +and not temporary selfish interest, should control the +foreign policy of any nation which really claimed to be +enlightened. The general feeling of Great Britain was +perhaps best expressed by the remark made to Mrs. +Page, on this occasion, by Lady D——:</p> + +<p>"The United States has set a high standard for all +nations to live up to. I don't believe that there is any +other nation that would have done it."</p> + +<p>One significant feature of this great episode was the act +of Congress in accepting the President's statement that +the repeal of the Panama discrimination was a necessary +preliminary to the success of American foreign +policy. Mr. Wilson's declaration, that, unless this legislation +should be repealed, he would not "know how to +deal with other matters of even greater delicacy and +nearer consequence" had puzzled Congress and the +country. The debates show the keenest curiosity as to +what the President had in mind. The newspapers turned +the matter over and over, without obtaining any clew +to the mystery. Some thought that the President had +planned to intervene in Mexico, and that the tolls legislation +was the consideration demanded by Great Britain +for a free hand in this matter. But this correspondence +has already demolished that theory. Others thought +that Japan was in some way involved—but that explanation +also failed to satisfy.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-269" id="page1-269"></a>[pg I-269]</span> +</div><p>Congress accepted the President's statement trustfully +and blindly, and passed the asked-for legislation. Up +to the present moment this passage in the Presidential +message has been unexplained. Page's papers, however, +disclose what seems to be a satisfactory solution to the +mystery. They show that the President and Colonel +House and Page were at this time engaged in a negotiation +of the utmost importance. At the very time that +the tolls bill was under discussion Colonel House was +making arrangements for a visit to Great Britain, France, +and Germany, the purpose of which was to bring these +nations to some kind of an understanding that would +prevent a European war. This evidently was the great +business that could not be disclosed at the time and for +which the repeal of the tolls legislation was the necessary +preliminary.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p class="center">FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44" /><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> The Committee to celebrate the centennial of the signing +of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. The plan to make +this an elaborate commemoration of a 100 years' peace between the +English-speaking peoples was upset by the outbreak of the World War.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45" /><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> This was the designation Mr. Bryan's admirers sometimes +gave him.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46" /><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> The reference is to President Roosevelt's speech at the +Guildhall in June, 1910.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47" /><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> This refers to the declination of the British Government +to be represented at the San Francisco world exhibition, held in 1915.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48" /><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> John Bassett Moore, at that time the very able counsellor +of the State Department.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49" /><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> Mr. Root's masterly speech on Panama tolls was made in the +United States Senate, January 21, 1913.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50" /><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> Ante: page 202.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51" /><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> This is the fact that is too frequently lost sight of in +current discussions of the melting pot. In the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i> for +August, 1920, Mr. William S. Rossiter, for many years chief clerk of the +United States Census and a statistician of high standing, shows that, of +the 95,000,000 white people of the United States, 55,000,000 trace their +origin to England, Scotland, and Wales.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52" /><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> The Ambassador's letter is dated March 18th.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53" /><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> Mr. Champ Clark, Speaker of the House of Representatives, +was one of the most blatant opponents of Panama repeal.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-270" id="page1-270"></a>[pg I-270]</span> +</div><h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX" />CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<h3>AMERICA TRIES TO PREVENT THE EUROPEAN WAR</h3> + + +<p>Page's mind, from the day of his arrival in England, +had been filled with that portent which was the +most outstanding fact in European life. Could nothing be +done to prevent the dangers threatened by European +militarism? Was there no way of forestalling the war +which seemed every day to be approaching nearer? The +dates of the following letters, August, 1913, show that +this was one of the first ideas which Page presented to the +new Administration.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Aug. 28, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR HOUSE:</p> + +<p>. . . Everything is lovely and the goose hangs high. +We're having a fine time. Only, only, only—I do wish +to do something constructive and lasting. Here are +great navies and armies and great withdrawals of men +from industry—an enormous waste. Here are kings and +courts and gold lace and ceremonies which, without producing +anything, require great cost to keep them going. +Here are all the privileges and taxes that this state of +things implies—every one a hindrance to human progress. +We are free from most of these. We have more people +and more capable people and many times more territory +than both England and Germany; and we have more +potential wealth than all Europe. They know that. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-271" id="page1-271"></a>[pg I-271]</span> +They'd like to find a way to escape. The Hague programmes, +for the most part, just lead them around a +circle in the dark back to the place where they started. +Somebody needs to <i>do</i> something. If we could find some +friendly use for these navies and armies and kings and +things—in the service of humanity—they'd follow us. We +ought to find a way to use them in cleaning up the tropics +under our leadership and under our code of ethics—that +everything must be done for the good of the tropical +peoples and that nobody may annex a foot of land. They +want a job. Then they'd quit sitting on their haunches, +growling at one another.</p> + +<p>I wonder if we couldn't serve notice that the land-stealing +game is forever ended and that the cleaning up +of backward lands is now in order—for the people that +live there; and then invite Europe's help to make the +tropics as healthful as the Panama Zone?</p> + +<p>There's no future in Europe's vision—no long look +ahead. They give all their thought to the immediate +danger. Consider this Balkan War; all European energy +was spent merely to keep the Great Powers at peace. +The two wars in the Balkans have simply impoverished +the people—left the world that much worse than it was +before. Nobody has considered the well-being or the +future of those peoples nor of their land. The Great +Powers are mere threats to one another, content to +check, one the other! There can come no help to the +progress of the world from this sort of action—no step +forward.</p> + +<p>Work on a world-plan. Nothing but blue chips, you +know. Is it not possible that Mexico may give an entering +wedge for this kind of thing?</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Heartily yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-272" id="page1-272"></a>[pg I-272]</span> +</div><p>In a memorandum, written about the same time, Mr. +Page explains his idea in more detail:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Was there ever greater need than there is now of a +first-class mind unselfishly working on world problems? +The ablest ruling minds are engaged on domestic tasks. +There is no world-girdling intelligence at work in government. +On the continent of Europe, the Kaiser is +probably the foremost man. Yet he cannot think far +beyond the provincial views of the Germans. In England, +Sir Edward Grey is the largest-visioned statesman. All +the Europeans are spending their thought and money +in watching and checkmating one another and in maintaining +their armed and balanced <i>status quo</i>.</p> + +<p>A way must be found out of this stagnant watching. +Else a way will have to be fought out of it; and a great +European war would set the Old World, perhaps the whole +world, back a long way; and thereafter, the present armed +watching would recur; we should have gained nothing. It +seems impossible to talk the Great Powers out of their +fear of one another or to "Hague" them out of it. They'll +never be persuaded to disarm. The only way left seems +to be to find some common and useful work for these +great armies to do. Then, perhaps, they'll work themselves +out of their jealous position. Isn't this sound +psychology?</p> + +<p>To produce a new situation, the vast energy that now +spends itself in maintaining armies and navies must find +a new outlet. Something new must be found for them to +do, some great unselfish task that they can do together.</p> + +<p>Nobody can lead in such a new era but the United +States.</p> + +<p>May there not come such a chance in Mexico—to clean +out bandits, yellow fever, malaria, hookworm—all to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-273" id="page1-273"></a>[pg I-273]</span> +make the country healthful, safe for life and investment, +and for orderly self-government at last? What we did in +Cuba might thus be made the beginning of a new epoch +in history—conquest for the sole benefit of the conquered, +worked out by a sanitary reformation. The new sanitation +will reclaim all tropical lands; but the work must be +first done by military power—probably from the outside.</p> + +<p>May not the existing military power of Europe conceivably +be diverted, gradually, to this use? One step +at a time, as political and financial occasions arise? As +presently in Mexico?</p> + +<p>This present order must change. It holds the Old +World still. It keeps all parts of the world apart, in +spite of the friendly cohesive forces of trade and travel. +It keeps back self-government and the progress of man.</p> + +<p>And the tropics cry out for sanitation, which is at first +an essentially military task.</p></div> + +<p>A strange idea this may have seemed in August, 1913, +a year before the outbreak of the European war; yet the +scheme is not dissimilar to the "mandatory" principle, +adopted by the Versailles Peace Conference as the only +practical method of dealing with backward peoples. In +this work, as in everything that would help mankind on +its weary way to a more efficient and more democratic +civilization, Page regarded the United States, Great +Britain, and the British Dominions as inevitable partners. +Anything that would bring these two nations into a +closer coöperation he looked upon as a step making for +human advancement. He believed that any opportunity +of sweeping away misconceptions and prejudices and of +impressing upon the two peoples their common mission +should be eagerly seized by the statesmen of the +two countries. And circumstances at this particular +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-274" id="page1-274"></a>[pg I-274]</span> +moment, Page believed, presented a large opportunity of +this kind. It is one of the minor ironies of modern +history that the United States and Great Britain should +have selected 1914 as a year for a great peace celebration. +That year marked the one hundredth anniversary of the +signing of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of +1812, and in 1913 comprehensive plans had already been +formed for observing this impressive centennial. The +plan was to make it more than the mere observance of a +hundred years of peaceful intercourse; it was the intention +to use the occasion to emphasize the fundamental +identity of American and British ideals and to lay the +foundation of a permanent understanding and friendship. +The erection of a monument to Abraham Lincoln +at Westminster—a plan that has since been realized—was +one detail of this programme. Another was the restoration +of Sulgrave Manor, the English country seat of +the Washingtons, and its preservation as a place where +the peoples of both countries could share their common +traditions. Page now dared to hope that President +Wilson might associate himself with this great purpose to +the extent of coming to England and accepting this +gift in the name of the American nation. Such a Presidential +visit, he believed, would exercise a mighty influence +in forestalling a threatening European war. +The ultimate purpose, that is, was world peace—precisely +the same motive that led President Wilson, in 1919, +to make a European pilgrimage.</p> + +<p>This idea was no passing fancy with Page: it was with +him a favourite topic of conversation. Such a presidential +visit, he believed, would accomplish more than any +other influences in dissipating the clouds that were +darkening the European landscape. He would elaborate +the idea at length in discussions with his intimates.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-275" id="page1-275"></a>[pg I-275]</span> +</div><p>"What I want," he would say, "is to have the President +of the United States and the King of England stand +up side by side and let the world take a good look at +them!"</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">August 25, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>. . . I wrote him (President Wilson) my plan—a +mere outline. He'll only smile now. But when the +tariff and the currency and Mexico are off his hands, and +when he can be invited to come and deliver an oration +on George Washington next year at the presentation of +the old Washington homestead here, he may be "pushed +over." You do the pushing. Mrs. Page has invited the +young White House couple to visit us on their honeymoon<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54" /><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a>. +Encourage that and that may encourage the +larger plan later. Nothing else would give such a friendly +turn to the whole world as the President's coming here. +The old Earth would sit up and rub its eyes and take +notice to whom it belongs. This visit might prevent +an English-German war and an American-Japanese war, +by this mere show of friendliness. It would be one of +the greatest occasions of our time. Even at my little +speeches, they "whoop it up!" What would they do +over the President's!</p></div> + +<p>But at that time Washington was too busy with its +domestic programme to consider such a proposal seriously. +"Your two letters," wrote Colonel House in reply, "have +come to me and lifted me out of the rut of things and +given me a glimpse of a fair land. What you are thinking +of and what you want this Administration to do is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-276" id="page1-276"></a>[pg I-276]</span> +beyond the power of accomplishment for the moment. +My desk is covered with matters of no lasting importance, +but which come to me as a part of the day's work, and +which must be done if I am to help lift the load that is +pressing upon the President. It tells me better than +anything else what he has to bear, and how utterly futile +it is for him to attempt such problems as you present."</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From the President</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>. . . As for your suggestion that I should myself +visit England during my term of office, I must say that I +agree with all your arguments for it, and yet the case +against the President's leaving the country, particularly +now that he is expected to exercise a constant leadership +in all parts of the business of the government, is +very strong and I am afraid overwhelming. It might +be the beginning of a practice of visiting foreign countries +which would lead Presidents rather far afield.</p> + +<p>It is a most attractive idea, I can assure you, and I +turn away from it with the greatest reluctance.</p> + +<p>We hear golden opinions of the impression you are +making in England, and I have only to say that it is +just what I had expected.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Cordially and faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WOODROW WILSON.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">HON. WALTER H. PAGE,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">American Embassy,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, England.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>In December, however, evidently Colonel House's mind +had turned to the general subject that had so engaged +that of the Ambassador.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-277" id="page1-277"></a>[pg I-277]</span> +</div><p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">145 East 35th Street,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">New York City.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">December 13th, 1913.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>In my budget of yesterday I did not tell you of +the suggestion which I made to Sir William Tyrrell +when he was here, and which I also made to the President.</p> + +<p>It occurred to me that between us all we might bring +about the naval holiday which Winston Churchill has +proposed. My plan is that I should go to Germany in +the spring and see the Kaiser, and try to win him over +to the thought that is uppermost in our mind and that +of the British Government.</p> + +<p>Sir William thought there was a good sporting chance +of success. He offered to let me have all the correspondence +that had passed between the British and German +governments upon this question so that I might be thoroughly +informed as to the position of them both. He +thought I should go directly to Germany without stopping +in England, and that Gerard should prepare the +Kaiser for my coming, telling him of my relations with the +President. He thought this would be sufficient without +any further credentials.</p> + +<p>In other words, he would do with the Kaiser what you +did with Sir Edward Grey last summer.</p> + +<p>I spoke to the President about the matter and he +seemed pleased with the suggestion; in fact, I might say, +he was enthusiastic. He said, just as Sir William did, +that it would be too late for this year's budget; but he +made a suggestion that he get the Appropriations Committee +to incorporate a clause, permitting him to eliminate +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-278" id="page1-278"></a>[pg I-278]</span> +certain parts of the battleship budget in the event that +other nations declared for a naval holiday. So this will +be done and will further the plan.</p> + +<p>Now I want to get you into the game. If you think it +advisable, take the matter up with Sir William Tyrrell +and then with Sir Edward Grey, or directly with Sir +Edward, if you prefer, and give me the benefit of your +advice and conclusions.</p> + +<p>Please tell Sir William that I lunched at the Embassy +with the Spring Rices yesterday, and had a satisfactory +talk with both Lady Spring Rice and Sir Cecil.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. HOUSE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>It is apparent from Page's letters that the suggestion +now contained in Colonel House's communication would +receive a friendly hearing. The idea that Colonel House +suggested was merely the initial stage of a plan which soon +took on more ambitious proportions. At the time of Sir +William Tyrrell's American visit, the Winston Churchill +proposal for a naval holiday was being actively discussed +by the British and the American press. In one +form or another it had been figuring in the news for nearly +two years. Viscount Haldane, in the course of his +famous visit to Berlin in February, 1912, had attempted +to reach some understanding with the German Government +on the limitation of the German and the British +fleets. The Agadir crisis of the year before had left +Europe with a bad state of nerves, and there was a general +belief that only some agreement on shipbuilding could +prevent a European war. Lord Haldane and von Tirpitz +spent many hours discussing the relative sizes of the +two navies, but the discussions led to no definite understanding. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-279" id="page1-279"></a>[pg I-279]</span> +In March, 1913, Mr. Churchill, then First +Lord of the Admiralty, took up the same subject in a +different form. In this speech he first used the words +"naval holiday," and proposed that Germany and Great +Britain should cease building first-class battleships for one +year, thus giving the two nations a breathing space, during +which time they might discuss their future plans in the hope +of reaching a permanent agreement. The matter lagged +again until October 18, 1913, when, in a speech at Manchester, +Mr. Churchill placed his proposal in this form: "Now, +we say to our great neighbour, Germany, 'If you will put off +beginning your two ships for twelve months from the ordinary +date when you would have begun them, we will put off +beginning our four ships, in absolute good faith, for exactly +the same period.'" About the same time Premier +Asquith made it clear that the Ministry was back of the +suggested programme. In Germany, however, the "naval +holiday" soon became an object of derision. The +official answer was that Germany had a definite naval +law and that the Government could not entertain any +suggestion of departing from it. Great Britain then +answered that, for every keel Germany laid down, the +Admiralty would lay down two. The outcome, therefore, +of this attempt at friendship was that the two nations +had been placed farther apart than ever.</p> + +<p>The dates of this discussion, it will be observed, almost +corresponded with the period covered by the Tyrrell +visit to America. This fact, and Page's letters of this +period, had apparently implanted in Colonel House's mind +an ambition for definite action. He now proposed that +President Wilson should take up the broken threads of +the rapprochement and attempt to bring them together +again. From this, as will be made plain, the plan developed +into something more comprehensive. Page's +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-280" id="page1-280"></a>[pg I-280]</span> +ideas on the treatment of backward nations had strongly +impressed both the President and Colonel House. The +discussion on Mexico which had just taken place between +the American and the British Governments seemed +to have developed ideas that could have a much wider +application. The fundamental difficulties in Mexico +were not peculiar to that country nor indeed to Latin-America. +Perhaps the most prolific cause of war among +the more enlightened countries was that produced by the +jealousies and antagonisms which were developed by their +contacts with unprogressive peoples—in the Balkans, the +Ottoman Empire, Asia, and the Far East. The method +of dealing with such peoples, which the United States +had found so successful in Cuba and the Philippines, had +proved that there was just one honourable way of dealing +with the less fortunate and more primitive races in all +parts of the world. Was it not possible to bring the +greatest nations, especially the United States, Great +Britain, and Germany, to some agreement on this question, +as well as on the question of disarmament? This +once accomplished, the way could be prepared for joint +action on the numerous other problems which were then +threatening the peace of the world. The League of +Nations was then not even a phrase, but the plan that +was forming in Colonel House's mind was at least some +scheme for permanent international coöperation. For +several years Germany had been the nation which had +proved the greatest obstacle to such international friendliness +and arbitration. The Kaiser had destroyed both +Hague Conferences as influential forces in the remaking of +the world; and in the autumn of 1913 he had taken on a +more belligerent attitude than ever. If this attempt to establish +a better condition of things was to succeed, Germany's +coöperation would be indispensable. This is the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-281" id="page1-281"></a>[pg I-281]</span> +reason why Colonel House proposed first of all to visit +Berlin.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">145 East 35th Street,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">New York City.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">January 4th, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Page:</p> + +<p>. . . Benj. Ide Wheeler<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55" /><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> took lunch with me the +other day. He is just back from Germany and he is on +the most intimate terms with the Kaiser. He tells me he +often takes dinner with the family alone, and spends the +evening with them.</p> + +<p>I know, now, the different Cabinet officials who have the +Kaiser's confidence and I know his attitude toward England, +naval armaments, war, and world politics in general.</p> + +<p>Wheeler spoke to me very frankly and the information +he gave me will be invaluable in the event that my +plans carry. The general idea is to bring about a sympathetic +understanding between England, Germany, and +America, not only upon the question of disarmament, but +upon other matters of equal importance to themselves, +and to the world at large.</p> + +<p>It seems to me that Japan should come into this pact, +but Wheeler tells me that the Kaiser feels very strongly +upon the question of Asiatics. He thinks the contest of +the future will be between the Eastern and Western civilizations.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Your friend always,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. House.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>By January 4, 1914, the House-Wilson plan had thus +grown into an Anglo-American-German "pact," to deal +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-282" id="page1-282"></a>[pg I-282]</span> +not only with "disarmament, but other matters of equal +importance to themselves and to the world at large." +Page's response to this idea was consistent and characteristic. +He had no faith in Germany and believed +that the existence of Kaiserism was incompatible with +the extension of the democratic ideal. Even at this +early time—eight months before the outbreak of the +World War—he had no enthusiasm for anything in the +nature of an alliance, or a "pact," that included Germany +as an equal partner. He did, however, have great +faith in the coöperation of the English-speaking peoples +as a force that would make for permanent peace and +international justice. In his reply to Colonel House, +therefore, Page fell back at once upon his favourite plan +for an understanding between the United States, Great +Britain, and the British colonies. That he would completely +sympathize with the Washington aspiration for +disarmament was to be expected.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To Edward M. House</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">January 2, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>My Dear House:</p> + +<p>You have set my imagination going. I've been thinking +of this thing for months, and now you've given me a fresh +start. It can be worked out somehow—doubtless, not +in the form that anybody may at first see; but experiment +and frank discussion will find a way.</p> + +<p>As I think of it, turning it this way and that, there +always comes to me just as I am falling to sleep this +reflection: the English-speaking peoples now rule the +world in all essential facts. They alone and Switzerland +have permanent free government. In France there's +freedom—but for how long? In Germany and Austria—hardly. +In the Scandinavian States—yes, but they +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-283" id="page1-283"></a>[pg I-283]</span> +are small and exposed as are Belgium and Holland. In +the big secure South American States—yes, it's coming. +In Japan—? Only the British lands and the United +States have secure liberty. They also have the most +treasure, the best fighters, the most land, the most ships—the +future in fact.</p> + +<p>Now, because George Washington warned us against +alliances, we've gone on as if an alliance were a kind of +smallpox. Suppose there were—let us say for argument's +sake—the tightest sort of an alliance, offensive and +defensive, between all Britain, colonies and all, and the +United States—what would happen? Anything we'd +say would go, whether we should say, "Come in out of +the wet," or, "Disarm." That might be the beginning of +a real world-alliance and union to accomplish certain +large results—disarmament, for instance, or arbitration—dozens +of good things.</p> + +<p>Of course, we'd have to draw and quarter the O'Gormans<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56" /><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a>. +But that ought to be done anyhow in the general +interest of good sense in the world. We could force any +nation into this "trust" that we wanted in it.</p> + +<p>Isn't it time we tackled such a job frankly, fighting out +the Irish problem once for all, and having done with it?</p> + +<p>I'm not proposing a programme. I'm only thinking +out loud. I see little hope of doing anything so long as +we choose to be ruled by an obsolete remark made by +George Washington.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">January H, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>. . . But this armament flurry is worth serious +thought. Lloyd George gave out an interview, seeming +to imply the necessity of reducing the navy programme. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-284" id="page1-284"></a>[pg I-284]</span> +The French allies of the British went up in the air! They +raised a great howl. Churchill went to see them, to +soothe them. They would not be soothed. Now the +Prime Minister is going to Paris—ostensibly to see his +daughter off to the Riviera. Nobody believes that reason. +They say he's going to smooth out the French. Meantime +the Germans are gleeful.</p> + +<p>And the British Navy League is receiving money and +encouraging letters from British subjects, praying greater +activity to keep the navy up. You touch the navy and +you touch the quick—that's the lesson. It's an enormous +excitement that this small incident has caused.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, February 24, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>My Dear House:</p> + +<p>You'll be interested in these pamphlets by Sir Max +Waechter, who has opened an office here and is spending +much money to "federate" Europe, and to bring a lessening +of armaments. I enclose also an article about him +from the <i>Daily Telegraph</i>, which tells how he has interviewed +most of the Old World monarchs. Get also, +immediately, the new two-volume life of Lord Lyons, +Minister to the United States during the Civil War, and +subsequently Ambassador to France. You will find an +interesting account of the campaign of about 1870 to reduce +armaments, when old Bismarck dumped the whole +basket of apples by marching against France. You +know I sometimes fear some sort of repetition of that +experience. Some government (probably Germany) will +see bankruptcy staring it in the face and the easiest way +out will seem a great war. Bankruptcy before a war +would be ignominious; after a war, it could be charged to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-285" id="page1-285"></a>[pg I-285]</span> +"Glory." It'll take a long time to bankrupt England. +It's unspeakably rich; they pay enormous taxes, but they +pay them out of their incomes, not out of their principal, +except their inheritance tax. That looks to me as if it +came out of the principal. . . .</p> + +<p>I hope you had a good time in Texas and escaped some +cold weather. This deceptive sort of winter here is +grippe-laden. I've had the thing, but I'm now getting +over it. . . .</p> + +<p>This Benton<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57" /><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a>-Mexican business is causing great excitement +here.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Always heartily yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>P.S. There's nothing like the President. By George! +the passage of the arbitration treaty (renewal) almost +right off the bat, and apparently the tolls discrimination +coming presently to its repeal! Sir Edward Grey remarked +to me yesterday: "Things are clearing up!" +I came near saying to him: "Have you any miracles in +mind that you'd like to see worked?" Wilson stock is at +a high premium on this side of the water in spite of the +momentary impatience caused by Benton's death.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">145 East 35th Street,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">New York City.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">April 19th, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>I have had a long talk with Mr. Laughlin<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58" /><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a>. At first he +thought I would not have more than one chance in a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-286" id="page1-286"></a>[pg I-286]</span> +million to do anything with the Kaiser, but after talking +with him further, he concluded that I would have a fairly +good sporting chance. I have about concluded to take it.</p> + +<p>If I can do anything, I can do it in a few days. I was +with the President most of last week. . . .</p> + +<p>He spoke of your letters to him and to me as being +classics, and said they were the best letters, as far as he +knew, that any one had ever written. Of course you +know how heartily I concur in this. He said that sometime +they should be published.</p> + +<p>The President is now crystallizing his mind in regard to +the Federal Reserve Board, and if you are not to remain +in London, then he would probably put Houston on the +Board and ask you to take the Secretaryship of Agriculture.</p> + +<p>You have no idea the feeling that is being aroused by +the tolls question. The Hearst papers are screaming at +all of us every day. They have at last honoured me with +their abuse. . . .</p> + +<p>With love and best wishes, I am,</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. HOUSE.</span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">145 East 35th Street,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">New York City.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">April 20th, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Page:</p> + +<p>. . . It is our purpose to sail on the <i>Imperator</i>, +May 16th, and go directly to Germany. I expect to be +there a week or more, but Mrs. House will reach London +by the 1st or 2nd of June. . . .</p> + +<p>Our friend<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59" /><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> in Washington thinks it is worth while for +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-287" id="page1-287"></a>[pg I-287]</span> +me to go to Germany, and that determines the matter. +The press is shrieking to-day over the Mexican situation, +but I hope they will be disappointed. It is not the intention +to do anything further for the moment than to +blockade the ports, and unless some overt act is made +from the North, our troops will not cross the border.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Your friend always,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. HOUSE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, April 27, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR HOUSE:</p> + +<p>Of course you decided wisely to carry out your original +Berlin plan, and you ought never to have had a moment's +hesitation, if you did have any hesitation. I do +not expect you to produce any visible or immediate results. +I hope I am mistaken in this. But you know that +the German Government has a well-laid progressive plan +for shipbuilding for a certain number of years. I believe +that the work has, in fact, already been arranged for. +But that has nothing to do with the case. You are going +to see what effect you can produce on the mind of a +man. Perhaps you will never know just what effect you +will produce. Yet the fact that you are who you are, +that you make this journey for this especial purpose, that +you are everlastingly right—these are enough.</p> + +<p>Moreover, you can't ever tell results, nor can you afford +to make your plans in this sort of high work with the +slightest reference to probable results. That's the bigness +and the glory of it. Any ordinary man can, on any +ordinary day, go and do a task, the favourable results +of which may be foreseen. <i>That's</i> easy. The big thing +is to go confidently to work on a task, the results of +which nobody can possibly foresee—a task so vague and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-288" id="page1-288"></a>[pg I-288]</span> +improbable of definite results that small men hesitate. +It is in this spirit that very many of the biggest things in +history have been done. Wasn't the purchase of Louisiana +such a thing? Who'd ever have supposed that that +could have been brought about? I applaud your errand +and I am eagerly impatient to hear the results. When +will <i>you</i> get here? I assume that Mrs. House will not +go with you to Berlin. No matter so you both turn up +here for a good long stay.</p> + +<p>I've taken me a little bit of a house about twenty +miles out of town whither we are going in July as soon +as we can get away from London. I hope to stay down +there till far into October, coming up to London about +thrice a week. That's the dull season of the year. It's +a charming little country place—big enough for you to +visit us. . . .</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">An Bord des Dampfers <i>Imperator</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">den May 21, 1914.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Hamburg-Amerika Linie</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Page:</p> + +<p>Here we are again. The Wallaces<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60" /><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> land at Cherbourg, +Friday morning, and we of course go on to Berlin. I +wish I might have the benefit of your advice just now, for +the chances for success in this great adventure are slender +enough at best. The President has done his part in the +letter I have with me, and it is clearly up to me to do +mine. . . .</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. House.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-289" id="page1-289"></a>[pg I-289]</span> +</div><p>It will be observed that Colonel House had taken the +advice of Sir William Tyrrell, and had sailed directly to +Germany on a German ship—the <i>Imperator</i>. Ambassador +Gerard had made preparations for his reception in +Berlin, and the American soon had long talks with Admiral +von Tirpitz, Falkenhayn, Von Jagow, Solf, and +others. Von Bethmann-Hollweg's wife died almost on +the day of his arrival in Berlin, so it was impossible for +him to see the Chancellor—the man who would have +probably been the most receptive to these peace ideas. +All the leaders of the government, except Von Tirpitz, +gave Colonel House's proposals a respectful if somewhat +cynical hearing. Von Tirpitz was openly and demonstratively +hostile. The leader of the German Navy simply +bristled with antagonism at any suggestion for peace +or disarmament or world coöperation. He consumed a +large part of the time which Colonel House spent with +him denouncing England and all its works. Hatred +of the "Island Kingdom" was apparently the consuming +passion of his existence. On the whole, Von Tirpitz +thus made no attempt to conceal his feeling that the purpose +of the House mission was extremely distasteful to +him. The other members of the Government, while not +so tactlessly hostile, were not particularly encouraging. +The usual objections to disarmament were urged—the +fear of other Powers, the walled-in state of Germany, the +vigilant enemies against which it was necessary constantly +to be prepared and watchful. Even more than +the unsympathetic politeness of the German Cabinet +the general atmosphere of Berlin was depressing to Colonel +House. The militaristic oligarchy was absolutely in +control. Militarism possessed not only the army, the +navy, and the chief officers of state, but the populace as +well. One almost trivial circumstance has left a lasting +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-290" id="page1-290"></a>[pg I-290]</span> +impression on Colonel House's mind. Ambassador Gerard +took him out one evening for a little relaxation. Both +Mr. Gerard and Colonel House were fond of target shooting +and the two men sought one of the numerous rifle +galleries of Berlin. They visited gallery after gallery, +but could not get into one. Great crowds lined up at +every place, waiting their turns at the target; it seemed +as though every able-bodied man in Berlin was spending +all his time improving his marksmanship. But this was +merely a small indication of the atmosphere of militarism +which prevailed in the larger aspects of life. Colonel +House found himself in a strange place to preach international +accord for the ending of war!</p> + +<p>He had come to Berlin not merely to talk with the +Cabinet heads; his goal was the Kaiser himself. But he +perceived at once a persistent opposition to his plan. +As he was the President's personal representative, and +carried a letter from the President to the Kaiser, an audience +could not be refused—indeed, it had already been +duly arranged; but there was a quiet opposition to his +consorting with the "All Highest" alone. It was not usual, +Colonel House was informed, for His Imperial Majesty +to discuss such matters except in the presence of a representative +of the Foreign Office. Germany had not yet +recovered from the shock which the Emperor's conversation +with certain foreign correspondents had given the +nation. The effects were still felt of the famous interviews +of October 28, 1908, which, when published in the London +<i>Telegraph</i>, had caused the bitterest resentment in +Great Britain. The Kaiser had given his solemn word +that he would indulge in no more indiscretions of this +sort, and a private interview with Colonel House was regarded +by his advisers as a possible infraction of that +promise. But the American would not be denied. He +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-291" id="page1-291"></a>[pg I-291]</span> +knew that an interview with a third person present would +be simply time thrown away since his message was intended +for the Kaiser's own ears; and ultimately his persistence +succeeded. The next Monday would be June +1st—a great day in Germany. It was the occasion of the +Schrippenfest, a day which for many years had been set +aside for the glorification of the German Army. On that +festival, the Kaiser entertained with great pomp representative +army officers and representative privates, as +well as the diplomatic corps and other distinguished +foreigners. Colonel House was invited to attend the +Kaiser's luncheon on that occasion, and was informed that, +after this function was over, he would have an opportunity +of having a private conversation with His Majesty.</p> + +<p>The affair took place in the palace at Potsdam. The +militarism which Colonel House had felt so oppressively +in Berlin society was especially manifest on this occasion. +There were two luncheon parties—that of the Kaiser +and his officers and guests in the state dining room, and +that of the selected private soldiers outside. The Kaiser +and the Kaiserin spent a few moments with their humbler +subjects, drinking beer with them and passing a few comradely +remarks; they then proceeded to the large dining +hall and took their places with the gorgeously caparisoned +and bemedalled chieftains of the German Army. The +whole proceeding has an historic interest, in that it was +the last Schrippenfest held. Whether another will ever +be held is problematical, for the occasion was an inevitable +part of the trappings of Hohenzollernism. Despite the +gravity of the occasion, Colonel House's chief memory +of this function is slightly tinged with the ludicrous. He +had spent the better part of a lifetime attempting to +rid himself of his military title, but uselessly. He was +now embarrassed because these solemn German officers +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-292" id="page1-292"></a>[pg I-292]</span> +persisted in regarding him as an important part of the +American Army, and in discussing technical and strategical +problems. The visitor made several attempts to explain +that he was merely a "geographical colonel"—that +the title was constantly conferred in an informal +sense on Americans, especially Southerners, and that the +handle to his name had, therefore, no military significance. +But the round-faced Teutons stared at his explanation +in blank amazement; they couldn't grasp the +point at all, and continued to ask his opinion of matters +purely military.</p> + +<p>When the lunch was finished, the Kaiser took Colonel +House aside, and the two men withdrew to the terrace, +out of earshot of the rest of the gathering. However, +they were not out of sight. For nearly half an hour the +Kaiser and the American stood side by side upon the terrace, +the German generals, at a respectful distance, watching +the proceeding, resentful, puzzled, curious as to what it +was all about. The quiet demeanour of the American +"Colonel," his plain citizen's clothes, and his almost impassive +face, formed a striking contrast to the Kaiser's dazzling +uniform and the general scene of military display. Two or +three of the generals and admirals present were in the +secret, but only two or three; the mass of officers watching +this meeting little guessed that the purpose of House's visit +was to persuade the Kaiser to abandon everything for +which the Schrippenfest stood; to enter an international +compact with the United States and Great Britain for +reducing armaments, to reach an agreement about trade +and the treatment of backward peoples, and to form +something of a permanent association for the preservation +of peace. The one thing which was apparent to the +watchers was that the American was only now and then +saying a brief word, but that the Kaiser was, as usual, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-293" id="page1-293"></a>[pg I-293]</span> +doing a vast amount of talking. His speech rattled on +with the utmost animation, his arms were constantly +gesticulating, he would bring one fist down into his palm +to register an emphatic point, and enforce certain ideas +with a menacing forefinger. At times Colonel House +would show slight signs of impatience and interrupt the +flow of talk. But the Kaiser was clearly absorbed in the +subject under discussion. His entourage several times +attempted to break up the interview. The Court Chamberlain +twice gingerly approached and informed His +Majesty that the Imperial train was waiting to take the +party back to Berlin. Each time the Kaiser, with an +angry gesture, waved the interrupter away. Despairing of +the usual resources, the Kaiserin was sent with the same +message. The Kaiser did not treat her so summarily, but +he paid no attention to the request, and continued to discuss +the European situation with the American.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="i1312" id="i1312" /> +<a href="images/1312.jpg"><img src= +"images/1312.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br /> +<b>Walter H. Page, from a photograph taken a few years<br /> +before he became American Ambassador to Great Britain</b><br /> +<br /> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="i1313" id="i1313" /> +<a href="images/1313.jpg"><img src= +"images/1313.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br /> +<b>The British Foreign Office, Downing Street</b><br /> +<br /> +</div> + +<p>The subject that had mainly aroused the Imperial +warmth was the "Yellow Peril." For years this had been +an obsession with the Kaiser, and he launched into the +subject as soon as Colonel House broached the purpose of +his visit. There could be no question of disarmament, +the Kaiser vehemently declared, as long as this danger +to civilization existed. "We white nations should join +hands," he said, "to oppose Japan and the other yellow +nations, or some day they will destroy us."</p> + +<p>It was with difficulty that Colonel House could get +His Majesty away from this subject. Whatever topic +he touched upon, the Kaiser would immediately start +declaiming on the dangers that faced Europe from the +East. His insistence on this accounted partly for the +slight signs of impatience which the American showed. +He feared that all the time allotted for the interview would +be devoted to discussing the Japanese. About another +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-294" id="page1-294"></a>[pg I-294]</span> +nation, the Kaiser showed almost as much alarm as he +did about Japan, and that was Russia. He spoke contemptuously +of France and Great Britain as possible +enemies, for he apparently had no fear of them. But the +size of Russia and the exposed eastern frontier of Germany +seemed to appal him. How could Germany join a +peace pact, and reduce its army, so long as 175,000,000 +Slavs threatened them from this direction?</p> + +<p>Another matter that the Kaiser discussed with derision +was Mr. Bryan's arbitration treaty. Practically +all the great nations had already ratified this treaty except +Germany. The Kaiser now laughed at the treaties +and pooh-poohed Bryan. Germany, he declared, would +never accept such an arbitration plan. Colonel House +had particular cause to remember this part of the conversation +three years afterward, when the United States +declared war on Germany. The outstanding feature of +the Bryan treaty was the clause which pledged the high +contracting parties not to go to war without taking a +breathing spell of one year in which to think the matter +over. Had Germany adopted this treaty, the United +States, in April, 1917, after Germany had presented a +<i>casus belli</i> by resuming unrestricted submarine warfare, +could not have gone to war. We should have been +obliged to wait a year, or until April, 1918, before engaging +in hostilities. That is, an honourable observance +of this Bryan treaty by the United States would have +meant that Germany would have starved Great Britain +into surrender, and crushed Europe with her army. Had +the Kaiser, on this June afternoon, not notified Colonel +House that Germany would not accept this treaty, but, +instead, had notified him that he would accept it, William II +might now be sitting on the throne of a victorious +Germany, with Europe for a footstool.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-295" id="page1-295"></a>[pg I-295]</span> +</div><p>Despite the Kaiser's hostile attitude toward these details, +his general reception of the President's proposals +was not outwardly unfriendly. Perhaps he was sincere, +perhaps not; yet the fact is that he manifested more +cordiality to this somewhat vague "get-together" proposal +than had any of his official advisers. He encouraged +Colonel House to visit London, talk the matter over with +British statesmen, and then return to Berlin.</p> + +<p>"The last thing," he said, "that Germany wants is +war We are getting to be a great commercial country. +In a few years Germany will be a rich country, like England +and the United States. We don't want a war to +interfere with our progress."</p> + +<p>Any peace suggestion that was compatible with German +safety, he said, would be entertained. Yet his parting +words were not reassuring.</p> + +<p>"Every nation in Europe," he said, "has its bayonets +pointed at Germany. But—"—and with this he gave +a proud and smiling glance at the glistening representatives +of his army gathered on this brilliant occasion—"we +are ready!"</p> + +<p>Colonel house left Berlin, not particularly hopeful; +the Kaiser impressed him as a man of unstable nervous +organization—as one who was just hovering on the borderland +of insanity. Certainly, this was no man to be entrusted +with such powers as the American had witnessed +that day at Potsdam. Dangerous as the Kaiser was, +however, he did not seem to Colonel House to be as great +a menace to mankind as were his military advisers. The +American came away from Berlin with the conviction +that the most powerful force in Germany was the militaristic +clique, and second, the Hohenzollern dynasty. +He has always insisted that this represented the real +precedence in power. So long as the Kaiser was obedient +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-296" id="page1-296"></a>[pg I-296]</span> +to the will of militarism, so long could he maintain his +standing. He was confident, however, that the militaristic +oligarchy was determined to have its will, and +would dethrone the Kaiser the moment he showed indications +of taking a course that would lead to peace. +Colonel House was also convinced that this militaristic +oligarchy was determined on war. The coolness with +which it listened to his proposals, the attempts it made +to keep him from seeing the Kaiser alone, its repeated +efforts to break up the conversation after it had begun, +all pointed to the inevitable tragedy. The fact that the +Kaiser expressed a wish to discuss the matter again, +after Colonel House had sounded London, was the one +hopeful feature of an otherwise discouraging experience, +and accounts for the tone of faint optimism in his letters +describing the visit.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Embassy of the United States of America,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Berlin,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">May 28, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Page:</p> + +<p>. . . I have done something here already—not +much, but enough to open negotiations with London. +I lunch with the Kaiser on Monday. I was advised to +avoid Admiral von Tirpitz as being very unsympathetic. +However, I went directly at him and had a most interesting +talk. He is a forceful fellow. Von Jagow is pleasant +but not forceful. I have had a long talk with him. The +Chancellor's wife died last week so I have not got in +touch with him. I will write you more fully from Paris. +My address there will be Hotel Ritz.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Hastily,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M.H.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-297" id="page1-297"></a>[pg I-297]</span> +</div><p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Hotel Ritz, 15, Place Vendôme, Paris.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">June 3, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Page:</p> + +<p>I had a satisfactory talk with the Kaiser on Monday. +I have now seen everyone worthwhile in Germany except +the Chancellor. I am ready now for London. Perhaps +you had better prepare the way. The Kaiser knows I +am to see them, and I have arranged to keep him in touch +with results—if there are any. We must work quickly +after I arrive, for it may be advisable for me to return to +Germany, and I am counting on sailing for home July +15th or 28th. . . . I am eager to see you and tell +you what I know.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M.H.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Colonel House left that night for Paris, but there the +situation was a hopeless one. France was not thinking +of a foreign war; it was engrossed with its domestic +troubles. There had been three French ministries in two +weeks; and the trial of Madame Caillaux for the murder of +Gaston Calmette, editor of the Paris <i>Figaro</i>, was monopolizing +all the nation's capacity for emotion. Colonel +House saw that it would be a waste of energy to take up +his mission at Paris—there was no government stable +enough to make a discussion worth while. He therefore +immediately left for London.</p> + +<p>The political situation in Great Britain was almost as +confused as that in Paris. The country was in a state +approaching civil war on the question of Home Rule +for Ireland; the suffragettes were threatening to dynamite +the Houses of Parliament; and the eternal struggle +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-298" id="page1-298"></a>[pg I-298]</span> +between the Liberal and the Conservative elements was +raging with unprecedented virulence. A European war +was far from everybody's mind. It was this utter inability +to grasp the realities of the European situation +which proved the main impediment to Colonel House's +work in England. He met all the important people—Mr. +Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, Sir Edward Grey, and +others. With them he discussed his "pact" proposal in +great detail.</p> + +<p>Naturally, ideas of this sort were listened to sympathetically +by statesmen of the stamp of Asquith, Grey, +and Lloyd George. The difficulty, however, was that +none of these men apprehended an immediate war. They +saw no necessity of hurrying about the matter. They had +the utmost confidence in Prince Lichnowsky, the German +Ambassador in London, and Von Bethmann-Hollweg, +the German Chancellor. Both these men were regarded +by the Foreign Office as guarantees against a German attack; +their continuance in their office was looked upon +as an assurance that Germany entertained no immediately +aggressive plans. Though the British statesmen did not +say so definitely, the impression was conveyed that the +mission on which Colonel House was engaged was an +unnecessary one—a preparation against a danger that +did not exist. Colonel House attempted to persuade +Sir Edward Grey to visit the Kiel regatta, which was to +take place in a few days, see the Kaiser, and discuss the +plan with him. But the Government feared that such a +visit would be very disturbing to France and Russia. +Already Mr. Churchill's proposal for a "naval holiday" +had so wrought up the French that a hurried trip to +France by Mr. Asquith had been necessary to quiet them; +the consternation that would have been caused in Paris +by the presence of Sir Edward Grey at Kiel can only be +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-299" id="page1-299"></a>[pg I-299]</span> +imagined. The fact that the British statesmen entertained +so little apprehension of a German attack may +possibly be a reflection on their judgment; yet Colonel +House's visit has great historical value, for the experience +afterward convinced him that Great Britain had had no +part in bringing on the European war, and that Germany +was solely responsible. It certainly should have put the +Wilson Administration right on this all-important point, +when the great storm broke.</p> + +<p>The most vivid recollection which the British statesmen +whom Colonel House met retain of his visit, was his consternation +at the spirit that had confronted him everywhere +in Germany. The four men most interested—Sir +Edward Grey, Sir William Tyrrell, Mr. Page, and +Colonel House—met at luncheon in the American Embassy +a few days after President Wilson's emissary had +returned from Berlin. Colonel House could talk of little +except the preparations for war which were manifest on +every hand.</p> + +<p>"I feel as though I had been living near a mighty +electric dynamo," Colonel House told his friends. "The +whole of Germany is charged with electricity. Everybody's +nerves are tense. It needs only a spark to set the +whole thing off."</p> + +<p>The "spark" came two weeks afterward with the assassination +of the Archduke Ferdinand.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"It is all a bad business," Colonel House wrote to +Page when war broke out, "and just think how near we +came to making such a catastrophe impossible! If +England had moved a little faster and had let me go +back to Germany, the thing, perhaps, could have been +done."</p> + +<p>To which Page at once replied:</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-300" id="page1-300"></a>[pg I-300]</span> +</div><p>"No, no, no—no power on earth could have prevented +it. The German militarism, which is <i>the</i> crime of the +last fifty years, has been working for this for twenty-five +years. It is the logical result of their spirit and enterprise +and doctrine. It had to come. But, of course, they +chose the wrong time and the wrong issue. Militarism +has no judgment. Don't let your conscience be worried. +You did all that any mortal man could do. But nobody +could have done anything effective.</p> + +<p>"We've got to see to it that this system doesn't grow +up again. That's all."</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p class="center">FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54" /><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Mr. and Mrs. Francis B. Sayre, son-in-law and daughter of +President Wilson.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55" /><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> Ex-President of the University of California, Roosevelt +Professor at the University of Berlin, 1909-10.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56" /><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> James A. O'Gorman was the anti-British Senator from New +York State at this time working hard against the repeal of the Panama +tolls discrimination.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57" /><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> In February, 1915, William S. Benton, an English subject +who had spent the larger part of his life in Mexico, was murdered in the +presence of Francisco Villa.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58" /><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> Mr. Irwin Laughlin, first secretary of the American +Embassy in London; at this time spending a few weeks in the United +States.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59" /><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Obviously President Wilson.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60" /><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> Mr. Hugh C. Wallace, afterward Ambassador to France, and +Mrs. Wallace. Mr. and Mrs. Wallace accompanied Mr. and Mrs. House on +this journey.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-301" id="page1-301"></a>[pg I-301]</span> +</div><h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X" />CHAPTER X</h2> + +<h3>THE GRAND SMASH</h3> + + +<p>In the latter part of July the Pages took a small house +at Ockham, in Surrey, and here they spent the fateful +week that preceded the outbreak of war. The Ambassador's +emotions on this event are reflected in a memorandum +written on Sunday, August 2nd—a day that was +full of negotiations, ultimatums, and other precursors of +the approaching struggle.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Bachelor's Farm, Ockham, Surrey.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Sunday, August 2, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The Grand Smash is come. Last night the German +Ambassador at St. Petersburg handed the Russian Government +a declaration of war. To-day the German Government +asked the United States to take its diplomatic +and consular business in Russia in hand. Herrick, our +Ambassador in Paris, has already taken the German interests +there.</p> + +<p>It is reported in London to-day that the Germans have +invaded Luxemburg and France.</p> + +<p>Troops were marching through London at one o'clock +this morning. Colonel Squier<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61" /><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> came out to luncheon. +He sees no way for England to keep out of it. There is +no way. If she keep out, Germany will take Belgium +and Holland, France would be betrayed, and England +would be accused of forsaking her friends.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-302" id="page1-302"></a>[pg I-302]</span> +</div><p>People came to the Embassy all day to-day (Sunday), +to learn how they can get to the United States—a rather +hard question to answer. I thought several times of +going in, but Greene and Squier said there was no need +of it. People merely hoped we might tell them what we +can't tell them.</p> + +<p>Returned travellers from Paris report indescribable +confusion—people unable to obtain beds and fighting for +seats in railway carriages.</p> + +<p>It's been a hard day here. I have a lot (not a +big lot either) of routine work on my desk which I +meant to do. But it has been impossible to get my +mind off this Great Smash. It holds one in spite of +one's self. I revolve it and revolve it—of course getting +nowhere.</p> + +<p>It will revive our shipping. In a jiffy, under stress of a +general European war, the United States Senate passed a +bill permitting American registry to ships built abroad. +Thus a real emergency knocked the old Protectionists +out, who had held on for fifty years! Correspondingly +the political parties here have agreed to suspend their +Home Rule quarrel till this war is ended. Artificial +structures fall when a real wind blows.</p> + +<p>The United States is the only great Power wholly out +of it. The United States, most likely, therefore, will be +able to play a helpful and historic part at its end. It will +give President Wilson, no doubt, a great opportunity. +It will probably help us politically and it will surely help +us economically.</p> + +<p>The possible consequences stagger the imagination. +Germany has staked everything on her ability to win +primacy. England and France (to say nothing of +Russia) really ought to give her a drubbing. If they do +not, this side of the world will henceforth be German. If +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-303" id="page1-303"></a>[pg I-303]</span> +they do flog Germany, Germany will for a long time be in +discredit.</p> + +<p>I walked out in the night a while ago. The stars are +bright, the night is silent, the country quiet—as quiet +as peace itself. Millions of men are in camp and on warships. +Will they all have to fight and many of them die—to +untangle this network of treaties and affiances and to +blow off huge debts with gunpowder so that the world +may start again?</p> + +<p>A hurried picture of the events of the next seven days +is given in the following letter to the President:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To the President</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, Sunday, August 9, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:</p> + +<p>God save us! What a week it has been! Last Sunday +I was down here at the cottage I have taken for the +summer—an hour out of London—uneasy because of the +apparent danger and of what Sir Edward Grey had told +me. During the day people began to go to the Embassy, +but not in great numbers—merely to ask what they +should do in case of war. The Secretary whom I had +left in charge on Sunday telephoned me every few hours +and laughingly told funny experiences with nervous women +who came in and asked absurd questions. Of course, +we all knew the grave danger that war might come but +nobody could by the wildest imagination guess at what +awaited us. On Monday I was at the Embassy earlier +than I think I had ever been there before and every +member of the staff was already on duty. Before breakfast +time the place was filled-packed—like sardines. +This was two days before war was declared. There was +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-304" id="page1-304"></a>[pg I-304]</span> +no chance to talk to individuals, such was the jam. I +got on a chair and explained that I had already telegraphed +to Washington—on Saturday—suggesting the +sending of money and ships, and asking them to be patient. +I made a speech to them several times during the +day, and kept the Secretaries doing so at intervals. More +than 2,000 Americans crowded into those offices (which +are not large) that day. We were kept there till two +o'clock in the morning. The Embassy has not been +closed since.</p> + +<p>Mr. Kent of the Bankers Trust Company in New York +volunteered to form an American Citizens' Relief Committee. +He and other men of experience and influence +organized themselves at the Savoy Hotel. The hotel +gave the use of nearly a whole floor. They organized +themselves quickly and admirably and got information +about steamships and currency, etc. We began to send +callers at the Embassy to this Committee for such information. +The banks were all closed for four days. These +men got money enough—put it up themselves and used +their English banking friends for help—to relieve all +cases of actual want of cash that came to them. Tuesday +the crowd at the Embassy was still great but smaller. +The big space at the Savoy Hotel gave them room to +talk to one another and to get relief for immediate needs. +By that time I had accepted the volunteer services of +five or six men to help us explain to the people—and +they have all worked manfully day and night. We now +have an orderly organization at four places: The Embassy, +the Consul-General's Office, the Savoy, and the +American Society in London, and everything is going well. +Those two first days, there was, of course, great confusion. +Crazy men and weeping women were imploring +and cursing and demanding—God knows it was bedlam +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-305" id="page1-305"></a>[pg I-305]</span> +turned loose. I have been called a man of the greatest +genius for an emergency by some, by others a damned +fool, by others every epithet between these extremes. +Men shook English banknotes in my face and demanded +United States money and swore our Government and its +agents ought all to be shot. Women expected me to +hand them steamship tickets home. When some found +out that they could not get tickets on the transports +(which they assumed would sail the next day) they accused +me of favouritism. These absurd experiences will +give you a hint of the panic. But now it has worked out +all right, thanks to the Savoy Committee and other +helpers.</p> + +<p>Meantime, of course, our telegrams and mail increased +almost as much as our callers. I have filled the place +with stenographers, I have got the Savoy people to answer +certain classes of letters, and we have caught up. My +own time and the time of two of the secretaries has been +almost wholly taken with governmental problems; hundreds +of questions have come in from every quarter that +were never asked before. But even with them we have +now practically caught up—it has been a wonderful week!</p> + +<p>Then the Austrian Ambassador came to give up his Embassy—to +have me take over his business. Every detail was +arranged. The next morning I called on him to assume +charge and to say good-bye, when he told me that he was +not yet going! That was a stroke of genius by Sir Edward +Grey, who informed him that Austria had not given +England cause for war. That <i>may</i> work out, or it may +not. Pray Heaven it may! Poor Mensdorff, the Austrian +Ambassador, does not know where he is. He is +practically shut up in his guarded Embassy, weeping and +waiting the decree of fate.</p> + +<p>Then came the declaration of war, most dramatically. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-306" id="page1-306"></a>[pg I-306]</span> +Tuesday night, five minutes after the ultimatum had expired, +the Admiralty telegraphed to the fleet "Go." In +a few minutes the answer came back "Off." Soldiers +began to march through the city going to the railway +stations. An indescribable crowd so blocked the streets +about the Admiralty, the War Office, and the Foreign +Office, that at one o'clock in the morning I had to drive +in my car by other streets to get home.</p> + +<p>The next day the German Embassy was turned over +to me. I went to see the German Ambassador at three +o'clock in the afternoon. He came down in his pajamas, +a crazy man. I feared he might literally go mad. He +is of the anti-war party and he had done his best and +utterly failed. This interview was one of the most +pathetic experiences of my life. The poor man had not +slept for several nights. Then came the crowds of +frightened Germans, afraid that they would be arrested. +They besieged the German Embassy and our Embassy. +I put one of our naval officers in the German Embassy, +put the United States seal on the door to protect it, and +we began business there, too. Our naval officer has moved +in—sleeps there. He has an assistant, a stenographer, a +messenger: and I gave him the German automobile and +chauffeur and two English servants that were left there. +He has the job well in hand now, under my and Laughlin's +supervision. But this has brought still another new +lot of diplomatic and governmental problems—a lot of +them. Three enormous German banks in London have, +of course, been closed. Their managers pray for my aid. +Howling women come and say their innocent German +husbands have been arrested as spies. English, Germans, +Americans—everybody has daughters and wives and +invalid grandmothers alone in Germany. In God's +name, they ask, what can I do for them? Here come +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-307" id="page1-307"></a>[pg I-307]</span> +stacks of letters sent under the impression that I can +send them to Germany. But the German business is +already well in hand and I think that that will take little +of my own time and will give little trouble. I shall send +a report about it in detail to the Department the very +first day I can find time to write it. In spite of the effort +of the English Government to remain at peace with +Austria, I fear I shall yet have the Austrian Embassy too. +But I can attend to it.</p> + +<p>Now, however, comes the financial job of wisely using +the $300,000 which I shall have to-morrow. I am using +Mr. Chandler Anderson as counsel, of course. I have +appointed a Committee—Skinner, the Consul-General, +Lieut.-Commander McCrary of our Navy, Kent of the +Bankers Trust Company, New York, and one other man +yet to be chosen—to advise, after investigation, about +every proposed expenditure. Anderson has been at work +all day to-day drawing up proper forms, etc., to fit the +Department's very excellent instructions. I have the +feeling that more of that money may be wisely spent in +helping to get people off the continent (except in France, +where they seem admirably to be managing it, under +Herrick) than is immediately needed in England. All +this merely to show you the diversity and multiplicity +of the job.</p> + +<p>I am having a card catalogue, each containing a sort +of who's who, of all Americans in Europe of whom we +hear. This will be ready by the time the <i>Tennessee</i><a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62" /><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> +comes. Fifty or more stranded Americans—men and +women—are doing this work free.</p> + +<p>I have a member of Congress<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63" /><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> in the general reception +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-308" id="page1-308"></a>[pg I-308]</span> +room of the Embassy answering people's questions—three +other volunteers as well.</p> + +<p>We had a world of confusion for two or three days. +But all this work is now well organized and it can be +continued without confusion or cross purposes. I meet +committees and lay plans and read and write telegrams +from the time I wake till I go to bed. But, since it is +now all in order, it is easy. Of course I am running up +the expenses of the Embassy—there is no help for that; +but the bill will be really exceedingly small because of the +volunteer work—for awhile. I have not and shall not +consider the expense of whatever it seems absolutely +necessary to do—of other things I shall always consider +the expense most critically. Everybody is working with +everybody else in the finest possible spirit. I have made +out a sort of military order to the Embassy staff, detailing +one man with clerks for each night and forbidding the +others to stay there till midnight. None of us slept more +than a few hours last week. It was not the work that +kept them after the first night or two, but the sheer excitement +of this awful cataclysm. All London has been +awake for a week. Soldiers are marching day and night; +immense throngs block the streets about the government +offices. But they are all very orderly. Every day Germans +are arrested on suspicion; and several of them have +committed suicide. Yesterday one poor American woman +yielded to the excitement and cut her throat. I +find it hard to get about much. People stop me on the +street, follow me to luncheon, grab me as I come out of +any committee meeting—to know my opinion of this +or that—how can they get home? Will such-and-such a +boat fly the American flag? Why did I take the German +Embassy? I have to fight my way about and rush to an +automobile. I have had to buy me a second one to keep +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-309" id="page1-309"></a>[pg I-309]</span> +up the racket. Buy?—no—only bargain for it, for I +have not any money. But everybody is considerate, +and that makes no matter for the moment. This little +cottage in an out-of-the-way place, twenty-five miles +from London, where I am trying to write and sleep, has +been found by people to-day, who come in automobiles +to know how they may reach their sick kinspeople in +Germany. I have not had a bath for three days: as +soon as I got in the tub, the telephone rang an "urgent" +call!</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="i1330" id="i1330" /> +<a href="images/1330.jpg"><img src= +"images/1330.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br /> +<b>No. 6 Grosvenor Square, the American Embassy under Mr. Page</b><br /> +<br /> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="i1331" id="i1331" /> +<a href="images/1331.jpg"><img src= +"images/1331.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br /> +<b>Irwin Laughlin, Secretary of the American Embassy at Longon,<br /> +1912-1917, Counsellor 1916-1919</b><br /> +<br /> +</div> + +<p>Upon my word, if one could forget the awful tragedy, +all this experience would be worth a lifetime of commonplace. +One surprise follows another so rapidly that one +loses all sense of time: it seems an age since last Sunday. +I shall never forget Sir Edward Grey's telling me of the +ultimatum—while he wept; nor the poor German Ambassador +who has lost in his high game—almost a demented +man; nor the King as he declaimed at me for half-an-hour +and threw up his hands and said, "My God, Mr. Page, +what else could we do?" Nor the Austrian Ambassador's +wringing his hands and weeping and crying out, "My +dear Colleague, my dear Colleague."</p> + +<p>Along with all this tragedy come two reverend American +peace delegates who got out of Germany by the +skin of their teeth and complain that they lost all the +clothes they had except what they had on. "Don't +complain," said I, "but thank God you saved your +skins." Everybody has forgotten what war means—forgotten +that folks get hurt. But they are coming +around to it now. A United States Senator telegraphs +me: "Send my wife and daughter home on the first +ship." Ladies and gentlemen filled the steerage of that +ship—not a bunk left; and his wife and daughter are +found three days later sitting in a swell hotel waiting for +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-310" id="page1-310"></a>[pg I-310]</span> +me to bring them stateroom tickets on a silver tray! One +of my young fellows in the Embassy rushes into my office +saying that a man from Boston, with letters of introduction +from Senators and Governors and Secretaries, +et al., was demanding tickets of admission to a picture +gallery, and a secretary to escort him there.</p> + +<p>"What shall I do with him?"</p> + +<p>"Put his proposal to a vote of the 200 Americans in +the room and see them draw and quarter him."</p> + +<p>I have not yet heard what happened. A woman writes +me four pages to prove how dearly she loves my sister +and invites me to her hotel—five miles away—"please +to tell her about the sailing of the steamships." Six +American preachers pass a resolution unanimously "urging +our Ambassador to telegraph our beloved, peace-loving +President to stop this awful war"; and they come +with simple solemnity to present their resolution. Lord +save us, what a world!</p> + +<p>And this awful tragedy moves on to—what? We +do not know what is really happening, so strict is the +censorship. But it seems inevitable to me that Germany +will be beaten, that the horrid period of alliances and +armaments will not come again, that England will gain +even more of the earth's surface, that Russia may next +play the menace; that all Europe (as much as survives) +will be bankrupt; that relatively we shall be immensely +stronger financially and politically—there must surely +come many great changes—very many, yet undreamed +of. Be ready; for you will be called on to compose this +huge quarrel. I thank Heaven for many things—first, +the Atlantic Ocean; second, that you refrained from war +in Mexico; third, that we kept our treaty—the canal +tolls victory, I mean. Now, when all this half of the +world will suffer the unspeakable brutalization of war, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-311" id="page1-311"></a>[pg I-311]</span> +we shall preserve our moral strength, our political powers, +and our ideals.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">God save us!</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Vivid as is the above letter, it lacks several impressive +details. Probably the one event that afterward stood +out most conspicuously in Page's mind was his interview +with Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary. Sir +Edward asked the American Ambassador to call Tuesday +afternoon; his purpose was to inform him that Great +Britain had sent an ultimatum to Germany. By this +time Page and the Foreign Secretary had established not +only cordial official relations but a warm friendship. +The two men had many things in common; they had the +same general outlook on world affairs, the same ideas of +justice and fair dealing, the same belief that other motives +than greed and aggrandizement should control the +attitude of one nation to another. The political tendencies +of both men were idealistic; both placed character +above everything else as the first requisite of a statesman; +both hated war, and looked forward to the time when +more rational methods of conducting international relations +would prevail. Moreover, their purely personal +qualities had drawn Sir Edward and Page closely together. +A common love of nature and of out-of-door +life had made them akin; both loved trees, birds, flowers, +and hedgerows; the same intellectual diversions and +similar tastes in reading had strengthened the tie. "I +could never mention a book I liked that Mr. Page had +not read and liked too," Sir Edward Grey once remarked +to the present writer, and the enthusiasm that both men +felt for Wordsworth's poetry in itself formed a strong bond +of union. The part that the American Ambassador had +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-312" id="page1-312"></a>[pg I-312]</span> +played in the repeal of the Panama discrimination had +also made a great impression upon this British statesman—a +man to whom honour means more in international +dealings than any other consideration. "Mr. Page is +one of the finest illustrations I have ever known," Grey +once said, "of the value of character in a public man." +In their intercourse for the past year the two men had +grown accustomed to disregard all pretense of diplomatic +technique; their discussions had been straightforward +man-to-man talks; there had been nothing suggestive +of pose or finesse, and no attempts at cleverness—merely +an effort to get to the bottom of things and to +discover a common meeting ground. The Ambassador, +moreover, represented a nation for which the Foreign +Secretary had always entertained the highest respect and +even affection, and he and Page could find no happier +common meeting-ground than an effort to bring about +the closest coöperation between the two countries. Sir +Edward, far-seeing statesman that he was, had already +appreciated, even amid the exciting and engrossing experiences +through which he was then passing, the critical +and almost determining part which the United States was +destined to play in the war, and he had now sent for the +American Ambassador because he believed that the President +was entitled to a complete explanation of the momentous +decision which Great Britain had just made.</p> + +<p>The meeting took place at three o'clock on Tuesday +afternoon, August 4th—a fateful date in modern history. +The time represented the interval which elapsed between +the transmission of the British ultimatum to Germany +and the hour set for the German reply. The place was +that same historic room in the Foreign Office where so +many interviews had already taken place and where so +many were to take place in the next four years. As +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-313" id="page1-313"></a>[pg I-313]</span> +Page came in, Sir Edward, a tall and worn and rather +pallid figure, was standing against the mantelpiece; he +greeted the Ambassador with a grave handshake and the +two men sat down. Overwrought the Foreign Secretary +may have been, after the racking week which had just +passed, but there was nothing flurried or excited in his +manner; his whole bearing was calm and dignified, his +speech was quiet and restrained, he uttered not one +bitter word against Germany, but his measured accents +had a sureness, a conviction of the justice of his course, +that went home in almost deadly fashion. He sat in a +characteristic pose, his elbows resting on the sides of his +chair, his hands folded and placed beneath his chin, +the whole body leaning forward eagerly and his eyes +searching those of his American friend. The British +Foreign Secretary was a handsome and an inspiring +figure. He was a man of large, but of well knit, robust, +and slender frame, wiry and even athletic; he had a large +head, surmounted with dark brown hair, slightly touched +with gray; a finely cut, somewhat rugged and bronzed +face, suggestive of that out-of-door life in which he had +always found his greatest pleasure; light blue eyes that +shone with straightforwardness and that on this occasion +were somewhat pensive with anxiety; thin, ascetic lips +that could smile in the most confidential manner or close +tightly with grimness and fixed purpose. He was a man +who was at the same time shy and determined, elusive +and definite, but if there was one note in his bearing that +predominated all others, it was a solemn and quiet sincerity. +He seemed utterly without guile and magnificently +simple.</p> + +<p>Sir Edward at once referred to the German invasion of +Belgium.</p> + +<p>"The neutrality of Belgium," he said, and there was +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-314" id="page1-314"></a>[pg I-314]</span> +the touch of finality in his voice, "is assured by treaty. +Germany is a signatory power to that treaty. It is upon +such solemn compacts as this that civilization rests. If +we give them up, or permit them to be violated, what +becomes of civilization? Ordered society differs from +mere force only by such solemn agreements or compacts. +But Germany has violated the neutrality of Belgium. +That means bad faith. It means also the end of Belgium's +independence. And it will not end with Belgium. +Next will come Holland, and, after Holland, Denmark. +This very morning the Swedish Minister informed me that +Germany had made overtures to Sweden to come in on +Germany's side. The whole plan is thus clear. This one +great military power means to annex Belgium, Holland, +and the Scandinavian states and to subjugate France."</p> + +<p>Sir Edward energetically rose; he again stood near the +mantelpiece, his figure straightened, his eyes were fairly +flashing—it was a picture, Page once told me, that was +afterward indelibly fixed in his mind.</p> + +<p>"England would be forever contemptible," Sir Edward +said, "if it should sit by and see this treaty violated. Its +position would be gone if Germany were thus permitted to +dominate Europe. I have therefore asked you to come +to tell you that this morning we sent an ultimatum to +Germany. We have told Germany that, if this assault +on Belgium's neutrality is not reversed, England will +declare war."</p> + +<p>"Do you expect Germany to accept it?" asked the +Ambassador.</p> + +<p>Sir Edward shook his head.</p> + +<p>"No. Of course everybody knows that there will be +war."</p> + +<p>There was a moment's pause and then the Foreign +Secretary spoke again:</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-315" id="page1-315"></a>[pg I-315]</span> +</div><p>"Yet we must remember that there are two Germanys. +There is the Germany of men like ourselves—of men like +Lichnowsky and Jagow. Then there is the Germany of men +of the war party. The war party has got the upper hand."</p> + +<p>At this point Sir Edward's eyes filled with tears.</p> + +<p>"Thus the efforts of a lifetime go for nothing. I feel +like a man who has wasted his life."</p> + +<p>"This scene was most affecting," Page said afterward. +"Sir Edward not only realized what the whole thing +meant, but he showed that he realized the awful responsibility +for it."</p> + +<p>Sir Edward then asked the Ambassador to explain +the situation to President Wilson; he expressed the hope +that the United States would take an attitude of neutrality +and that Great Britain might look for "the courtesies +of neutrality" from this country. Page tried to tell him +of the sincere pain that such a war would cause the President +and the American people.</p> + +<p>"I came away," the Ambassador afterward said, "with +a sort of stunned sense of the impending ruin of half the +world<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64" /><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a>."</p> + +<p>The significant fact in this interview is that the British +Foreign Secretary justified the attitude of his country +exclusively on the ground of the violation of a treaty. +This is something that is not yet completely understood +in the United States. The participation of Great Britain +in this great continental struggle is usually regarded as +having been inevitable, irrespective of the German invasion +of Belgium; yet the fact is that, had Germany +not invaded Belgium, Great Britain would not have declared +war, at least at this critical time. Sir Edward +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-316" id="page1-316"></a>[pg I-316]</span> +came to Page after a week's experience with a wavering +cabinet. Upon the general question of Britain's participation +in a European war the Asquith Ministry had been +by no means unanimous. Probably Mr. Asquith himself +and Mr. Lloyd George would have voted against +taking such a step. It is quite unlikely that the cabinet +could have carried a majority of the House of Commons +on this issue. But the violation of the Belgian treaty +changed the situation in a twinkling. The House of +Commons at once took its stand in favour of intervention. +All members of the cabinet, excepting John Morley and +John Burns, who resigned, immediately aligned themselves +on the side of war. In the minds of British statesmen +the violation of this treaty gave Britain no choice. Germany +thus forced Great Britain into the war, just as, two +and a half years afterward, the Prussian war lords compelled +the United States to take up arms. Sir Edward +Grey's interview with the American Ambassador thus +had great historic importance, for it makes this point clear. +The two men had recently had many discussions on another +subject in which the violation of a treaty was the +great consideration—that of Panama tolls—and there +was a certain appropriateness in this explanation of the +British Foreign Secretary that precisely the same point +had determined Great Britain's participation in the greatest +struggle that has ever devastated Europe.</p> + +<p>Inevitably the question of American mediation had +come to the surface in this trying time. Several days +before Page's interview with Grey, the American Ambassador, +acting in response to a cablegram from Washington, +had asked if the good offices of the United States +could be used in any way. "Sir Edward is very appreciative +of our mood and willingness," Page wrote in +reference to this visit. "But they don't want peace on +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-317" id="page1-317"></a>[pg I-317]</span> +the continent—the ruling classes do not. But they will +want it presently and then our opportunity will come. +Ours is the only great government in the world that is +not in some way entangled. Of course I'll keep in daily +touch with Sir Edward and with everybody who can and +will keep me informed."</p> + +<p>This was written about July 27th; at that time Austria +had sent her ultimatum to Serbia but there was no certainty +that Europe would become involved in war. A +demand for American mediation soon became widespread +in the United States; the Senate passed a resolution +requesting the President to proffer his good offices to +that end. On this subject the following communications +were exchanged between President Wilson and his chief +adviser, then sojourning at his summer home in Massachusetts. +Like Mr. Tumulty, the President's Secretary, +Colonel House usually addressed the President in terms +reminiscent of the days when Mr. Wilson was Governor +of New Jersey. Especially interesting also are Colonel +House's references to his own trip to Berlin and the joint +efforts made by the President and himself in the preceding +June to forestall the war which had now broken out.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Edward M. House to the President</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Pride's Crossing (Mass.),</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">August 3, 1914. [Monday.]</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The President,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The White House, Washington, D.C.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Governor:</p> + +<p>Our people are deeply shocked at the enormity of this +general European war, and I see here and there regret +that you did not use your good offices in behalf of peace.</p> + +<p>If this grows into criticism so as to become noticeable +I believe everyone would be pleased and proud that you +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-318" id="page1-318"></a>[pg I-318]</span> +had anticipated this world-wide horror and had done all +that was humanly possible to avert it.</p> + +<p>The more terrible the war becomes, the greater credit +it will be that you saw the trend of events long before +it was seen by other statesmen of the world.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Your very faithful,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. House.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>P.S. The question might be asked why negotiations +were only with Germany and England and not with +France and Russia. This, of course, was because it +was thought that Germany would act for the Triple +Alliance and England for the Triple Entente<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65" /><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a>.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>The President to Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The White House,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Washington, D.C.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">August 4th, 1914. [Tuesday.]</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Edward M. House,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Pride's Crossing, Mass.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Letter of third received. Do you think I could and +should act now and if so how?</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Woodrow Wilson.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Edward M. House to the President</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">[Telegram]</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Pride's Crossing, Mass.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">August 5th, 1914. [Wednesday.]</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The President,</p> + +<p>The White House, Washington, D.C.</p> + +<p>Olney<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66" /><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> and I agree that in response to the Senate resolution +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-319" id="page1-319"></a>[pg I-319]</span> +it would be unwise to tender your good offices at +this time. We believe it would lessen your influence +when the proper moment arrives. He thinks it advisable +that you make a direct or indirect statement to the effect +that you have done what was humanly possible to compose +the situation before this crisis had been reached. +He thinks this would satisfy the Senate and the public +in view of your disinclination to act now upon the Senate +resolution. The story might be told to the correspondents +at Washington and they might use the expression +"we have it from high authority."</p> + +<p>He agrees to my suggestion that nothing further should +be done now than to instruct our different ambassadors +to inform the respective governments to whom they are +accredited, that you stand ready to tender your good +offices whenever such an offer is desired.</p> + +<p>Olney agrees with me that the shipping bill<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67" /><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> is full of +lurking dangers.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. House.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>For some reason, however, the suggested statement was +not made. The fact that Colonel House had visited +London, Paris, and Berlin six weeks before the outbreak +of war, in an effort to bring about a plan for disarmament, +was not permitted to reach the public ear. Probably the +real reason why this fact was concealed was that its publication +at that time would have reflected so seriously +upon Germany that it would have been regarded as +"un-neutral." Colonel House, as already described, +had found Germany in a most belligerent frame of mind, +its army "ready," to use the Kaiser's own word, for an +immediate spring at France; on the other hand he had +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-320" id="page1-320"></a>[pg I-320]</span> +found Great Britain in a most pacific frame of mind, entirely +unsuspicious of Germany, and confident that the +European situation was daily improving. It is interesting +now to speculate on the public sensation that would have +been caused had Colonel House's account of his visit to +Berlin been published at that exciting time.</p> + +<p>Page's telegrams and letters show that any suggestion +at mediation would have been a waste of effort. The +President seriously forebore, but the desire to mediate +was constantly in his mind for the next few months, and +he now interested himself in laying the foundations of +future action. Page was instructed to ask for an audience +with King George and to present the following +document:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From the President of the United States</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>to His Majesty the King</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>SIR:</p> + +<p>As official head of one of the Powers signatory to the +Hague Convention, I feel it to be my privilege and my +duty under Article 3 of that Convention to say to your +Majesty, in a spirit of most earnest friendship, that I +should welcome an opportunity to act in the interest of +European peace either now or at any time that might +be thought more suitable as an occasion, to serve your +Majesty and all concerned in a way that would afford +me lasting cause for gratitude and happiness.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WOODROW WILSON.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>This, of course, was not mediation, but a mere expression +of the President's willingness to mediate at any +time that such a tender from him, in the opinion of the +warring Powers, would serve the cause of peace. Identically +the same message was sent to the American Ambassadors +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-321" id="page1-321"></a>[pg I-321]</span> +at the capitals of all the belligerent Powers for +presentation to the heads of state. Page's letter of +August 9th, printed above, refers to the earnestness and +cordiality with which King George received him and to +the freedom with which His Majesty discussed the situation.</p> + +<p>In this exciting week Page was thrown into intimate +contact with the two most pathetic figures in the diplomatic +circle of London—the Austrian and the German +Ambassadors. To both of these men the war was more +than a great personal sorrow: it was a tragedy. Mensdorff, +the Austrian Ambassador, had long enjoyed an +intimacy with the British royal family. Indeed he was a +distant relative of King George, for he was a member of +the family of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a fact which was emphasized +by his physical resemblance to Prince Albert, +the consort of Queen Victoria. Mensdorff was not a +robust man, physically or mentally, and he showed his +consternation at the impending war in most unrestrained +and even unmanly fashion. As his government directed +him to turn the Austrian Embassy over to the American +Ambassador, it was necessary for Page to call and arrange +the details. The interview, as Page's letter indicates, +was little less than a paroxysm of grief on the Austrian's +part. He denounced Germany and the Kaiser; he paraded +up and down the room wringing his hands; he could +be pacified only by suggestions from the American that +perhaps something might happen to keep Austria out of +the war. The whole atmosphere of the Austrian Embassy +radiated this same feeling. "Austria has no quarrel +with England," remarked one of Mensdorff's assistants +to one of the ladies of the American Embassy; and this +sentiment was the general one in Austrian diplomatic +circles. The disinclination of both Great Britain and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-322" id="page1-322"></a>[pg I-322]</span> +Austria to war was so great that, as Page relates, for +several days there was no official declaration.</p> + +<p>Even more tragical than the fate of the Austrian Ambassador +was that of his colleague, the representative of +the German Emperor. It was more tragical because +Prince Lichnowsky represented the power that was primarily +responsible, and because he had himself been an +unwilling tool in bringing on the cataclysm. It was +more profound because Lichnowsky was a man of deeper +feeling and greater moral purpose than his Austrian colleague, +and because for two years he had been devoting +his strongest energies to preventing the very calamity +which had now become a fact. As the war went on +Lichnowsky gradually emerged as one of its finest figures; +the pamphlet which he wrote, at a time when Germany's +military fortunes were still high, boldly placing the +responsibility upon his own country and his own Kaiser, +was one of the bravest acts which history records. +Through all his brief Ambassadorship Lichnowsky had +shown these same friendly traits. The mere fact that he +had been selected as Ambassador at this time was little +less than a personal calamity. His appointment gives a +fair measure of the depths of duplicity to which the +Prussian system could descend. For more than fourteen +years Lichnowsky had led the quiet life of a Polish +country gentleman; he had never enjoyed the favour of +the Kaiser; in his own mind and in that of his friends his +career had long since been finished; yet from this retirement +he had been suddenly called upon to represent the +Fatherland at the greatest of European capitals. The +motive for this elevation, which was unfathomable then, +is evident enough now. Prince Lichnowsky was known +to be an Anglophile; everything English—English literature, +English country life, English public men—had for +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-323" id="page1-323"></a>[pg I-323]</span> +him an irresistible charm; and his greatest ambition as +a diplomat had been to maintain the most cordial relations +between his own country and Great Britain. This +was precisely the type of Ambassador that fitted into the +Imperial purpose at that crisis. Germany was preparing +energetically but quietly for war; it was highly essential +that its most formidable potential foe, Great Britain, +should be deceived as to the Imperial plans and lulled into +a sense of security. The diabolical character of Prince +Lichnowsky's selection for this purpose was that, though +his mission was one of deception, he was not himself a +party to it and did not realize until it was too late that he +had been used merely as a tool. Prince Lichnowsky was +not called upon to assume a mask; all that was necessary +was that he should simply be himself. And he acquitted +himself with great success. He soon became a favourite +in London society; the Foreign Office found him always +ready to coöperate in any plan that tended to improve +relations between the two countries. It will be remembered +that, when Colonel House returned to London +from his interview with the Kaiser in June, 1914, he +found British statesmen incredulous about any trouble +with Germany. This attitude was the consequence of +Lichnowsky's work. The fact is that relations between +the two countries had not been so harmonious in twenty +years. All causes of possible friction had been adjusted. +The treaty regulating the future of the Bagdad Railroad, +the only problem that clouded the future, had been +initialled by both the British and the German Foreign +Offices and was about to be signed at the moment when +the ultimatums began to fly through the air. Prince +Lichnowsky was thus entitled to look upon his ambassadorship +as one of the most successful in modern history, +for it had removed all possible cause of war.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-324" id="page1-324"></a>[pg I-324]</span> +</div><p>And then suddenly came the stunning blow. For +several days Lichnowsky's behaviour was that of an irresponsible +person. Those who came into contact with +him found his mind wandering and incoherent. Page +describes the German Ambassador as coming down and +receiving him in his pajamas; he was not the only one +who had that experience, for members of the British +Foreign Office transacted business with this most punctilious +of diplomats in a similar condition of personal +disarray. And the dishabille extended to his mental +operations as well.</p> + +<p>But Lichnowsky's and Mensdorff's behaviour merely +portrayed the general atmosphere that prevailed in +London during that week. This atmosphere was simply +hysterical. Among all the intimate participants, however, +there was one man who kept his poise and who +saw things clearly. That was the American Ambassador. +It was certainly a strange trick which fortune +had played upon Page. He had come to London with +no experience in diplomacy. Though the possibility of +such an outbreak as this war had been in every man's +consciousness for a generation, it had always been as +something certain yet remote; most men thought of it +as most men think of death—as a fatality which is inevitable, +but which is so distant that it never becomes a +reality. Thus Page, when he arrived in London, did not +have the faintest idea of the experience that awaited +him. Most people would have thought that his quiet and +studious and unworldly life had hardly prepared him to +become the representative of the most powerful neutral +power at the world's capital during the greatest crisis of +modern history. To what an extent that impression was +justified the happenings of the next four years will disclose; +it is enough to point out in this place that in one +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-325" id="page1-325"></a>[pg I-325]</span> +respect at least the war found the American Ambassador +well prepared. From the instant hostilities began his +mind seized the significance of it all. "Mr. Page had one +fine qualification for his post," a great British statesman +once remarked to the present writer. "From the beginning +he saw that there was a right and a wrong to the +matter. He did not believe that Great Britain and Germany +were equally to blame. He believed that Great +Britain was right and that Germany was wrong. I regard +it as one of the greatest blessings of modern times +that the United States had an ambassador in London in +August, 1914, who had grasped this overwhelming fact. +It seems almost like a dispensation of Providence."</p> + +<p>It is important to insist on this point now, for it explains +Page's entire course as Ambassador. The confidential +telegram which Page sent directly to President +Wilson in early September, 1914, furnishes the standpoint +from which his career as war Ambassador can be +understood:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Confidential to the President</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">September 11, 3 A.M.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">No. 645.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Accounts of atrocities are so inevitably a part of every +war that for some time I did not believe the unbelievable +reports that were sent from Europe, and there are many +that I find incredible even now. But American and other +neutral observers who have seen these things in France +and especially in Belgium now convince me that the +Germans have perpetrated some of the most barbarous +deeds in history. Apparently credible persons relate +such things without end.</p> + +<p>Those who have violated the Belgian treaty, those who +have sown torpedoes in the open sea, those who have +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-326" id="page1-326"></a>[pg I-326]</span> +dropped bombs on Antwerp and Paris indiscriminately +with the idea of killing whom they may strike, have taken +to heart Bernhardi's doctrine that war is a glorious occupation. +Can any one longer disbelieve the completely +barbarous behaviour of the Prussians?</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p class="center">FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61" /><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> At this time American military attaché.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62" /><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> The American Government, on the outbreak of war, sent the +U.S.S. <i>Tennessee</i> to Europe, with large supplies of gold for the relief +of stranded Americans.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63" /><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> The late Augustus P. Gardner, of Massachusetts.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64" /><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> The materials on which this account is based are a +memorandum of the interview made by Sir Edward Grey, now in the archives +of the British Foreign Office, a similar memorandum made by Page, and a +detailed description given verbally by Page to the writer.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65" /><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> Colonel House, of course, is again referring to his +experience in Berlin and London, described in the preceding chapter.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66" /><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> Richard Olney, Secretary of State in the Cabinet of +President Cleveland, who was a neighbour of Colonel House at his summer +home, and with whom the latter apparently consulted.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67" /><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> This is the bill passed soon after the outbreak of war +admitting foreign built ships to American registry. Subsequent events +showed that it was "full of lurking dangers."</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-327" id="page1-327"></a>[pg I-327]</span> +</div><h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI" />CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<h3>ENGLAND UNDER THE STRESS OF WAR</h3> + + +<p>The months following the outbreak of the war were +busy ones for the American Embassy in London. +The Embassies of all the great Powers with which Great +Britain was contending were handed over to Page, and +the citizens of these countries—Germany, Austria, Turkey—who +found themselves stranded in England, were +practically made his wards. It is a constant astonishment +to his biographer that, during all the labour and +distractions of this period, Page should have found time +to write long letters describing the disturbing scene. +There are scores of them, all penned in the beautiful +copper-plate handwriting that shows no signs of excitement +or weariness, but is in itself an evidence of +mental poise and of the sure grip which Page had upon +the evolving drama. From the many sent in these +autumn and early winter months the following selections +are made:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">September 22nd, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR HOUSE:</p> + +<p>When the day of settlement comes, the settlement +must make sure that the day of militarism is done and +can come no more. If sheer brute force is to rule the +world, it will not be worth living in. If German bureaucratic +brute force could conquer Europe, presently it +would try to conquer the United States; and we should +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-328" id="page1-328"></a>[pg I-328]</span> +all go back to the era of war as man's chief industry and +back to the domination of kings by divine right. It +seems to me, therefore, that the Hohenzollern idea must +perish—be utterly strangled in the making of peace.</p> + +<p>Just how to do this, it is not yet easy to say. If the +German defeat be emphatic enough and dramatic enough, +the question may answer itself—how's the best way to +be rid of the danger of the recurrence of a military bureaucracy? +But in any event, this thing must be killed forever—somehow. +I think that a firm insistence on this +is the main task that mediation will bring. The rest will +be corollaries of this.</p> + +<p>The danger, of course, as all the world is beginning to +fear, is that the Kaiser, after a local victory—especially +if he should yet take Paris—will propose peace, saying +that he dreads the very sight of blood—propose peace +in time, as he will hope, to save his throne, his dynasty, +his system. That will be a dangerous day. The horror +of war will have a tendency to make many persons in the +countries of the Allies accept it. All the peace folk in +the world will say "Accept it!" But if he and his +throne and his dynasty and his system be saved, in +twenty-five years the whole job must be done over again. +We are settling down to a routine of double work and +to an oppression of gloom. Dead men, dead men, maimed +men, the dull gray dread of what may happen next, the +impossibility of changing the subject, the monotony of +gloom, the consequent dimness of ideals, the overworking +of the emotions and the heavy bondage of thought—the +days go swiftly: that's one blessing.</p> + +<p>The diplomatic work proper brings fewer difficulties +than you would guess. New subjects and new duties +come with great rapidity, but they soon fall into formulas—at +least into classes. We shall have no sharp crises nor +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-329" id="page1-329"></a>[pg I-329]</span> +grave difficulties so long as our Government and this +Government keep their more than friendly relations. I +see Sir Edward Grey almost every day. We talk of many +things—all phases of one vast wreck; and all the clear-cut +points that come up I report by telegraph. To-day the +talk was of American cargoes in British ships and the +machinery they have set up here for fair settlement. +Then of Americans applying for enlistment in Canadian +regiments. "If sheer brute force conquer Europe," said +he, "the United States will be the only country where life +will be worth living; and in time you will have to fight +against it, too, if it conquer Europe." He spoke of the +letter he had just received from the President, and he +asked me many sympathetic questions about you also +and about your health. I ventured to express some solicitude +for him.</p> + +<p>"How much do you get out now</p> + +<p>"Only for an automobile drive Sunday afternoon."</p> + +<p>This from a man who is never happy away from nature +and is at home only in the woods and along the streams. +He looks worn.</p> + +<p>I hear nothing but satisfaction with our neutrality +tight-rope walk. I think we are keeping it here, by close +attention to our work and by silence.</p> + +<p>Our volunteer and temporary aids are doing well—especially +the army and navy officers. We now occupy +three work-places: (1) the over-crowded embassy; (2) +a suite of offices around the corner where the ever-lengthening +list of inquiries for persons is handled and +where an army officer pays money to persons whose friends +have deposited it for them with the Government in Washington—just +now at the rate of about $15,000 a day; and +(3) two great rooms at the Savoy Hotel, where the admirable +relief committee (which meets all trains that bring +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-330" id="page1-330"></a>[pg I-330]</span> +people from the continent) gives aid to the needy and +helps people to get tickets home. They have this week +helped about 400 with more or less money—after full +investigation.</p> + +<p>At the Embassy a secretary remains till bed-time, which +generally means till midnight; and I go back there for an +hour or two every night.</p> + +<p>The financial help we give to German and Austrian +subjects (poor devils) is given, of course, at their embassies, +where we have men—our men-in charge. Each of these +governments accepted my offer to give our Ambassadors +(Gerard and Penfield) a sum of money to help Americans +if I would set aside an equal sum to help their people here. +The German fund that I thus began with was $50,000; +the Austrian, $25,000. All this and more will be needed +before the war ends.—All this activity is kept up with +scrupulous attention to the British rules and regulations. +In fact, we are helping this Government much in the management +of these "alien enemies," as they call them.</p> + +<p>I am amazed at the good health we all keep with this +big volume of work and the long hours. Not a man nor a +woman has been ill a day. I have known something +about work and the spirit of good work in other organizations +of various sorts; but I never saw one work in better +spirit than this. And remember, most of them are volunteers.</p> + +<p>The soldiers here complained for weeks in private about +the lethargy of the people—the slowness of men to enlist. +But they seemed to me to complain with insufficient reason. +For now they come by thousands. They do need +more men in the field, and they may conscript them, but +I doubt the necessity. But I run across such incidents +as these: I met the Dowager Countess of D—— yesterday—a +woman of 65, as tall as I and as erect herself as a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-331" id="page1-331"></a>[pg I-331]</span> +soldier, who might be taken for a woman of 40, prematurely +gray. "I had five sons in the Boer War. I have +three in this war. I do not know where any one of them +is." Mrs. Page's maid is talking of leaving her. "My +two brothers have gone to the war and perhaps I ought to +help their wives and children." The Countess and the +maid are of the same blood, each alike unconquerable. +My chauffeur has talked all day about the naval battle in +which five German ships were lately sunk<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68" /><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a>. He reminded +me of the night two months ago when he drove Mrs. Page +and me to dine with Sir John and Lady Jellicoe—Jellicoe +now, you know, being in command of the British fleet.</p> + +<p>This Kingdom has settled down to war as its one great +piece of business now in hand, and it is impossible, as the +busy, burdensome days pass, to pick out events or impressions +that one can be sure are worth writing. For instance +a soldier—a man in the War Office—told me to-day that +Lord Kitchener had just told him that the war may last +for several years. That, I confess, seems to me very improbable, +and (what is of more importance) it is not the +notion held by most men whose judgment I respect. But +all the military men say it will be long. It would take +several years to kill that vast horde of Germans, but it +will not take so long to starve them out. Food here is +practically as cheap as it was three months ago and the sea +routes are all open to England and practically all closed to +Germany. The ultimate result, of course, will be Germany's +defeat. But the British are now going about the +business of war as if they knew they would continue it indefinitely. +The grim efficiency of their work even in small +details was illustrated to-day by the Government's informing +us that a German handy man, whom the German +Ambassador left at his Embassy, with the English Government's +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-332" id="page1-332"></a>[pg I-332]</span> +consent, is a spy—that he sends verbal messages +to Germany by women who are permitted to go home, and +that they have found letters written by him sewed in some +of these women's undergarments! This man has been at +work there every day under the two very good men whom +I have put in charge there and who have never suspected +him. How on earth they found this out simply passes +my understanding. Fortunately it doesn't bring any embarrassment +to us; he was not in our pay and he was left +by the German Ambassador with the British Government's +consent, to take care of the house. Again, when the German +Chancellor made a statement two days ago about +the causes of the war, in a few hours Sir Edward Grey +issued a statement showing that the Chancellor had misstated +every important historic fact.—The other day a +commercial telegram was sent (or started) by Mr. Bryan +for some bank or trading concern in the United States, +managed by Germans, to some correspondent of theirs in +Germany. It contained the words, "Where is Harry?" +The censor here stopped it. It was brought to me with +the explanation that "Harry" is one of the most notorious +of German spies—whom they would like to catch. The +English were slow in getting into full action, but now they +never miss a trick, little or big.</p> + +<p>The Germans have far more than their match in resources +and in shrewdness and—in character. As the +bloody drama unfolds itself, the hollow pretence and essential +barbarity of Prussian militarism become plainer +and plainer: there is no doubt of that. And so does the +invincibility of this race. A well-known Englishman told +me to-day that his three sons, his son-in-law, and half his +office men are in the military service, "where they belong +in a time like this." The lady who once so sharply criticized +this gentleman to Mrs. Page has a son and a brother +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-333" id="page1-333"></a>[pg I-333]</span> +in the army in France. It makes you take a fresh grip on +your eyelids to hear either of these talk. In fact the strain +on one's emotions, day in and day out, makes one wonder +if the world is real—or is this a vast dream? From sheer +emotional exhaustion I slept almost all day last Sunday, +though I had not for several days lost sleep at all. Many +persons tell me of their similar experiences. The universe +seems muffled. There is a ghostly silence in London (so +it seems); and only dim street lights are lighted at night. +No experience seems normal. A vast organization is +working day and night down town receiving Belgian +refugees. They become the guests of the English. They +are assigned to people's homes, to boarding houses, to +institutions. They are taking care of them—this government +and this people are. I do not recall when one nation +ever did another whole nation just such a hospitable service +as this. You can't see that work going on and remain +unmoved. An old woman who has an income of $15 +a week decided that she could live on $7.50. She buys milk +with the other $7.50 and goes to meet every train at one +of the big stations with a basket filled with baby bottles, +and she gives milk to every hungry-looking baby she sees. +Our American committeeman, Hoover, saw her in trouble +the other day and asked her what was the matter. She +explained that the police would no longer admit her to the +platform because she didn't belong to any relief committee. +He took her to headquarters and said: "Do you see this +good old lady? She puts you and me and everybody else +to shame—do you understand?" The old lady now gets to +the platform. Hoover himself gave $5,000 for helping +stranded Americans and he goes to the trains to meet them, +while the war has stopped his big business and his big +income. This is a sample of the noble American end of +the story.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-334" id="page1-334"></a>[pg I-334]</span> +</div><p>These are the saving class of people to whom life becomes +a bore unless they can help somebody. There's +just such a fellow in Brussels—you may have heard of +him, for his name is Whitlock. Stories of his showing +himself a man come out of that closed-up city every week. +To a really big man, it doesn't matter whether his post is a +little post, or a big post but, if I were President, I'd give +Whitlock a big post. There's another fellow somewhere +in Germany—a consul—of whom I never heard till the +other day. But people have taken to coming in my office—English +ladies—who wish to thank "you and your great +government" for the courage and courtesy of this consul<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69" /><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a>. +Stories about him will follow. Herrick, too, in Paris, +somehow causes Americans and English and even Guatemalans +who come along to go out of their way to say what +he has done for them. Now there is a quality in the old +woman with the baby bottles, and in the consul and in +Whitlock and Hoover and Herrick and this English nation +which adopts the Belgians—a quality that is invincible. +When folk like these come down the road, I respectfully do +obeisance to them. And—it's this kind of folk that the +Germans have run up against. I thank Heaven I'm of +their race and blood.</p> + +<p>The whole world is bound to be changed as a result of +this war. If Germany should win, our Monroe Doctrine +would at once be shot in two, and we should have to get +"out of the sun." The military party is a party of +conquest—absolutely. If England wins, as of course she +will, it'll be a bigger and a stronger England, with no +strong enemy in the world, with her Empire knit closer +than ever—India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South +Africa, Egypt; under obligations to and in alliance with +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-335" id="page1-335"></a>[pg I-335]</span> +Russia! England will not need our friendship as much as +she now needs it; and there may come governments here +that will show they do not. In any event, you see, the +world will be changed. It's changed already: witness +Bernstorff<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70" /><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> and Münsterberg<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71" /><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> playing the part once played +by Irish agitators!</p> + +<p>All of which means that it is high time we were constructing +a foreign service. First of all, Congress ought +to make it possible to have half a dozen or more permanent +foreign under-secretaries—men who, after service in the +Department, could go out as Ministers and Ambassadors; +it ought generously to reorganize the whole thing. It +ought to have a competent study made of the foreign +offices of other governments. Of course it ought to get +room to work in. Then it ought at once to give its +Ambassadors and Ministers homes and dignified treatment. +We've got to play a part in the world whether we +wish to or not. Think of these things.</p> + +<p>The blindest great force in this world to-day is the +Prussian War Party—blind and stupid.—Well, and the +most weary man in London just at this hour is</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Your humble servant,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P,</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>but he'll be all right in the morning.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Arthur W. Page</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">[Undated]<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72" /><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a></span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR ARTHUR:</p> + +<p>. . . I recall one night when we were dining at Sir +John Jellicoe's, he told me that the Admiralty never slept—that +he had a telephone by his bed every night.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-336" id="page1-336"></a>[pg I-336]</span> +</div><p>"Did it ever ring?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"No; but it will."</p> + +<p>You begin to see pretty clearly how English history +has been made and makes itself. This afternoon Lady +S—— told your mother of her three sons, one on a warship +in the North Sea, another with the army in France, and +a third in training to go. "How brave you all are!" said +your mother, and her answer was: "They belong to their +country; we can't do anything else." One of the +daughters-in-law of the late Lord Salisbury came to see +me to find out if I could make an inquiry about her son +who was reported "missing" after the battle of Mons. +She was dry-eyed, calm, self-restrained—very grateful +for the effort I promised to make; but a Spartan woman +would have envied her self-possession. It turned out +that her son was dead.</p> + +<p>You hear experiences like these almost every day. +These are the kinds of women and the kinds of men that +have made the British Empire and the English race. You +needn't talk of decadence. All their great qualities are +in them here and now. I believe that half the young men +who came to Katharine's<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73" /><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> dances last winter and who used +to drop in at the house once in a while are dead in France +already. They went as a matter of course. This is the +reason they are going to win. Now these things impress +you, as they come to you day by day.</p> + +<p>There isn't any formal social life now—no dinners, no +parties. A few friends dine with a few friends now and +then very quietly. The ladies of fashion are hospital +nurses and Red Cross workers, or they are collecting +socks and blankets for the soldiers. One such woman +told your mother to-day that she went to one of the recruiting +camps every day and taught the young fellows +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-337" id="page1-337"></a>[pg I-337]</span> +what colloquial French she could. Every man, woman, +and child seems to be doing something. In the ordinary +daily life, we see few of them: everybody is at work somewhere.</p> + +<p>We live in a world of mystery: nothing can surprise us. +The rumour is that a servant in one of the great families +sent word to the Germans where the three English cruisers<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74" /><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> +were that German submarines blew up the other day. +Not a German in the Kingdom can earn a penny. We're +giving thousands of them money at the German Embassy +to keep them alive. Our Austrian Embassy runs a soup +kitchen where it feeds a lot of Austrians. Your mother +went around there the other day and they showed that +they thought they owe their daily bread to her. One day +she went to one of the big houses where the English receive +and distribute the thousands of Belgians who come +here, poor creatures, to be taken care of. One old woman +asked your mother in French if she were a princess. The +lady that was with your mother answered, "Une Grande +Dame." That seemed to do as well.</p> + +<p>This government doesn't now let anybody carry any +food away. But to-day they consented on condition I'd +receive the food (for the Belgians) and consign it to Whitlock. +This is their way of keeping it out of German hands—have +the Stars and Stripes, so to speak, to cover every +bag of flour and of salt. That's only one of 1,000 queer +activities that I engage in. I have a German princess's<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75" /><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> +jewels in our safe—$100,000 worth of them in my keeping; +I have an old English nobleman's check for $40,000 to be +sent to men who have been building a house for his daughter +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-338" id="page1-338"></a>[pg I-338]</span> +in Dresden—to be sent as soon as the German Government +agrees not to arrest the lady for debt. I have sent +Miss Latimer<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76" /><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> over to France to bring an Austrian baby +eight months old whose mother will take it to the United +States and bring it up an American citizen! The mother +can't go and get it for fear the French might detain her; +I've got the English Government's permission for the +family to go to the United States. Harold<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77" /><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> is in Belgium, +trying to get a group of English ladies home who went +there to nurse wounded English and Belgians and whom +the Germans threaten to kidnap and transport to German +hospitals—every day a dozen new kinds of jobs.</p> + +<p>London is weird and muffled and dark and, in the West +End, deserted. Half the lamps are not lighted, and the +upper half of the globes of the street lights are painted +black—so the Zeppelin raiders may not see them. You've +no idea what a strange feeling it gives one. The papers +have next to no news. The 23rd day of the great battle +is reported very much in the same words as the 3rd day +was. Yet nobody talks of much else. The censor erases +most of the matter the correspondents write. We're in +a sort of dumb as well as dark world. And yet, of course, +we know much more here than they know in any other +European capital.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To the President</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">[Undated.]</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Mr. President:</p> + +<p>When England, France, and Russia agreed the other +day not to make peace separately, that cooked the Kaiser's +goose. They'll wear him out. Since England thus has +Frenchmen and Russians bound, the Allies are strength-cued +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-339" id="page1-339"></a>[pg I-339]</span> +at their only weak place. That done, England is +now going in deliberately, methodically, patiently to do the +task. Even a fortnight ago, the people of this Kingdom +didn't realize all that the war means to them. But the +fever is rising now. The wounded are coming back, the +dead are mourned, and the agony of hearing only that +such-and-such a man is missing—these are having a prodigious +effect. The men I meet now say in a matter-of-fact +way: "Oh, yes! we'll get 'em, of course; the only +question is, how long it will take us and how many of us +it will cost. But no matter, we'll get 'em."</p> + +<p>Old ladies and gentlemen of the high, titled world now +begin by driving to my house almost every morning while +I am at breakfast. With many apologies for calling so +soon and with the fear that they interrupt me, they ask if +I can make an inquiry in Germany for "my son," or +"my nephew"—"he's among the missing." They never +weep; their voices do not falter; they are brave and proud +and self-restrained. It seems a sort of matter-of-course +to them. Sometimes when they get home, they write +me polite notes thanking me for receiving them. This +morning the first man was Sir Dighton Probyn of Queen +Alexandra's household—so dignified and courteous that +you'd hardly have guessed his errand. And at intervals +they come all day. Not a tear have I seen yet. They +take it as a part of the price of greatness and of empire. +You guess at their grief only by their reticence. They +use as few words as possible and then courteously take +themselves away. It isn't an accident that these people +own a fifth of the world. Utterly unwarlike, they outlast +anybody else when war comes. You don't get a sense +of fighting here—only of endurance and of high resolve. +Fighting is a sort of incident in the struggle to keep their +world from German domination. . . .</p></div> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-340" id="page1-340"></a>[pg I-340]</span> +</div><p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">October 11, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR HOUSE:</p> + +<p>There is absolutely nothing to write. It's war, war, +war all the time; no change of subject; and, if you changed +with your tongue, you couldn't change in your thought; +war, war, war—"for God's sake find out if my son is dead +or a prisoner"; rumours—they say that two French generals +were shot for not supporting French, and then they +say only one; and people come who have helped take the +wounded French from the field and they won't even talk, it +is so horrible; and a lady says that her own son (wounded) +told her that when a man raised up in the trench to fire, +the stench was so awful that it made him sick for an +hour; and the poor Belgians come here by the tens of +thousands, and special trains bring the English wounded; +and the newspapers tell little or nothing—every day's +reports like the preceding days'; and yet nobody talks +about anything else.</p> + +<p>Now and then the subject of its settlement is +mentioned—Belgium and Serbia, of course, to be saved and +as far as possible indemnified; Russia to have the Slav-Austrian +States and Constantinople; France to have +Alsace-Lorraine, of course; and Poland to go to Russia; +Schleswig-Holstein and the Kiel Canal no longer to be +German; all the South-German States to become Austrian +and none of the German States to be under Prussian rule; +the Hohenzollerns to be eliminated; the German fleet, +or what is left of it, to become Great Britain's; and the +German colonies to be used to satisfy such of the Allies +as clamour for more than they get.</p> + +<p>Meantime this invincible race is doing this revolutionary +task marvellously—volunteering; trying to buy arms +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-341" id="page1-341"></a>[pg I-341]</span> +in the United States (a Pittsburgh manufacturer is now +here trying to close a bargain with the War Office!)<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78" /><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a>; +knitting socks and mufflers; taking in all the poor Belgians; +stopping all possible expenditure; darkening London +at night; doing every conceivable thing to win as if +they had been waging this war always and meant to do +nothing else for the rest of their lives-and not the slightest +doubt about the result and apparently indifferent how +long it lasts or how much it costs.</p> + +<p>Every aspect of it gets on your nerves. I can't keep +from wondering how the world will seem after it is over—Germany +(that is, Prussia and its system) cut out like a +cancer; England owning still more of the earth; Belgium—all +the men dead; France bankrupt; Russia admitted to +the society of nations; the British Empire entering on a +new lease of life; no great navy but one; no great army +but the Russian; nearly all governments in Europe bankrupt; +Germany gone from the sea—in ten years it will be +difficult to recall clearly the Europe of the last ten years. +And the future of the world more than ever in our hands!</p> + +<p>We here don't know what you think or what you know +at home; we haven't yet any time to read United States +newspapers, which come very, very late; nobody writes +us real letters (or the censor gets 'em, perhaps!); and so +the war, the war, the war is the one thing that holds our +minds.</p> + +<p>We have taken a house for the Chancery<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79" /><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a>—almost the +size of my house in Grosvenor Square—for the same +sum as rent that the landlord proposed hereafter to charge +us for the old hole where we've been for twenty-nine +years. For the first time Uncle Sam has a decent place +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-342" id="page1-342"></a>[pg I-342]</span> +in London. We've five times as much room and ten +times as much work. Now—just this last week or two—I +get off Sundays: that's doing well. And I don't now +often go back at night. So, you see, we've much to be +thankful for.—Shall we insure against Zeppelins? That's +what everybody's asking. I told the Spanish Ambassador +yesterday that I am going to ask the German Government +for instructions about insuring their Embassy +here!</p> + +<p>Write and send some news. I saw an American to-day +who says he's going home to-morrow. "Cable me," +said I, "if you find the continent where it used to be."</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>P.S. It is strange how little we know what you know +on your side and just what you think, what relative value +you put on this and what on that. There's a new sort +of loneliness sprung up because of the universal absorption +in the war.</p> + +<p>And I hear all sorts of contradictory rumours about +the effect of the German crusade in the United States. +Oh well, the world has got to choose whether it will have +English or German domination in Europe; that's the single +big question at issue. For my part I'll risk the English +and then make a fresh start ourselves to outstrip them +in the spread of well-being; in the elevation of mankind +of all classes; in the broadening of democracy and democratic +rule (which is the sheet-anchor of all men's hopes +just as bureaucracy and militarism are the destruction +of all men's hopes); in the spread of humane feeling and +action; in the growth of human kindness; in the tender +treatment of women and children and the old; in literature, +in art; in the abatement of suffering; in great changes +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-343" id="page1-343"></a>[pg I-343]</span> +in economic conditions which discourage poverty; and in +science which gives us new leases on life and new tools +and wider visions. These are <i>our</i> world tasks, with England +as our friendly rival and helper. God bless us.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Arthur W. Page</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, November 6, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR ARTHUR:</p> + +<p>Those excellent photographs, those excellent apples, +those excellent cigars—thanks. I'm thinking of sending +Kitty<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80" /><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> over again. They all spell and smell and taste +of home—of the U.S.A. Even the messenger herself +seems Unitedstatesy, and that's a good quality, I assure +you. She's told us less news than you'd think she might +for so long a journey and so long a visit; but that's the +way with us all. And, I dare say, if it were all put together +it would make a pretty big news-budget. And +luckily for us (I often think we are among the luckiest +families in the world) all she says is quite cheerful. It's +a wonderful report she makes of County Line<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81" /><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a>—the country, +the place, the house, and its inhabitants. Maybe, +praise God, I'll see it myself some day—it and them.</p> + +<p>But—but—I don't know when and can't guess out of +this vast fog of war and doom. The worst of it is nobody +knows just what is happening. I have, for an example, +known for a week of the blowing up of a British +dreadnaught<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82" /><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a>—thousands of people know it privately—and yet +it isn't published! Such secrecy makes you fear there +may be other and even worse secrets. But I don't really +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-344" id="page1-344"></a>[pg I-344]</span> +believe there are. What I am trying to say is, so far as +news (and many other things) go, we are under a military +rule.</p> + +<p>It's beginning to wear on us badly. It presses down, +presses down, presses down in an indescribable way. +All the people you see have lost sons or brothers; mourning +becomes visible over a wider area all the time; people +talk of nothing else; all the books are about the war; +ordinary social life is suspended—people are visibly +growing older. And there are some aspects of it that are +incomprehensible. For instance, a group of American +and English military men and correspondents were talking +with me yesterday—men who have been on both +sides—in Germany and Belgium and in France—and they +say that the Germans in France alone have had 750,000 +men killed. The Allies have lost 400,000 to 500,000. +This in France only. Take the other fighting lines and +there must already be a total of 2,000,000 killed. Nothing +like that has ever happened before in the history +of the world. A flood or a fire or a wreck which has +killed 500 has often shocked all mankind. Yet we know +of this enormous slaughter and (in a way) are not greatly +moved. I don't know of a better measure of the brutalizing +effect of war—it's bringing us to take a new and more +inhuman standard to measure events by.</p> + +<p>As for any political or economic reckoning—that's +beyond any man's ability yet. I see strings of incomprehensible +figures that some economist or other now and +then puts in the papers, summing up the loss in pounds +sterling. But that means nothing because we have no +proper measure of it. If a man lose $10 or $10,000 we +can grasp that. But when nations shoot away so many +million pounds sterling every day—that means nothing +to me. I do know that there's going to be no money on +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-345" id="page1-345"></a>[pg I-345]</span> +this side the world for a long time to buy American securities. +The whole world is going to be hard up in consequence +of the bankruptcy of these nations, the inestimable +destruction of property, and the loss of productive +men. I fancy that such a change will come in the economic +and financial readjustment of the world as nobody +can yet guess at.—Are Americans studying these things? +It is not only South-American trade; it is all sorts of +manufacturers; it is financial influence—if we can quit +spending and wasting, and husband our earnings. There's +no telling the enormous advantages we shall gain if we +are wise.</p> + +<p>The extent to which the German people have permitted +themselves to be fooled is beyond belief. As a little instance +of it, I enclose a copy of a letter that Lord Bryce +gave me, written by an English woman who did good +social work in her early life—a woman of sense—and +who married a German merchant and has spent her married +life in Germany. She is a wholly sincere person. +This letter she wrote to a friend in England and—she +believes every word of it. If she believes it, the great +mass of the Germans believe similar things. I have +heard of a number of such letters—sincere, as this one is. +It gives a better insight into the average German mind +than a hundred speeches by the Emperor.</p> + +<p>This German and Austrian diplomatic business involves +an enormous amount of work. I've now sent one +man to Vienna and another to Berlin to straighten out +almost hopeless tangles and lies about prisoners and such +things and to see if they won't agree to swap more civilians +detained in each country. On top of these, yesterday +came the Turkish Embassy! Alas, we shall never +see old Tewfik<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83" /><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> again! This business begins briskly to-day +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-346" id="page1-346"></a>[pg I-346]</span> +with the detention of every Turkish consul in the British +Empire. Lord! I dread the missionaries; and I know +they're coming now. This makes four embassies. We +put up a sign, "The American Embassy," on every +one of them. Work? We're worked to death. Two +nights ago I didn't get time to read a letter or even a +telegram that had come that day till 11 o'clock at night. +For on top of all these Embassies, I've had to become +Commissary-General to feed 6,000,000 starving people in +Belgium; and practically all the food must come from the +United States. You can't buy food for export in any +country in Europe. The devastation of Belgium defeats +the Germans.—I don't mean in battle but I mean +in the after-judgment of mankind. They cannot recover +from that half as soon as they may recover from the +economic losses of the war. The reducing of those people +to starvation—that will stick to damn them in history, +whatever they win or whatever they lose.</p> + +<p>When's it going to end? Everybody who ought to +know says at the earliest next year—next summer. Many +say in two years. As for me, I don't know. I don't see +how it can end soon. Neither can lick the other to a +frazzle and neither can afford to give up till it is completely +licked. This way of living in trenches and fighting +a month at a time in one place is a new thing in warfare. +Many a man shoots a cannon all day for a month without +seeing a single enemy. There are many wounded men +back here who say they haven't seen a single German. +When the trenches become so full of dead men that the +living can't stay there longer, they move back to other +trenches. So it goes on. Each side has several more +million men to lose. What the end will be—I mean when +it will come, I don't see how to guess. The Allies are +obliged to win; they have more food and more money, +and in the long run, more men. But the German fighting +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-347" id="page1-347"></a>[pg I-347]</span> +machine is by far the best organization ever made—not +the best men, but the best organization; and the whole +German people believe what the woman writes whose +letter I send you. It'll take a long time to beat it.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Affectionately,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The letter that Page inclosed, and another copy of +which was sent to the President, purported to be written +by the English wife of a German in Bremen. It was as +follows:</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>It is very difficult to write, more difficult to believe +that what I write will succeed in reaching you. My +husband insists on my urging you—it is not necessary I +am sure—to destroy the letter and all possible indications +of its origin, should you think it worth translating. The +letter will go by a business friend of my husband's to +Holland, and be got off from there. For our business +with Holland is now exceedingly brisk as you may understand. +Her neutrality is most precious to us<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84" /><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a>.</p> + +<p>Well, I have of course a divided mind. I think of those +old days in Liverpool and Devonshire—how far off they +seem! And yet I spent all last year in England. It was +in March last when I was with you and we talked of the +amazing treatment of your army—I cannot any longer +call it <i>our</i> army—by ministers crying for the resignation +of its officers and eager to make their humiliation an +election cry! How far off that seems, too! Let me +tell you that it was the conduct of your ministers, Churchill +especially, that made people here so confident that your +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-348" id="page1-348"></a>[pg I-348]</span> +Government could not fight. It seemed impossible that +Lloyd George and his following could have the effrontery +to pose as a "war" cabinet; still more impossible that +any sane people could trust them if they did! Perhaps +you may remember a talk we had also in March about +Matthew Arnold whom I was reading again during my +convalescence at Sidmouth. You said that "Friendship's +Garland" and its Arminius could not be written +now. I disputed that and told you that it was still true +that your Government talked and "gassed" just as much +as ever, and were wilfully blind to the fact that your +power of action was wholly unequal to your words. As +in 1870 so now. Nay, worse, your rulers have always +known it perfectly well, but refused to see it or to admit +it, because they wanted office and knew that to say the +truth would bring the radical vote in the cities upon their +poor heads. It is the old hypocrisy, in the sense in which +Germans have always accused your nation: alas! and it +is half my nation too. You pride yourselves on "Keeping +your word" to Belgium. But you pride yourselves also, +not so overtly just now, on always refusing to prepare +yourselves to keep that word in <i>deed</i>. In the first days +of August you knew, absolutely and beyond all doubt, +that you could do nothing to make good your word. You +had not the moral courage to say so, and, having said +so, to act accordingly and to warn Belgium that your +promise was "a scrap of paper," and effectively nothing +more. It <i>is</i> nothing more, and has proved to be nothing +more, but you do not see that your indelible disgrace lies +just in this, that you unctuously proclaim that you are +keeping your word when all the time you know, you have +always known, that you refused utterly and completely +to take the needful steps to enable you to translate word +into action. Have you not torn up your "scrap of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-349" id="page1-349"></a>[pg I-349]</span> +paper" just as effectively as Germany has? As my +husband puts it: England gave Belgium a check, a big +check, and gave it with much ostentation, but took +care that there should be no funds to meet it! Trusting +to your check Belgium finds herself bankrupt, sequestrated, +blotted out as a nation. But I know England well +enough to foresee that English statesmen, with our old +friend, the Manchester <i>Guardian</i>, which we used to read +in years gone by, will always quote with pride how they +"guaranteed" the neutrality of Belgium.</p> + +<p>As to the future. You cannot win. A nation that has +prided itself on making no sacrifice for political power or +even independence must pay for its pride. Our house +here in Bremen has lately been by way of a centre for +naval men, and to a less extent, for officers of the neighbouring +commands. They are absolutely confident that +they will land ten army corps in England before Christmas. +It is terrible to know what they mean to go for. +They mean to destroy. Every town which remotely is +concerned with war material is to be annihilated. +Birmingham, Bradford, Leeds, Newcastle, Sheffield, +Northampton are to be wiped out, and the men killed, +ruthlessly hunted down. The fact that Lancashire and +Yorkshire have held aloof from recruiting is not to save +them. The fact that Great Britain is to be a Reichsland +will involve the destruction of inhabitants, to enable German +citizens to be planted in your country in their place. +German soldiers hope that your poor creatures will resist, +as patriots should, but they doubt it very much. +For resistance will facilitate the process of clearance. +Ireland will be left independent, and its harmlessness will +be guaranteed by its inevitable civil war.</p> + +<p>You may wonder, as I do sometimes, whether this +hatred of England is not unworthy, or a form of mental +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-350" id="page1-350"></a>[pg I-350]</span> +disease. But you must know that it is at bottom not +hatred but contempt; fierce, unreasoning scorn for a +country that pursues money and ease, from aristocrat to +trade-unionist labourer, when it has a great inheritance to +defend. I feel bitter, too, for I spent half my life in your +country and my dearest friends are all English still; and +yet I am deeply ashamed of the hypocrisy and make-believe +that has initiated your national policy and brought +you down. Now, one thing more. England is, after all, +only a stepping stone. From Liverpool, Queenstown, +Glasgow, Belfast, we shall reach out across the ocean. I +firmly believe that within a year Germany will have +seized the new Canal and proclaimed its defiance of the +great Monroe Doctrine. We have six million Germans +in the United States, and the Irish-Americans behind +them. The Americans, believe me, are <i>as a nation</i> a +cowardly nation, and will never fight organized strength +except in defense of their own territories. With the Nova +Scotian peninsula and the Bermudas, with the West +Indies and the Guianas we shall be able to dominate the +Americas. By our possession of the entire Western European +seaboard America can find no outlet for its products +except by our favour. Her finance is in German hands, +her commercial capitals, New York and Chicago, are in +reality German cities. It is some years since my father +and I were in New York. But my opinion is not very +different from that of the forceful men who have planned +this war—that with Britain as a base the control of the +American continent is under existing conditions the task +of a couple of months.</p> + +<p>I remember a conversation with Doctor Dohrn, the +head of the great biological station at Naples, some four +or five years ago. He was complaining of want of adequate +subventions from Berlin. "Everything is wanted +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-351" id="page1-351"></a>[pg I-351]</span> +for the Navy," he said. "And what really does Germany +want with such a navy?" I asked. "She is always +saying that she certainly does not regard it as a weapon +against England." At that Doctor Dohrn raised his +eyebrows. "But you, <i>gnädige Frau</i>, are a German?" +"Of course." "Well, then, you will understand me when +I say with all the seriousness I can command that this +fleet of ours is intended to deal with smugglers on the +shores of the Island of Rügen." I laughed. He became +graver still. "The ultimate enemy of our country is +America<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85" /><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a>; and I pray that I may see the day of an alliance +between a beaten England and a victorious Fatherland +against the bully of the Americas." Well, Germany and +Austria were never friends until Sadowa had shown the +way. Oh! if your country, which in spite of all I love so +much, would but "see things clearly and see them whole."</p> + +<p>Bremen, September 25, 1914.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Ralph W. Page</i><a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86" /><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, Sunday, November 15, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR RALPH:</p> + +<p>You were very good to sit down in Greensboro', or anywhere +else, and to write me a fine letter. Do that often. +You say there's nothing to do now in the Sandhills. +Write us letters: that's a fair job!</p> + +<p>God save us, we need 'em. We need anything from +the sane part of the world to enable us to keep our balance. +One of the commonest things you hear about now +is the insanity of a good number of the poor fellows who +come back from the trenches as well as of a good many +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-352" id="page1-352"></a>[pg I-352]</span> +Belgians. The sights and sounds they've experienced unhinge +their reason. If this war keep up long enough—and +it isn't going to end soon—people who have had no +sight of it will go crazy, too—the continuous thought of +it, the inability to get away from it by any device whatever—all +this tells on us all. Letters, then, plenty of +them—let 'em come.</p> + +<p>You are in a peaceful land. The war is a long, long +way off. You suffer nothing worse than a little idleness +and a little poverty. They are nothing. I hope (and +believe) that you get enough to eat. Be content, then. +Read the poets, improve a piece of land, play with the +baby, learn golf. That's the happy and philosophic and +fortunate life in these times of world-madness.</p> + +<p>As for the continent of Europe—forget it. We have +paid far too much attention to it. It has ceased to be +worth it. And now it's of far less value to us—and will be +for the rest of your life—than it has ever been before. An +ancient home of man, the home, too, of beautiful things—buildings, +pictures, old places, old traditions, dead civilizations—the +place where man rose from barbarism to +civilization—it is now bankrupt, its best young men dead, +its system of politics and of government a failure, its social +structure enslaving and tyrannical—it has little help for +us. The American spirit, which is the spirit that concerns +itself with making life better for the whole mass of +men—that's at home at its best with us. The whole +future of the race is in the new countries—our country +chiefly. This grows on one more and more and more. +The things that are best worth while are on our side of the +ocean. And we've got all the bigger job to do because of +this violent demonstration of the failure of continental +Europe. It's gone on living on a false basis till its elements +got so mixed that it has simply blown itself to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-353" id="page1-353"></a>[pg I-353]</span> +pieces. It is a great convulsion of nature, as an earthquake +or a volcano is. Human life there isn't worth +what a yellow dog's life is worth in Moore County. Don't +bother yourself with the continent of Europe any more—except +to learn the value of a real democracy and the +benefits it can confer precisely in proportion to the extent +to which men trust to it. Did you ever read my Address +delivered before the Royal Institution of Great +Britain<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87" /><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a>? I enclose a copy. Now that's my idea of the +very milk of the word. To come down to daily, deadly +things—this upheaval is simply infernal. Parliament +opened the other day and half the old lords that sat in +their robes had lost their heirs and a larger part of the +members of the House wore khaki. To-morrow they will +vote $1,125,000,000 for war purposes. They had already +voted $500,000,000. They'll vote more, and more, and +more, if necessary. They are raising a new army of 2,000,000 +men. Every man and every dollar they have will go +if necessary. That's what I call an invincible people. +The Kaiser woke up the wrong passenger. But for fifty +years the continent won't be worth living on. My +heavens! what bankruptcy will follow death!</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Affectionately,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Frank C. Page</i><a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88" /><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Sunday, December 20th, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR OLD MAN:</p> + +<p>I envy both you and your mother<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89" /><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> your chance to make +plans for the farm and the house and all the rest of it and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-354" id="page1-354"></a>[pg I-354]</span> +to have one another to talk to. And, most of all, you are +where you can now and then change the subject. You +can guess somewhat at our plight when Kitty and I confessed +to one another last night that we were dead tired +and needed to go to bed early and to stay long. She's +sleeping yet, the dear kid, and I hope she'll sleep till lunch +time. There isn't anything the matter with us but the +war; but that's enough, Heaven knows. It's the worst +ailment that has ever struck me. Then, if you add to that +this dark, wet, foggy, sooty, cold, penetrating climate—you +ought to thank your stars that you are not in it. I'm +glad your mother's out of it, as much as we miss her; and +miss her? Good gracious! there's no telling the hole her +absence makes in all our life. But Kitty is a trump, +true blue and dead game, and the very best company you +can find in a day's journey. And, much as we miss your +mother, you mustn't weep for us; we are having some fun +and are planning more. I could have no end of fun with +her if I had any time. But to work all day and till bedtime +doesn't leave much time for sport.</p> + +<p>The farm—the farm—the farm—it's yours and Mother's +to plan and make and do with as you wish. I shall +be happy whatever you do, even if you put the roof in the +cellar and the cellar on top of the house.</p> + +<p>If you have room enough (16 X 10 plus a fire and a bath +are enough for me), I'll go down there and write a book. +If you haven't it, I'll go somewhere else and write a book. +I don't propose to be made unhappy by any house or by +the lack of any house nor by anything whatsoever.</p> + +<p>All the details of life go on here just the same. The war +goes as slowly as death because it <i>is</i> death, death to +millions of men. We've all said all we know about it to one +another a thousand times; nobody knows anything else; +nobody can guess when it will end; nobody has any doubt +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-355" id="page1-355"></a>[pg I-355]</span> +about how it will end, unless some totally improbable and +unexpected thing happens, such as the falling out of the +Allies, which can't happen for none of them can afford it; +and we go around the same bloody circle all the time. +The papers never have any news; nobody ever talks about +anything else; everybody is tired to death; nobody is +cheerful; when it isn't sick Belgians, it's aeroplanes; and +when it isn't aeroplanes, it's bombarding the coast of England. +When it isn't an American ship held up, it's a fool +American-German arrested as a spy; and when it isn't a +spy it's a liar who <i>knows</i> the Zeppelins are coming to-night. +We don't know anything; we don't believe anybody; +we should be surprised at nothing; and at 3 o'clock +I'm going to the Abbey to a service in honour of the 100 +years of peace! The world has all got itself so jumbled up +that the bays are all promontories, the mountains are all +valleys, and earthquakes are necessary for our happiness. +We have disasters for breakfast; mined ships for luncheon; +burned cities for dinner; trenches in our dreams, and bombarded +towns for small talk.</p> + +<p>Peaceful seems the sandy landscape where you are, glad +the very blackjacks, happy the curs, blessed the sheep, +interesting the chin-whiskered clodhopper, innocent the fool +darkey, blessed the mule, for it knows no war. And you +have your mother—be happy, boy; you don't know how +much you have to be thankful for.</p> + +<p>Europe is ceasing to be interesting except as an example +of how-not-to-do-it. It has no lessons for us except as a +warning. When the whole continent has to go fighting—every +blessed one of them—once a century, and half of +them half the time between and all prepared even when +they are not fighting, and when they shoot away all their +money as soon as they begin to get rich a little and everybody +else's money, too, and make the whole world poor, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-356" id="page1-356"></a>[pg I-356]</span> +and when they kill every third or fourth generation of the +best men and leave the worst to rear families, and have to +start over afresh every time with a worse stock—give me +Uncle Sam and his big farm. We don't need to catch +any of this European life. We can do without it all as well +as we can do without the judges' wigs and the court costumes. +Besides, I like a land where the potatoes have +some flavour, where you can buy a cigar, and get your hair +cut and have warm bathrooms.</p> + +<p>Build the farm, therefore; and let me hear at every +stage of that happy game. May the New Year be the +best that has ever come for you!</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Affectionately,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p class="center">FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68" /><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> Evidently the battle of Heligoland Bight of August 28, +1914.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69" /><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> The reference in all probability is to Mr. Charles L. +Hoover, at that time American Consul at Carlsbad.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70" /><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> German Ambassador in Washington.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71" /><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, whose +openly expressed pro-Germanism was making him exceedingly unpopular in +the United States.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72" /><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> Evidently written in the latter part of September, 1914.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73" /><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> Miss Katharine A. Page, the Ambassador's daughter.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74" /><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> The <i>Hague</i>, the <i>Cressy</i>, and the <i>Aboukir</i> were +torpedoed by a German submarine September 22, 1914. This exploit first +showed the world the power of the submarine.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75" /><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> Princess Lichnowsky, wife of the German Ambassador to +Great Britain.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76" /><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> Private Secretary to Mrs. Page.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77" /><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> Mr. Harold Fowler, the Ambassador's Secretary.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78" /><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> Probably a reference to Mr. Charles M. Schwab, President +of the Bethlehem Steel Company, who was in London at this time on this +errand.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79" /><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> No. 4 Grosvenor Gardens.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80" /><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> Miss Katharine A. Page had just returned from a visit to +the United States.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81" /><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> Mr. Arthur W. Page's country home on Long Island.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82" /><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> Evidently the <i>Audacious</i>, sunk by mine off the North of +Ireland, October 27, 1914.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83" /><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> Tewfik Pasha, the very popular Turkish Ambassador to Great +Britain.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84" /><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> Germany was conducting her trade with the neutral world +largely through Dutch and Danish ports.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85" /><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> Mr. Irwin Laughlin, first secretary of the American +Embassy in London, furnishes this note: "This statement about America +was made to me more than once in Germany, between 1910 and 1912, by +German officers, military and naval."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86" /><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> Of Pinehurst, North Carolina, the Ambassador's oldest +son.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87" /><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> On June 12, 1914. The title of the address was "Some +Aspects of the American Democracy."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88" /><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> The Ambassador's youngest son.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89" /><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> Mrs. W.H. Page was at this time spending a few weeks in +the United States.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-357" id="page1-357"></a>[pg I-357]</span> +</div><h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII" />CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<h3>"WAGING NEUTRALITY"</h3> + +<h3>I</h3> + + +<p>The foregoing letters sufficiently portray Page's +attitude toward the war; they also show the extent +to which he suffered from the daily tragedy. The great +burdens placed upon the Embassy in themselves would +have exhausted a physical frame that had never been +particularly robust; but more disintegrating than these +was the mental distress—the constant spectacle of a +civilization apparently bent upon its own destruction. +Indeed there were probably few men in Europe upon whom +the war had a more depressing effect. In the first few +weeks the Ambassador perceptibly grew older; his face +became more deeply lined, his hair became grayer, his +body thinner, his step lost something of its quickness, +his shoulders began to stoop, and his manner became more +and more abstracted. Page's kindness, geniality, and +consideration had long since endeared him to all the embassy +staff, from his chief secretaries to clerks and doormen; +and all his associates now watched with affectionate +solicitude the extent to which the war was wearing upon +him. "In those first weeks," says Mr. Irwin Laughlin, +Page's most important assistant and the man upon whom +the routine work of the Embassy largely fell, "he acted +like a man who was carrying on his shoulders all the sins +and burdens of the world. I know no man who seemed to +realize so poignantly the misery and sorrow of it all. The +sight of an England which he loved bleeding to death in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-358" id="page1-358"></a>[pg I-358]</span> +defence of the things in which he most believed was a grief +that seemed to be sapping his very life."</p> + +<p>Page's associates, however, noted a change for the better +after the Battle of the Marne. Except to his most intimate +companions he said little, for he represented a nation +that was "neutral"; but the defeat of the Germans added +liveliness to his step, gave a keener sparkle to his eye, and +even brought back some of his old familiar gaiety of spirit. +One day the Ambassador was lunching with Mr. Laughlin +and one or two other friends.</p> + +<p>"We did pretty well in that Battle of the Marne, didn't +we?" he said.</p> + +<p>"Isn't that remark slightly unneutral, Mr. Ambassador?" +asked Mr. Laughlin.</p> + +<p>At this a roar of laughter went up from the table that +could be heard for a considerable distance.</p> + +<p>About this same time Page's personal secretary, Mr. +Harold Fowler, came to ask the Ambassador's advice +about enlisting in the British Army. To advise a young +man to take a step that might very likely result in his +death was a heavy responsibility, and the Ambassador refused +to accept it. It was a matter that the Secretary +could settle only with his own conscience. Mr. Fowler +decided his problem by joining the British Army; he had a +distinguished career in its artillery and aviation service +as he had subsequently in the American Army. Mr. +Fowler at once discovered that his decision had been +highly pleasing to his superior.</p> + +<p>"I couldn't advise you to do this, Harold," Page said, +placing his hand on the young man's shoulder, "but now +that you've settled it yourself I'll say this—if I were a +young man like you and in your circumstances, I should +enlist myself."</p> + +<p>Yet greatly as Page abhorred the Prussians and greatly +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-359" id="page1-359"></a>[pg I-359]</span> +as his sympathies from the first day of the war were enlisted +on the side of the Allies, there was no diplomat in +the American service who was more "neutral" in the +technical sense. "Neutral!" Page once exclaimed. +"There's nothing in the world so neutral as this embassy. +Neutrality takes up all our time." When he made this +remark he was, as he himself used to say, "the German +Ambassador to Great Britain." And he was performing +the duties of this post with the most conscientious fidelity. +These duties were onerous and disagreeable ones and were +made still more so by the unreasonableness of the German +Government. Though the American Embassy was caring +for the more than 70,000 Germans who were then +living in England and was performing numerous other +duties, the Imperial Government never realized that Page +and the Embassy staff were doing it a service. With +characteristic German tactlessness the German Foreign +Office attempted to be as dictatorial to Page as though he +had been one of its own junior secretaries. The business +of the German Embassy in London was conducted with +great ability; the office work was kept in the most shipshape +condition; yet the methods were American methods +and the Germans seemed aggrieved because the routine +of the Imperial bureaucracy was not observed. With +unparalleled insolence they objected to the American +system of accounting—not that it was unsound or did +not give an accurate picture of affairs—but simply that +it was not German. Page quietly but energetically +informed the German Government that the American diplomatic +service was not a part of the German organization, +that its bookkeeping system was American, not +German, that he was doing this work not as an obligation +but as a favour, and that, so long as he continued to do it, +he would perform the duty in his own way. At this the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-360" id="page1-360"></a>[pg I-360]</span> +Imperial Government subsided. Despite such annoyances +Page refused to let his own feelings interfere with +the work. The mere fact that he despised the Germans +made him over-scrupulous in taking all precautions that +they obtained exact justice. But this was all that the +German cause in Great Britain did receive. His administration +of the German Embassy was faultless in its +technique, but it did not err on the side of over-enthusiasm.</p> + +<p>His behaviour throughout the three succeeding years +was entirely consistent with his conception of "neutrality." +That conception, as is apparent from the letters +already printed, was not the Wilsonian conception. +Probably no American diplomat was more aggrieved at +the President's definition of neutrality than his Ambassador +to Great Britain. Page had no quarrel with +the original neutrality proclamation; that was purely a +routine governmental affair, and at the time it was issued +it represented the proper American attitude. But the +President's famous emendations filled him with astonishment +and dismay. "We must be impartial in thought +as well as in action," said the President on August 19th<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90" /><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a>, +"we must put a curb upon our sentiments as well as upon +every transaction that might be construed as a prejudice +of one party to the prejudice of another." Page was +prepared to observe all the traditional rules of neutrality, +to insist on American rights with the British Government, +and to do full legal justice to the Germans, but he declined +to abrogate his conscience where his personal +judgment of the rights and wrongs of the conflict were +concerned. "Neutrality," he said in a letter to his +brother, Mr. Henry A. Page, of Aberdeen, N.C., "is a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-361" id="page1-361"></a>[pg I-361]</span> +quality of government—an artificial unit. When a war +comes a government must go in it or stay out of it. It +must make a declaration to the world of its attitude. +That's all that neutrality is. A government can be +neutral, but no <i>man</i> can be."</p> + +<p>"The President and the Government," Page afterward +wrote, "in their insistence upon the moral quality +of neutrality, missed the larger meaning of the war. It +is at bottom nothing but the effort of the Berlin absolute +monarch and his group to impose their will on as large a +part of the world as they can overrun. The President +started out with the idea that it was a war brought on by +many obscure causes—economic and the like; and he +thus missed its whole meaning. We have ever since +been dealing with the chips which fly from the war machine +and have missed the larger meaning of the conflict. +Thus we have failed to render help to the side of Liberalism +and Democracy, which are at stake in the world."</p> + +<p>Nor did Page think it his duty, in his private communications +to his Government and his friends, to maintain +that attitude of moral detachment which Mr. Wilson's +pronouncement had evidently enjoined upon him. It +was not his business to announce his opinions to the world, +for he was not the man who determined the policy of the +United States; that was the responsibility of the President +and his advisers. But an ambassador did have a certain +rôle to perform. It was his duty to collect information +and impressions, to discover what important people +thought of the United States and of its policies, and to +send forward all such data to Washington. According +to Page's theory of the Ambassadorial office, he was a +kind of listening post on the front of diplomacy, and he +would have grievously failed had he not done his best to +keep headquarters informed. He did not regard it as +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-362" id="page1-362"></a>[pg I-362]</span> +"loyalty" merely to forward only that kind of material +which Washington apparently preferred to obtain; with +a frankness which Mr. Wilson's friends regarded as almost +ruthless, Page reported what he believed to be the +truth. That this practice was displeasing to the powers +of Washington there is abundant evidence. In early +December, 1914, Colonel House was compelled to transmit +a warning to the American Ambassador at London. +"The President wished me to ask you to please be more +careful not to express any unneutral feeling, either by +word of mouth, or by letter and not even to the State +Department. He said that both Mr. Bryan and Mr. +Lansing had remarked upon your leaning in that direction +and he thought that it would materially lessen +your influence. He feels very strongly about this."</p> + +<p>Evidently Page did not regard his frank descriptions of +England under war as expressing unneutral feeling; at any +rate, as the war went on, his letters, even those which he +wrote to President Wilson, became more and more outspoken. +Page's resignation was always at the President's +disposal; the time came, as will appear, when it +was offered; so long as he occupied his post, however, +nothing could turn him from his determination to make +what he regarded as an accurate record of events. This +policy of maintaining an outward impartiality, and, at +the same time, of bringing pressure to bear on Washington +in behalf of the Allies, he called "waging neutrality."</p> + +<p>Such was the mood in which Page now prepared to +play his part in what was probably the greatest diplomatic +drama in history. The materials with which this +drama concerned itself were such apparently lifeless subjects +as ships and cargoes, learned discourses on such +abstract matters as the doctrine of continuous voyage, +effective blockade, and conditional contraband; yet the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-363" id="page1-363"></a>[pg I-363]</span> +struggle, which lasted for three years, involved the +greatest issue of modern times—nothing less than the survival +of those conceptions of liberty, government, and +society which make the basis of English-speaking civilization. +To the newspaper reader of war days, shipping +difficulties signified little more than a newspaper headline +which he hastily read, or a long and involved lawyer's +note which he seldom read at all—or, if he did, practically +never understood. Yet these minute and neglected controversies +presented to the American Nation the greatest +decision in its history. Once before, a century ago, a +European struggle had laid before the United States +practically the same problem. Great Britain fought +Napoleon, just as it had now been compelled to fight the +Hohenzollern, by blockade; such warfare, in the early +nineteenth century, led to retaliations, just as did the +maritime warfare in the recent conflict, and the United +States suffered, in 1812, as in 1914, from what were regarded +as the depredations of both sides. In Napoleon's +days France and Great Britain, according to the +international lawyers, attacked American commerce in +illegal ways; on strictly technical grounds this infant +nation had an adequate cause of war against both belligerents; +but the ultimate consequence of a very confused +situation was a declaration of war against Great +Britain. Though an England which was ruled by a +George III or a Prince Regent—an England of rotten +boroughs, of an ignorant and oppressed peasantry, and of +a social organization in which caste was almost as definitely +drawn as in an Oriental despotism—could hardly +appeal to the enthusiastic democrat as embodying all the +ideals of his system, yet the England of 1800 did represent +modern progress when compared with the mediæval +autocracy of Napoleon. If we take this broad view, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-364" id="page1-364"></a>[pg I-364]</span> +therefore, we must admit that, in 1812, we fought on the +side of darkness and injustice against the forces that were +making for enlightenment. The war of 1914 had not +gone far when the thinking American foresaw that it +would present to the American people precisely this same +problem. What would the decision be? Would America +repeat the experience of 1812, or had the teachings of a +century so dissipated hatreds that it would be able to +exert its influence in a way more worthy of itself and more +helpful to the progress of mankind?</p> + +<p>There was one great difference, however, between the +position of the United States in 1812 and its position in +1914. A century ago we were a small and feeble nation, +of undeveloped industries and resources and of immature +character; our entrance into the European conflict, on +one side or the other, could have little influence upon its +results, and, in fact, it influenced it scarcely at all; the +side we fought against emerged triumphant. In 1914, +we had the greatest industrial organization and the +greatest wealth of any nation and the largest white +population of any country except Russia; the energy of +our people and our national talent for success had long +been the marvel of foreign observers. It mattered little +in 1812 on which side the United States took its stand; +in 1914 such a decision Mould inevitably determine the +issue. Of all European statesmen there was one man +who saw this point with a definiteness which, in itself, +gives him a clear title to fame. That was Sir Edward +Grey. The time came when a section of the British +public was prepared almost to stone the Foreign Secretary +in the streets of London, because they believed that his +"subservience" to American trade interests was losing +the war for Great Britain; his tenure of office was a +constant struggle with British naval and military chiefs +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-365" id="page1-365"></a>[pg I-365]</span> +who asserted that the Foreign Office, in its efforts to +maintain harmonious relations with America, was hamstringing +the British fleet, was rendering almost impotent +its control of the sea, and was thus throwing away +the greatest advantage which Great Britain possessed +in its life and death struggle. "Some blight has been +at work in our Foreign Office for years," said the <i>Quarterly +Review</i>, "steadily undermining our mastery of the +sea."</p> + +<p>"The fleet is not allowed to act," cried Lord Charles +Beresford in Parliament; the Foreign Office was constantly +interfering with its operations. The word "traitor" +was not infrequently heard; there were hints that +pro-Germanism was rampant and that officials in the +Foreign Office were drawing their pay from the Kaiser. +It was constantly charged that the navy was bringing in +suspicious cargoes only to have the Foreign Office order +their release. "I fight Sir Edward about stopping cargoes," +Page wrote to Colonel House in December, 1914; +"literally fight. He yields and promises this or that. +This or that doesn't happen or only half happens. I +know why. The military ministers balk him. I inquire +through the back door and hear that the Admiralty +and the War Office of course value American good-will, +but they'll take their chances of a quarrel with the United +States rather than let copper get to Germany. The +cabinet has violent disagreements. But the military +men yield as little as possible. It was rumoured the +other day that the Prime Minister threatened to resign; +and I know that Kitchener's sister told her friends, with +tears in her eyes, that the cabinet shamefully hindered +her brother."</p> + +<p>These criticisms unquestionably caused Sir Edward +great unhappiness, but this did not for a moment move +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-366" id="page1-366"></a>[pg I-366]</span> +him from his course. His vision was fixed upon a much +greater purpose. Parliamentary orators might rage because +the British fleet was not permitted to make indiscriminate +warfare on commerce, but the patient and far-seeing +British Foreign Secretary was the man who was +really trying to win the war. He was one of the few +Englishmen who, in August, 1914, perceived the tremendous +extent of the struggle in which Great Britain +had engaged. He saw that the English people were +facing the greatest crisis since William of Normandy, in +1066, subjected their island to foreign rule. Was England +to become the "Reichsland" of a European monarch, and +was the British Empire to pass under the sway of Germany? +Proud as Sir Edward Grey was of his country, he +was modest in the presence of facts; and one fact of which +he early became convinced was that Great Britain could +not win unless the United States was ranged upon its +side. Here was the country—so Sir Edward reasoned—that +contained the largest effective white population +in the world; that could train armies larger than those +of any other nation; that could make the most munitions, +build the largest number of battleships and merchant +vessels, and raise food in quantities great enough to +feed itself and Europe besides. This power, the Foreign +Secretary believed, could determine the issue of the war. +If Great Britain secured American sympathy and support, +she would win; if Great Britain lost this sympathy +and support, she would lose. A foreign policy that +would estrange the United States and perhaps even throw +its support to Germany would not only lose the war to +Great Britain, but it would be perhaps the blackest crime +in history, for it would mean the collapse of that British-American +coöperation, and the destruction of those +British-American ideals and institutions which are the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-367" id="page1-367"></a>[pg I-367]</span> +greatest facts in the modern world. This conviction +was the basis of Sir Edward's policy from the day that +Great Britain declared war. Whatever enemies he might +make in England, the Foreign Secretary was determined +to shape his course so that the support of the United +States would be assured to his country. A single illustration +shows the skill and wisdom with which he pursued +this great purpose.</p> + +<p>Perhaps nothing in the early days of the war enraged +the British military chiefs more than the fact that cotton +was permitted to go from the United States to Germany. +That Germany was using this cotton in the manufacture +of torpedoes to sink British ships and of projectiles to kill +British soldiers in trenches was well known; nor did many +people deny that Great Britain had the right to put +cotton on the contraband list. Yet Grey, in the pursuit +of his larger end, refused to take this step. He knew +that the prosperity of the Southern States depended +exclusively upon the cotton crop. He also knew that the +South had raised the 1914 crop with no knowledge that a +war was impending and that to deny the Southern planters +their usual access to the German markets would all +but ruin them. He believed that such a ruling would immediately +alienate the sympathy of a large section of the +United States and make our Southern Senators and Congressmen +enemies of Great Britain. Sir Edward was also +completely informed of the extent to which the German-Americans +and the Irish-Americans were active and he +was familiar with the aims of American pacifists. He believed +that declaring cotton contraband at this time would +bring together in Congress the Southern Senators and +Congressmen, the representatives of the Irish and the +German causes and the pacifists, and that this combination +would exercise an influence that would be disastrous +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-368" id="page1-368"></a>[pg I-368]</span> +to Great Britain. Two dangers constantly haunted Sir +Edward's mind at this time. One was that the enemies of +Great Britain would assemble enough votes in Congress +to place an embargo upon the shipment of munitions from +this country. Such an embargo might well be fatal to +Great Britain, for at this time she was importing munitions, +especially shells, in enormous quantities from the +United States. The other was that such pressure might +force the Government to convoy American cargoes with +American warships. Great Britain then could stop the +cargoes only by attacking our cruisers, and to attack a +cruiser is an act of war. Had Congress taken either +one of these steps the Allies would have lost the war +in the spring of 1915. At a cabinet meeting held to +consider this question, Sir Edward Grey set forth this +view and strongly advised that cotton should not be +made contraband at that time<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91" /><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a>. The Cabinet supported +him and events justified the decision. Afterward, in +Washington, several of the most influential Senators informed +Sir Edward that this action had averted a great +crisis.</p> + +<p>This was the motive, which, as will appear as the story +of our relations with Great Britain progresses, inspired +the Foreign Secretary in all his dealings with the United +States. His purpose was to use the sea power of Great +Britain to keep war materials and foodstuffs out of Germany, +but never to go to the length of making an unbridgeable +gulf between the United States and Great +Britain. The American Ambassador to Great Britain +completely sympathized with this programme. It was +Page's business to protect the rights of the United States, +just as it was Grey's to protect the rights of Great Britain. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-369" id="page1-369"></a>[pg I-369]</span> +Both were vigilant in protecting such rights, and animated +differences between the two men on this point were not +infrequent. Great Britain did many absurd and high-handed +things in intercepting American cargoes, and Page +was always active in "protesting" when the basis for the +protest actually existed. But on the great overhanging +issue the two men were at one. Like Grey, Page believed +that there were more important things involved than +an occasional cargo of copper or of oil cake. The American +Ambassador thought that the United States should +protect its shipping interests, but that it should realize +that maritime law was not an exact science, that its +principles had been modified by every great conflict in +which the blockade had been an effective agency, and +that the United States itself, in the Civil War, had not +hesitated to make such changes as the changed methods +of modern transportation had required. In other words +he believed that we could safeguard our rights in a way +that would not prevent Great Britain from keeping war +materials and foodstuffs out of Germany. And like Sir +Edward Grey, Page was obliged to contend with forces at +home which maintained a contrary view. In this early +period Mr. Bryan was nominally Secretary of State, but +the man who directed the national policy in shipping +matters was Robert Lansing, then counsellor of the Department. +It is somewhat difficult to appraise Mr. Lansing +justly, for in his conduct of his office there was not the +slightest taint of malice. His methods were tactless, the +phrasing of his notes lacked deftness and courtesy, his +literary style was crude and irritating; but Mr. Lansing +was not anti-British, he was not pro-German; he was nothing +more nor less than a lawyer. The protection of American +rights at sea was to him simply a "case" in which he +had been retained as counsel for the plaintiff. As a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-370" id="page1-370"></a>[pg I-370]</span> +good lawyer it was his business to score as many points as +possible for his client and the more weak joints he found +in the enemy's armour the better did he do his job. It was +his duty to scan the law books, to look up the precedents, +to examine facts, and to prepare briefs that would be +unassailable from a technical standpoint. To Mr. Lansing +this European conflict was the opportunity of a lifetime. +He had spent thirty years studying the intricate +problems that now became his daily companions. His +mind revelled in such minute details as ultimate destination, +the continuous voyage as applied to conditional +contraband, the searching of cargoes upon the high seas, +belligerent trading through neutral ports, war zones, +orders in council, and all the other jargon of maritime +rights in time of war. These topics engrossed him as +completely as the extension of democracy and the significance +of British-American coöperation engrossed all the +thoughts of Page and Grey.</p> + +<p>That Page took this larger view is evident from the +communications which he now began sending to the +President. One that he wrote on October 15, 1915, is +especially to the point. The date is extremely important; +so early had Page formulated the standards that should +guide the United States and so early had he begun his +work of attempting to make President Wilson understand +the real nature of the conflict. The position which Page +now assumed was one from which he never departed.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To the President</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>In this great argument about shipping I cannot help +being alarmed because we are getting into deep water +uselessly. The Foreign Office has yielded unquestioningly +to all our requests and has shown the sincerest wish +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-371" id="page1-371"></a>[pg I-371]</span> +to meet all our suggestions, so long as it is not called +upon to admit war materials into Germany. It will +not give way to us in that. We would not yield it if we +were in their place. Neither would the Germans. England +will risk a serious quarrel or even hostilities with +us rather than yield. You may look upon this as the final +word.</p> + +<p>Since the last lists of contraband and conditional contraband +were published, such materials as rubber and copper +and petroleum have developed entirely new uses in war. +The British simply will not let Germany import them. +Nothing that can be used for war purposes in Germany +now will be used for anything else. Representatives of +Spain, Holland, and all the Scandinavian states agree that +they can do nothing but acquiesce and file protests and +claims, and they admit that Great Britain has the right to +revise the list of contraband. This is not a war in the +sense in which we have hitherto used that word. It is a +world-clash of systems of government, a struggle to the +extermination of English civilization or of Prussian military +autocracy. Precedents have gone to the scrap heap. +We have a new measure for military and diplomatic action. +Let us suppose that we press for a few rights to which the +shippers have a theoretical claim. The American people +gain nothing and the result is friction with this country; +and that is what a very small minority of the agitators in +the United States would like. Great Britain can any day +close the Channel to all shipping or can drive Holland to +the enemy and blockade her ports.</p> + +<p>Let us take a little farther view into the future. If +Germany win, will it make any difference what position +Great Britain took on the Declaration of London? The +Monroe Doctrine will be shot through. We shall have +to have a great army and a great navy. But suppose that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-372" id="page1-372"></a>[pg I-372]</span> +England win. We shall then have an ugly academic dispute +with her because of this controversy. Moreover, +we shall not hold a good position for helping to compose +the quarrel or for any other service.</p> + +<p>The present controversy seems here, where we are close +to the struggle, academic. It seems to us a petty matter +when it is compared with the grave danger we incur of +shutting ourselves off from a position to be of some service +to civilization and to the peace of mankind.</p> + +<p>In Washington you seem to be indulging in a more or +less theoretical discussion. As we see the issue here, it is +a matter of life and death for English-speaking civilization. +It is not a happy time to raise controversies that can be +avoided or postponed. We gain nothing, we lose every +chance for useful coöperation for peace. In jeopardy also +are our friendly relations with Great Britain in the sorest +need and the greatest crisis in her history. I know that +this is the correct view. I recommend most earnestly +that we shall substantially accept the new Order in Council +or acquiesce in it and reserve whatever rights we may +have. I recommend prompt information be sent to the +British Government of such action. I should like to inform +Grey that this is our decision.</p> + +<p>So far as our neutrality obligations are concerned, I do +not believe that they require us to demand that Great +Britain should adopt for our benefit the Declaration of +London. Great Britain has never ratified it, nor have +any other nations except the United States. In its +application to the situation presented by this war it is +altogether to the advantage of Germany.</p> + +<p>I have delayed to write you this way too long. I have +feared that I might possibly seem to be influenced by +sympathy with England and by the atmosphere here. +But I write of course solely with reference to our own +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-373" id="page1-373"></a>[pg I-373]</span> +country's interest and its position after the reorganization +of Europe.</p> + +<p>Anderson<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92" /><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> and Laughlin<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93" /><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> agree with me emphatically.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>The immediate cause of this protest was, as its context +shows, the fact that the State Department was +insisting that Great Britain should adopt the Declaration +of London as a code of law for regulating its warfare on +German shipping. Hostilities had hardly started when +Mr. Bryan made this proposal; his telegram on this subject +is dated August 7, 1914. "You will further state," +said Mr. Bryan, "that this Government believes that the +acceptance of these laws by the belligerents would prevent +grave misunderstandings which may arise as to the +relations between belligerents and neutrals. It therefore +hopes that this inquiry may receive favourable consideration." +At the same time Germany and the other belligerents +were asked to adopt this Declaration.</p> + +<p>The communication was thus more than a suggestion; +it was a recommendation that was strongly urged. According +to Page this telegram was the first great mistake +the American Government made in its relations with +Great Britain. In September, 1916, the Ambassador +submitted to President Wilson a memorandum which he +called "Rough notes toward an explanation of the British +feeling toward the United States." "Of recent years," +he said, "and particularly during the first year of the +present Administration, the British feeling toward the +United States was most friendly and cordial. About +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-374" id="page1-374"></a>[pg I-374]</span> +the time of the repeal of the tolls clause in the Panama Act, +the admiration and friendliness of the whole British +public (governmental and private) reached the highest +point in our history. In considering the change that has +taken place since, it is well to bear this cordiality in mind +as a starting point. When the war came on there was at +first nothing to change this attitude. The hysterical hope +of many persons that our Government might protest +against the German invasion of Belgium caused some +feeling of disappointment, but thinking men did not share +it; and, if this had been the sole cause of criticism of us, +the criticism would have died out. The unusually high +regard in which the President—and hence our Government—was +then held was to a degree new. The British +had for many years held the people of the United States +in high esteem: they had not, as a rule, so favourably regarded +the Government at Washington, especially in its +conduct of foreign relations. They had long regarded +our Government as ignorant of European affairs and amateurish +in its cockiness. When I first got to London I +found evidence of this feeling, even in the most friendly +atmosphere that surrounded us. Mr. Bryan was looked +on as a joke. They forgot him—rather, they never took +serious notice of him. But, when the Panama tolls incident +was closed, they regarded the President as his own +Foreign Secretary; and thus our Government as well as +our Nation came into this high measure of esteem.</p> + +<p>"The war began. We, of course, took a neutral attitude, +wholly to their satisfaction. But we at once interfered—or +tried to interfere—by insisting on the Declaration +of London, which no Great Power but the United +States (I think) had ratified and which the British House +of Lords had distinctly rejected. That Declaration +would probably have given a victory to Germany if the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-375" id="page1-375"></a>[pg I-375]</span> +Allies had adopted it. In spite of our neutrality we insisted +vigorously on its adoption and aroused a distrust in +our judgment. Thus we started in wrong, so far as the +British Government is concerned."</p> + +<p>The rules of maritime warfare which the American State +Department so disastrously insisted upon were the direct +outcome of the Hague Conference of 1907. That assembly +of the nations recognized, what had long been a +palpable fact, that the utmost confusion existed in the +operations of warring powers upon the high seas. About +the fundamental principle that a belligerent had the right, +if it had the power, to keep certain materials of commerce +from reaching its enemy, there was no dispute. But as to +the particular articles which it could legally exclude there +were as many different ideas as there were nations. +That the blockade, a term which means the complete +exclusion of cargoes and ships from an enemy's ports, +was a legitimate means of warfare, was also an accepted +fact, but as to the precise means in which the blockade +could be enforced there was the widest difference of opinion. +The Hague Conference provided that an attempt +should be made to codify these laws into a fixed system, +and the representatives of the nations met in London in +1908, under the presidency of the Earl of Desart, for this +purpose. The outcome of their two months' deliberations +was that document of seven chapters and seventy articles +which has ever since been known as the Declaration of +London. Here at last was the thing for which the world +had been waiting so long—a complete system of maritime +law for the regulation of belligerents and the protection +of neutrals, which would be definitely binding upon all +nations because all nations were expected to ratify it.</p> + +<p>But the work of all these learned gentlemen was thrown +away. The United States was the only party to the negotiations +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-376" id="page1-376"></a>[pg I-376]</span> +that put the stamp of approval upon its labours. +All other nations declined to commit themselves. In +Great Britain the Declaration had an especially interesting +course. In that country it became a football of party +politics. The Liberal Government was at first inclined to +look upon it favourably; the Liberal House of Commons +actually ratified it. It soon became apparent, however, +that this vote did not represent the opinion of the British +public. In fact, few measures have ever aroused such +hostility as this Declaration, once its details became +known. For more than a year the hubbub against it +filled the daily press, the magazines, the two Houses of +Parliament and the hustings; Rudyard Kipling even wrote +a poem denouncing it. The adoption of the Declaration, +these critics asserted, would destroy the usefulness of the +British fleet. In many quarters it was denounced as a +German plot—as merely a part of the preparations which +Germany was making for world conquest. The fact is +that the Declaration could not successfully stand the +analysis to which it was now mercilessly submitted; the +House of Lords rejected it, and this action met with more +approbation than had for years been accorded the legislative +pronouncements of that chamber. The Liberal +House of Commons was not in the least dissatisfied with +this conclusion, for it realized that it had made a mistake +and it was only too happy to be permitted to forget it.</p> + +<p>When the war broke out there was therefore no single +aspect of maritime law which was quite so odious as the +Declaration of London. Great Britain realized that she +could never win unless her fleet were permitted to keep +contraband out of Germany and, if necessary, completely +to blockade that country. The two greatest conflicts of +the nineteenth century were the European struggle with +Napoleon and the American Civil War. In both the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-377" id="page1-377"></a>[pg I-377]</span> +blockade had been the decisive element, and that this great +agency would similarly determine events in this even +greater struggle was apparent. What enraged the British +public against any suggestion of the Declaration was that +it practically deprived Great Britain of this indispensable +means of weakening the enemy. In this Declaration were +drawn up lists of contraband, non-contraband, and conditional +contraband, and all of these, in English eyes, +worked to the advantage of Germany and against the advantage +of Great Britain. How absurd this classification +was is evident from the fact that airplanes were not listed +as absolute contraband of war. Germany's difficulty in +getting copper was one of the causes of her collapse; yet +the Declaration put copper for ever on the non-contraband +list; had this new code been adopted, Germany could have +imported enormous quantities from this country, instead +of being compelled to reinforce her scanty supply by +robbing housewives of their kitchen utensils, buildings of +their hardware, and church steeples of their bells. Germany's +constant scramble for rubber formed a diverting +episode in the struggle; there are indeed few things so +indispensable in modern warfare; yet the Declaration included +rubber among the innocent articles and thus opened +up to Germany the world's supply. But the most serious +matter was that the Declaration would have prevented +Great Britain from keeping foodstuffs out of the Fatherland.</p> + +<p>When Mr. Bryan, therefore, blandly asked Great Britain +to accept the Declaration as its code of maritime warfare, +he was asking that country to accept a document which +Great Britain, in peace time, had repudiated and which +would, in all probability, have caused that country to +lose the war. The substance of this request was bad +enough, but the language in which it was phrased made +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-378" id="page1-378"></a>[pg I-378]</span> +matters much worse. It appears that only the intervention +of Colonel House prevented the whole thing from +becoming a tragedy.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">115 East 53rd Street,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">New York City.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">October 3, 1914.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">HIS EXCELLENCY,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The American Ambassador, London, England.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>. . . I have just returned from Washington where +I was with the President for nearly four days. He is +looking well and is well. Sometimes his spirits droop, but +then, again, he is his normal self.</p> + +<p>I had the good fortune to be there at a time when the +discussion of the Declaration of London had reached a +critical stage. Bryan was away and Lansing, who had +not mentioned the matter to Sir Cecil<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94" /><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a>, prepared a long +communication to you which he sent to the President +for approval. The President and I went over it and I +strongly urged not sending it until I could have a conference +with Sir Cecil. I had this conference the next day +without the knowledge of any one excepting the President, +and had another the day following. Sir Cecil told me that +if the dispatch had gone to you as written and you had +shown it to Sir Edward Grey, it would almost have been +a declaration of war; and that if, by any chance, the newspapers +had got hold of it as they so often get things from +our State Department, the greatest panic would have prevailed. +He said it would have been the Venezuela incident +magnified by present conditions.</p> + +<p>At the President's suggestion, Lansing then prepared a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-379" id="page1-379"></a>[pg I-379]</span> +cablegram to you. This, too, was objectionable and the +President and I together softened it down into the one you +received.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. HOUSE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>In justice to Mr. Lansing, a passage in a later letter of +Colonel House must be quoted: "It seems that Lansing +did not write the particular dispatch to you that was objected +to. Someone else prepared it and Lansing rather +too hastily submitted it to the President, with the result +you know."</p> + +<p>This suppressed communication is probably for ever +lost, but its tenor may perhaps be gathered from instructions +which were actually sent to the Ambassador about +this time. After eighteen typewritten pages of not too +urbanely expressed discussion of the Declaration of London +and the general subject of contraband, Page was instructed +to call the British Government's attention to the +consequences which followed shipping troubles in previous +times. It is hard to construe this in any other way than +as a threat to Great Britain of a repetition of 1812:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Confidential</i>. You will not fail to impress upon His +Excellency<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95" /><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> the gravity of the issues which the enforcement +of the Order in Council seems to presage, and say to +him in substance as follows:</p> + +<p>It is a matter of grave concern to this Government that +the particular conditions of this unfortunate war should +be considered by His Britannic Majesty's Government to +be such as to justify them in advancing doctrines and advocating +practices which in the past aroused strong opposition +on the part of the Government of the United +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-380" id="page1-380"></a>[pg I-380]</span> +States, and bitter feeling among the American people. +This Government feels bound to express the fear, though +it does so reluctantly, that the publicity, which must be +given to the rules which His Majesty's Government announce +that they intend to enforce, will awaken memories +of controversies, which it is the earnest desire of the United +States to forget or to pass over in silence. . . .</p></div> + +<p>Germany, of course, promptly accepted the Declaration, +for the suggestion fitted in perfectly with her programme; +but Great Britain was not so acquiescent. +Four times was Page instructed to ask the British Government +to accede unconditionally, and four times did the +Foreign Office refuse. Page was in despair. In the following +letter he notified Colonel House that if he were instructed +again to move in this matter he would resign his +ambassadorship.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">American Embassy, London,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">October 22, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR HOUSE:</p> + +<p>This is about the United States and England. Lets +get that settled before we try our hands at making peace +in Europe.</p> + +<p>One of our greatest assets is the friendship of Great +Britain, and our friendship is a still bigger asset for her, +and she knows it and values it. Now, if either country +should be damfool enough to throw this away because old +Stone<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96" /><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> roars in the Senate about something that hasn't +happened, then this crazy world would be completely mad +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-381" id="page1-381"></a>[pg I-381]</span> +all round, and there would be no good-will left on earth at +all.</p> + +<p>The case is plain enough to me. England is going to +keep war-materials out of Germany as far as she can. +We'd do it in her place. Germany would do it. Any +nation would do it. That's all she has declared her intention +of doing. And, if she be let alone, she'll do it in a +way to give us the very least annoyance possible; for she'll +go any length to keep our friendship and good will. And +<i>she has not confiscated a single one of our cargoes even of +unconditional contraband</i>. She has stopped some of them +and bought them herself, but confiscated not one. All +right; what do we do? We set out on a comprehensive +plan to regulate the naval warfare of the world and we up +and ask 'em all, "Now, boys, all be good, damn you, and +agree to the Declaration of London."</p> + +<p>"Yah," says Germany, "if England will."</p> + +<p>Now Germany isn't engaged in naval warfare to count, +and she never even paid the slightest attention to the +Declaration all these years. But she saw that it would +hinder England and help her now, by forbidding England +to stop certain very important war materials from reaching +Germany. "Yah," said Germany. But England said +that her Parliament had rejected the Declaration in times +of peace and that she could now hardly be expected to +adopt it in the face of this Parliamentary rejection. But, +to please us, she agreed to adopt it with only two +changes.</p> + +<p>Then Lansing to the bat:</p> + +<p>"No, no," says Lansing, "you've got to adopt it all."</p> + +<p>Four times he's made me ask for its adoption, the last +time coupled with a proposition that if England would +adopt it, she might issue a subsequent proclamation saying +that, since the Declaration is contradictory, she will +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-382" id="page1-382"></a>[pg I-382]</span> +construe it her own way, and the United States will raise +no objection!</p> + +<p>Then he sends eighteen pages of fine-spun legal arguments +(not all sound by any means) against the sections +of the English proclamations that have been put forth, +giving them a strained and unfriendly interpretation.</p> + +<p>In a word, England has acted in a friendly way to us +and will so act, if we allow her. But Lansing, instead of +trusting to her good faith and reserving all our rights +under international law and usage, imagines that he can +force her to agree to a code that the Germans now agree +to because, in Germany's present predicament, it will be +especially advantageous to Germany. Instead of trusting +her, he assumes that she means to do wrong and proceeds +to try to bind her in advance. He hauls her up and +tries her in court—that's his tone.</p> + +<p>Now the relations that I have established with Sir +Edward Grey have been built up on frankness, fairness +and friendship. I can't have relations of any other sort +nor can England and the United States have relations of +any other sort. This is the place we've got to now. Lansing +seems to assume that the way to an amicable agreement +is through an angry controversy.</p> + +<p>Lansing's method is the trouble. He treats Great +Britain, to start with, as if she were a criminal and an opponent. +That's the best way I know to cause trouble to +American shipping and to bring back the good old days of +mutual hatred and distrust for a generation or two. If +that isn't playing into the hands of the Germans, what +would be? And where's the "neutrality" of this kind of +action?</p> + +<p>See here: If we let England go on, we can throw the +whole responsibility on her and reserve all our rights under +international law and usage and claim damages (and get +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-383" id="page1-383"></a>[pg I-383]</span> +'em) for every act of injury, if acts of injury occur; and +we can keep her friendship and good-will. Every other +neutral nation is doing that. Or we can insist on regulating +all naval warfare and have a quarrel and refer it to a +Bryan-Peace-Treaty Commission and claim at most the +selfsame damages with a less chance to get 'em. We can +get damages without a quarrel; or we can have a quarrel +and probably get damages. Now, why, in God's name, +should we provoke a quarrel?</p> + +<p>The curse of the world is little men who for an imagined +small temporary advantage throw away the long growth +of good-will nurtured by wise and patient men and who +cannot see the lasting and far greater future evil they do. +Of all the years since 1776 this great war-year is the worst +to break the 100 years of our peace, or even to ruffle it. +I pray you, good friend, get us out of these incompetent +lawyer-hands.</p> + +<p>Now about the peace of Europe. Nothing can yet be +done, perhaps nothing now can ever be done by us. The +Foreign Office doubts our wisdom and prudence since +Lansing came into action. The whole atmosphere is +changing. One more such move and they will conclude +that Dernburg and Bernstorff have seduced us—without +our knowing it, to be sure; but their confidence in our +judgment will be gone. God knows I have tried to keep +this confidence intact and our good friendship secure. +But I have begun to get despondent over the outlook since +the President telegraphed me that Lansing's proposal +would settle the matter. I still believe he did not understand +it—he couldn't have done so. Else he could not +have approved it. But that tied my hands. If Lansing +again brings up the Declaration of London—after four +flat and reasonable rejections—I shall resign. I will not +be the instrument of a perfectly gratuitous and ineffective +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-384" id="page1-384"></a>[pg I-384]</span> +insult to this patient and fair and friendly government and +people who in my time have done us many kindnesses and +never an injury but Carden<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97" /><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a>, and who sincerely try now +to meet our wishes. It would be too asinine an act ever +to merit forgiveness or ever to be forgotten. I should +blame myself the rest of my life. It would grieve Sir +Edward more than anything except this war. It would +knock the management of foreign affairs by this Administration +into the region of sheer idiocy. I'm afraid any +peace talk from us, as it is, would merely be whistling down +the wind. If we break with England—not on any case or +act of violence to our shipping—but on a useless discussion, +in advance, of general principles of conduct during the +war—just for a discussion—we've needlessly thrown away +our great chance to be of some service to this world gone +mad. If Lansing isn't stopped, that's what he will do. +Why doesn't the President see Spring Rice? Why don't +you take him to see him?</p> + +<p>Good night, my good friend. I still have hope that the +President himself will take this in hand.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Yours always,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The letters and the cablegrams which Page was sending +to Colonel House and the State Department at this time +evidently ended the matter. By the middle of October +the two nations were fairly deadlocked. Sir Edward +Grey's reply to the American proposal had been an acceptance +of the Declaration of London with certain +modifications. For the list of contraband in the Declaration +he had submitted the list already adopted by Great +Britain in its Order in Council, and he had also rejected +that article which made it impossible for Great Britain +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-385" id="page1-385"></a>[pg I-385]</span> +to apply the doctrine of "continuous voyage" to conditional +contraband. The modified acceptance, declared +Mr. Lansing, was a practical rejection—as of course it +was, and as it was intended to be. So the situation remained +for several exciting weeks, the State Department +insisting on the Declaration in full, precisely as the legal +luminaries had published it five years before, the Foreign +Office courteously but inflexibly refusing to accede. +Only the cordial personal relations which prevailed between +Grey and Page prevented the crisis from producing +the most disastrous results. Finally, on October 17th, +Page proposed by cable an arrangement which he hoped +would settle the matter. This was that the King should +issue a proclamation accepting the Declaration with practically +the modifications suggested above, and that a new +Order in Council should be issued containing a new list of +contraband. Sir Edward Grey was not to ask the American +Government to accept this proclamation; all that he +asked was that Washington should offer no objections to +it. It was proposed that the United States at the same +time should publish a note withdrawing its suggestion +for the adoption of the Declaration, and explaining that +it proposed to rest the rights of its citizens upon the existing +rules of international law and the treaties of the United +States. This solution was accepted. It was a defeat +for Mr. Lansing, of course, but he had no alternative. +The relief that Page felt is shown in the following memorandum, +written soon after the tension had ceased:</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"That insistence on the Declaration entire came near +to upsetting the whole kettle of fish. It put on me the +task of insisting on a general code—at a time when the +fiercest war in history was every day becoming fiercer and +more desperate—which would have prevented the British +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-386" id="page1-386"></a>[pg I-386]</span> +from putting on their contraband list several of the most +important war materials—accompanied by a proposal +that would have angered every neutral nation through +which supplies can possibly reach Germany and prevented +this Government from making friendly working arrangements +with them; and, after Sir Edward Grey had flatly +declined for these reasons, I had to continue to insist. I +confess it did look as if we were determined to dictate to +him how he should conduct the war—and in a way that +distinctly favoured the Germans.</p> + +<p>"I presented every insistence; for I should, of course, +not have been excusable if I had failed in any case vigorously +to carry out my instructions. But every time I +plainly saw matters getting worse and worse; and I should +have failed of my duty also if I had not so informed the +President and the Department. I can conceive of no +more awkward situation for an Ambassador or for any +other man under Heaven. I turned the whole thing over +in my mind backward and forward a hundred times every +day. For the first time in this stress and strain, I lost +my appetite and digestion and did not know the day of +the week nor what month it was—seeing the two governments +rushing toward a very serious clash, which would +have made my mission a failure and done the Administration +much hurt, and have sowed the seeds of bitterness +for generations to come.</p> + +<p>"One day I said to Anderson (whose assistance is in +many ways invaluable): 'Of course nobody is infallible—least +of all we. Is it possible that we are mistaken? You +and Laughlin and I, who are close to it all, are absolutely +agreed. But may there not be some important element in +the problem that we do not see? Summon and nurse +every doubt that you can possibly muster up of the correctness +of our view, put yourself on the defensive, recall +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-387" id="page1-387"></a>[pg I-387]</span> +every mood you may have had of the slightest hesitation, +and tell me to-morrow of every possible weak place there +may be in our judgment and conclusions.' The next day +Anderson handed me seventeen reasons why it was unwise +to persist in this demand for the adoption of the Declaration +of London. Laughlin gave a similar opinion. I +swear I spent the night in searching every nook and corner +of my mind and I was of the same opinion the next morning. +There was nothing to do then but the most unwelcome +double duty: (1) Of continuing to carry out instructions, +at every step making a bad situation worse and +running the risk of a rupture (which would be the only +great crime that now remains uncommitted in the world); +and (2) of trying to persuade our own Government that +this method was the wrong method to pursue. I know it +is not my business to make policies, but I conceive it to be +my business to report when they fail or succeed. Now +if I were commanded to look throughout the whole universe +for the most unwelcome task a man may have, I +think I should select this. But, after all, a man has +nothing but his own best judgment to guide him; and, if +he follow that and fail—that's all he <i>can</i> do. I do reverently +thank God that we gave up that contention. We +may have trouble yet, doubtless we shall, but it will not +be trouble of our own making, as that was.</p> + +<p>"Tyrrell<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98" /><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> came into the reception room at the Foreign +Office the day after our withdrawal, while I was waiting +to see Sir Edward Grey, and he said: 'I wish to tell you +personally—just privately between you and me—how infinite +a relief it is to us all that your Government has withdrawn +that demand. We couldn't accept it; our refusal +was not stubborn nor pig-headed: it was a physical necessity +in order to carry on the war with any hope of success.' +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-388" id="page1-388"></a>[pg I-388]</span> +Then, as I was going out, he volunteered this remark: 'I +make this guess—that that programme was not the work +of the President but of some international prize court +enthusiast (I don't know who) who had failed to secure +the adoption of the Declaration when parliaments and +governments could discuss it at leisure and who hoped to +jam it through under the pressure of war and thus get +his prize court international.' I made no answer for +several reasons, one of which is, I do not know whose programme +it was. All that I know is that I have here, on +my desk at my house, a locked dispatch book half full of +telegrams and letters insisting on it, which I do not wish +(now at least) to put in the Embassy files, and the sight +of which brings the shuddering memory of the worst +nightmare I have ever suffered.</p> + +<p>"Now we can go on, without being a party to any general +programme, but in an independent position vigorously +stand up for every right and privilege under law and usage +and treaties; and we have here a government that we can +deal with frankly and not (I hope) in a mood to suspect us +of wishing to put it at a disadvantage for the sake of a +general code or doctrine. A land and naval and air and +submarine battle (the greatest battle in the history of the +belligerent race of man) within 75 miles of the coast of +England, which hasn't been invaded since 1066 and is now +in its greatest danger since that time; and this is no time +I fear, to force a great body of doctrine on Great Britain. +God knows I'm afraid some American boat will run on a +mine somewhere in the Channel or the North Sea. +There's war there as there is on land in Germany. Nobody +tries to get goods through on land on the continent, +and they make no complaints that commerce is stopped. +Everybody tries to ply the Channel and the North Sea +as usual, both of which have German and English mines +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-389" id="page1-389"></a>[pg I-389]</span> +and torpedo craft and submarines almost as thick as +batteries along the hostile camps on land. The British +Government (which now issues marine insurance) will not +insure a British boat to carry food to Holland en route to +the starving Belgians; and I hear that no government +and no insurance company will write insurance for anything +going across the North Sea. I wonder if the extent +and ferocity and danger of this war are fully realized in +the United States?</p> + +<p>"There is no chance yet effectively to talk of peace<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99" /><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a>. +The British believe that their civilization and their Empire +are in grave danger. They are drilling an army of a +million men here for next spring; more and more troops +come from all the Colonies, where additional enlistments +are going on. They feel that to stop before a decisive +result is reached would simply be provoking another war, +after a period of dread such as they have lived through +the last ten years; a large and increasing proportion of the +letters you see are on black-bordered paper and this whole +island is becoming a vast hospital and prisoners' camp—all +which, so far from bringing them to think of peace, +urges them to renewed effort; and all the while the bitterness +grows.</p> + +<p>"The Straus incident' produced the impression here that +it was a German trick to try to shift the responsibility +of continuing the war, to the British shoulders. Mr. +Sharp's bare mention of peace in Paris caused the French +censor to forbid the transmission of a harmless interview; +and our insistence on the Declaration left, for the time +being at least, a distinct distrust of our judgment and +perhaps even of our good-will. It was suspected—I am +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-390" id="page1-390"></a>[pg I-390]</span> +sure—that the German influence in Washington had unwittingly +got influence over the Department. The atmosphere +(toward me) is as different now from what it was a +week ago as Arizona sunshine is from a London fog, as +much as to say, 'After all, perhaps, you don't <i>mean</i> to try +to force us to play into the hands of our enemies!'"</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>And so this crisis was passed; it was the first great service +that Page had rendered the cause of the Allies +and his own country. Yet shipping difficulties had their +more agreeable aspects. Had it not been for the fact that +both Page and Grey had an understanding sense of humour, +neutrality would have proved a more difficult path than +it actually was. Even amid the tragic problems with +which these two men were dealing there was not lacking +an occasional moment's relaxation into the lighter aspect +of things. One of the curious memorials preserved in the +British Foreign Office is the cancelled $15,000,000 check +with which Great Britain paid the <i>Alabama</i> claims. That +the British should frame this memento of their great diplomatic +defeat and hang it in the Foreign Office is an evidence +of the fact that in statesmanship, as in less exalted +matters, the English are excellent sports. The real +justification of the honour paid to this piece of paper, of +course, is that the settlement of the <i>Alabama</i> claims by +arbitration signalized a great forward step in international +relations and did much to heal a century's troubles between +the United States and Great Britain. Sir Edward +Grey used frequently to call Page's attention to this document. +It represented the amount of money, then considered +large, which Great Britain had paid the United +States for the depredations on American shipping for +which she was responsible during the Civil War.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-391" id="page1-391"></a>[pg I-391]</span> +</div><p>One day the two men were discussing certain detentions +of American cargoes—high-handed acts which, in Page's +opinion, were unwarranted. Not infrequently, in the heat +of discussion, Page would get up and pace the floor. And +on this occasion his body, as well as his mind, was in a +state of activity. Suddenly his eye was attracted by the +framed Alabama check. He leaned over, peered at it +intensely, and then quickly turned to the Foreign Secretary:</p> + +<p>"If you don't stop these seizures, Sir Edward, some day +you'll have your entire room papered with things like +that!"</p> + +<p>Not long afterward Sir Edward in his turn scored on +Page. The Ambassador called to present one of the many +State Department notes. The occasion was an embarrassing +one, for the communication was written in the +Department's worst literary style. It not infrequently +happened that these notes, in the form in which Page received +them, could not be presented to the British Government; +they were so rasping and undiplomatic that Page +feared that he would suffer the humiliation of having them +returned, for there are certain things which no self-respecting +Foreign Office will accept. On such occasions it was +the practice of the London Embassy to smooth down +the language before handing the paper to the Foreign +Secretary. The present note was one of this kind; +but Page, because of his friendly relations with Grey, +decided to transmit the communication in its original +shape.</p> + +<p>Sir Edward glanced over the document, looked up, and +remarked, with a twinkle in his eye,—</p> + +<p>"This reads as though they thought that they are still +talking to George the Third."</p> + +<p>The roar of laughter that followed was something quite +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-392" id="page1-392"></a>[pg I-392]</span> +unprecedented amid the thick and dignified walls of the +Foreign Office.</p> + +<p>One of Page's most delicious moments came, however, +after the Ministry of Blockade had been formed, with +Lord Robert Cecil in charge. Lord Robert was high +minded and conciliatory, but his knowledge of American +history was evidently not without its lapses. One day, +in discussing the ill-feeling aroused in the United States +by the seizure of American cargoes, Page remarked banteringly:</p> + +<p>"You must not forget the Boston Tea Party, Lord +Robert."</p> + +<p>The Englishman looked up, rather puzzled.</p> + +<p>"But you must remember, Mr. Page, that I have +never been in Boston. I have never attended a tea party +there."</p> + +<p>It has been said that the tact and good sense of Page +and Grey, working sympathetically for the same end, +avoided many an impending crisis. The trouble caused +early in 1915 by the ship <i>Dacia</i> and the way in which the +difficulty was solved, perhaps illustrate the value of this +coöperation at its best. In the early days of the War +Congress passed a bill admitting foreign ships to American +registry. The wisdom and even the "neutrality" of such +an act were much questioned at the time. Colonel House, +in one of his early telegrams to the President, declared that +this bill "is full of lurking dangers." Colonel House was +right. The trouble was that many German merchant +ships were interned in American harbours, fearing to put +to sea, where the watchful British warships lay waiting +for them. Any attempt to place these vessels under the +American flag, and to use them for trade between American +and German ports, would at once cause a crisis +with the Allies, for such a paper change in ownership +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-393" id="page1-393"></a>[pg I-393]</span> +would be altogether too transparent. Great Britain +viewed this legislation with disfavour, but did not think it +politic to protest such transfers generally; Spring Rice +contented himself with informing the State Department +that his government would not object so long as this +changed status did not benefit Germany. If such German +ships, after being transferred to the American flag, engaged +in commerce between American ports and South +American ports, or other places remotely removed from +the Fatherland, Great Britain would make no difficulty. +The <i>Dacia</i>, a merchantman of the Hamburg-America +line, had been lying at her wharf in Port Arthur, Texas, +since the outbreak of the war. In early January, 1915, +she was purchased by Mr. E.N. Breitung, of Marquette, +Michigan. Mr. Breitung caused great excitement in the +newspapers when he announced that he had placed the +<i>Dacia</i> under American registry, according to the terms of +this new law, had put upon her an American crew, and +that he proposed to load her with cotton and sail for Germany. +The crisis had now arisen which the well-wishers +of Great Britain and the United States had so dreaded. +Great Britain's position was a difficult one. If it acquiesced, +the way would be opened for placing under American +registry all the German and Austrian ships that were +then lying unoccupied in American ports and using them +in trade between the United States and the Central Powers. +If Great Britain seized the <i>Dacia</i>, then there was the +likelihood that this would embroil her with the American +Government—and this would serve German purposes +quite as well.</p> + +<p>Sir Cecil Spring Rice, the British Ambassador at Washington, +at once notified Washington that the <i>Dacia</i> would +be seized if she sailed for a German port. The cotton +which she intended to carry was at that time not contraband, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-394" id="page1-394"></a>[pg I-394]</span> +but the vessel itself Was German and was thus subject +to apprehension as enemy property. The seriousness +of this position was that technically the <i>Dacia</i> was now an +American ship, for an American citizen owned her, she +carried an American crew, she bore on her flagstaff the +American flag, and she had been admitted to American +registry under a law recently passed by Congress. How +could the United States sit by quietly and permit +this seizure to take place? When the <i>Dacia</i> sailed on +January 23rd the excitement was keen; the voyage had +obtained a vast amount of newspaper advertising, and the +eyes of the world were fixed upon her. German sympathizers +attributed the attitude of the American Government +in permitting the vessel to sail as a "dare" to Great +Britain, and the fact that Great Britain had announced +her intention of taking up this "dare" made the situation +still more tense.</p> + +<p>When matters had reached this pass Page one day +dropped into the Foreign Office.</p> + +<p>"Have you ever heard of the British fleet, Sir Edward?" +he asked.</p> + +<p>Grey admitted that he had, though the question obviously +puzzled him.</p> + +<p>"Yes," Page went on musingly. "We've all heard of +the British fleet. Perhaps we have heard too much +about it. Don't you think it's had too much advertising?"</p> + +<p>The Foreign Secretary looked at Page with an expression +that implied a lack of confidence in his sanity.</p> + +<p>"But have you ever heard of the French fleet?" the +American went on. "France has a fleet too, I believe."</p> + +<p>Sir Edward granted that.</p> + +<p>"Don't you think that the French fleet ought to have a +little advertising?"</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-395" id="page1-395"></a>[pg I-395]</span> +</div><p>"What on earth are you talking about?"</p> + +<p>"Well," said Page, "there's the <i>Dacia</i>. Why not let +the French fleet seize it and get some advertising?"</p> + +<p>A gleam of understanding immediately shot across +Grey's face. The old familiar twinkle came into his eye.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, "why not let the Belgian royal yacht +seize it?"</p> + +<p>This suggestion from Page was one of the great inspirations +of the war. It amounted to little less than genius. +By this time Washington was pretty wearied of the <i>Dacia</i>, +for mature consideration had convinced the Department +that Great Britain had the right on its side. Washington +would have been only too glad to find a way out of +the difficult position into which it had been forced, and +this Page well understood. But this government always +finds itself in an awkward plight in any controversy with +Great Britain, because the hyphenates raise such a noise +that it has difficulty in deciding such disputes upon their +merits. To ignore the capture of this ship by the British +would have brought all this hullabaloo again about the +ears of the Administration. But the position of France is +entirely different; the memories of Lafayette and Rochambeau +still exercise a profound spell on the American mind; +France does not suffer from the persecution of hyphenate +populations, and Americans will stand even outrages from +France without getting excited. Page knew that if the +British seized the <i>Dacia</i>, the cry would go up in certain +quarters for immediate war, but that, if France committed +the same crime, the guns of the adversary would be spiked. +It was purely a case of sentiment and "psychology." And +so the event proved. His suggestion was at once acted +on; a French cruiser went out into the Channel, seized +the offending ship, took it into port, where a French prize +court promptly condemned it. The proceeding did not +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-396" id="page1-396"></a>[pg I-396]</span> +cause even a ripple of hostility. The <i>Dacia</i> was sold to +Frenchmen, rechristened the <i>Yser</i> and put to work in the +Mediterranean trade. The episode was closed in the latter +part of 1915 when a German submarine torpedoed the +vessel and sent it to the bottom.</p> + +<p>Such was the spirit which Page and Sir Edward Grey +brought to the solution of the great shipping problems of +1914-1917. There is much more to tell of this great task +of "waging neutrality," and it will be told in its proper +place. But already it is apparent to what extent these +two men served the great cause of English-speaking civilization. +Neither would quibble or uphold an argument +which he thought unjust, even though his nation might +gain in a material sense, and neither would pitch the discussion +in any other key than forbearance and mutual +accommodation and courtliness. For both men had the +same end in view. They were both thinking, not of the +present, but of the coming centuries. The coöperation +of the two nations in meeting the dangers of autocracy +and Prussian barbarism, in laying the foundations of a +future in which peace, democracy, and international +justice should be the directing ideas of human society—such +was the ultimate purpose at which these two statesmen +aimed. And no men have ever been more splendidly +justified by events. The Anglo-American situation of +1914 contained dangers before which all believers in real +progress now shudder. Had Anglo-American diplomacy +been managed with less skill and consideration, the United +States and Great Britain would have become involved in +a quarrel beside which all their previous differences would +have appeared insignificant. Mutual hatreds and hostilities +would have risen that would have prevented the +entrance of the United States into the war on the side of the +Allies. It is not inconceivable that the history of 1812 +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-397" id="page1-397"></a>[pg I-397]</span> +would have been repeated, and that the men and resources +of this country might have been used to support purposes +which have always been hateful to the American conscience. +That the world was saved from this calamity is +owing largely to the fact that Great Britain had in its +Foreign Office a man who was always solving temporary +irritations with his eyes constantly fixed upon a great +goal, and that the United States had as ambassador in +London a man who had the most exalted view of the mission +of his country, who had dedicated his life to the world-wide +spread of the American ideal, and who believed that +an indispensable part of this work was the maintenance of +a sympathetic and helpful coöperation with the English-speaking +peoples.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p class="center">FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90" /><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> In a letter addressed to "My fellow Countrymen" and +presented to the Senate by Mr. Chilton.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91" /><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> This was in October, 1914. In August, 1915, when +conditions had changed, cotton was declared contraband.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92" /><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> Mr. Chandler P. Anderson, of New York, at this time +advising the American Embassy on questions of international law.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93" /><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> Mr. Irwin Laughlin, first secretary of the Embassy.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94" /><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> Sir Cecil Spring Rice, British Ambassador at Washington.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95" /><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> Sir Edward Grey.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96" /><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> Senator William J. Stone, perhaps the leading spokesman of +the pro-German cause in the United States Senate. Senator Stone +represented Missouri, a state with a large German-American element.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97" /><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> See Chapter VII.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98" /><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> Private secretary to Sir Edward Grey.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99" /><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> The reference is to an attempt by Germany to start peace +negotiations in September, 1914, after the Battle of the Marne. This is +described in the next chapter.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-398" id="page1-398"></a>[pg I-398]</span> +</div><h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII" />CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<h3>GERMANY'S FIRST PEACE DRIVES</h3> + + +<p>The Declaration of London was not the only problem +that distracted Page in these early months of the war. +Washington's apparent determination to make peace also +added to his daily anxieties. That any attempt to end +hostilities should have distressed so peace-loving and +humanitarian a statesman as Page may seem surprising; +it was, however, for the very reason that he was a man of +peace that these Washington endeavours caused him endless +worry. In Page's opinion they indicated that President +Wilson did not have an accurate understanding of +the war. The inspiring force back of them, as the Ambassador +well understood, was a panic-stricken Germany. +The real purpose was not a peace, but a truce; and the +cause which was to be advanced was not democracy but +Prussian absolutism. Between the Battle of the Marne +and the sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i> four attempts were made +to end the war; all four were set afoot by Germany. +President Wilson was the man to whom the Germans appealed +to rescue them from their dilemma. It is no longer +a secret that the Germans at this time regarded their +situation as a tragic one; the success that they had +anticipated for forty years had proved to be a disaster. +The attempt to repeat the great episodes of 1864, 1866, +and 1870, when Prussia had overwhelmed Denmark, +Austria, and France in three brief campaigns, had ignominiously +failed. Instead of beholding a conquered Europe +at her feet, Germany awoke from her illusion to find +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-399" id="page1-399"></a>[pg I-399]</span> +herself encompassed by a ring of resolute and powerful +foes. The fact that the British Empire, with its immense +resources, naval, military, and economic, was now leading +the alliance against them, convinced the most intelligent +Germans that the Fatherland was face to face with +the greatest crisis in its history.</p> + +<p>Peace now became the underground Germanic programme. +Yet the Germans did not have that inexorable +respect for facts which would have persuaded them to +accept terms to which the Allies could consent. The +military oligarchy were thinking not so much of saving +the Fatherland as of saving themselves; a settlement +which would have been satisfactory to their enemies +would have demanded concessions which the German +people, trained for forty years to expect an unparalleled +victory, would have regarded as a defeat. The collapse +of the militarists and of Hohenzollernism would have ensued. +What the German oligarchy desired was a peace +which they could picture to their deluded people as a +triumph, one that would enable them to extricate themselves +at the smallest possible cost from what seemed a +desperate position, to escape the penalties of their crimes, +to emerge from their failure with a Germany still powerful, +both in economic resources and in arms, and to set to +work again industriously preparing for a renewal of the +struggle at a more favourable time. If negotiations resulted +in such a truce, the German purpose would be splendidly +served; even if they failed, however, the gain for +Germany would still be great. Germany could appear as +the belligerent which desired peace and the Entente could +perhaps be manoeuvred into the position of the side +responsible for continuing the war. The consideration +which was chiefly at stake in these tortuous proceedings +was public opinion in the United States. Americans do +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-400" id="page1-400"></a>[pg I-400]</span> +not yet understand the extent to which their country was +regarded as the determining power. Both the German +and the British Foreign Offices clearly understood, in +August, 1914, that the United States, by throwing its +support, especially its economic support, to one side or +the other, could settle the result. Probably Germany +grasped this point even more clearly than did Great +Britain, for, from the beginning, she constantly nourished +the hope that she could embroil the United States and +Great Britain—a calamity which would have given victory +to the German arms. In every German move there +were thus several motives, and one of the chief purposes +of the subterranean campaigns which she now started +for peace was the desire of putting Britain in the false +light of prolonging the war for aggressive purposes, +and thus turning to herself that public opinion in this +country which was so outspoken on the side of the +Allies. Such public opinion, if it could be brought to +regard Germany in a tolerant spirit, could easily be +fanned into a flame by the disputes over blockades and +shipping, and the power of the United States might thus +be used for the advancement of the Fatherland. On +the other hand, if Germany could obtain a peace which +would show a profit for her tremendous effort, then the +negotiations would have accomplished their purpose.</p> + +<p>Conditions at Washington favoured operations of this +kind. Secretary Bryan was an ultra-pacifist; like men of +one idea, he saw only the fact of a hideous war, and he was +prepared to welcome anything that would end hostilities. +The cessation of bloodshed was to him the great purpose to +be attained: in the mind of Secretary Bryan it was more +important that the war should be stopped than that the +Allies should win. To President Wilson the European +disaster appeared to be merely a selfish struggle for +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-401" id="page1-401"></a>[pg I-401]</span> +power, in which both sides were almost equally to blame. +He never accepted Page's obvious interpretation that the +single cause was Germany's determination to embark +upon a war of world conquest. From the beginning, +therefore, Page saw that he would have great difficulty in +preventing intervention from Washington in the interest +of Germany, yet this was another great service to which +he now unhesitatingly directed his efforts.</p> + +<p>The Ambassador was especially apprehensive of these +peace moves in the early days of September, when the +victorious German armies were marching on Paris. In +London, as in most parts of the world, the capture of the +French capital was then regarded as inevitable. September +3, 1914, was one of the darkest days in modern +times. The population of Paris was fleeing southward; +the Government had moved its headquarters to Bordeaux; +and the moment seemed to be at hand when the German +Emperor would make his long anticipated entry into the +capital of France. It was under these circumstances that +the American Ambassador to Great Britain sent the following +message directly to the President:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To the President</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">American Embassy, London,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Sep. 3, 4 A.M.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Everybody in this city confidently believes that the +Germans, if they capture Paris, will make a proposal for +peace, and that the German Emperor will send you a +message declaring that he is unwilling to shed another +drop of blood. Any proposal that the Kaiser makes will +be simply the proposal of a conqueror. His real purpose +will be to preserve the Hohenzollern dynasty and the +imperial bureaucracy. The prevailing English judgment +is that, if Germany be permitted to stop hostilities, the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-402" id="page1-402"></a>[pg I-402]</span> +war will have accomplished nothing. There is a determination +here to destroy utterly the German bureaucracy, +and Englishmen are prepared to sacrifice themselves to +any extent in men and money. The preparations that +are being made here are for a long war; as I read the disposition +and the character of Englishmen they will not +stop until they have accomplished their purpose. There +is a general expression of hope in this country that neither +the American Government nor the public opinion of our +country will look upon any suggestion for peace as a +serious one which does not aim, first of all, at the absolute +destruction of the German bureaucracy.</p> + +<p>From such facts as I can obtain, it seems clear to me +that the opinion of Europe—excluding of course, Germany—is +rapidly solidifying into a severe condemnation +of the German Empire. The profoundest moral judgment +of the world is taking the strongest stand against +Germany and German methods. Such incidents as the +burning of Louvain and other places, the slaughter of +civilian populations, the outrages against women and +children—outrages of such a nature that they cannot be +printed, but which form a matter of common conversation +everywhere—have had the result of arousing Great +Britain to a mood of the grimmest determination.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>This message had hardly reached Washington when +the peace effort of which it warned the President began to +take practical form. In properly estimating these manoeuvres +it must be borne in mind that German diplomacy +always worked underground and that it approached its +negotiations in a way that would make the other side +appear as taking the initiative. This was a phase of +German diplomatic technique with which every European +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-403" id="page1-403"></a>[pg I-403]</span> +Foreign Office had long been familiar. Count Bernstorff +arrived in the United States from Germany in the +latter part of August, evidently with instructions from +his government to secure the intercession of the United +States. There were two unofficial men in New York who +were ideally qualified to serve the part of intermediaries. +Mr. James Speyer had been born in New York; he had +received his education at Frankfort-on-the-Main, Germany, +and had spent his apprenticeship also in the family +banking house in that city. As the head of an American +banking house with important German affiliations, his +interests and sympathies were strong on the side of the +Fatherland; indeed, he made no attempt to conceal his +strong pro-Germanism.</p> + +<p>Mr. Oscar S. Straus had been born in Germany; his +father had been a German revolutionist of 'Forty-eight; +like Carl Schurz, Abraham Jacobi, and Franz Sigel, +he had come to America to escape Prussian militarism and +the Prussian autocracy, and his children had been educated +in a detestation of the things for which the German +Empire stood. Mr. Oscar Straus was only two years old +when he was brought to this country, and he had given +the best evidences of his Americanism in a distinguished +public career. Three times he had served the United +States as Ambassador to Turkey; he had filled the post of +Secretary of Commerce and Labour in President Roosevelt's +cabinet, and had held other important public +commissions. Among his other activities, Mr. Straus +had played an important part in the peace movement of +the preceding quarter of a century and he had been a +member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The +Hague. Mr. Straus was on excellent terms with the +German, the British, and the French ambassadors at +Washington. As far back as 1888, when he was American +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-404" id="page1-404"></a>[pg I-404]</span> +Minister at Constantinople, Bernstorff, then a youth, +was an attaché at the German Embassy; the young German +was frequently at the American Legation and used +to remind Mr. Straus, whenever he met him in later +years, how pleasantly he remembered his hospitality. +With Sir Cecil Spring Rice, the British Ambassador, and +M. Jules Jusserand, the French Ambassador, Mr. Straus +had also become friendly in Constantinople and in Washington. +This background, and Mr. Straus's well-known +pro-British sentiments, would have made him a desirable +man to act as a liaison agent between the Germans and +the Allies, but there were other reasons why this ex-ambassador +would be useful at this time. Mr. Straus +had been in Europe at the outbreak of the war; he had +come into contact with the British statesmen in those +exciting early August days; in particular he had discussed +all phases of the conflict with Sir Edward Grey, and before +leaving England, he had given certain interviews which +the British statesmen declared had greatly helped their +cause in the United States. Of course, the German +Government knew all about these activities.</p> + +<p>On September 4th, Mr. Straus arrived at New York on +the <i>Mauretania</i>. He had hardly reached this country +when he was called upon the telephone by Mr. Speyer, a +friend of many years' standing. Count Bernstorff, the +German Ambassador, Mr. Speyer said, was a guest at +his country home, Waldheim, at Scarboro, on the Hudson; +Mr. Speyer was giving a small, informal dinner +the next evening, Saturday, September 5th, and he asked +Mr. and Mrs. Straus to come. The other important +guests were Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip, president of the +National City Bank, and Mrs. Vanderlip. Mr. Straus +accepted the invitation, mentally resolving that he would +not discuss the war himself, but merely listen. It would +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-405" id="page1-405"></a>[pg I-405]</span> +certainly have been a difficult task for any man to avoid +this subject on this particular evening; the date was +September 5th, the day when the German Army suddenly +stopped in its progress toward Paris, and began +retreating, the French and the British forces in pursuit. +A few minutes before Count Bernstorff sat down at Mr. +Speyer's table, with Mr. Straus opposite, he had learned +that the magnificent enterprise which Germany had +planned for forty years had failed, and that his country +was facing a monstrous disaster. The Battle of the +Marne was raging in all its fury while this pacific conversation +at Mr. Speyer's house was taking place.</p> + +<p>Of course the war became the immediate topic of discussion. +Count Bernstorff at once plunged into the +usual German point of view—that Germany did not want +war in the first place, that the Entente had forced the +issue, and the like.</p> + +<p>"The Emperor and the German Government stood +for peace," he said.</p> + +<p>Naturally, a man who had spent a considerable part of +his life promoting the peace cause pricked up his ears at +this statement.</p> + +<p>"Does that sentiment still prevail in Germany?" +asked Mr. Straus.</p> + +<p>"Yes," replied the German Ambassador.</p> + +<p>"Would your government entertain a proposal for +mediation now?" asked Mr. Straus.</p> + +<p>"Certainly," Bernstorff promptly replied. He hastened +to add, however, that he was speaking unofficially. +He had had no telegraphic communication from Berlin +for five days, and therefore could not definitely give the +attitude of his government. But he was quite sure that +the Kaiser would be glad to have President Wilson take +steps to end the war.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-406" id="page1-406"></a>[pg I-406]</span> +</div><p>The possibility that he might play a part in bringing +hostilities to a close now occurred to Mr. Straus. He had +come to the dinner determined to avoid the subject altogether, +but Count Bernstorff had precipitated the issue +in a way that left the American no option. Certainly +Mr. Straus would have been derelict if he had not reported +this conversation to the high quarters for which Count +Bernstorff had evidently intended it.</p> + +<p>"That is a very important statement you have made, +Mr. Ambassador," said Mr. Straus, measuring every +word. "May I make use of it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"May I use it in any way I choose?"</p> + +<p>"You may," replied Bernstorff.</p> + +<p>Mr. Straus saw in this acquiescent mood a chance to +appeal directly to President Wilson.</p> + +<p>"Do you object to my laying this matter before our +government?"</p> + +<p>"No, I do not."</p> + +<p>Mr. Straus glanced at his watch; it was 10:15 o'clock.</p> + +<p>"I think I shall go to Washington at once—this very +night. I can get the midnight train."</p> + +<p>Mr. Speyer, who has always maintained that this proceeding +was casual and in no way promoted by himself +and Bernstorff, put in a word of caution.</p> + +<p>"I would sleep on it," he suggested.</p> + +<p>But, in a few moments, Mr. Straus was speeding in his +automobile through Westchester County in the direction +of the Pennsylvania Station. He caught the express, +and, the next morning, which was Sunday the sixth, he +was laying the whole matter before Secretary Bryan at the +latter's house. Naturally, Mr. Bryan was overjoyed at +the news; he at once summoned Bernstorff from New +York to Washington, and went over the suggestion personally. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-407" id="page1-407"></a>[pg I-407]</span> +The German Ambassador repeated the statements +which he had made to Mr. Straus—always guardedly +qualifying his remarks by saying that the proposal +had not come originally from him but from his American +friend. Meanwhile Mr. Bryan asked Mr. Straus to +discuss the matter with the British and French ambassadors.</p> + +<p>The meeting took place at the British Embassy. The +two representatives of the Entente, though only too glad +to talk the matter over, were more skeptical about the +attitude of Bernstorff than Mr. Bryan had been.</p> + +<p>"Of course, Mr. Straus," said Sir Cecil Spring Rice, +"you know that this dinner was arranged purposely so +that the German Ambassador could meet you?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Straus demurred at this statement, but the Englishman +smiled.</p> + +<p>"Do you suppose," Sir Cecil asked, "that any ambassador +would make such a statement as Bernstorff +made to you without instructions from his government?"</p> + +<p>"You and M. Jusserand," replied the American, "have +devoted your whole lives to diplomacy with distinguished +ability and you can therefore answer that question better +than I."</p> + +<p>"I can assure you," replied M. Jusserand, "that no +ambassador under the German system would dare for a +moment to make such a statement without being authorized +to do so."</p> + +<p>"The Germans," added Sir Cecil, "have a way of +making such statements unofficially and then denying +that they have ever made them."</p> + +<p>Both the British and French ambassadors, however, +thought that the proposal should be seriously considered.</p> + +<p>"If it holds out one chance in a hundred of lessening +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-408" id="page1-408"></a>[pg I-408]</span> +the length of the war, we should entertain it," said Ambassador +Jusserand.</p> + +<p>"I certainly hope that you will entertain it cordially," +said Mr. Straus.</p> + +<p>"Not cordially—that is a little too strong."</p> + +<p>"Well, sympathetically?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sympathetically," said M. Jusserand, with a +smile.</p> + +<p>These facts were at once cabled to Page, who took the +matter up with Sir Edward Grey. A despatch from the +latter to the British Ambassador in Washington gives a +splendid summary of the British attitude on such approaches +at this time.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Sir Edward Grey to Sir Cecil Spring Rice</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Foreign Office,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">September 9, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>SIR:</p> + +<p>The American Ambassador showed me to-day a communication +that he had from Mr. Bryan. It was to the +effect that Mr. Straus and Mr. Speyer had been talking +with the German Ambassador, who had said that, though +he was without instructions, he thought that Germany +might be disposed to end the war by mediation. This +had been repeated to Mr. Bryan, who had spoken to the +German Ambassador, and had heard the same from +him. Mr. Bryan had taken the matter up, and was +asking direct whether the German Emperor would accept +mediation if the other parties who were at war would +do the same.</p> + +<p>The American Ambassador said to me that this information +gave him a little concern. He feared that, +coming after the declaration that we had signed last week +with France and Russia about carrying on the war in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-409" id="page1-409"></a>[pg I-409]</span> +common<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100" /><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a>, the peace parties in the United States might +be given the impression that Germany was in favour of +peace, and that the responsibility for continuing the war +was on others.</p> + +<p>I said that the agreement that we had made with +France and Russia was an obvious one; when three +countries were at war on the same side, one of them could +not honourably make special terms for itself and leave +the others in the lurch. As to mediation, I was favourable +to it in principle, but the real question was: On +what terms could the war be ended? If the United +States could devise anything that would bring this war +to an end and prevent another such war being forced on +Europe I should welcome the proposal.</p> + +<p>The Ambassador said that before the war began I had +made suggestions for avoiding it, and that these suggestions +had been refused.</p> + +<p>I said that this was so, but since the war began there +were two further considerations to be borne in mind: We +were fighting to save the west of Europe from being dominated +by Prussian militarism; Germany had prepared to +the day for this war, and we could not again have a great +military power in the middle of Europe preparing war in +this way and forcing it upon us; and the second thing was +that cruel wrong had been done to Belgium, for which +there should be some compensation. I had no indication +whatever that Germany was prepared to make any +reparation to Belgium, and, while repeating that in +principle I was favourable to mediation, I could see +nothing to do but to wait for the reply of the German +Emperor to the question that Mr. Bryan had put to him +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-410" id="page1-410"></a>[pg I-410]</span> +and for the United States to ascertain on what terms +Germany would make peace if the Emperor's reply was +favourable to mediation.</p> + +<p>The Ambassador made it quite clear that he regarded +what the German Ambassador had said as a move in the +game. He agreed with what I had said respecting terms +of peace, and that there seemed no prospect at present of +Germany being prepared to accept them.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I am, &c.,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E. GREY.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>A letter from Page to Colonel House gives Page's interpretation +of this negotiation:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">London, September 10, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR HOUSE:</p> + +<p>A rather serious situation has arisen: The Germans of +course thought that they would take Paris. They were +then going to propose a conqueror's terms of peace, which +they knew would not be accepted. But they would use +their so-called offer of peace purely for publicity purposes. +They would say, "See, men of the world, we want +peace; we offer peace; the continuance of this awful war +is not our doing." They are using Hearst for this purpose. +I fear they are trying to use so good a man as +Oscar Straus. They are fooling the Secretary.</p> + +<p>Every nation was willing to accept Sir Edward Grey's +proposals but Germany. She was bent on a war of +conquest. Now she's likely to get licked—lock, stock +and barrel. She is carrying on a propaganda and a publicity +campaign all over the world. The Allies can't and +won't accept any peace except on the condition that German +militarism be uprooted. They are not going to live +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-411" id="page1-411"></a>[pg I-411]</span> +again under that awful shadow and fear. They say +truly that life on such terms is not worth living. Moreover, +if Germany should win the military control of +Europe, she would soon—that same war-party—attack +the United States. The war will not end until this condition +can be imposed—that there shall be no more militarism.</p> + +<p>But in the meantime, such men as Straus (a good +fellow) may be able to let (by helping) the Germans appear +to the Peace people as really desiring peace. Of +course, what they want is to save their mutton.</p> + +<p>And if we begin mediation talk now on that basis, we +shall not be wanted when a real chance for mediation +comes. If we are so silly as to play into the hands of the +German-Hearst publicity bureau, our chance for real +usefulness will be thrown away.</p> + +<p>Put the President on his guard.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">W.H.P.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>In the latter part of the month came Germany's reply. +One would never suspect, when reading it, that Germany +had played any part in instigating the negotiation. The +Kaiser repeated the old charges that the Entente had +forced the war on the Fatherland, that it was now determined +to annihilate the Central Powers and that consequently +there was no hope that the warring countries +could agree upon acceptable terms for ending the struggle.</p> + +<p>So ended Germany's first peace drive, and in the only +possible way that it could end. But the Washington administration +continued to be most friendly to mediation. +A letter of Colonel House's, dated October 4, 1914, possesses +great historical importance. It was written after +a detailed discussion with President Wilson, and it indicates +not only the President's desire to bring the struggle +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-412" id="page1-412"></a>[pg I-412]</span> +to a close, but it describes in some detail the principles +which the President then regarded as essential to a permanent +peace. It furnishes the central idea of the presidential +policy for the next four years; indeed, it contains +the first statement of that famous "Article X" of the +Covenant of the League of Nations which was Mr. Wilson's +most important contribution to that contentious +document. This was the article which pledges the +League "to respect and preserve as against external aggression +the territorial integrity and existing political independence" +of all its members; it was the article which, +more than any other, made the League obnoxious to +Americans, who interpreted it as an attempt to involve +them perpetually in the quarrels of Europe; and it was +the one section of the Treaty of Versailles which was most +responsible for the rejection of that document by the +United States Senate. There are other suggestions in +Colonel House's letter which apparently bore fruit in the +League Covenant. It is somewhat astonishing that a letter +of Colonel House's, written as far back as October 3, +1914, two months after the outbreak of the war, should +contain "Article X" as one of the essential terms of +peace, as well as other ideas afterward incorporated in +that document, accompanied by an injunction that Page +should present the suggestion to Sir Edward Grey:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">115 East 53rd Street,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">New York City.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">October 3rd, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>Frank [the Ambassador's son] has just come in and has +given me your letter of September 22nd<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101" /><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> which is of absorbing +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-413" id="page1-413"></a>[pg I-413]</span> +interest. You have never done anything better +than this letter, and some day, when you give the word, +it must be published. But in the meantime, it will repose +in the safe deposit box along with your others and with +those of our great President.</p> + +<p>I have just returned from Washington where I was with +the President for nearly four days. He is looking well +and is well. Sometimes his spirits droop, but then again, +he is his normal self.</p> + +<p>Before I came from Prides<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102" /><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> I was fearful lest Straus, +Bernstorff, and others would drive the President into +doing something unwise. I have always counselled him +to remain quiet for the moment and let matters unfold +themselves further. In the meantime, I have been conferring +with Bernstorff, with Dumba<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103" /><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a>, and, of course, +Spring Rice. The President now wants me to keep in +touch with the situation, and I do not think there is +any danger of any one on the outside injecting himself +into it unless Mr. Bryan does something on his own +initiative.</p> + +<p>Both Bernstorff and Dumba say that their countries +are ready for peace talks, but the difficulty is with England. +Sir Cecil says their statements are made merely to +place England in a false position.</p> + +<p>The attitude, I think, for England to maintain is the +one which she so ably put forth to the world. That is, +peace must come only upon condition of disarmament +and must be permanent. I have a feeling that Germany +will soon be willing to discuss terms. I do not agree +that Germany has to be completely crushed and that +terms must be made either in Berlin or London. It is +manifestly against England's interest and the interest of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-414" id="page1-414"></a>[pg I-414]</span> +Europe generally for Russia to become the dominating +military force in Europe, just as Germany was. The +dislike which England has for Germany should not blind +her to actual conditions. If Germany is crushed, England +cannot solely write the terms of peace, but Russia's +wishes must also largely prevail.</p> + +<p>With Russia strong in militarism, there is no way by +which she could be reached. Her government is so constituted +that friendly conversations could not be had with +her as they might be had even with such a power as Germany, +and the world would look forward to another cataclysm +and in the not too distant future.</p> + +<p>When peace conversations begin, at best, they will +probably continue many months before anything tangible +comes from them. England and the Allies could readily +stand on the general proposition that only enduring peace +will satisfy them and I can see no insuperable obstacle +in the way.</p> + +<p>The Kaiser did not want war and was not responsible +for it further than his lack of foresight which led him to +build up a formidable engine of war which later dominated +him. Peace cannot be made until the war party +in Germany find that their ambitions cannot be realized, +and this, I think, they are beginning to know.</p> + +<p>When the war is ended and the necessary territorial +alignments made, it seems to me, the best guaranty of +peace could be brought by every nation in Europe guaranteeing +the territorial integrity of every other nation<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104" /><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a>. +By confining the manufacture of arms to the governments +themselves and by permitting representatives of all +nations to inspect, at any time, the works<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105" /><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a>.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-415" id="page1-415"></a>[pg I-415]</span> +</div><p>Then, too, all sources of national irritation should be +removed so what at first may be a sore spot cannot grow +into a malignant disease<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106" /><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a>. It will not be too difficult, I +think, to bring about an agreement that will insure permanent +peace, provided all the nations of Europe are +honest in their desire for it.</p> + +<p>I am writing this to you with the President's knowledge +and consent and with the thought that it will be +conveyed to Sir Edward. There is a growing impatience +in this country because of this war and there is constant +pressure upon the President to use his influence to bring +about normal conditions. He does not wish to do anything +to irritate or offend any one of the belligerent nations, +but he has an abiding faith in the efficacy of open +and frank discussion between those that are now at war.</p> + +<p>As far as I can see, no harm can be done by a dispassionate +discussion at this stage, even though nothing +comes of it. In a way, it is perhaps better that informal +and unofficial conversations are begun and later the +principals can take it up themselves.</p> + +<p>I am sure that Sir Edward is too great a man to let any +prejudices deter him from ending, as soon as possible, the +infinite suffering that each day of war entails.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. HOUSE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>It is apparent that the failure of this first attempt at +mediation discouraged neither Bernstorff nor the Washington +administration. Colonel House was constantly +meeting the German and the British Ambassadors; he +was also, as his correspondence shows, in touch with +Zimmermann, the German Under Foreign Secretary. +The German desire for peace grew stronger in the autumn +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-416" id="page1-416"></a>[pg I-416]</span> +and winter of 1914-1915, as the fact became more and +more clear that Great Britain was summoning all her resources +for the greatest effort in her history, as the stalemate +on the Aisne more and more impressed upon the +German chieftains the impossibility of obtaining any decision +against the French Army, and as the Russians +showed signs of great recuperation after the disaster of +Tannenberg. By December 4th Washington had evidently +made up its mind to move again.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">115 East 53rd Street,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">New York City.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">December 4th, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>The President desires to start peace parleys at the very +earliest moment, but he does not wish to offend the sensibilities +of either side by making a proposal before the +time is opportune. He is counting upon being given a +hint, possibly through me, in an unofficial way, as to when +a proffer from him will be acceptable.</p> + +<p>Pressure is being brought upon him to offer his services +again, for this country is suffering, like the rest of +the neutral world, from the effects of the war, and our +people are becoming restless.</p> + +<p>Would you mind conveying this thought delicately to +Sir Edward Grey and letting me know what he thinks?</p> + +<p>Would the Allies consider parleys upon a basis of indemnity +for Belgium and a cessation of militarism? If +so, then something may be begun with the Dual Alliance.</p> + +<p>I have been told that negotiations between Russia and +Japan were carried on several months before they agreed +to meet at Portsmouth. The havoc that is being wrought +in human lives and treasure is too great to permit racial +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-417" id="page1-417"></a>[pg I-417]</span> +feeling or revenge to enter into the thoughts of those who +govern the nations at war.</p> + +<p>I stand ready to go to Germany at any moment in +order to sound the temper of that government, and I +would then go to England as I did last June.</p> + +<p>This nation would not look with favour upon a policy +that held nothing but the complete annihilation of the +enemy.</p> + +<p>Something must be done sometime, by somebody, to +initiate a peace movement, and I can think of no way, at +the moment, than the one suggested.</p> + +<p>I will greatly appreciate your writing me fully and +freely in regard to this phase of the situation.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. HOUSE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>To this Page immediately replied:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">December 12th, 1914.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>MY DEAR HOUSE:</p> + +<p>The English rulers have no feeling of vengeance. I +have never seen the slightest traces of that. But they +are determined to secure future safety. They will not +have this experience repeated if they can help it. They +realize now that they have been living under a sort of +fear—or dread—for ten years: they sometimes felt that +it was bound to come some time and then at other times +they could hardly believe it. And they will spend all the +men and all the money they have rather than suffer that +fear again or have that danger. Now, if anybody could +fix a basis for the complete restoration of Belgium, so far +as restoration is possible, and for the elimination of militarism, +I am sure the <i>English</i> would talk on that basis. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-418" id="page1-418"></a>[pg I-418]</span> +But there are two difficulties-Russia wouldn't talk till +she has Constantinople, and I haven't found anybody +who can say exactly what you mean by the "elimination +of militarism." Disarmament? England will have her +navy to protect her incoming bread and meat. How, +then, can she say to Germany, "You can't have an army"?</p> + +<p>You say the Americans are becoming "restless." The +plain fact is that the English people, and especially the +English military and naval people, don't care a fig what +the Americans think and feel. They say, "We're fighting +their battle, too—the battle of democracy and freedom +from bureaucracy—why don't they come and help +us in our life-and-death struggle?" I have a drawer +full of letters saying this, not one of which I have ever +answered. The official people never say that of course—nor +the really responsible people, but a vast multitude of +the public do. This feeling comes out even in the present +military and naval rulers of this Kingdom—comes +indirectly to me. A part of the public, then, and the +military part of the Cabinet, don't longer care for American +opinion and they resent even such a reference to +peace as the President made in his Message to Congress<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107" /><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a>. +But the civil part of the Cabinet and the responsible and +better part of the public do care very much. The President's +intimation about peace, however, got no real +response here. They think he doesn't understand the +meaning of the war. They don't want war; they are not +a warlike people. They don't hate the Germans. There +is no feeling of vengeance. They constantly say: "Why +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-419" id="page1-419"></a>[pg I-419]</span> +do the Germans hate us? We don't hate them." But, +since Germany set out to rule the world and to conquer +Great Britain, they say, "We'll all die first." That's +"all there is to it." And they will all die unless they can +so fix things that this war cannot be repeated. Lady +K——, as kindly an old lady as ever lived, said to me the other +day: "A great honour has come to us. Our son has +been killed in battle, fighting for the safety of England."</p> + +<p>Now, the question which nobody seems to be able to +answer is this: How can the military party and the +military spirit of Germany be prevented from continuing +to prepare for the conquest of Great Britain and from +going to work to try it again? That implies a change in +the form, spirit, and control of the German Empire. If +they keep up a great army, they will keep it up with that +end more or less in view. If the military party keeps in +power, they will try it again in twenty-five or forty years. +This is all that the English care about or think about.</p> + +<p>They don't see how it is to be done themselves. All +they see yet is that they must show the Germans that +they can't whip Great Britain. If England wins decisively +the English hope that somehow the military +party will be overthrown in Germany and that the +Germans, under peaceful leadership, will go about their +business—industrial, political, educational, etc.—and quit +dreaming of and planning for universal empire and quit +maintaining a great war-machine, which at some time, +for some reason, must attack somebody to justify its existence. +This makes it difficult for the English to make +overtures to or to receive overtures from this military +war-party which now <i>is</i> Germany. But, if it he possible +so completely to whip the war party that it will somehow +be thrown out of power at home—that's the only way +they now see out of it. To patch up a peace, leaving the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-420" id="page1-420"></a>[pg I-420]</span> +German war party in power, they think, would be only to +invite another war.</p> + +<p>If you can get over this point, you can bring the English +around in ten minutes. But they are not going to +take any chances on it. Read English history and +English literature about the Spanish Armada or about +Napoleon. They are acting those same scenes over +again, having the same emotions, the same purpose: +nobody must invade or threaten England. "If they do, +we'll spend the last man and the last shilling. We value," +they say truly, "the good-will and the friendship of the +United States more than we value anything except our +own freedom, but we'll risk even that rather than admit +copper to Germany, because every pound of copper prolongs +the war."</p> + +<p>There you are. I've blinked myself blind and talked +myself hoarse to men in authority—from Grey down—to +see a way out—without keeping this intolerable slaughter +up to the end. But they stand just where I tell you.</p> + +<p>And the horror of it no man knows. The news is suppressed. +Even those who see it and know it do not +realize it. Four of the crack regiments of this kingdom—regiments +that contained the flower of the land and to +which it was a distinction to belong—have been practically +annihilated, one or two of them annihilated twice. +Yet their ranks are filled up and you never hear a murmur. +Presently it'll be true that hardly a title or an +estate in England will go to its natural heir—the heir has +been killed. Yet, not a murmur; for England is threatened +with invasion. They'll all die first. It will presently +be true that more men will have been killed in this +war than were killed before in all the organized wars since +the Christian era began. The English are willing and +eager to stop it if things can be so fixed that there will be +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-421" id="page1-421"></a>[pg I-421]</span> +no military power in Europe that wishes or prepares to +attack and invade England.</p> + +<p>I've had many one-hour, two-hour, three-hour talks +with Sir Edward Grey. He sees nothing further than I +have written. He says to me often that if the United +States could see its way to cease to protest against +stopping war materials from getting into Germany, they +could end the war more quickly—all this, of course, +informally; and I say to him that the United States will +consider any proposal you will make that does not infringe +on a strict neutrality. Violate a rigid neutrality +we will not do. And, of course, he does not ask that. I +give him more trouble than all the other neutral Powers +combined; they all say this. And, on the other side, his +war-lord associates in the Cabinet make his way hard.</p> + +<p>So it goes—God bless us, it's awful. I never get away +from it—war, war, war every waking minute, and the +worry of it; and I see no near end of it. I've had only +one thoroughly satisfactory experience in a coon's age, +and this was this: Two American ships were stopped the +other day at Falmouth. I telegraphed the captains to +come here to see me. I got the facts from them—all the +facts. I telephoned Sir Edward that I wished to see him +at once. I had him call in one of his ship-detaining +committee. I put the facts on the table. I said, "By +what right, or theory of right, or on what excuse, are those +ships stopped? They are engaged in neutral commerce. +They fly the American flag." One of them was released +that night—no more questions asked. The other was +allowed to go after giving bond to return a lot of kerosene +which was loaded at the bottom of the ship.</p> + +<p>If I could get facts, I could do many things. The State +Department telegraphs me merely what the shipper says—a +partial statement. The British Government tells me +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-422" id="page1-422"></a>[pg I-422]</span> +(after infinite delay) another set of facts. The British +Government says, "We're sorry, but the Prize Court +must decide." Our Government wires a dissertation on +International Law—Protest, protest: (I've done nothing +else since the world began!) One hour with a sensible +ship captain does more than a month of cross-wrangling +with Government Departments.</p> + +<p>I am trying my best, God knows, to keep the way as +smooth as possible; but neither government helps me. +Our Government merely sends the shipper's ex-parte statement. +This Government uses the Navy's excuse. . . .</p> + +<p>At present, I can't for the life of me see a way to peace, +for the one reason I have told you. The Germans wish +to whip England, to invade England. They started with +their army toward England. Till that happened England +didn't have an army. But I see no human power that +can give the English now what they are determined to +have—safety for the future—till some radical change is +made in the German system so that they will no longer +have a war-party any more than England has a war-party. +England surely has no wish to make conquest of +Germany. If Germany will show that she has no wish +to make conquest of England, the war would end to-morrow.</p> + +<p>What impresses me through it all is the backwardness +of all the Old World in realizing the true aims of government +and the true methods. I can't see why any man +who has hope for the progress of mankind should care +to live anywhere in Europe. To me it is all infinitely sad. +This dreadful war is a logical outcome of their condition, +their thought, their backwardness. I think I shall never +care to see the continent again, which of course is committing +suicide and bankruptcy. When my natural +term of service is done here, I shall go home with more +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-423" id="page1-423"></a>[pg I-423]</span> +joy than you can imagine. That's the only home for a +man who wishes his horizon to continue to grow wider.</p> + +<p>All this for you and me only—nobody else.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Heartily yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">WALTER H. PAGE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Probably Page thought that this statement of the case—and +it was certainly a masterly statement—would end +any attempt to get what he regarded as an unsatisfactory +and dangerous peace. But President Wilson could not +be deterred from pressing the issue. His conviction was +firm that this winter of 1914-1915 represented the most +opportune time to bring the warring nations to terms, +and it was a conviction from which he never departed. +After the sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i> the Administration +gazed back regretfully at its frustrated attempts of the +preceding winter, and it was inclined to place the responsibility +for this failure upon Great Britain and +France. "The President's judgment," wrote Colonel +House on August 4, 1915, three months after the <i>Lusitania</i> +went down, "was that last autumn was the time to +discuss peace parleys, and we both saw present possibilities. +War is a great gamble at best, and there was too +much at stake in this one to take chances. I believe if +one could have started peace parleys in November, we +could have forced the evacuation of both France and +Belgium, and finally forced a peace which would have +eliminated militarism on land and sea. The wishes of +the Allies were heeded with the result that the war has +now fastened itself upon the vitals of Europe and what +the end may be is beyond the knowledge of man."</p> + +<p>This shows that the efforts which the Administration +was making were not casual or faint-hearted, but that +they represented a most serious determination to bring +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-424" id="page1-424"></a>[pg I-424]</span> +hostilities to an end. This letter and the correspondence +which now took place with Page also indicate the general +terms upon which the Wilson Administration believed +that the mighty differences could be composed. The +ideas which Colonel House now set forth were probably +more the President's than his own; he was merely the +intermediary in their transmission. They emphasized +Mr. Wilson's conviction that a decisive victory on either +side would be a misfortune for mankind. As early as +August, 1914, this was clearly the conviction that +underlay all others in the President's interpretation of +events. His other basic idea was that militarism should +come to an end "on land and sea"; this could mean +nothing except that Germany was expected to abandon +its army and that Great Britain was to abandon its navy.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">115 East 53rd Street,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">New York City.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">January 4th, 1915.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>I believe the Dual Alliance is thoroughly ready for +peace and I believe they would be willing to agree upon +terms England would accept provided Russia and France +could be satisfied.</p> + +<p>They would, in my opinion, evacuate both Belgium and +France and indemnify the former, and they would, I think, +be willing to begin negotiations upon a basis looking to +permanent peace.</p> + +<p>It would surprise me if the Germans did not come out +in the open soon and declare that they have always been +for peace, that they are for peace now, and that they are +willing to enter into a compact which would insure peace +for all time; that they have been misrepresented and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-425" id="page1-425"></a>[pg I-425]</span> +maligned and that they leave the entire responsibility +for the continuation of the war with the Allies.</p> + +<p>If they should do this, it would create a profound impression, +and if it was not met with sympathy by the Allies, +the neutral sentiment, which is now almost wholly against +the Germans, would veer toward them.</p> + +<p>Will you not convey this thought to Sir Edward and let +me know what he says?</p> + +<p>The President is willing and anxious for me to go to +England and Germany as soon as there is anything +tangible to go on, and whenever my presence will be welcome. +The Germans have already indicated this feeling +but I have not been able to get from Spring Rice any +expression from his Government.</p> + +<p>As I told you before, the President does not wish to +offend the sensibilities of any one by premature action, +but he is, of course, enormously interested in initiating at +least tentative conversations.</p> + +<p>Will you not advise me in regard to this?</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. HOUSE.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">115 East 53rd Street,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">New York City.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">January 18, 1915.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>The President has sent me a copy of your confidential +dispatch No. 1474, January 15th.</p> + +<p>The reason you had no information in regard to what +General French mentioned was because no one knew of it +outside of the President and myself and there was no safe +way to inform you.</p> + +<p>As a matter of fact, there has been no direct proposal +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-426" id="page1-426"></a>[pg I-426]</span> +made by anybody. I have had repeated informal talks +with the different ambassadors and I have had direct +communication with Zimmermann, which has led the +President and me to believe that peace conversations may +be now initiated in an unofficial way.</p> + +<p>This is the purpose of my going over on the <i>Lusitania</i>, +January 30th. When I reach London I will be guided by +circumstances as to whether I shall go next to France or +Germany.</p> + +<p>The President and I find that we are going around in a +circle in dealing with the representatives in Washington, +and he thinks it advisable and necessary to reach the +principals direct. When I explain just what is in the +President's mind, I believe they will all feel that it was +wise for me to come at this time.</p> + +<p>I shall not write more fully for the reason I am to see +you so soon.</p> + +<p>I am sending this through the kindness of Sir Horace +Plunkett.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. HOUSE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>P.S. We shall probably say, for public consumption, +that I am coming to look into relief measures, and see what +further can be done. Of course, no one but you and Sir +Edward must know the real purpose of my visit.</p></div> + +<p>Why was Colonel House so confident that the Dual +Alliance was prepared at this time to discuss terms of +peace? Colonel House, as his letter shows, was in communication +with Zimmermann, the German Under Foreign +Secretary. But a more important approach had +just been made, though information bearing on this had +not been sent to Page. The Kaiser had asked President +Wilson to transmit to Great Britain a suggestion for making +peace on the basis of surrendering Belgium and of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-427" id="page1-427"></a>[pg I-427]</span> +paying for its restoration. It seems incredible that the +Ambassador should not have been told of this, but Page +learned of the proposal from Field Marshal French, then +commanding the British armies in the field, and this accounts +for Colonel House's explanation that, "the reason +you had no information, in regard to what General French +mentioned was because no one knew of it outside of the +President and myself and there was no safe way to inform +you." Page has left a memorandum which explains the +whole strange proceeding—a paper which is interesting +not only for its contents, but as an illustration of the unofficial +way in which diplomacy was conducted in Washington +at this time:</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Field Marshal Sir John French, secretly at home from +his command of the English forces in France, invited me +to luncheon. There were his especially confidential friend +Moore, the American who lives with him, and Sir John's +private secretary. The military situation is this: a trench +stalemate in France. Neither army has made appreciable +progress in three months. Neither can advance without +a great loss of men. Neither is whipped. Neither can +conquer. It would require a million more men than the +Allies can command and a very long time to drive the +Germans back across Belgium. Presently, if the Russians +succeed in driving the Germans back to German soil, +there will be another trench stalemate there. Thus the +war wears a practically endless outlook so far as military +operations are concerned. Germany has plenty of men +and plenty of food for a long struggle yet; and, if she use +all the copper now in domestic use in the Empire, she will +probably have also plenty of ammunition for a long struggle. +She is not nearly at the end of her rope either in a +military or an economic sense.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-428" id="page1-428"></a>[pg I-428]</span> +</div><p>What then? The Allies are still stronger—so long as +they hold together as one man. But is it reasonable to +assume that they can? And, even if they can, is it worth +while to win a complete victory at such a cost as the lives +of practically all the able-bodied men in Europe? But +can the Allies hold together as one man for two or three +or four years? Well, what are we going to do? And here +came the news of the lunch. General French informed +me that the President had sent to England, at the request +of the Kaiser, a proposal looking toward peace, Germany +offering to give up Belgium and to pay for its restoration.</p> + +<p>"This," said Sir John, "is their fourth proposal."</p> + +<p>"And," he went on, "if they will restore Belgium and +give Alsace-Lorraine to France and Constantinople will +go to Russia, I can't see how we can refuse it."</p> + +<p>He scouted the popular idea of "crushing out militarism" +once for all. It would be desirable, even if it were +not necessary, to leave Germany as a first-class power. +We couldn't disarm her people forever. We've got to +leave her and the rest to do what they think they must +do; and we must arm ourselves the best we can against +them.</p> + +<p>Now—did General French send for me and tell me this +just for fun and just because he likes me? He was very +eager to know my opinion whether this peace offer were +genuine or whether it was a trick of the Germans to—publish +it later and thereby to throw the blame for continuing +the war on England?</p> + +<p>It occurs to me as possible that he was directed to tell +me what he told, trusting to me, in spite of his protestations +of personal confidence, etc., to get it to the President. +Assuming that the President sent the Kaiser's message +to the King, this may be a suggested informal answer—that +if the offer be extended to give France and Russia +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-429" id="page1-429"></a>[pg I-429]</span> +what they want, it will be considered, etc. This may or +may not be true. Alas! the fact that I know nothing +about the offer has no meaning; for the State Department +never informs me of anything it takes up with the +British Ambassador in Washington. Well, I'll see.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>These were therefore the reasons why Colonel House +had decided to go to Europe and enter into peace negotiations +with the warring powers. Colonel House was +wise in taking all possible precautions to conceal the purpose +of this visit. His letter intimates that the German +Government was eager to have him cross the ocean on +this particular mission; it discloses, on the other hand, +that the British Government regarded the proposed +negotiations with no enthusiasm. Sir Edward Grey +and Mr. Asquith would have been glad to end hostilities +on terms that would permanently establish peace +and abolish the vices which were responsible for the +war, and they were ready to welcome courteously the +President's representative and discuss the situation with +him in a fair-minded spirit. But they did not believe +that such an enterprise could serve a useful purpose. +Possibly the military authorities, as General French's +remarks to Page may indicate, did not believe that either +side could win a decisive victory, but this was not the belief +of the British public itself. The atmosphere in England +at that time was one of confidence in the success of +British arms and of suspicion and distrust of the British +Government. A strong expectation prevailed in the +popular mind, that the three great Powers of the Entente +would at an early date destroy the menace which had +enshrouded Europe for forty years, and there was no intention +of giving Germany a breathing spell during which +she could regenerate her forces to resume the onslaught. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-430" id="page1-430"></a>[pg I-430]</span> +In the winter of 1915 Great Britain was preparing for the +naval attack on the Dardanelles, and its success was regarded +as inevitable. Page had an opportunity to observe +the state of optimism which prevailed in high British +circles. In March of 1915 he was visiting the Prime +Minister at Walmer Castle; one afternoon Mr. Asquith +took him aside, informed him of the Dardanelles preparations +and declared that the Allies would have possession +of Constantinople in two weeks. The Prime Minister's +attitude was not one of hope; it was one of confidence. +The capture of Constantinople, of course, would have +brought an early success to the allied army on all fronts<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108" /><a href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a>. +This was the mood that was spurring on the British public +to its utmost exertions, and, with such a determination +prevailing everywhere, a step in the direction of peace was +the last thing that the British desired; such a step could +have been interpreted only as an attempt to deprive the +Allies of their victory and as an effort to assist Germany +in escaping the consequences of her crimes. Combined +with this stout popular resolve, however, there was a lack +of confidence in the Asquith ministry. An impression +was broadcast that it was pacifist, even "defeatist," in its +thinking, and that it harboured a weak humanitarianism +which was disposed to look gently even upon the behaviour +of the Prussians. The masses suspected that the ministry +would welcome a peace with Germany which would mean +little more than a cessation of hostilities and which would +leave the great problems of the war unsolved. That this +opinion was unjust, that, on the contrary, the British +Foreign Office was steadily resisting all attempts to end the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-431" id="page1-431"></a>[pg I-431]</span> +war on an unsatisfactory basis, Page's correspondence, already +quoted, abundantly proves, but this unreasoning +belief did prevail and it was an important factor in the +situation. This is the reason why the British Cabinet regarded +Colonel House's visit at that time with positive +alarm. It feared that, should the purpose become known, +the British public and press would conclude that the +Government had invited a peace discussion. Had any +such idea seized the popular mind in February and March, +1915, a scandal would have developed which would probably +have caused the downfall of the Asquith Ministry. +"Don't fool yourself about peace," Page writes to his +son Arthur, about this time. "If any one should talk +about peace, or doves, or ploughshares here, they'd shoot +him."</p> + +<p>Colonel House reached London early in February and +was soon in close consultation with the Prime Minister +and Sir Edward Grey. He made a great personal success; +the British statesmen gained a high regard for his +disinterestedness and his general desire to serve the cause of +decency among nations; but he made little progress in his +peace plans, simply because the facts were so discouraging +and so impregnable. Sir Edward repeated to him what he +had already said to Page many times: that Great Britain +was prepared to discuss a peace that would really safeguard +the future of Europe, but was not prepared to discuss +one that would merely reinstate the régime that had +existed before 1914. The fact that the Germans were +not ready to accept such a peace made discussion useless. +Disappointed at this failure, Colonel House left for +Berlin. His letters to Page show that the British judgment +of Germany was not unjust and that the warnings +which Page had sent to Washington were based on +facts:</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-432" id="page1-432"></a>[pg I-432]</span> +</div><p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Embassy of the United States of America,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Berlin, Germany,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">March 20, 1915.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>I arrived yesterday morning and I saw Zimmermann<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109" /><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a> +almost immediately. He was very cordial and talked to +me frankly and sensibly.</p> + +<p>I tried to bring about a better feeling toward England, +and told him how closely their interests touched at certain +points. I also told him of the broad way in which Sir +Edward was looking at the difficult problems that confronted +Europe, and I expressed the hope that this view +would be reciprocated elsewhere, so that, when the final +settlement came, it could be made in a way that would +be to the advantage of mankind.</p> + +<p>The Chancellor is out of town for a few days and I shall +see him when he returns. I shall also see Ballin, Von +Gwinner, and many others. I had lunch yesterday with +Baron von Wimpsch who is a very close friend of the +Emperor.</p> + +<p>Zimmermann said that it was impossible for them to +make any peace overtures, and he gave me to understand +that, for the moment, even what England would perhaps +consent to now, could not be accepted by Germany, to say +nothing of what France had in mind.</p> + +<p>I shall hope to establish good relations here and +then go somewhere and await further developments. I +even doubt whether more can be done until some decisive +military result is obtained by one or other of the belligerents.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-433" id="page1-433"></a>[pg I-433]</span> +</div><p>I will write further if there is any change in the situation. +I shall probably be here until at least the 27th.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. HOUSE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Embassy of the United States of America,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Berlin, Germany.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">March 26, 1915.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>While I have accomplished here much that is of value, +yet I leave sadly disappointed that no direct move can be +made toward peace.</p> + +<p>The Civil Government are ready, and upon terms that +would at least make an opening. There is also a large +number in military and naval circles that I believe would +be glad to begin parleys, but the trouble is mainly with +the people. It is a very dangerous thing to permit a people +to be misled and their minds inflamed either by the +press, by speeches, or otherwise.</p> + +<p>In my opinion, no government could live here at this +time if peace was proposed upon terms that would have +any chance of acceptance. Those in civil authority +that I have met are as reasonable and fairminded as their +counterparts in England or America, but, for the moment, +they are impotent.</p> + +<p>I hear on every side the old story that all Germany +wants is a permanent guaranty of peace, so that she may +proceed upon her industrial career undisturbed.</p> + +<p>I have talked of the second convention<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110" /><a href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a>, and it has been +cordially received, and there is a sentiment here, as well as +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-434" id="page1-434"></a>[pg I-434]</span> +elsewhere, to make settlement upon lines broad enough to +prevent a recurrence of present conditions.</p> + +<p>There is much to tell you verbally, which I prefer not +to write.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. HOUSE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Colonel House's next letter is most important, for it +records the birth of that new idea which afterward became +a ruling thought with President Wilson and the +cause of almost endless difficulties in his dealings with +Great Britain. The "new phase of the situation" to +which he refers is "the Freedom of the Seas" and this +brief note to Page, dated March 27, 1915, contains the +first reference to this idea on record. Indeed, it is evident +from the letter itself that Colonel House made this notation +the very day the plan occurred to him.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>From Edward M. House</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Embassy of the United States of America,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Berlin, Germany.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">March 27, 1915.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR PAGE:</p> + +<p>I have had a most satisfactory talk with the Chancellor. +After conferring with Stovall<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111" /><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a>, Page<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112" /><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a>, and Willard<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113" /><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a>, I shall +return to Paris and then to London to discuss with Sir +Edward a phase of the situation which promises results.</p> + +<p>I did not think of it until to-day and have mentioned it +to both the Chancellor and Zimmermann, who have received +it cordially, and who join me in the belief that it +may be the first thread to bridge the chasm.</p> + +<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-435" id="page1-435"></a>[pg I-435]</span> +</div><p>I am writing hastily, for the pouch is waiting to be +closed.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">E.M. HOUSE.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The "freedom of the seas" was merely a proposal to make +all merchant shipping, enemy and neutral, free from attack +in time of war. It would automatically have ended +all blockades and all interference with commerce. Germany +would have been at liberty to send all her merchant +ships to sea for undisturbed trade with all parts of the +world in war time as in peace, and, in future, navies would +be used simply for fighting. Offensively, their purpose +would be to bombard enemy fortifications, to meet enemy +ships in battle, and to convoy ships which were transporting +troops for the invasion of enemy soil; defensively, +their usefulness would consist in protecting the homeland +from such attacks and such invasions. Perhaps an argument +can be made for this new rule of warfare, but it is at +once apparent that it is the most startling proposal +brought forth in modern times in the direction of disarmament. +It meant that Great Britain should abandon that +agency of warfare with which she had destroyed Napoleon, +and with which she expected to destroy Germany in the +prevailing struggle—the blockade. From a defensive +standpoint, Colonel House's proposed reform would have +been a great advantage to Britain, for an honourable observance +of the rule would have insured the British people +its food supply in wartime. With Great Britain, however, +the blockade has been historically an offensive measure: +it is the way in which England has always made war. +Just what reception this idea would have had with official +London, in April, 1915, had Colonel House been able to +present it as his own proposal, is not clear, but the Germans, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1-436" id="page1-436"></a>[pg I-436]</span> +with characteristic stupidity, prevented the American +from having a fair chance. The Berlin Foreign Office at +once cabled to Count Bernstorff and Bernhard Dernburg—the +latter a bovine publicity agent who was then promoting +the German cause in the American press—with +instructions to start a "propaganda" in behalf of the +"freedom of the seas." By the time Colonel House +reached London, therefore, these four words had been +adorned with the Germanic label. British statesmen +regarded the suggestion as coming from Germany and not +from America, and the reception was worse than cold.</p> + +<p>And another tragedy now roughly interrupted President +Wilson's attempts at mediation. Page's letters have disclosed +that he possessed almost a clairvoyant faculty of +foreseeing approaching events. The letters of the latter +part of April and of early May contain many forebodings +of tragedy. "Peace? Lord knows when!" he writes to +his son Arthur on May 2nd. "The blowing up of a liner +with American passengers may be the prelude. I almost +expect such a thing." And again on the same date: "If +a British liner full of American passengers be blown up, +what will Uncle Sam do? That's what's going to happen." +"We all have the feeling here," the Ambassador writes +on May 6th, "that more and more frightful things are +about to happen."</p> + +<p>The ink on those words was scarcely dry when a message +from Queenstown was handed to the American Ambassador. +A German submarine had torpedoed and sunk the +<i>Lusitania</i> off the Old head of Kinsale, and one hundred +and twenty-four American men, women, and children had +been drowned.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p class="center">FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100" /><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> On September 5, 1914, Great Britain, France, and Russia +signed the Pact of London, an agreement which bound the three powers of +the Entente to make war and peace as a unit. Each power specifically +pledged itself not to make a separate peace.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101" /><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> Published in Chapter XI, page 327.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102" /><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> Colonel House's summer home in Massachusetts.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103" /><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> Ambassador from Austria-Hungary to the United States.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104" /><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> This, with certain modifications is Article 10 of the +Covenant of the League of Nations.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105" /><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> There is a suggestion of these provisions in Article 8 of +the League Covenant.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106" /><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> Article 11 of the League Covenant reflects the influence +of this idea.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107" /><a href="#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> From the President's second message to Congress, December +8, 1914: "It is our dearest present hope that this character and +reputation may presently, in God's providence, bring us an opportunity, +such as has seldom been vouchsafed any nation, to counsel and obtain +peace in the world and reconciliation and a healing settlement of many a +matter that has cooled and interrupted the friendship of nations."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108" /><a href="#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> The opening of the Dardanelles would have given Russian +agricultural products access to the markets of the world and thus have +preserved the Russian economic structure. It would also have enabled the +Entente to munition the Russian Army. With a completely equipped Russian +Army in the East and the Entente Army in the West, Germany could not +long have survived the pressure.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109" /><a href="#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a> German Under Foreign Secretary.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110" /><a href="#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> It was the Wilson Administration's plan that there should +be two peace gatherings, one of the belligerents to settle the war, and +the other of belligerents and neutrals, to settle questions of general +importance growing out of the war. This latter is what Colonel House +means by "the second convention."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111" /><a href="#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> Mr. Pleasant A. Stovall, American Minister to +Switzerland.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112" /><a href="#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, American Ambassador to Italy.</p></div> +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113" /><a href="#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> Mr. Joseph E. Willard. American Ambassador to Spain.</p></div> +</div> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life and Letters of Walter H. +Page, Volume I, by Burton J. 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Page, +Volume I, by Burton J. Hendrick + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I + +Author: Burton J. Hendrick + +Release Date: November 6, 2005 [EBook #17017] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF *** + + + + +Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +[Illustration: Walter H. Page] + + + + +THE +LIFE AND LETTERS OF +WALTER H. PAGE + + +BY +BURTON J. HENDRICK + + +VOLUME +I + + +GARDEN CITY NEW YORK +DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY +1922 + + + + +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES +AT +THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y. + +_First Edition +after the printing of 377 de luxe copies_ + + + + +_PREFATORY NOTE_ + + +_Among the many who have assisted in the preparation of this Biography +especial acknowledgment is made to Mr. Irwin Laughlin, First Secretary +and Counsellor of the London Embassy under Mr. Page. Mr. Page's papers +show the high regard which he entertained for Mr. Laughlin's abilities +and character, and the author similarly has found Mr. Laughlin's +assistance indispensable. Mr. Laughlin has had the goodness to read the +manuscript and make numerous suggestions, all for the purpose of +reenforcing the accuracy of the narrative. The author gratefully +remembers many long conversations with Viscount Grey of Fallodon, in +which Anglo-American relations from 1913 to 1916 were exhaustively +canvassed and many side-lights thrown upon Mr. Page's conduct of his +difficult and delicate duties. The British Foreign Office most +courteously gave the writer permission to examine a large number of +documents in its archives bearing upon Mr. Page's ambassadorship and +consented to the publication of several of the most important._ + +B.J.H. + + + + +CONTENTS + +VOLUME I + +CHAPTER PAGE + I. A RECONSTRUCTION BOYHOOD 1 + II. JOURNALISM 32 + III. "THE FORGOTTEN MAN" 64 + IV. THE WILSONIAN ERA BEGINS 102 + V. ENGLAND BEFORE THE WAR 132 + VI. "POLICY" AND "PRINCIPLE" IN MEXICO 175 + VII. PERSONALITIES OF THE MEXICAN PROBLEM 215 +VIII. HONOUR AND DISHONOUR IN PANAMA 232 + IX. AMERICA TRIES TO PREVENT THE EUROPEAN WAR 270 + X. THE GRAND SMASH 301 + XI. ENGLAND UNDER THE STRESS OF WAR 327 + XII. "WAGING NEUTRALITY" 357 +XIII. GERMANY'S FIRST PEACE DRIVES 398 + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + + Walter H. Page _Frontispiece_ + + Allison Francis Page (1824-1899), father of Walter H. Page 20 + + Catherine Raboteau Page (1831-1897), mother of Walter H. Page 21 + + Walter H. Page in 1876, when he was a Fellow of Johns Hopkins + University, Baltimore, Md. 36 + + Basil L. Gildersleeve, Professor of Greek, Johns Hopkins + University, 1876-1915 37 + + Walter H. Page (1899) from a photograph taken when he was + editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_ 100 + + Dr. Wallace Buttrick, President of the General Education Board 101 + + Charles D. McIver, of Greensboro, North Carolina, a leader in + the cause of Southern Education 116 + + Woodrow Wilson in 1912 117 + + Walter H. Page, from a photograph taken a few years before he + became American Ambassador to Great Britain 292 + + The British Foreign Office, Downing Street 293 + + No. 6 Grosvenor Square, the American Embassy under Mr. Page 308 + + Irwin Laughlin, Secretary of the American Embassy at London, + 1912-1917, Counsellor 1916-1919 309 + + + + +THE + +LIFE AND LETTERS + +OF + +WALTER H. PAGE + + + + +THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +A RECONSTRUCTION BOYHOOD + +I + + +The earliest recollections of any man have great biographical interest, +and this is especially the case with Walter Page, for not the least +dramatic aspect of his life was that it spanned the two greatest wars in +history. Page spent his last weeks in England, at Sandwich, on the coast +of Kent; every day and every night he could hear the pounding of the +great guns in France, as the Germans were making their last desperate +attempt to reach Paris or the Channel ports. His memories of his +childhood days in America were similarly the sights and sounds of war. +Page was a North Carolina boy; he has himself recorded the impression +that the Civil War left upon his mind. + +"One day," he writes, "when the cotton fields were white and the elm +leaves were falling, in the soft autumn of the Southern climate wherein +the sky is fathomlessly clear, the locomotive's whistle blew a much +longer time than usual as the train approached Millworth. It did not +stop at so small a station except when there was somebody to get off or +to get on, and so long a blast meant that someone was coming. Sam and I +ran down the avenue of elms to see who it was. Sam was my Negro +companion, philosopher, and friend. I was ten years old and Sam said +that he was fourteen. There was constant talk about the war. Many men of +the neighbourhood had gone away somewhere--that was certain; but Sam and +I had a theory that the war was only a story. We had been fooled about +old granny Thomas's bringing the baby and long ago we had been fooled +also about Santa Claus. The war might be another such invention, and we +sometimes suspected that it was. But we found out the truth that day, +and for this reason it is among my clearest early recollections. + +"For, when the train stopped, they put off a big box and gently laid it +in the shade of the fence. The only man at the station was the man who +had come to change the mail-bags; and he said that this was Billy +Morris's coffin and that he had been killed in a battle. He asked us to +stay with it till he could send word to Mr. Morris, who lived two miles +away. The man came back presently and leaned against the fence till old +Mr. Morris arrived, an hour or more later. The lint of cotton was on his +wagon, for he was hauling his crop to the gin when the sad news reached +him; and he came in his shirt sleeves, his wife on the wagon seat with +him. + +"All the neighbourhood gathered at the church, a funeral was preached +and there was a long prayer for our success against the invaders, and +Billy Morris was buried. I remember that I wept the more because it now +seemed to me that my doubt about the war had somehow done Billy Morris +an injustice. Old Mrs. Gregory wept more loudly than anybody else; and +she kept saying, while the service was going on, 'It'll be my John +next.' In a little while, sure enough, John Gregory's coffin was put off +the train, as Billy Morris's had been, and I regarded her as a woman +gifted with prophecy. Other coffins, too, were put off from time to +time. About the war there could no longer be a doubt. And, a little +later, its realities and horrors came nearer home to us, with swift, +deep experiences. + +"One day my father took me to the camp and parade ground ten miles away, +near the capital. The General and the Governor sat on horses and the +soldiers marched by them and the band played. They were going to the +front. There surely must be a war at the front, I told Sam that night. +Still more coffins were brought home, too, as the months and the years +passed; and the women of the neighbourhood used to come and spend whole +days with my mother, sewing for the soldiers. So precious became woollen +cloth that every rag was saved and the threads were unravelled to be +spun and woven into new fabrics. And they baked bread and roasted +chickens and sheep and pigs and made cakes, all to go to the soldiers at +the front[1]." + +The quality that is uppermost in the Page stock, both in the past and in +the present generation, is that of the builder and the pioneer. The +ancestor of the North Carolina Pages was a Lewis Page, who, in the +latter part of the eighteenth century, left the original American home +in Virginia, and started life anew in what was then regarded as the less +civilized country to the south. Several explanations have survived as to +the cause of his departure, one being that his interest in the rising +tide of Methodism had made him uncongenial to his Church of England +relatives; in the absence of definite knowledge, however, it may safely +be assumed that the impelling motive was that love of seeking out new +things, of constructing a new home in the wilderness, which has never +forsaken his descendants. His son, Anderson Page, manifesting this same +love of change, went farther south into Wake County, and acquired a +plantation of a thousand acres about twelve miles north of Raleigh. He +cultivated this estate with slaves, sending his abundant crops of cotton +and tobacco to Petersburg, Virginia, a traffic that made him +sufficiently prosperous to give several of his sons a college education. +The son who is chiefly interesting at the present time, Allison Francis +Page, the father of the future Ambassador, did not enjoy this +opportunity. This fact in itself gives an insight into his character. +While his brothers were grappling with Latin and Greek and theology--one +of them became a Methodist preacher of the hortatory type for which the +South is famous--we catch glimpses of the older man battling with the +logs in the Cape Fear River, or penetrating the virgin pine forest, +felling trees and converting its raw material to the uses of a growing +civilization. Like many of the Page breed, this Page was a giant in size +and in strength, as sound morally and physically as the mighty forests +in which a considerable part of his life was spent, brave, determined, +aggressive, domineering almost to the point of intolerance, deeply +religious and abstemious--a mixture of the frontiersman and the Old +Testament prophet. Walter Page dedicated one of his books[2] to his +father, in words that accurately sum up his character and career. "To +the honoured memory of my father, whose work was work that built up the +commonwealth." Indeed, Frank Page--for this is the name by which he was +generally known--spent his whole life in these constructive labours. He +founded two towns in North Carolina, Cary and Aberdeen; in the City of +Raleigh he constructed hotels and other buildings; his enterprising and +restless spirit opened up Moore County--which includes the Pinehurst +region; he scattered his logging camps and his sawmills all over the +face of the earth; and he constructed a railroad through the pine woods +that made him a rich man. + +Though he was not especially versed in the learning of the schools, +Walter Page's father had a mind that was keen and far-reaching. He was a +pioneer in politics as he was in the practical concerns of life. Though +he was the son of slave-holding progenitors and even owned slaves +himself, he was not a believer in slavery. The country that he primarily +loved was not Moore County or North Carolina, but the United States of +America. In politics he was a Whig, which meant that, in the years +preceding the Civil War, he was opposed to the extension of slavery and +did not regard the election of Abraham Lincoln as a sufficient +provocation for the secession of the Southern States. It is therefore +not surprising that Walter Page, in the midst of the London turmoil of +1916, should have found his thoughts reverting to his father as he +remembered him in Civil War days. That gaunt figure of America's time of +agony proved an inspiration and hope in the anxieties that assailed the +Ambassador. "When our Civil War began," wrote Page to Col. Edward M. +House--the date was November 24, 1916, one of the darkest days for the +Allied cause--"every man who had a large and firm grip on economic facts +foresaw how it would end--not when but how. Young as I was, I recall a +conversation between my father and the most distinguished judge of his +day in North Carolina. They put down on one side the number of men in +the Confederate States, the number of ships, the number of manufactures, +as nearly as they knew, the number of skilled workmen, the number of +guns, the aggregate of wealth and of possible production. On the other +side they put down the best estimate they could make of all these +things in the Northern States. The Northern States made two (or I +shouldn't wonder if it were three) times as good a showing in men and +resources as the Confederacy had. 'Judge,' said my father, 'this is the +most foolhardy enterprise that man ever undertook.' But Yancey of +Alabama was about that time making five-hour speeches to thousands of +people all over the South, declaring that one Southerner could whip five +Yankees, and the awful slaughter began and darkened our childhood and +put all our best men where they would see the sun no more. Our people +had at last to accept worse terms than they could have got at the +beginning. This World War, even more than our Civil War, is an economic +struggle. Put down on either side the same items that my father and the +judge put down and add the items up. You will see the inevitable +result." + +If we are seeking an ancestral explanation for that moral ruggedness, +that quick perception of the difference between right and wrong, that +unobscured vision into men and events, and that deep devotion to America +and to democracy which formed the fibre of Walter Page's being, we +evidently need look no further than his father. But the son had +qualities which the older man did not possess--an enthusiasm for +literature and learning, a love of the beautiful in Nature and in art, +above all a gentleness of temperament and of manner. These qualities he +held in common with his mother. On his father's side Page was undiluted +English; on his mother's he was French and English. Her father was John +Samuel Raboteau, the descendant of Huguenot refugees who had fled from +France on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; her mother was Esther +Barclay, a member of a family which gave the name of Barclaysville to a +small town half way between Raleigh and Fayetteville, North Carolina. +It is a member of this tribe to whom Page once referred as the "vigorous +Barclay who held her receptions to notable men in her bedroom during the +years of her bedridden condition." She was the proprietor of the "Half +Way House," a tavern located between Fayetteville and Raleigh; and in +her old age she kept royal state, in the fashion which Page describes, +for such as were socially entitled to this consideration. The most vivid +impression which her present-day descendants retain is that of her +fervent devotion to the Southern cause. She carried the spirit of +secession to such an extreme that she had the gate to her yard painted +to give a complete presentment of the Confederate Flag. Walter Page's +mother, the granddaughter of this determined and rebellious lady, had +also her positive quality, but in a somewhat more subdued form. She did +not die until 1897, and so the recollection of her is fresh and vivid. +As a mature woman she was undemonstrative and soft spoken; a Methodist +of old-fashioned Wesleyan type, she dressed with a Quaker-like +simplicity, her brown hair brushed flatly down upon a finely shaped head +and her garments destitute of ruffles or ornamentation. The home which +she directed was a home without playing cards or dancing or smoking or +wine-bibbing or other worldly frivolities, yet the memories of her +presence which Catherine Page has left are not at all austere. Duty was +with her the prime consideration of life, and fundamental morals the +first conceptions which she instilled in her children's growing minds, +yet she had a quiet sense of humour and a real love of fun. + +She had also strong likes and dislikes, and was not especially +hospitable to men and women who fell under her disapproval. A small +North Carolina town, in the years preceding and following the Civil +War, was not a fruitful soil for cultivating an interest in things +intellectual, yet those who remember Walter Page's mother remember her +always with a book in her hand. She would read at her knitting and at +her miscellaneous household duties, which were rather arduous in the +straitened days that followed the war, and the books she read were +always substantial ones. Perhaps because her son Walter was in delicate +health, perhaps because his early tastes and temperament were not unlike +her own, perhaps because he was her oldest surviving child, the fact +remains that, of a family of eight, he was generally regarded as the +child with whom she was especially sympathetic. The picture of mother +and son in those early days is an altogether charming one. Page's mother +was only twenty-four when he was born; she retained her youth for many +years after that event, and during his early childhood, in appearance +and manner, she was little more than a girl. When Walter was a small +boy, he and his mother used to take long walks in the woods, sometimes +spending the entire day, fishing along the brooks, hunting wild flowers, +now and then pausing while the mother read pages of Dickens or of Scott. +These experiences Page never forgot. Nearly all his letters to his +mother--to whom, even in his busiest days in New York, he wrote +constantly--have been accidentally destroyed, but a few scraps indicate +the close spiritual bond that existed between the two. Always he seemed +to think of his mother as young. Through his entire life, in whatever +part of the world he might be, and however important was the work in +which he might be engaged, Page never failed to write her a long and +affectionate letter at Christmas. + +"Well, I've gossiped a night or two"--such is the conclusion of his +Christmas letter of 1893, when Page was thirty-eight, with a growing +family of his own--"till I've filled the paper--all such little news and +less nonsense as most gossip and most letters are made of. But it is for +you to read between the lines. That's where the love lies, dear mother. +I wish you were here Christmas; we should welcome you as nobody else in +the world can be welcomed. But wherever you are and though all the rest +have the joy of seeing you, which is denied to me, never a Christmas +comes but I feel as near you as I did years and years ago when we were +young. (In those years _big_ fish bit in old Wiley Bancom's pond by the +railroad: they must have been two inches long!)--I would give a year's +growth to have the pleasure of having you here. You may be sure that +every one of my children along with me will look with an added reverence +toward the picture on the wall that greets me every morning, when we +have our little Christmas frolics--the picture that little Katharine +points to and says 'That's my grandmudder.'--The years, as they come, +every one, deepen my gratitude to you, as I better and better understand +the significance of life and every one adds to an affection that was +never small. God bless you. + + "WALTER." + + * * * * * + +Such were the father and mother of Walter Hines Page; they were married +at Fayetteville, North Carolina, July 5, 1849; two children who preceded +Walter died in infancy. The latter was born at Cary, August 15, 1855. +Cary was a small village which Frank Page had created; in honour of the +founder it was for several years known as Page's Station; the father +himself changed the name to Cary, as a tribute to a temperance orator +who caused something of a commotion in the neighbourhood in the early +seventies. Cary was not then much of a town and has not since become +one; but it was placed amid the scene of important historical events. +Page's home was almost the last stopping place of Sherman's army on its +march through Georgia and the Carolinas, and the Confederacy came to an +end, with Johnston's surrender of the last Confederate Army, at Durham, +only fifteen miles from Page's home. Walter, a boy of ten, his brother +Robert, aged six, and the negro "companion" Tance--who figures as Sam in +the extract quoted above--stood at the second-story window and watched +Sherman's soldiers pass their house, in hot pursuit of General "Joe" +Wheeler's cavalry. The thing that most astonished the children was the +vast size of the army, which took all day to file by their home. They +had never realized that either of the fighting forces could embrace such +great numbers of men. Nor did the behaviour of the invading troops +especially endear them to their unwilling hosts. Part of the cavalry +encamped in the Page yard; their horses ate the bark off the mimosa +trees; an army corps built its campfires under the great oaks, and cut +their emblems on the trunks; the officers took possession of the house, +a colonel making his headquarters in the parlour. Several looting +cavalrymen ran their swords through the beds, probably looking for +hidden silver; the hearth was torn up in the same feverish quest; angry +at their failure, they emptied sacks of flour and scattered their +contents in the bedrooms and on the stairs; for days the flour, +intermingled with feathers from the bayonetted beds, formed a carpet all +over the house. It is therefore perhaps not strange that the feelings +which Walter entertained for Sherman's "bummers," despite his father's +Whig principles, were those of most Southern communities. One day a +kindly Northern soldier, sympathizing with the boy because of the small +rations left for the local population, invited him to join the +officers' mess at dinner. Walter drew proudly back. + +"I'll starve before I'll eat with the Yankees," he said. + + * * * * * + +"I slept that night on a trundle bed by my mother's," Page wrote years +afterward, describing these early scenes, "for her room was the only +room left for the family, and we had all lived there since the day +before. The dining room and the kitchen were now superfluous, because +there was nothing more to cook or to eat. . . . A week or more after the +army corps had gone, I drove with my father to the capital one day, and +almost every mile of the journey we saw a blue coat or a gray coat lying +by the road, with bones or hair protruding--the unburied and the +forgotten of either army. Thus I had come to know what war was, and +death by violence was among the first deep impressions made on my mind. +My emotions must have been violently dealt with and my sensibilities +blunted--or sharpened? Who shall say? The wounded and the starved +straggled home from hospitals and from prisons. There was old Mr. +Sanford, the shoemaker, come back again, with a body so thin and a step +so uncertain that I expected to see him fall to pieces. Mr. Larkin and +Joe Tatum went on crutches; and I saw a man at the post-office one day +whose cheek and ear had been torn away by a shell. Even when Sam and I +sat on the river-bank fishing, and ought to have been silent lest the +fish swim away, we told over in low tones the stories that we had heard +of wounds and of deaths and of battles. + +"But there was the cheerful gentleness of my mother to draw my thoughts +to different things. I can even now recall many special little plans +that she made to keep my mind from battles. She hid the military cap +that I had worn. She bought from me my military buttons and put them +away. She would call me in and tell me pleasant stories of her own +childhood. She would put down her work to make puzzles with me, and she +read gentle books to me and kept away from me all the stories of the war +and of death that she could. Whatever hardships befell her (and they +must have been many) she kept a tender manner of resignation and of +cheerful patience. + +"After a while the neighbourhood came to life again. There were more +widows, more sonless mothers, more empty sleeves and wooden legs than +anybody there had ever seen before. But the mimosa bloomed, the cotton +was planted again, and the peach trees blossomed; and the barnyard and +the stable again became full of life. For, when the army marched away, +they, too, were as silent as an old battlefield. The last hen had been +caught under the corn-crib by a 'Yankee' soldier, who had torn his coat +in this brave raid. Aunt Maria told Sam that all Yankees were chicken +thieves whether they 'brung freedom or no.' + +"Every year the cotton bloomed and ripened and opened white to the sun; +for the ripening of the cotton and the running of the river and the +turning of the mills make the thread not of my story only but of the +story of our Southern land--of its institutions, of its misfortunes and +of its place in the economy of the world; and they will make the main +threads of its story, I am sure, so long as the sun shines on our white +fields and the rivers run--a story that is now rushing swiftly into a +happier narrative of a broader day. The same women who had guided the +spindles in war-time were again at their tasks--they at least were left; +but the machinery was now old and worked ill. Negro men, who had +wandered a while looking for an invisible 'freedom,' came back and went +to work on the farm from force of habit. They now received wages and +bought their own food. That was the only apparent difference that +freedom had brought them. + +"My Aunt Katharine came from the city for a visit, my Cousin Margaret +with her. Through the orchard, out into the newly ploughed ground +beyond, back over the lawn which was itself bravely repairing the hurt +done by horses' hoofs and tent-poles, and under the oaks, which bore the +scars of camp-fires, we two romped and played gentler games than camp +and battle. One afternoon, as our mothers sat on the piazza and saw us +come loaded with apple-blossoms, they said something (so I afterward +learned) about the eternal blooming of childhood and of Nature--how +sweet the early summer was in spite of the harrying of the land by war; +for our gorgeous pageant of the seasons came on as if the earth had been +the home of unbroken peace[3]." + + +II + +And so it was a tragic world into which this boy Page had been born. He +was ten years old when the Civil War came to an end, and his early life +was therefore cast in a desolate country. Like all of his neighbours, +Frank Page had been ruined by the war. Both the Southern and Northern +armies had passed over the Page territory; compared with the military +depredations with which Page became familiar in the last years of his +life, the Federal troops did not particularly misbehave, the attacks on +hen roosts and the destruction of feather beds representing the extreme +of their "atrocities"; but no country can entertain two great fighting +forces without feeling the effects for a prolonged period. Life in this +part of North Carolina again became reduced to its fundamentals. The +old homesteads and the Negro huts were still left standing, and their +interiors were for the most part unharmed, but nearly everything else +had disappeared. Horses, cattle, hogs, livestock of all kinds had +vanished before the advancing hosts of hungry soldiers; and there was +one thing which was even more a rarity than these. That was money. +Confederate veterans went around in their faded gray uniforms, not only +because they loved them, but because they did not have the wherewithal +to buy new wardrobes. Judges, planters, and other dignified members of +the community became hack drivers from the necessity of picking up a few +small coins. Page's father was more fortunate than the rest, for he had +one asset with which to accumulate a little liquid capital; he possessed +a fine peach orchard, which was particularly productive in the summer of +1865, and the Northern soldiers, who drew their pay in money that had +real value, developed a weakness for the fruit. Walter Page, a boy of +ten, used to take his peaches to Raleigh, and sell them to the +"invader"; although he still disdained having companionable relations +with the enemy, he was not above meeting them on a business footing; and +the greenbacks and silver coin obtained in this way laid a new basis for +the family fortunes. + +Despite this happy windfall, life for the next few years proved an +arduous affair. The horrors of reconstruction which followed the war +were more agonizing than the war itself. Page's keenest enthusiasm in +after life was democracy, in its several manifestations; but the form in +which democracy first unrolled before his astonished eyes was a phase +that could hardly inspire much enthusiasm. Misguided sentimentalists and +more malicious politicians in the North had suddenly endowed the Negro +with the ballot. In practically all Southern States that meant +government by Negroes--or what was even worse, government by a +combination of Negroes and the most vicious white elements, including +that which was native to the soil and that which had imported itself +from the North for this particular purpose. Thus the political +vocabulary of Page's formative years consisted chiefly of such words as +"scalawag," "carpet bagger," "regulator," "Union League," "Ku Klux +Klan," and the like. The resulting confusion, political, social, and +economic, did not completely amount to the destruction of a +civilization, for underneath it all the old sleepy ante-bellum South +still maintained its existence almost unchanged. The two most +conspicuous and contrasting figures were the Confederate veteran walking +around in a sleeveless coat and the sharp-featured New England school +mar'm, armed with that spelling book which was overnight to change the +African from a genial barbarian into an intelligent and conscientious +social unit; but more persistent than these forces was that old dreamy, +"unprogressive" Southland--the same country that Page himself described +in an article on "An Old Southern Borough" which, as a young man, he +contributed to the _Atlantic Monthly_. It was still the country where +the "old-fashioned gentleman" was the controlling social influence, +where a knowledge of Latin and Greek still made its possessor a person +of consideration, where Emerson was a "Yankee philosopher" and therefore +not important, where Shakespeare and Milton were looked upon almost as +contemporary authors, where the Church and politics and the matrimonial +history of friends and relatives formed the staple of conversation, and +where a strong prejudice still existed against anything that resembled +popular education. In the absence of more substantial employment, stump +speaking, especially eloquent in praise of the South and its +achievements in war, had become the leading industry. + +"Wat" Page--he is still known by this name in his old home--was a tall, +rangy, curly-headed boy, with brown hair and brown eyes, fond of fishing +and hunting, not especially robust, but conspicuously alert and vital. +Such of his old playmates as survive recall chiefly his keenness of +observation, his contagious laughter, his devotion to reading and to +talk. He was also given to taking long walks in the woods, frequently +with the solitary companionship of a book. Indeed, his extremely +efficient family regarded him as a dreamer and were not entirely clear +as to what purpose he was destined to serve in a community which, above +all, demanded practical men. Such elementary schools as North Carolina +possessed had vanished in the war; the prevailing custom was for the +better-conditioned families to join forces and engage a teacher for +their assembled children. It was in such a primary school in Cary that +Page learned the elementary branches, though his mother herself taught +him to read and write. The boy showed such aptitude in his studies that +his mother began to hope, though in no aggressive fashion, that he might +some day become a Methodist clergyman; she had given him his middle +name, "Hines," in honour of her favourite preacher--a kinsman. At the +age of twelve Page was transferred to the Bingham School, then located +at Mcbane. This was the Eton of North Carolina, from both a social and +an educational standpoint. It was a military school; the boys all +dressed in gray uniforms built on the plan of the Confederate army; the +hero constantly paraded before their imaginations was Robert E. Lee; +discipline was rigidly military; more important, a high standard of +honour was insisted upon. There was one thing a boy could not do at +Bingham and remain in the school; that was to cheat in class-rooms or at +examinations. For this offence no second chance was given. "I cannot +argue the subject," Page quotes Colonel Bingham saying to the distracted +parent whose son had been dismissed on this charge, and who was begging +for his reinstatement. "In fact, I have no power to reinstate your boy. +I could not keep the honour of the school--I could not even keep the +boys, if he were to return. They would appeal to their parents and most +of them would be called home. They are the flower of the South, Sir!" +And the social standards that controlled the thinking of the South for +so many years after the war were strongly entrenched. "The son of a +Confederate general," Page writes, "if he were at all a decent fellow, +had, of course, a higher social rank at the Bingham School than the son +of a colonel. There was some difficulty in deciding the exact rank of a +judge or a governor, as a father; but the son of a preacher had a fair +chance of a good social rating, especially of an Episcopalian clergyman. +A Presbyterian preacher came next in rank. I at first was at a social +disadvantage. My father had been a Methodist--that was bad enough; but +he had had no military title at all. If it had become known among the +boys that he had been a 'Union man'--I used to shudder at the suspicion +in which I should be held. And the fact that my father had held no +military title did at last become known!" + +A single episode discloses that Page maintained his respect for the +Bingham School to the end. In March, 1918, as American Ambassador, he +went up to Harrow and gave an informal talk to the boys on the United +States. His hosts were so pleased that two prizes were established to +commemorate his visit. One was for an essay by Harrow boys on the +subject: "The Drawing Together of America and Great Britain by Common +Devotion to a Great Cause." A similar prize on the same subject was +offered to the boys of some American school, and Page was asked to +select the recipient. He promptly named his old Bingham School in North +Carolina. + +It was at Bingham that Page gained his first knowledge of Greek, Latin, +and mathematics, and he was an outstanding student in all three +subjects. He had no particular liking for mathematics, but he could +never understand why any one should find this branch of learning +difficult; he mastered it with the utmost ease and always stood high. In +two or three years he had absorbed everything that Bingham could offer +and was ready for the next step. But political conditions in North +Carolina now had their influence upon Page's educational plans. Under +ordinary conditions he would have entered the State University at Chapel +Hill; it had been a great headquarters in ante-bellum days for the +prosperous families of the South. But by the time that Page was ready to +go to college the University had fallen upon evil days. The forces which +then ruled the state, acting in accordance with the new principles of +racial equality, had opened the doors of this, one of the most +aristocratic of Southern institutions, to Negroes. The consequences may +be easily imagined. The newly enfranchised blacks showed no inclination +for the groves of Academe, and not a single representative of the race +applied for matriculation. The outraged white population turned its back +upon this new type of coeducation; in the autumn of 1872 not a solitary +white boy made his appearance. The old university therefore closed its +doors for lack of students and for the next few years it became a +pitiable victim to the worst vices of the reconstruction era. +Politicians were awarded the presidency and the professorships as +political pap, and the resources of the place, in money and books, were +scattered to the wind. Page had therefore to find his education +elsewhere. The deep religious feelings of his family quickly settled +this point. The young man promptly betook himself to the backwoods of +North Carolina and knocked at the doors of Trinity College, a Methodist +Institution then located in Randolph County. Trinity has since changed +its abiding place to Durham and has been transformed into one of the +largest and most successful colleges of the new South; but in those days +a famous Methodist divine and journalist described it as "a college with +a few buildings that look like tobacco barns and a few teachers that +look as though they ought to be worming tobacco." Page spent something +more than a year at Trinity, entering in the autumn of 1871, and leaving +in December, 1872. A few letters, written from this place, are scarcely +more complimentary than the judgment passed above. They show that the +young man was very unhappy. One long letter to his mother is nothing but +a boyish diatribe against the place. "I do not care a horse apple for +Trinity's distinction," he writes, and then he gives the reasons for +this juvenile contempt. His first report, he says, will soon reach home; +he warns his mother that it will be unfavourable, and he explains that +this bad showing is the result of a deliberate plot. The boys who obtain +high marks, Page declares, secure them usually by cheating or through +the partisanship of the professors; a high grade therefore really means +that the recipient is either a humbug or a bootlicker. Page had +therefore attempted to keep his reputation unsullied by aiming at a low +academic record! The report on that three months' work, which still +survives, discloses that Page's conspiracy against himself did not +succeed, for his marks are all high. "Be sure to send him back" is the +annotation on this document, indicating that Page had made a better +impression on Trinity than Trinity had made on Page. + +But the rebellious young man did not return. After Christmas, 1872, his +schoolboy letters reveal him at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va. +Here again the atmosphere is Methodistical, but of a somewhat more +genial type. "It was at Ashland that I first began to unfold," said Page +afterward. "Dear old Ashland!" Dr. Duncan, the President, was a +clergyman whose pulpit oratory is still a tradition in the South, but, +in addition to his religious exaltation, he was an exceedingly lovable, +companionable, and stimulating human being. Certainly there was no lack +of the religious impulse. "We have a preacher president," Page writes +his mother, "a preacher secretary, a preacher chaplain, and a dozen +preacher students and three or more preachers are living here and +twenty-five or thirty yet-to-be preachers in college!" In this latter +class Page evidently places himself; at least he gravely writes his +mother--he was now eighteen--that he had definitely made up his mind to +enter the Methodist ministry. He had a close friend--Wilbur Fisk +Tillett--who cherished similar ambitions, and Page one day surprised +Tillett by suggesting that, at the approaching Methodist Conference, +they apply for licensing as "local preachers" for the next summer. His +friend dissuaded him, however, and henceforth Page concentrated on more +worldly studies. In many ways he was the life of the undergraduate body. +His desire for an immediate theological campaign was merely that passion +for doing things and for self-expression which were always conspicuous +traits. His intense ambition as a boy is still remembered in this sleepy +little village. He read every book in the sparse college library; he +talked to his college mates and his professors on every imaginable +subject; he led his associates in the miniature parliament--the Franklin +Debating Society--to which he belonged; he wrote prose and verse at an +astonishing rate; he explored the country for miles around, making +frequent pilgrimages to the birthplace of Henry Clay, which is the chief +historical glory of Ashland, and to that Hanover Court House which was +the scene of the oratorical triumph of Patrick Henry; he flirted with +the pretty girls in the village, and even had two half-serious love +affairs in rapid succession; he slept upon a hard mattress at night and +imbibed more than the usual allotment of Greek, Latin, and mathematics +in the daytime. One year he captured the Greek prize and the next the +Sutherlin medal for oratory. With a fellow classicist he entered into a +solemn compact to hold all their conversation, even on the most trivial +topics, in Latin, with heavy penalties for careless lapses into English. +Probably the linguistic result would have astonished Quintilian, but the +experiment at least had a certain influence in improving the young man's +Latinity. Another favourite dissipation was that of translating English +masterpieces into the ancient tongue; there still survives among Page's +early papers a copy of Bryant's "Waterfowl" done into Latin iambics. As +to Page's personal appearance, a designation coined by a fellow student +who afterward became a famous editor gives the suggestion of a portrait. +He called him one of the "seven slabs" of the college. And, as always, +the adjectives which his contemporaries chiefly use in describing Page +are "alert" and "positive." + +[Illustration: Allison Francis Page (1824-1899), father of Walter H. +Page] + +[Illustration: Catherine Raboteau Page (1831-1897), mother of Walter H. +Page] + +But Randolph-Macon did one great thing for Page. Like many small +struggling Southern, colleges it managed to assemble several instructors +of real mental distinction. And at the time of Page's undergraduate life +it possessed at least one great teacher. This was Thomas R. Price, +afterward Professor of Greek at the University of Virginia and Professor +of English at Columbia University in New York. Professor Price took one +forward step that has given him a permanent fame in the history of +Southern education. He found that the greatest stumbling block to +teaching Greek was not the conditional mood, but the fact that his +hopeful charges were not sufficiently familiar with their mother tongue. +The prayer that was always on Price's lips, and the one with which he +made his boys most familiar, was that of a wise old Greek: "O Great +Apollo, send down the reviving rain upon our fields; preserve our +flocks; ward off our enemies; and--build up our speech!" "It is +irrational," he said, "absurd, almost criminal, to expect a young man, +whose knowledge of English words and construction is scant and inexact, +to put into English a difficult thought of Plato or an involved period +of Cicero." Above all, it will be observed, Price's intellectual +enthusiasm was the ancient tongue. A present-day argument for learning +Greek and Latin is that thereby we improve our English; but Thomas H. +Price advocated the teaching of English so that we might better +understand the dead languages. To-day every great American educational +institution has vast resources for teaching English literature; even in +1876, most American universities had their professors of English; but +Price insisted on placing English on exactly the same footing as Greek +and Latin. He himself became head of the new English school at +Randolph-Macon; and Page himself at once became the favourite pupil. +This distinguished scholar--a fine figure with an imperial beard that +suggested the Confederate officer--used to have Page to tea at least +twice a week and at these meetings the young man was first introduced in +an understanding way to Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and +the other writers who became the literary passions of his maturer life. +And Price did even more for Page; he passed him on to another place and +to another teacher who extended his horizon. Up to the autumn of 1876 +Page had never gone farther North than Ashland; he was still a Southern +boy, speaking with the Southern drawl, living exclusively the thoughts +and even the prejudices of the South. His family's broad-minded attitude +had prevented him from acquiring a too restricted view of certain +problems that were then vexing both sections of the country; however, +his outlook was still a limited one, as his youthful correspondence +shows. But in October of the centennial year a great prospect opened +before him. + + +III + +Two or three years previously an eccentric merchant named Johns Hopkins +had died, leaving the larger part of his fortune to found a college or +university in Baltimore. Johns Hopkins was not an educated man himself +and his conception of a new college did not extend beyond creating +something in the nature of a Yale or Harvard in Maryland. By a lucky +chance, however, a Yale graduate who was then the President of the +University of California, Daniel Coit Gilman, was invited to come to +Baltimore and discuss with the trustees his availability for the +headship of the new institution. Dr. Gilman promptly informed his +prospective employers that he would have no interest in associating +himself with a new American college built upon the lines of those which +then existed. Such a foundation would merely be a duplication of work +already well done elsewhere and therefore a waste of money and effort. +He proposed that this large endowment should be used, not for the +erection of expensive architecture, but primarily for seeking out, in +all parts of the world, the best professorial brains in certain approved +branches of learning. In the same spirit he suggested that a similarly +selective process be adopted in the choice of students: that only those +American boys who had displayed exceptional promise should be admitted +and that part of the university funds should be used to pay the expenses +of twenty young men who, in undergraduate work at other colleges, stood +head and shoulders above their contemporaries. The bringing together of +these two sets of brains for graduate study would constitute the new +university. A few rooms in the nearest dwelling house would suffice for +headquarters. Dr. Gilman's scheme was approved; he became President on +these terms; he gathered his faculty not only in the United States but +in England, and he collected his first body of students, especially his +first twenty fellows, with the same minute care. + +It seems almost a miracle that an inexperienced youth in a little +Methodist college in Virginia should have been chosen as one of these +first twenty fellows, and it is a sufficient tribute to the impression +that Page must have made upon all who met him that he should have won +this great academic distinction. He was only twenty-one at the time--the +youngest of a group nearly every member of which became distinguished in +after life. He won a Fellowship in Greek. This in itself was a great +good fortune; even greater was the fact that his new life brought him +into immediate contact with a scholar of great genius and lovableness. +Someone has said that America has produced four scholars of the very +first rank--Agassiz in natural science, Whitney in philology, Willard +Gibbs in physics, and Gildersleeve in Greek. It was the last of these +who now took Walter Page in charge. The atmosphere of Johns Hopkins was +quite different from anything which the young man had previously known. +The university gave a great shock to that part of the American community +with which Page had spent his life by beginning its first session in +October, 1876, without an opening prayer. Instead Thomas H. Huxley was +invited from England to deliver a scientific address--an address which +now has an honoured place in his collected works. The absence of prayer +and the presence of so audacious a Darwinian as Huxley caused a +tremendous excitement in the public prints, the religious press, and the +evangelical pulpit. In the minds of Gilman and his abettors, however, +all this was intended to emphasize the fact that Johns Hopkins was a +real university, in which the unbiased truth was to be the only aim. And +certainly this was the spirit of the institution. "Gentlemen, you must +light your own torch," was the admonition of President Gilman, in his +welcoming address to his twenty fellows; intellectual independence, +freedom from the trammels of tradition, were thus to be the directing +ideas. One of Page's associates was Josiah Royce, who afterward had a +distinguished career in philosophy at Harvard. "The beginnings of Johns +Hopkins," he afterward wrote, "was a dawn wherein it was bliss to be +alive. The air was full of noteworthy work done by the older men of the +place and of hopes that one might find a way to get a little working +power one's self. One longed to be a doer of the word, not a hearer +only, a creator of his own infinitesimal fraction of the product, bound +in God's name to produce when the time came." + +A choice group of five aspiring Grecians, of whom Page was one, +periodically gathered around a long pine table in a second-story room of +an old dwelling house on Howard Street, with Professor Gildersleeve at +the head. The process of teaching was thus the intimate contact of mind +with mind. Here in the course of nearly two years' residence, Page was +led by Professor Gildersleeve into the closest communion with the great +minds of the ancient world and gained that intimate knowledge of their +written word which was the basis of his mental equipment. "Professor +Gildersleeve, splendid scholar that he is!" he wrote to a friend in +North Carolina. "He makes me grow wonderfully. When I have a chance to +enjoy AEschylus as I have now, I go to work on those immortal pieces with +a pleasure that swallows up everything." To the extent that Gildersleeve +opened up the literary treasures of the past--and no man had a greater +appreciation of his favourite authors than this fine humanist--Page's +life was one of unalloyed delight. But there was another side to the +picture. This little company of scholars was composed of men who aspired +to no ordinary knowledge of Greek; they expected to devote their entire +lives to the subject, to edit Greek texts, and to hold Greek chairs at +the leading American universities. Such, indeed, has been the career of +nearly all members of the group. The Greek tragedies were therefore read +for other things than their stylistic and dramatic values. The sons of +Germania then exercised a profound influence on American education; +Professor Gildersleeve himself was a graduate of Goettingen, and the +necessity of "settling hoti's business" was strong in his seminar. +Gildersleeve was a writer of English who developed real style; as a +Greek scholar, his fame rests chiefly upon his work in the field of +historical syntax. He assumed that his students could read Greek as +easily as they could read French, and the really important tasks he set +them had to do with the most abstruse fields of philology. For work of +this kind Page had little interest and less inclination. When Professor +Gildersleeve would assign him the adverb [Greek: prin], and direct him +to study the peculiarities of its use from Homer down to the Byzantine +writers, he really found himself in pretty deep waters. Was it +conceivable that a man could spend a lifetime in an occupation of this +kind? By pursuing such studies Gildersleeve and his most advanced pupils +uncovered many new facts about the language and even found hitherto +unsuspected beauties; but Page's letters show that this sort of effort +was extremely uncongenial. He fulminates against the "grammarians" and +begins to think that perhaps, after all, a career of erudite scholarship +is not the ideal existence. "Learn to look on me as a Greek drudge," he +writes, "somewhere pounding into men and boys a faint hint of the beauty +of old Greekdom. That's most probably what I shall come to before many +years. I am sure that I have mistaken my lifework, if I consider Greek +my lifework. In truth at times I am tempted to throw the whole thing +away. . . . But without a home feeling in Greek literature no man can lay +claim to high culture." So he would keep at it for three or four years +and "then leave it as a man's work." Despite these despairing words Page +acquired a living knowledge of Greek that was one of his choicest +possessions through life. That he made a greater success than his +self-depreciation would imply is evident from the fact that his +Fellowship was renewed for the next year. + +But the truth is that the world was tugging at Page more insistently +than the cloister. "Speaking grammatically," writes Prof. E.G. Sihler, +one of Page's fellow students of that time, in his "Confessions and +Convictions of a Classicist," "Page was interested in that one of the +main tenses which we call the Present." In his after life, amid all the +excitements of journalism, Page could take a brief vacation and spend +it with Ulysses by the sea; but actuality and human activity charmed him +even more than did the heroes of the ancient world. He went somewhat +into Baltimore society, but not extensively; he joined a club whose +membership comprised the leading intellectual men of the town; probably +his most congenial associations, however, came of the Saturday night +meetings of the fellows in Hopkins Hall, where, over pipes and steins of +beer, they passed in review all the questions of the day. Page was still +the Southern boy, with the strange notions about the North and Northern +people which were the inheritance of many years' misunderstandings. He +writes of one fellow student to whom he had taken a liking. "He is that +rare thing," he says, "a Yankee Christian gentleman." He particularly +dislikes one of his instructors, but, as he explains, he is "a native of +Connecticut, and Connecticut, I suppose, is capable of producing any +unholy human phenomenon." Speaking of a beautiful and well mannered +Greek girl whom he had met, he says: "The little creature might be taken +for a Southern girl, but never for a Yankee. She has an easy manner and +even an air of gentility about her that doesn't appear north of Mason +and Dixon's Line. Indeed, however much the Southern race (I say race +intentionally: Yankeedom is the home of another race from us) however +much the Southern race owes its strength to Anglo-Saxon blood, it owes +its beauty and gracefulness to the Southern climate and culture. Who +says that we are not an improvement on the English? An improvement in a +happy combination of mental graces and Saxon force?" This sort of thing +is especially entertaining in the youthful Page, for it is precisely +against this kind of complacency that, as a mature man, he directed his +choicest ridicule. As an editor and writer his energies were devoted to +reconciling North and South, and Johns Hopkins itself had much to do +with opening his eyes. Its young men and its professors were gathered +from all parts of the country; a student, if his mind was awake, learned +more than Greek and mathematics; he learned much about that far-flung +nation known as the United States. + +And Page did not confine his work exclusively to the curriculum. He +writes that he is regularly attending a German Sunday School, not, +however, from religious motives, but from a desire to improve his +colloquial German. "Is this courting the Devil for knowledge?" he asks. +And all this time he was engaging in a delightful correspondence--from +which these quotations are taken--with a young woman in North Carolina, +his cousin. About this time this cousin began spending her summers in +the Page home at Cary; her great interest in books made the two young +people good friends and companions. It was she who first introduced Page +to certain Southern writers, especially Timrod and Sidney Lanier, and, +when Page left for Johns Hopkins, the two entered into a compact for a +systematic reading and study of the English poets. According to this +plan, certain parts of Tennyson or Chaucer would be set aside for a +particular week's reading; then both would write the impressions gained +and the criticisms which they assumed to make, and send the product to +the other. The plan was carried out more faithfully than is usually the +case in such arrangements; a large number of Page's letters survive and +give a complete history of his mental progress. There are lengthy +disquisitions on Wordsworth, Browning, Byron, Shelley, Matthew Arnold, +and the like. These letters also show that Page, as a relaxation from +Greek roots and syntax, was indulging in poetic flights of his own; his +efforts, which he encloses in his letters, are mainly imitations of the +particular poet in whom he was at the moment interested. This +correspondence also takes Page to Germany, in which country he spent the +larger part of the summer of 1877. This choice of the Fatherland as a +place of pilgrimage was probably merely a reflection of the enthusiasm +for German educational methods which then prevailed in the United +States, especially at Johns Hopkins. Page's letters are the usual +traveller's descriptions of unfamiliar customs, museums, libraries, and +the like; so far as enlarging his outlook was concerned the experience +does not seem to have been especially profitable. + +He returned to Baltimore in the autumn of 1877, but only for a few +months. He had pretty definitely abandoned his plan of devoting his life +to Greek scholarship. As a mental stimulus, as a recreation from the +cares of life, his Greek authors would always be a first love, as they +proved to be; but he had abandoned his early ambition of making them his +everyday occupation and means of livelihood. Of course there was only +one career for a man of his leanings, and, more and more, his mind was +turning to journalism. For only one brief period did he again listen to +the temptations of a scholar's existence. The university of his native +state invited him to lecture in the summer school of 1878; he took +Shakespeare for his subject, and made so great a success that there was +some discussion of his settling down permanently at Chapel Hill in the +chair of Greek. Had the offer definitely been made Page would probably +have accepted, but difficulties arose. Page was no longer orthodox in +his religious views; he had long outgrown dogma and could only smile at +the recollection that he had once thought of becoming a clergyman. But a +rationalist at the University of North Carolina in 1878 could hardly be +endured. The offer, therefore, fortunately was not made. Afterward Page +was much criticized for having left his native state at a time when it +especially needed young men of his type. It may therefore be recorded +that, if there were any blame at all, it rested upon North Carolina. He +refers to his disappointment in a letter in February, 1879--a letter +that proved to be a prophecy. "I shall some day buy a home," he says, +"where I was not allowed to work for one, and be laid away in the soil +that I love. I wanted to work for the old state; it had no need for it, +it seems." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: From "The Southerner," Chapter I. The first chapter in this +novel is practically autobiographical, though fictitious names have been +used.] + +[Footnote 2: "The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths." (1902.)] + +[Footnote 3: "The Southerner," Chapter I.] + + + + +CHAPTER II + +JOURNALISM + +I + + +The five years from 1878 to 1883 Page spent in various places, engaged, +for the larger part of the time, in several kinds of journalistic work. +It was his period of struggle and of preparation. Like many American +public men he served a brief apprenticeship--in his case, a very brief +one--as a pedagogue. In the autumn of 1878 he went to Louisville, +Kentucky, and taught English for a year at the Boys' High School. But he +presently found an occupation in this progressive city which proved far +more absorbing. A few months before his arrival certain energetic +spirits had founded a weekly paper, the _Age_, a journal which, they +hoped, would fill the place in the Southern States which the very +successful New York _Nation_, under the editorship of Godkin, was then +occupying in the North. Page at once began contributing leading articles +on literary and political topics to this publication; the work proved so +congenial that he purchased--on notes--a controlling interest in the new +venture and became its directing spirit. The _Age_ was in every way a +worthy enterprise; in the dignity of its make-up and the high literary +standards at which it aimed it imitated the London _Spectator_. Perhaps +Page obtained a thousand dollars' worth of fun out of his investment; if +so, that represented his entire profit. He now learned a lesson which +was emphasized in his after career as editor and publisher, and that was +that the Southern States provided a poor market for books or +periodicals. The net result of the proceeding was that, at the age of +twenty-three, he found himself out of a job and considerably in debt. + +He has himself rapidly sketched his varied activities of the next five +years: + +"After trying in vain," he writes, "to get work to do on any newspaper +in North Carolina, I advertised for a job in journalism--any sort of a +job. By a queer accident--a fortunate one for me--the owner of the St. +Joseph, Missouri, _Gazette_, answered the advertisement. Why he did it, +I never found out. He was in the same sort of desperate need of a +newspaper man as I was in desperate need of a job. I knew nothing about +him: he knew nothing about me. I knew nothing about newspaper work. I +had done nothing since I left the University but teach English in the +Louisville, Kentucky, High School for boys one winter and lecture at the +summer school at Chapel Hill one summer. I made up my mind to go into +journalism. But journalism didn't seem in any hurry to make up its mind +to admit me. Not only did all the papers in North Carolina decline my +requests for work, but such of them in Baltimore and Louisville as I +tried said 'No.' So I borrowed $50 and set out to St. Joe, Missouri, +where I didn't know a human being. I became a reporter. At first I +reported the price of cattle--went to the stockyards, etc. My salary +came near to paying my board and lodging, but it didn't quite do it. But +I had a good time in St. Joe for somewhat more than a year. There were +interesting people there. I came to know something about Western life. +Kansas was across the river. I often went there. I came to know Kansas +City, St. Louis--a good deal of the West. After a while I was made +editor of the paper. What a rousing political campaign or two we had! +Then--I had done that kind of a job as long as I cared to. Every +swashbuckling campaign is like every other one. Why do two? Besides, I +knew my trade. I had done everything on a daily paper from stockyard +reports to political editorials and heavy literary articles. In the +meantime I had written several magazine articles and done other such +jobs. I got leave of absence for a month or two. I wrote to several of +the principal papers in Chicago, New York, and Boston and told them that +I was going down South to make political and social studies and that I +was going to send them my letters. I hoped they'd publish them. + +"That's all I could say. I could make no engagement; they didn't know +me. I didn't even ask for an engagement. I told them simply this: that +I'd write letters and send them; and I prayed heaven that they'd print +them and pay for them. Then off I went with my little money in my +pocket--about enough to get to New Orleans. I travelled and I wrote. I +went all over the South. I sent letters and letters and letters. All the +papers published all that I sent them and I was rolling in wealth! I had +money in my pocket for the first time in my life. Then I went back to +St. Joe and resigned; for the (old) New York _World_ had asked me to go +to the Atlanta Exposition as a correspondent. I went. I wrote and kept +writing. How kind Henry Grady was to me! But at last the Exposition +ended. I was out of a job. I applied to the _Constitution_. No, they +wouldn't have me. I never got a job in my life that I asked for! But all +my life better jobs have been given me than I dared ask for. Well--I was +at the end of my rope in Atlanta and I was trying to make a living in +any honest way I could when one day a telegram came from the New York +_World_ (it was the old _World_, which was one of the best of the +dailies in its literary quality) asking me to come to New York. I had +never seen a man on the paper--had never been in New York except for a +day when I landed there on a return voyage from a European trip that I +took during one vacation when I was in the University. Then I went to +New York straight and quickly. I had an interesting experience on the +old _World_, writing literary matter chiefly, an editorial now and then, +and I was frequently sent as a correspondent on interesting errands. I +travelled all over the country with the Tariff Commission. I spent one +winter in Washington as a sort of editorial correspondent while the +tariff bill was going through Congress. Then, one day, the _World_ was +sold to Mr. Pulitzer and all the staff resigned. The character of the +paper changed." + +What better training could a journalist ask for than this? Page was only +twenty-eight when these five years came to an end; but his life had been +a comprehensive education in human contact, in the course of which he +had picked up many things that were not included in the routine of Johns +Hopkins University. From Athens to St. Joe, from the comedies of +Aristophanes to the stockyards and political conventions of Kansas +City--the transition may possibly have been an abrupt one, but it is not +likely that Page so regarded it. For books and the personal relation +both appealed to him, in almost equal proportions, as essentials to the +fully rounded man. Merely from the standpoint of geography, Page's +achievement had been an important one; how many Americans, at the age of +twenty-eight, have such an extensive mileage to their credit? Page had +spent his childhood--and his childhood only--in North Carolina; he had +passed his youth in Virginia and Maryland; before he was twenty-three he +had lived several months in Germany, and, on his return voyage, he had +sailed by the white cliffs of England, and, from the deck of his +steamer, had caught glimpses of that Isle of Wight which then held his +youthful favourite Tennyson. He had added to these experiences a winter +in Kentucky and a sojourn of nearly two years in Missouri. His Southern +trip, to which Page refers in the above, had taken him through +Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana; he had visited +the West again in 1882, spending a considerable time in all the large +cities, Chicago, Omaha, Denver, Leadville, Salt Lake, and from the +latter point he had travelled extensively through Mormondom. The several +months spent in Atlanta had given the young correspondent a glimpse into +the new South, for this energetic city embodied a Southern spirit that +was several decades removed from the Civil War. After this came nearly +two years in New York and Washington, where Page gained his first +insight into Federal politics; in particular, as a correspondent +attached to the Tariff Commission--an assignment that again started him +on his travels to industrial centres--he came into contact, for the +first time, with the mechanism of framing the great American tariff. And +during this period Page was not only forming a first-hand acquaintance +with the passing scene, but also with important actors in it. The mere +fact that, on the St. Joseph _Gazette_, he succeeded Eugene Field--"a +good fellow named Page is going to take my desk," said the careless +poet, "I hope he will succeed to my debts too"--always remained a +pleasant memory. He entered zealously into the life of this active +community; his love of talk and disputation, his interest in politics, +his hearty laugh, his vigorous handclasp, his animation of body and of +spirit, and his sunny outlook on men and events--these are the traits +that his old friends in this town, some of whom still survive, +associate with the juvenile editor. In his Southern trip Page +called--self-invited--upon Jefferson Davis and was cordially +received. At Atlanta, as he records above, he made friends with that +chivalric champion of a resurrected South, Henry Grady; here also he +obtained fugitive glimpses of a struggling and briefless lawyer, who, +like Page, was interested more in books and writing than in the humdrum +of professional life, and who was then engaged in putting together a +brochure on _Congressional Government_ which immediately gave him a +national standing. The name of this sympathetic acquaintance was Woodrow +Wilson. + +[Illustration: Walter H. Page in 1876, when he was a Fellow of Johns +Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.] + +[Illustration: Basil L. Gildersleeve, Professor of Greek, Johns Hopkins +University, 1876-1915] + +Another important event had taken place, for, at St. Louis, on November +15, 1880, Page had married Miss Willia Alice Wilson. Miss Wilson was the +daughter of a Scotch physician, Dr. William Wilson, who had settled in +Michigan, near Detroit, in 1832. When she was a small child she went +with her sister's family--her father had died seven years before--to +North Carolina, near Cary; and she and Page had been childhood friends +and schoolmates. At the time of the wedding, Page was editor of the St. +Joseph _Gazette_; the fact that he had attained this position, five +months after starting at the bottom, sufficiently discloses his aptitude +for journalistic work. + +Page had now outgrown any Southern particularism with which he may have +started life. He no longer found his country exclusively in the area +south of the Potomac; he had made his own the West, the North--New York, +Chicago, Denver, as well as Atlanta and Raleigh. It is worth while +insisting on this fact, for the cultivation of a wide-sweeping +Americanism and a profound faith in democracy became the qualities that +will loom most largely in his career from this time forward. It is +necessary only to read the newspaper letters which he wrote on his +Southern trip in 1881 to understand how early his mind seized this new +point of view. Many things which now fell under his observant eye in the +Southern States greatly irritated him and with his characteristic +impulsiveness he pictured these traits in pungent phrase. The atmosphere +of shiftlessness that too generally prevailed in some localities; the +gangs of tobacco-chewing loafers assembled around railway stations; the +listless Negroes that seemed to overhang the whole country like a black +cloud; the plantation mansions in a sad state of disrepair; the old +unoccupied slave huts overgrown with weeds; the unpainted and +broken-down fences; the rich soil that was crudely and wastefully +cultivated with a single crop--the youthful social philosopher found +himself comparing these vestigia of a half-moribund civilization with +the vibrant cities of the North, the beautiful white and green villages +of New England, and the fertile prairie farms of the West. "Even the +dogs," he said, "look old-fashioned." Oh, for a change in his beloved +South--a change of almost any kind! "Even a heresy, if it be bright and +fresh, would be a relief. You feel as if you wished to see some kind of +an effort put forth, a discussion, a fight, a runaway, anything to make +the blood go faster." Wherever Page saw signs of a new spirit--and he +saw many--he recorded them with an eagerness which showed his loyalty to +the section of his birth. The splitting up of great plantations into +small farms he put down as one of the indications of a new day. A +growing tendency to educate, not only the white child, but the Negro, +inspired a similar tribute. But he rejoiced most over the decreasing +bitterness of the masses over the memories of the Civil War, and +discovered, with satisfaction, that any remaining ill-feeling was a +heritage left not by the Union soldier, but by the carpetbagger. + +And one scene is worth preserving, for it illustrates not only the zeal +of Page himself for the common country, but the changing attitude of the +Southern people. It was enacted at Martin, Tennessee, on the evening of +July 2, 1881. Page was spending a few hours in the village grocery, +discussing things in general with the local yeomanry, when the telegraph +operator came from the post office with rather more than his usual +expedition and excitement. He was frantically waving a yellow slip which +bore the news that President Garfield had been shot. Garfield had been +an energetic and a successful general in the war and his subsequent +course in Congress, where he had joined the radical Republicans, had not +caused the South to look upon him as a friend. But these farmers +responded to this shock, not like sectionalists, but like Americans. +"Every man of them," Page records, "expressed almost a personal sorrow. +Little was said of politics or of parties. Mr. Garfield was President of +the United States--that was enough. A dozen voices spoke the great +gratification that the assassin was not a Southern man. It was an +affecting scene to see weather-beaten old countrymen so profoundly +agitated--men who yesterday I should have supposed hardly knew and +certainly did not seem to care who was President. The great centres of +population, of politicians, and of thought may be profoundly agitated +to-night, but no more patriotic sorrow and humiliation is felt anywhere +by any men than by these old backwoods ex-Confederates." + +Page himself was so stirred by the news that he ascended a cracker +barrel, and made a speech to the assembled countrymen, preaching to +responsive ears the theme of North and South, now reunited in a common +sorrow. Thus, by the time he was twenty-six, Page, at any rate in +respect to his Americanism, was a full-grown man. + + +II + +A few years afterward Page had an opportunity of discussing this, his +favourite topic, with the American whom he most admired. Perhaps the +finest thing in the career of Grover Cleveland was the influence which +he exerted upon young men. After the sordid political transactions of +the reconstruction period and after the orgy of partisanship which had +followed the Civil War, this new figure, acceding to the Presidency in +1885, came as an inspiration to millions of zealous and intelligent +young college-bred Americans. One of the first to feel the new spell was +Walter Page; Mr. Cleveland was perhaps the most important influence in +forming his public ideals. Of everything that Cleveland +represented--civil service reform; the cleansing of politics, state and +national; the reduction in the tariff; a foreign policy which, without +degenerating into truculence, manfully upheld the rights of American +citizens; a determination to curb the growing pension evil; the doctrine +that the Government was something to be served and not something to be +plundered--Page became an active and brilliant journalistic advocate. It +was therefore a great day in his life when, on a trip to Washington in +the autumn of 1885, he had an hour's private conversation with President +Cleveland, and it was entirely characteristic of Page that he should +make the conversation take the turn of a discussion of the so-called +Southern question. + +"In the White House at Washington," Page wrote about this visit, "is an +honest, plain, strong man, a man of wonderfully broad information and of +most uncommon industry. He has always been a Democrat. He is a +distinguished lawyer and a scholar on all public questions. He is as +frank and patriotic and sincere as any man that ever won the high place +he holds. Within less than a year he has done so well and so wisely that +he has disappointed his enemies and won their admiration. He is as +unselfish as he is great. He is one of the most industrious men in the +world. He rises early and works late and does not waste his time--all +because his time is now not his own but the Republic's, whose most +honoured servant he is. I count it among the most inspiring experiences +in my life that I had the privilege, at the suggestion of one of his +personal friends, of talking with him one morning about the complete +reuniting of the two great sections of our Republic by his election. I +told him, and I know I told him the truth, when I said that every young +man in the Southern States who, without an opportunity to share either +the glory or the defeat of the late Confederacy, had in spite of himself +suffered the disadvantages of the poverty and oppression that followed +war, took new hope for the full and speedy realization of a complete +union, of unparalleled prosperity and of broad thinking and noble living +from his elevation to the Presidency. I told him that the men of North +Carolina were not only patriotic but ambitious as well; and that they +were Democrats and proud citizens of the State and the Republic not +because they wanted offices or favours, but because they loved freedom +and wished the land that had been impoverished by war to regain more +than it had lost. 'I have not called, Mr. President, to ask for an +office for myself or for anybody else,' I remarked; 'but to have the +pleasure of expressing my gratification, as a citizen of North Carolina, +at the complete change in political methods and morals that I believe +will date from your Administration.' He answered that he was glad to +see all men who came in such a spirit and did not come to +beg--especially young men of the South of to-day; and he talked and +encouraged me to talk freely as if he had been as small a man as I am, +or I as great a man as he is. + +"From that day to this it has been my business to watch every public act +that he does, to read every public word he speaks, and it has been a +pleasure and a benefit to me (like the benefit that a man gets from +reading a great history--for he is making a great history) to study the +progress of his Administration; and at every step he seems to me to +warrant the trust that the great Democratic party put in him." + +The period to which Page refers in this letter represented the time when +he was making a serious and harassing attempt to establish himself in +his chosen profession in his native state. He went south for a short +visit after resigning his place on the New York _World_, and several +admirers in Raleigh persuaded him to found a new paper, which should +devote itself to preaching the Cleveland ideals, and, above all, to +exerting an influence on the development of a new Southern spirit. No +task could have been more grateful to Page and there was no place in +which he would have better liked to undertake it than in the old state +which he loved so well. The result was the _State Chronicle_ of Raleigh, +practically a new paper, which for a year and a half proved to be the +most unconventional and refreshing influence that North Carolina had +known in many a year. Necessarily Page found himself in conflict with +his environment. He had little interest in the things that then chiefly +interested the state, and North Carolina apparently had little interest +in the things that chiefly occupied the mind of the youthful journalist. +Page was interested in Cleveland, in the reform of the civil service; +the Democrats of North Carolina little appreciated their great national +leader and were especially hostile to his belief that service to a party +did not in itself establish a qualification for public office. Page was +interested in uplifting the common people, in helping every farmer to +own his own acres, and in teaching the most modern and scientific way of +cultivating them; he was interested in giving every boy and girl at +least an elementary education, and in giving a university training to +such as had the aptitude and the ambition to obtain it; he believed in +industrial training--and in these things the North Carolina of those +days had little concern. Page even went so far as to take an open stand +for the pitiably neglected black man: he insisted that he should be +taught to read and write, and instructed in agriculture and the manual +trades. A man who advocated such revolutionary things in those days was +accused--and Page was so accused--of attempting to promote the "social +equality" of the two races. Page also declaimed in favour of developing +the state industrially; he called attention to the absurdity of sending +Southern cotton to New England spinning mills, and he pointed out the +boundless but unworked natural resources of the state, in minerals, +forests, waterpower, and lands. + +North Carolina, he informed his astonished compatriots, had once been a +great manufacturing colony; why could the state not become one again? +But the matter in which the buoyant editor and his constituents found +themselves most at variance was the spirit that controlled North +Carolina life. It was a spirit that found comfort for its present +poverty and lack of progress in a backward look at the greatness of the +state in the past and the achievements of its sons in the Civil War. +Though Page believed that the Confederacy had been a ghastly error, and +though he abhorred the institution of slavery and attributed to it all +the woes, economic and social, from which his section suffered, he +rendered that homage to the soldiers of the South which is the due of +brave, self-sacrificing and conscientious men; yet he taught that +progress lay in regarding the four dreadful years of the Civil War as +the closed chapter of an unhappy and mistaken history and in hastening +the day when the South should resume its place as a living part of the +great American democracy. All manifestations of a contrary spirit he +ridiculed in language which was extremely readable but which at times +outraged the good conservative people whom he was attempting to convert. +He did not even spare the one figure which was almost a part of the +Southerner's religion, the Confederate general, especially that +particular type who used his war record as a stepping stone to public +office, and whose oratory, colourful and turgid in its celebrations of +the past, Page regarded as somewhat unrelated, in style and matter, to +the realities of the present. The image-breaking editor even asserted +that the Daughters of the Confederacy were not entirely a helpful +influence in Southern regeneration; for they, too, were harping always +upon the old times and keeping alive sectional antagonisms and hatreds. +This he regarded as an unworthy occupation for high-minded Southern +women, and he said so, sometimes in language that made him very +unpopular in certain circles. + +Altogether it was a piquant period in Page's life. He found that he had +suddenly become a "traitor" to his country and that his experiences in +the North had completely "Yankeeized" him. Even in more mature days, +Page's pen had its javelin-like quality; and in 1884, possessed as he +was of all the fury of youth, he never hesitated to return every blow +that was rained upon his head. As a matter of fact he had a highly +enjoyable time. The _State Chronicle_ during his editorship is one of +the most cherished recollections of older North Carolinians to-day. Even +those who hurled the liveliest epithets in his direction have long since +accepted the ideas for which Page was then contending; "the only trouble +with him," they now ruefully admit, "was that he was forty years ahead +of his time." They recall with satisfaction the satiric accounts which +Page used to publish of Democratic Conventions--solemn, long-winded, +frock-coated, white-neck-tied affairs that displayed little concern for +the reform of the tariff or of the civil service, but an energetic +interest in pensioning Confederate veterans and erecting monuments to +the Southern heroes of the Civil War. One editorial is joyfully +recalled, in which Page referred to a public officer who was +distinguished for his dignity and his family tree, but not noted for any +animated administration of his duties, as "Thothmes II." When this +bewildered functionary searched the Encyclopaedia and learned that +"Thothmes II" was an Egyptian king of the XVIIIth dynasty, whose +dessicated mummy had recently been disinterred from the hot sands of the +desert, he naturally stopped his subscription to the paper. The metaphor +apparently tickled Page, for he used it in a series of articles which +have become immortal in the political annals of North Carolina. These +have always been known as the "Mummy letters." They furnished a vivid +but rather aggravating explanation for the existing backwardness and +chauvinism of the commonwealth. All the trouble, it seems, was caused by +the "mummies." "It is an awfully discouraging business," Page wrote, "to +undertake to prove to a mummy that it is a mummy. You go up to it and +say, 'Old fellow, the Egyptian dynasties crumbled several thousand years +ago: you are a fish out of water. You have by accident or the +Providence of God got a long way out of your time. This is America.' The +old thing grins that grin which death set on its solemn features when +the world was young; and your task is so pitiful that even the humour of +it is gone. Give it up." + +Everything great in North Carolina, Page declared, belonged to a +vanished generation. "Our great lawyers, great judges, great editors, +are all of the past. . . . In the general intelligence of the people, in +intellectual force and in cultivation, we are doing nothing. We are not +doing or getting more liberal ideas, a broader view of this world. . . . +The presumptuous powers of ignorance, heredity, decayed respectability +and stagnation that control public action and public expression are +absolutely leading us back intellectually." + +But Page did more than berate the mummified aristocracy which, he +declared, was driving the best talent and initiative from the state; he +was not the only man in Raleigh who expressed these unpopular views; at +that time, indeed, he was the centre and inspiration of a group of young +progressive spirits who held frequent meetings to devise ways of +starting the state on the road to a new existence. Page then, as always, +exercised a great fascination over young men. The apparently merciless +character of his ridicule might at first convey the idea of intolerance; +the fact remains, however, that he was the most tolerant of men; he was +almost deferential to the opinions of others, even the shallow and the +inexperienced; and nothing delighted him more than an animated +discussion. His liveliness of spirits, his mental and physical vitality, +the constant sparkle of his talk, the sharp edge of his humour, +naturally drew the younger men to his side. The result was the +organization of the Wautauga Club, a gathering which held monthly +meetings for the discussion of ways and means of improving social and +educational conditions in North Carolina. The very name gives the key to +its mental outlook. The Wautauga colony was one of the last founded in +North Carolina--in the extreme west, on a plateau of the Great Smoky +Mountains; it was always famous for the energy and independence of its +people. The word "Wautauga" therefore suggested the breaker of +tradition; and it provided a stimulating name for Page's group of young +spiritual and economic pathfinders. The Wautauga Club had a brief +existence of a little more than two years, the period practically +covering Page's residence in the state; but its influence is an +important fact at the present time. It gave the state ideas that +afterward caused something like a revolution in its economic and +educational status. The noblest monument to its labours is the State +College in Raleigh, an institution which now has more than a thousand +students, for the most part studying the mechanic arts and scientific +agriculture. To this one college most North Carolinians to-day attribute +the fact that their state in appreciable measure is realizing its great +economic and industrial opportunities. From it in the last thirty years +thousands of young men have gone: in all sections of the commonwealth +they have caused the almost barren acres to yield fertile and +diversified crops; they have planted everywhere new industries; they +have unfolded unsuspected resources and everywhere created wealth and +spread enlightenment. This institution is a direct outcome of Page's +brief sojourn in his native state nearly forty years ago. The idea +originated in his brain; the files of the _State Chronicle_ tell the +story of his struggle in its behalf; the activities of the Wautauga Club +were largely concentrated upon securing its establishment. + +The State College was a great victory for Page, but final success did +not come until three years after he had left the state. For a year and a +half of hard newspaper work convinced Page that North Carolina really +had no permanent place for him. The _Chronicle_ was editorially a +success: Page's articles were widely quoted, not only in his own state +but in New England and other parts of the Union. He succeeded in +stirring up North Carolina and the South generally, but popular support +for the _Chronicle_ was not forthcoming in sufficient amount to make the +paper a commercial possibility. Reluctantly and sadly Page had to forego +his hope of playing an active part in rescuing his state from the +disasters of the Civil War. Late in the summer of 1885, he again left +for the North, which now became his permanent home. + + +III + +And with this second sojourn in New York Page's opportunity came. The +first two years he spent in newspaper work, for the most part with the +_Evening Post_, but, one day in November, 1887, a man whom he had never +seen came into his office and unfolded a new opportunity. Two years +before a rather miscellaneous group had launched an ambitious literary +undertaking. This was a monthly periodical, which, it was hoped, would +do for the United States what such publications as the _Fortnightly_ and +the _Contemporary_ were doing for England. The magazine was to have the +highest literary quality and to be sufficiently dignified to attract the +finest minds in America as contributors; its purpose was to exercise a +profound influence in politics, literature, science, and art. The +projectors had selected for this publication a title that was almost +perfection--the _Forum_--but which, after nearly two years' +experimentation, represented about the limit of their achievement. The +_Forum_ had hardly made an impression on public thought and had +attracted very few readers, although it had lost large sums of money for +its progenitors. These public-spirited gentlemen now turned to Page as +the man who might rescue them from their dilemma and achieve their +purpose. He accepted the engagement, first as manager and presently as +editor, and remained the guiding spirit of the _Forum_ for eight years, +until the summer of 1895. + +That the success of a publication is the success of its editors, and not +of its business managers and its "backers," is a truth that ought to be +generally apparent; never has this fact been so eloquently illustrated +as in the case of the _Forum_ under Page. Before his accession it had +had not the slightest importance; for the period of his editorship it is +doubtful if any review published in English exercised so great an +influence, and certainly none ever obtained so large a circulation. From +almost nothing the _Forum_, in two or three years, attracted 30,000 +subscribers--something without precedent for a publication of this +character. It had accomplished this great result simply because of the +vitality and interest of its contents. The period covered was an +important one, in the United States and Europe; it was the time of +Cleveland's second administration in this country, and of Gladstone's +fourth administration in England; it was a time of great controversy and +of a growing interest in science, education, social reform and a better +political order. All these great matters were reflected in the pages of +the _Forum_, whose list of contributors contained the most distinguished +names in all countries. Its purpose, as Page explained it, was "to +provoke discussion about subjects of contemporary interest, in which the +magazine is not a partisan, but merely the instrument." In the highest +sense, that is, its purpose was journalistic; practically everything +that it printed was related to the thought and the action of the time. +So insistent was Page on this programme that his pages were not "closed" +until a week before the day of issue. Though the _Forum_ dealt +constantly in controversial subjects it never did so in a narrow-minded +spirit; it was always ready to hear both sides of a question and the +magazine "debate," in which opposing writers handled vigorously the same +theme, was a constant feature. + +Page, indeed, represented a new type of editor. Up to that time this +functionary had been a rather solemn, inaccessible high priest; he sat +secluded in his sanctuary, and weeded out from the mass of manuscripts +dumped upon his desk the particular selections which seemed to be most +suited to his purpose. To solicit contributions would have seemed an +entirely undignified proceeding; in all cases contributors must come to +him. According to Page, however, "an editor must know men and be out +among men." His system of "making up" the magazine at first somewhat +astounded his associates. A month or two in advance of publication day +he would draw up his table of contents. This, in its preliminary stage, +amounted to nothing except a list of the main subjects which he aspired +to handle in that number. It was a hope, not a performance. The subjects +were commonly suggested by the happenings of the time--an especially +outrageous lynching, the trial of a clergyman for heresy, a new attack +upon the Monroe Doctrine, the discovery of a new substance such as +radium, the publication of an epoch-making book. Page would then fix +upon the inevitable men who could write most readably and most +authoritatively upon these topics, and "go after" them. Sometimes he +would write one of his matchless editorial letters; at other times he +would make a personal visit; if necessary, he would use any available +friends in a wire-pulling campaign. At all odds he must "get" his man; +once he had fixed upon a certain contributor nothing could divert him +from the chase. Nor did the negotiations cease after he had "landed" his +quarry. He had his way of discussing the subject with his proposed +writer, and he discussed it from every possible point of view. He would +take him to lunch or to dinner; in his quiet way he would draw him out, +find whether he really knew much about the subject, learn the attitude +that he was likely to take, and delicately slip in suggestions of his +own. Not infrequently this preliminary interview would disclose that the +much sought writer, despite appearances, was not the one who was +destined for that particular job; in this case Page would find some way +of shunting him in favour of a more promising candidate. But Page was no +mere chaser of names; there was nothing of the literary tuft-hunter +about his editorial methods. He liked to see such men as Theodore +Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, William Graham Sumner, Charles W. Eliot, +Frederic Harrison, Paul Bourget, and the like upon his title page--and +here these and many other similarly distinguished authors appeared--but +the greatest name could not attain a place there if the letter press +that followed were unworthy. Indeed Page's habit of throwing out the +contributions of the great, after paying a stiff price for them, caused +much perturbation in his counting room. One day he called in one of his +associates. + +"Do you see that waste basket?" he asked, pointing to a large receptacle +filled to overflowing with manuscripts. "All our Cleveland articles are +there!" + +He had gone to great trouble and expense to obtain a series of six +articles from the most prominent publicists and political leaders of +the country on the first year of Mr. Cleveland's second administration. +It was to be the "feature" of the number then in preparation. + +"There isn't one of them," he declared, "who has got the point. I have +thrown them all away and I am going to try to write something myself." + +And he spent a couple of days turning out an article which aroused great +public interest. When Page commissioned an article, he meant simply that +he would pay full price for it; whether he would publish it depended +entirely upon the quality of the material itself. But Page was just as +severe upon his own writings as upon those of other men. He wrote +occasionally--always under a nom-de-plume; but he had great difficulty +in satisfying his own editorial standards. After finishing an article he +would commonly send for one of his friends and read the result. + +"That is superb!" this admiring associate would sometimes say. + +In response Page would take the manuscript and, holding it aloft in two +hands, tear it into several bits, and throw the scraps into the waste +basket. + +"Oh, I can do better than that," he would laugh and in another minute he +was busy rewriting the article, from beginning to end. + +Page retired from the editorship of the _Forum_ in 1895. The severance +of relations was half a comedy, half a tragedy. The proprietors had only +the remotest relation to literature; they had lost much money in the +enterprise before Page became editor and only the fortunate accident of +securing his services had changed their losing venture into a financial +success. In a moment of despair, before the happier period had arrived, +they offered to sell the property to Page and his friends. Page quickly +assembled a new group to purchase control, when, much to the amazement +of the old owners, the _Forum_ began to make money. Instead of having a +burden on their hands, the proprietors suddenly discovered that they had +a gold mine. They therefore refused to deliver their holdings and an +inevitable struggle ensued for control. Page could edit a magazine and +turn a shipwrecked enterprise into a profitable one; but, in a tussle of +this kind, he was no match for the shrewd business men who owned the +property. When the time came for counting noses Page and his friends +found themselves in a minority. Of course his resignation as editor +necessarily followed this little unpleasantness. And just as inevitably +the _Forum_ again began to lose money, and soon sank into an obscurity +from which it has never emerged. + +The _Forum_ had established Page's reputation as an editor, and the +competition for his services was lively. The distinguished Boston +publishing house of Houghton, Mifflin & Company immediately invited him +to become a part of their organization. When Horace E. Scudder, in 1898, +resigned the editorship of the _Atlantic Monthly_, Page succeeded him. +Thus Page became the successor of James Russell Lowell, James T. Fields, +William D. Howells, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich as the head of this famous +periodical. This meant that he had reached the top of his profession. He +was now forty-three years old. + +No American publication had ever had so brilliant a history. Founded in +1857, in the most flourishing period of the New England writers, its +pages had first published many of the best essays of Emerson, the second +series of the Biglow papers as well as many other of Lowell's writings, +poems of Longfellow and Whittier, such great successes as Holmes's +"Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," Mrs. Howe's "Battle Hymn of the +Republic," and the early novels of Henry James. If America had a +literature, the _Atlantic_ was certainly its most successful periodical +exponent. Yet, in a sense, the _Atlantic_, by the time Page succeeded to +the editorship, had become the victim of its dazzling past. Its recent +editors had lived too exclusively in their back numbers. They had +conducted the magazine too much for the restricted audience of Boston +and New England. There was a time, indeed, when the business office +arranged the subscribers in two classes--"Boston" and "foreign"; +"Boston" representing their local adherents, and "foreign" the loyal +readers who lived in the more benighted parts of the United States. One +of its editors had been heard to boast that he never solicited a +contribution; it was not his business to be a literary drummer! Let the +truth be fairly spoken: when Page made his first appearance in the +_Atlantic_ office, the magazine was unquestionably on the decline. Its +literary quality was still high; the momentum that its great +contributors had given it was still keeping the publication alive; +entrance into its columns still represented the ultimate ambition of the +aspiring American writer; but it needed a new spirit to insure its +future. What it required was the kind of editing that had suddenly made +the _Forum_ one of the greatest of English-written reviews. This is the +reason why the canny Yankee proprietors had reached over to New York and +grasped Page as quickly as the capitalists of the _Forum_ let him slip +between their fingers. + +Page's sense of humour discovered a certain ironic aspect in his +position as the dictator of this famous New England magazine. The fact +that his manner was impatiently energetic and somewhat startling to the +placid atmosphere of Park Street was not the thing that really signified +its break with its past. But here was a Southerner firmly entrenched in +a headquarters that had long been sacred to the New England +abolitionists. One of the first sights that greeted Page, as he came +into the office, was the angular and spectacled countenance of William +Lloyd Garrison, gazing down from a steel engraving on the wall. One of +Garrison's sons was a colleague, and the anterooms were frequently +cluttered with dusky gentlemen patiently waiting for interviews with +this benefactor of their race. Page once was careless enough to inform +Mr. Garrison that "one of your niggers" was waiting outside for an +audience. "I very much regret, Mr. Page," came the answer, "that you +should insist on spelling 'Negro' with two 'g's'." Despite the mock +solemnity of this rebuke, perennial good-nature and raillery prevailed +between the son of Garrison and his disrespectful but ever sympathetic +Southern friend. Indeed, one of Page's earliest performances was to +introduce a spirit of laughter and genial cooeperation into a rather +solemn and self-satisfied environment. Mr. Mifflin, the head of the +house, even formally thanked Page "for the hearty human way in which you +take hold of life." Mr. Ellery Sedgwick, the present editor of the +_Atlantic_, has described the somewhat disconcerting descent of Page +upon the editorial sanctuary of James Russell Lowell: + + "Were a visitant from another sphere to ask me for the incarnation + of those qualities we love to call American, I should turn to a + familiar gallery of my memory and point to the living portrait that + hangs there of Walter Page. A sort of foursquareness, bluntness, it + seemed to some; an uneasy, often explosive energy; a disposition to + underrate fine drawn nicenesses of all sorts; ingrained Yankee + common sense, checking his vaulting enthusiasm; enormous + self-confidence, impatience of failure--all of these were in him; + and he was besides affectionate to a fault, devoted to his country, + his family, his craft--a strong, bluff, tender man. + + "Those were the decorous days of the old tradition, and Page's + entrance into the 'atmosphere' of Park Street has taken on the + dignity of legend. There were all kinds of signs and portents, as + the older denizens will tell you. Strange breezes floated through + the office, electric emanations, and a pervasive scent of tobacco, + which--so the local historian says--had been unknown in the + vicinity since the days of Walter Raleigh, except for the literary + aroma of Aldrich's quarantined sanctum upstairs. Page's coming + marked the end of small ways. His first requirement was, in lieu of + a desk, a table that might have served a family of twelve for + Thanksgiving dinner. No one could imagine what that vast, polished + tableland could serve for until they watched the editor at work. + Then they saw. Order vanished and chaos reigned. Huge piles of + papers, letters, articles, reports, books, pamphlets, magazines, + congregated themselves as if by magic. To work in such confusion + seemed hopeless, but Page eluded the congestion by the simple + expedient of moving on. He would light a fresh cigar, give the + editorial chair a hitch, and begin his work in front of a fresh + expanse of table, with no clutter of the past to disturb the new + day's litter. + + "The motive power of his work was enthusiasm. Never was more + generous welcome given to a newcomer than Page held out to the + successful manuscript of an unknown. I remember, though I heard the + news second hand at the time, what a day it was in the office when + the first manuscript from the future author of 'To Have and To + Hold,' came in from an untried Southern girl. He walked up and + down, reading paragraphs aloud and slapping the crisp manuscript + to enforce his commendation. To take a humbler instance, I recall + the words of over generous praise with which he greeted the first + paper I ever sent to an editor quite as clearly as I remember the + monstrous effort which had brought it into being. Sometimes he + would do a favoured manuscript the honour of taking it out to lunch + in his coat-pocket, and an associate vividly recalls eggs, coffee, + and pie in a near-by restaurant, while, in a voice that could be + heard by the remotest lunchers, Page read passages which many of + them were too startled to appreciate. He was not given to + overrating, but it was not in his nature to understate. 'I tell + you,' said he, grumbling over some unfortunate proof-sheets from + Manhattan, 'there isn't one man in New York who can write + English--not from the Battery to Harlem Heights.' And if the faults + were moral rather than literary, his disapproval grew in emphasis. + There is more than tradition in the tale of the Negro who, + presuming on Page's deep interest in his race, brought to his desk + a manuscript copied word for word from a published source. Page + recognized the deception, and seizing the rascal's collar with a + firm editorial grip, rejected the poem, and ejected the poet, with + an energy very invigorating to the ancient serenities of the + office. + + "Page was always effervescent with ideas. Like an editor who would + have made a good fisherman, he used to say that you had to cast a + dozen times before you could get a strike. He was forever in those + days sending out ideas and suggestions and invitations to write. + The result was electric, and the magazine became with a suddenness + (of which only an editor can appreciate the wonder) a storehouse of + animating thoughts. He avoided the mistake common to our craft of + editing a magazine for the immediate satisfaction of his + colleagues. 'Don't write for the office,' he would say. 'Write for + outside,' and so his magazine became a living thing. His phrase + suggests one special gift that Page had, for which his profession + should do him especial honour. He was able, quite beyond the powers + of any man of my acquaintance, to put compendiously into words the + secrets of successful editing. It was capital training just to hear + him talk. 'Never save a feature,' he used to say. 'Always work for + the next number. Forget the others. Spend everything just on that.' + And to those who know, there is divination in the principle. Again + he understood instinctively that to write well a man must not only + have something to say, but must long to say it. A highly + intelligent representative of the coloured race came to him with a + philosophic essay. Page would have none of it. 'I know what you are + thinking of,' said Page. 'You are thinking of the barriers we set + up against you, and the handicap of your lot. If you will write + what it feels like to be a Negro, I will print that.' The result + was a paper which has seemed to me the most moving expression of + the hopeless hope of the race I know of. + + "Page was generous in his cooeperation. He never drew a rigid line + about his share in any enterprise, but gave and took help with each + and all. A lover of good English, with an honest passion for things + tersely said, Page esteemed good journalism far above any + second-rate manifestation of more pretentious forms; but many of us + will regret that he was not privileged to find some outlet for his + energies in which aspiration for real literature might have played + an ampler part. For the literature of the past Page had great + respect, but his interest was ever in the present and the future. + He was forever fulminating against bad writing, and hated the + ignorant and slipshod work of the hack almost as much as he + despised the sham of the man who affected letters, the dabbler and + the poetaster. His taste was for the roast beef of literature, not + for the side dishes and the trimmings, and his appreciation of the + substantial work of others was no surer than his instinct for his + own performance. He was an admirable writer of exposition, + argument, and narrative--solid and thoughtful, but never dull. . . . + I came into close relations with him and from him I learned more of + my profession than from any one I have ever known. Scores of other + men would say the same." + +But the fact that a new hand had seized the _Atlantic_ was apparent in +other places than in the _Atlantic_ office itself. One of Page's +contributors of the _Forum_ days, Mr. Courtney DeKalb, happened to be in +St. Louis when the first number of the magazine under its new editor +made its appearance. Mr. DeKalb had been out of the country for some +time and knew nothing of the change. Happening accidentally to pick up +the _Atlantic_, the table of contents caught his eye. It bore the traces +of an unmistakable hand. Only one man, he said to himself, could +assemble such a group as that, and above all, only Page could give such +an enticing turn of the titles. He therefore sat down and wrote his old +friend congratulating him on his accession to the _Atlantic Monthly_. +The change that now took place was indeed a conspicuous, almost a +startling one. The _Atlantic_ retained all its old literary flavour, for +to its traditions Page was as much devoted as the highest caste +Bostonian; it still gave up much of its space to a high type of fiction, +poetry, and reviews of contemporary literature, but every number +contained also an assortment of articles which celebrated the prevailing +activities of men and women in all worth-while fields of effort. There +were discussions of present-day politics, and these even became +personal dissections of presidential candidates; there were articles on +the racial characters of the American population: Theodore Roosevelt was +permitted to discuss the New York police; Woodrow Wilson to pass in +review the several elements that made the Nation; Booker T. Washington +to picture the awakening of the Negro; John Muir to enlighten Americans +upon a national beauty and wealth of which they had been woefully +ignorant, their forests; William Allen White to describe certain aspects +of his favourite Kansas; E.L. Godkin to review the dangers and the hopes +of American democracy; Jacob Rues to tell about the Battle with the Slum; +and W.G. Frost to reveal for the first time the archaic civilization of +the Kentucky mountaineers. The latter article illustrated Page's genius +at rewriting titles. Mr. Frost's theme was that these Kentucky +mountaineers were really Elizabethan survivals; that their dialect, +their ballads, their habits were really a case of arrested development; +that by studying them present-day Americans could get a picture of their +distant forbears. Page gave vitality to the presentation by changing a +commonplace title to this one: "Our Contemporary Ancestors." + +There were those who were offended by Page's willingness to seek +inspiration on the highways and byways and even in newspapers, for not +infrequently he would find hidden away in a corner an idea that would +result in valuable magazine matter. On one occasion at least this +practice had important literary consequences. One day he happened to +read that a Mrs. Robert Hanning had died in Toronto, the account +casually mentioning the fact that Mrs. Hanning was the youngest sister +of Thomas Carlyle. Page handed this clipping to a young assistant, and +told him to take the first train to Canada. The editor could easily +divine that a sister of Carlyle, expatriated for forty-six years on +this side of the Atlantic, must have received a large number of letters +from her brother, and it was safe to assume that they had been carefully +preserved. Such proved to be the fact; and a new volume of Carlyle +letters, of somewhat more genial character than the other collections, +was the outcome of this visit[4]. And another fruit of this journalistic +habit was "The Memoirs of a Revolutionist," by Prince Peter Kropotkin. +In 1897 the great Russian nihilist was lecturing in Boston. Page met +him, learned from his own lips his story, and persuaded him to put it in +permanent form. This willingness of Page to admit such a revolutionary +person into the pages of the _Atlantic_ caused some excitement in +conventional circles. In fact, it did take some courage, but Page never +hesitated; the man was of heroic mould, he had a great story to tell, he +wielded an engaging pen, and his purposes were high-minded. A great book +of memoirs was the result. + +Mr. Sedgwick refers above to Page's editorial fervour when Miss Mary +Johnston's "Prisoners of Hope" first fell out of the blue sky into his +Boston office. Page's joy was not less keen because the young author was +a Virginia girl, and because she had discovered that the early period of +Virginia history was a field for romance. When, a few months afterward, +Page was casting about for an _Atlantic_ serial, Miss Johnston and this +Virginia field seemed to be an especially favourable prospect. +"Prisoners of Hope" had been published as a book and had made a good +success, but Miss Johnston's future still lay ahead of her. With Page to +think meant to act, and so, instead of writing a formal letter, he at +once jumped on a train for Birmingham, Alabama, where Miss Johnston was +then living. "I remember quite distinctly that first meeting," writes +Miss Johnston. "The day was rainy. Standing at my window I watched Mr. +Page--a characteristic figure, air and walk--approach the house. When a +few minutes later I met him he was simplicity and kindliness itself. +This was my first personal contact with publishers (my publishers) or +with editors of anything so great as the _Atlantic_. My heart beat! But +he was friendly and Southern. I told him what I had done upon a new +story. He was going on that night. Might he take the manuscript with him +and read it upon the train? It might--he couldn't say positively, of +course--but it might have serial possibilities. I was only too glad for +him to have the manuscript. I forget just how many chapters I had +completed. But it was not quite in order. Could I get it so in a few +hours? In that case he would send a messenger for it from the hotel. +Yes, I could. Very good! A little further talk and he left with a strong +handshake. Three or four hours later he had the manuscript and took it +with him from Birmingham that night." + +Page's enterprising visit had put into his hands the half-finished +manuscript of a story, "To Have and to Hold," which, when printed in the +_Atlantic_, more than doubled its circulation, and which, when made into +a book, proved one of the biggest successes since "Uncle Tom's Cabin." + +Page's most independent stroke in his _Atlantic_ days came with the +outbreak of the Spanish-American War. Boston was then the headquarters +of a national mood which has almost passed out of popular remembrance. +Its spokesmen called themselves anti-imperialists. The theory back of +their protest was that the American declaration of war on Spain was not +only the wanton attack of a great bully upon a feeble little country: it +was something that was bound to have deplorable consequences. The +United States was breaking with its past and engaging in European +quarrels; as a consequence of the war it would acquire territories and +embark on a career of "imperialism." Page was impatient at this kind of +twaddle. He declared that the Spanish War was a "necessary act of +surgery for the health of civilization." He did not believe that a +nation, simply because it was small, should be permitted to maintain +indefinitely a human slaughter house at the door of the United States. +The _Atlantic_ for June, 1898, gave the so-called anti-imperialists a +thrill of horror. On the cover appeared the defiantly flying American +flag; the first article was a vigorous and approving presentation of the +American case against Spain; though this was unsigned, its incisive +style at once betrayed the author. The _Atlantic_ had printed the +American flag on its cover during the Civil War; but certain New +Englanders thought that this latest struggle, in its motives and its +proportions, was hardly entitled to the distinction. Page declared, +however, that the Spanish War marked a new period in history; and he +endorsed the McKinley Administration, not only in the war itself, but in +its consequences, particularly the annexation of the Philippine Islands. + +Page greatly enjoyed life in Boston and Cambridge. The _Atlantic_ was +rapidly growing in circulation and in influence, and the new friends +that its editor was making were especially to his taste. He now had a +family of four children, three boys and one girl--and their bringing up +and education, as he said at this time, constituted his real occupation. +So far as he could see, in the summer of 1899, he was permanently +established in life. But larger events in the publishing world now again +pulled him back to New York. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 4: "Letters of Thomas Carlyle to his Youngest Sister." Edited +by Charles Townsend Copeland. Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1899.] + + + + +CHAPTER III + +"THE FORGOTTEN MAN" + +I + + +In July, 1899, the publishing community learned that financial +difficulties were seriously embarrassing the great house of Harper. For +nearly a century this establishment had maintained a position almost of +preeminence among American publishers. Three generations of Harpers had +successively presided over its destinies; its magazines and books had +become almost a household necessity in all parts of the United States, +and its authors included many of the names most celebrated in American +letters. The average American could no more associate the idea of +bankruptcy with this great business than with the federal Treasury +itself. Yet this incredible disaster had virtually taken place. At this +time the public knew nothing of the impending ruin; the fact was, +however, that, in July, 1899, the banking house of J.P. Morgan & Company +practically controlled this property. This was the situation which again +called Page to New York. + +In the preceding year Mr. S.S. McClure, whose recent success as editor +and publisher had been little less than a sensation, had joined forces +with Mr. Frank N. Doubleday, and organized the new firm of Doubleday & +McClure. This business was making rapid progress; and that it would soon +become one of the leading American publishing houses was already +apparent. It was perhaps not unnatural, therefore, that Mr. J. Pierpont +Morgan, scanning the horizon for the men who might rescue the Harper +concern from approaching disaster, should have had his attention drawn +to Mr. McClure and Mr. Doubleday. "The failure of Harper & Brothers," +Mr. Morgan said in a published statement, "would be a national +calamity." One morning, therefore, a member of the Harper firm called +upon Mr. McClure. Without the slightest hesitation he unfolded the +Harper situation to his astonished contemporary. The solution proposed +was more astonishing still. This was that Mr. Doubleday and Mr. McClure +should amalgamate their young and vigorous business with the Harper +enterprise and become the active managers of the new corporation. Both +Mr. McClure and Mr. Doubleday were comparatively young men, and the +magnitude of the proposed undertaking at first rather staggered them. It +was as though a small independent steel maker should suddenly be invited +to take over the United States Steel Corporation. Mr. McClure, +characteristically impetuous and daring, wished to accept the invitation +outright; Mr. Doubleday, however, suggested a period of probation. The +outcome was that the two men offered to take charge of Harper & Brothers +for a few months, and then decide whether they wished to make the +association a permanent one. One thing was immediately apparent; Messrs. +Doubleday and McClure, able as they were, would need the help of the +best talent available in the work that lay ahead. The first man to whom +they turned was Page, who presently left Boston and took up his business +abode at Franklin Square. The rumble of the elevated road was somewhat +distracting after the four quiet years in Park Street, but the new daily +routine was not lacking in interest. The Harper experiment, however, did +not end as Mr. Morgan had hoped. After a few months Messrs. Doubleday, +Page and McClure withdrew, and left the work of rescue to be performed +by Mr. George Harvey, who, curiously enough, succeeded Page, twenty-one +years afterward, in an even more important post--that of ambassador to +the Court of St. James's. The one important outcome of the Harper +episode, so far as Page was concerned, was the forming of a close +business and personal association with Mr. Frank N. Doubleday. As soon +as the two men definitely decided not to assume the Harper +responsibility, therefore, they joined forces and founded the firm of +Doubleday, Page & Company. Page now had the opportunity which he had +long wished for; the mere editing of magazines, even magazines of such +an eminent character as the _Forum_ and the _Atlantic Monthly_, could +hardly satisfy his ambition; he yearned to possess something which he +could call his own, at least in part. + +The life of an editor has its unsatisfactory aspect, unless the editor +himself has an influential ownership in his periodical. Page now found +his opportunity to establish a monthly magazine which he could regard as +his own in both senses. He was its untrammelled editor, and also, in +part, its proprietor. All editors and writers will sympathize with the +ideas expressed in a letter written about this time to Page's friend, +Mr. William Roscoe Thayer, already distinguished as the historian of +Italian unity and afterward to win fame as the biographer of Cavour and +John Hay. When the first number of the _World's Work_ appeared Mr. +Thayer wrote, expressing a slight disappointment that its leading +tendency was journalistic rather than literary and intellectual. "When +you edited the _Forum_," wrote Mr. Thayer, "I perceived that no such +talent for editing had been seen in America before, and when, a little +later, you rejuvenated the _Atlantic_, making it for a couple of years +the best periodical printed in English, I felt that you had a great +mission before you as evoker and editor of the best literary work and +weightiest thought on important topics of our foremost men." He had +hoped to see a magnified _Atlantic_, and the new publication, splendid +as it was, seemed to be of rather more popular character than the +publications with which Page had previously been associated. Page met +this challenge in his usual hearty fashion. + + _To William Roscoe Thayer_ + 34 Union Square East, New York, + December 5, 1900. + + My Dear Thayer: + + The _World's Work_ has brought me nothing so good as your letter of + yesterday. When Mrs. Page read it, she shouted "Now that's it!" For + "it" read "truth," and you will have her meaning and mine. My + thanks you may be sure you have, in great and earnest abundance. + + You surprise me in two ways--(1) that you think as well of the + magazine as you do. If it have half the force and earnestness that + you say it has, how happy I shall be, for then it will surely bring + something to pass. The other way in which you surprise me is by the + flattering things that you say about my conduct of the _Atlantic_. + Alas! it was not what you in your kind way say--no, no. + + Of course the _World's Work_ is not yet by any means what I hope to + make it. But it has this incalculable advantage (to me) over every + other magazine in existence: it is mine (mine and my partners', + i.e., partly mine), and I shall not work to build up a good piece + of machinery and then be turned out to graze as an old horse is. + This of course, is selfish and personal--not wholly selfish either, + I think. I threw down the _Atlantic_ for this reason: (Consider the + history of its editors) Lowell[5] complained bitterly that he was + never rewarded properly for the time and work he did; Fields was + (in a way) one of its owners; it was sold out from under Howells, + etc., etc. I might (probably should) have been at the mercy + completely of owners some day who would have dismissed me for a + younger man. Nearly all hired editors suffer this fate. My good + friends in Boston were sincere in thinking that my day of doom + would never come; but they didn't offer me any guarantee--part + ownership, for instance; and the years go swiftly. I could afford, + of my own volition, to leave the _Atlantic_. I couldn't afford to + take permanently the risks that a hired editor must take. Nor + should I ever again have turned my hand to such a task except on a + magazine of my own. I should have sought other employment. There + are many easier and better and more influential things to do--yet; + ten years hence I might have been too old. Harry Houghton[6] has an + old horse thirty years old. I used to see him grazing sometimes and + hear his master's self-congratulatory explanation of his own + kindness to that faithful beast. In the office of Houghton, Mifflin + & Company there is an old man whom I used to see every + day--pensioned, grazing. Then I would go home and see four bright + children. Three of them are now away from home at school; and the + four cost a pretty penny to educate. My income had been the same + for ten years-or very nearly the same. If I was a "magic" editor, I + confess I didn't see the magic; and there is no power under Heaven + or in it that can prove to me that I ought to keep on making + magazines as a hired man--without the common security of permanent + service for lack of which nearly all my predecessors lost their + chance. + + But this is not all, nor half. A man ought to express himself, + ought to live his own life, say his own little say, before silence + comes. The "say" may be bad--a mere yawp, and silence might be more + becoming. But the same argument would make a man dissatisfied with + his own nose if it happened to be ugly. It's _his_ nose, and he + must content himself. So it's _his_ yawp and he must let it go. + + I'm not going to make the new magazine my own megaphone--you may be + sure of that. It will nevertheless contain my general + interpretation of things, in which I swear I do believe! The first + thing, of course, is to establish it. Then it can be shaped more + nearly into what I wish it to become. If it seem unmannerly, + aggressive, I know no other way to make it heard. If it died, then + the game would be up. Well, we seem to have established it at once. + It promises not to cost us a penny of investment. + + Now, the magazines need new topics. They have all threshed over old + straw for many years. There is _one_ new subject, to my thinking + worth all the old ones: the new impulse in American life, the new + feeling of nationality, our coming to realize ourselves. To my mind + there is greater promise in democracy than men of any preceding + period ever dared dream of--aggressive democracy--growth by action. + Our writers (the few we have) are yet in the pre-democratic era. + When men's imaginations lay hold on the things that already begin + to appear above the horizon, we shall have something worth reading. + At present I can do no more than bawl out, "See! here are new + subjects." One of these days somebody will come along who can write + about them. I have started out without a writer. Fiske is under + contract, James would give nothing more to the _Atlantic_, you were + ill (I thank Heaven you are no longer so) the second-and third-rate + essayists have been bought by mere Wall Street publishers. Beyond + these are the company of story tellers and beyond them only a + dreary waste of dead-level unimaginative men and women. I can + (soon) get all that I could ever have got in the _Atlantic_ and new + ones (I know they'll come) whom I could never have got there. + + You'll see--within a year or two--by far a better magazine than I + have ever made; and you and I will differ in nothing unless you + feel despair about the breakdown of certain democratic theories, + which I think were always mere theories. Let 'em go! The real + thing, which is life and action, is better. + + Heartily and always your grateful friend, + Walter H. Page + +Thus the fact that Page's new magazine was intended for a popular +audience was not the result of accident, but of design. It represented a +periodical plan which had long been taking shape in Page's mind. The +things that he had been doing for the _Forum_ and the _Atlantic_ he +aspired to do for a larger audience than that to which publications of +this character could appeal. Scholar though Page was, and lover of the +finest things in literature that he had always been, yet this sympathy +and interest had always lain with the masses. Perhaps it is impossible +to make literature democratic, but Page believed that he would be +genuinely serving the great cause that was nearest his heart if he could +spread wide the facts of the modern world, especially the facts of +America, and if he could clothe the expression in language which, while +always dignified and even "literary," would still be sufficiently +touched with the vital, the picturesque, and the "human," to make his +new publication appeal to a wide audience of intelligent, everyday +Americans. It was thus part of his general programme of improving the +status of the average man, and it formed a logical part of his +philosophy of human advancement. For the only acceptable measure of any +civilization, Page believed, was the extent to which it improved the +condition of the common citizen. A few cultured and university-trained +men at the top; a few ancient families living in luxury; a few painters +and poets and statesmen and generals; these things, in Page's view, did +not constitute a satisfactory state of society; the real test was the +extent to which the masses participated in education, in the necessities +and comforts of existence, in the right of self-evolution and +self-expression, in that "equality of opportunity," which, Page never +wearied of repeating, "was the basis of social progress." The mere right +to vote and to hold office was not democracy; parliamentary majorities +and political caucuses were not democracy--at the best these things were +only details and not the most important ones; democracy was the right of +every man to enjoy, in accordance with his aptitudes of character and +mentality, the material and spiritual opportunities that nature and +science had placed at the disposition of mankind. This democratic creed +had now become the dominating interest of Page's life. From this time on +it consumed all his activities. His new magazine set itself first of all +to interpret the American panorama from this point of view; to describe +the progress that the several parts of the country were making in the +several manifestations of democracy--education, agriculture, industry, +social life, politics--and the importance that Page attached to them was +practically in the order named. Above all it concerned itself with the +men and women who were accomplishing most in the definite realization of +this great end. + +And now also Page began to carry his activities far beyond mere print. +In his early residence in New York, from 1885 to 1895, he had always +taken his part in public movements; he had been a vital spirit in the +New York Reform Club, which was engaged mainly in advocating the +Cleveland tariff; he had always shown a willingness to experiment with +new ideas; at one time he had mingled with Socialists and he had been +quite captivated by the personal and literary charm of Henry George. +After 1900, however, Page became essentially a public man, though not in +the political sense. His work as editor and writer was merely one +expression of the enthusiasms that occupied his mind. From 1900 until +1913, when he left for England, life meant for him mainly an effort to +spread the democratic ideal, as he conceived it; concretely it +represented a constant campaign for improving the fundamental +opportunities and the everyday social advantages of the masses. + + +II + +Inevitably the condition of the people in his own homeland enlisted +Page's sympathy, for he had learned of their necessities at first hand. +The need of education had powerfully impressed him even as a boy. At +twenty-three he began writing articles for the Raleigh _Observer_, and +practically all of them were pleas for the education of the Southern +child. His subsequent activities of this kind, as editor of the _State +Chronicle_, have already been described. The American from other parts +of the country is rather shocked when he first learns of the +backwardness of education in the South a generation ago. In any real +sense there was no publicly supported system for training the child. A +few wretched hovels, scattered through a sparsely settled country, +served as school houses; a few uninspiring and neglected women, earning +perhaps $50 or $75 a year, did weary duty as teachers; a few groups of +anemic and listless children, attending school for only forty days a +year--such was the preparation for life which most Southern states gave +the less fortunate of their citizens. The glaring fact that emphasized +the outcome of this official carelessness was an illiteracy, among white +men and women, of 26 per cent. Among the Negroes it was vastly larger. + +The first exhortation to reform came from the Wautauga Club, which Page +had organized in Raleigh in 1884. After Page had left his native state, +other men began preaching the same crusade. Perhaps the greatest of +those advocates whom the South loves to refer to as "educational +statesmen" was Dr. Charles D. McIver, of Greensboro, N.C. McIver's +personality and career had an heroic quality all their own. Back in the +'eighties McIver and Edwin A. Alderman, now President of the University +of Virginia, endured all kinds of hardships and buffetings in the cause +of popular education; they stumped the state, much like political +campaigners, preaching the strange new gospel in mountain cabin, in +village church, at the cart's tail--all in an attempt to arouse their +lethargic countrymen to the duty of laying a small tax to save their +children from illiteracy. Some day the story of McIver and Alderman will +find its historian; when it does, he will learn that, in those dark +ages, one of their greatest sources of inspiration was Walter Page. +McIver, a great burly boy, physically and intellectually, so full of +energy that existence for him was little less than an unending tornado, +so full of zeal that any other occupation than that of training the +neglected seemed a trifling with life, so sleepless in his efforts that, +at the age of forty-five, he one day dropped dead while travelling on a +railroad train; Alderman, a man of finer culture, quieter in his +methods, an orator of polish and restraint, but an advocate vigorous in +the prosecution of the great end; and Page, living faraway in the North, +but pumping his associates full of courage and enthusiasm--these were +the three guardsmen of this new battle for the elevation of the white +and black men of the South. McIver's great work was the State Normal +College for Women, which, amid unparalleled difficulties, he founded +for teaching the teachers of the new Southern generation. It was at this +institution that Page, in 1897, delivered the address which gave the +cause of Southern education that one thing which is worth armies to any +struggling reform--a phrase; and it was a phrase that lived in the +popular mind and heart and summed up, in a way that a thousand speeches +could never have done, the great purpose for which the best people in +the state were striving. + +His editorial gift for title-making now served Page in good stead. "The +Forgotten Man," which was the heading of his address, immediately passed +into the common speech of the South and even at this day inevitably +appears in all discussions of social progress. It was again Page's +familiar message of democracy, of improving the condition of the +everyday man, woman, and child; and the message, as is usually the case +in all incitements to change, involved many unpleasant facts. Page had +first of all to inform his fellow Southerners that it was only in the +South that "The Forgotten Man" was really an outstanding feature. He did +not exist in New England, in the Middle States, in the Mississippi +Valley, or in the West, or existed in these regions to so slight an +extent that he was not a grave menace to society. But in the South the +situation was quite different. And for this fact the explanation was +found in history. The South certainly could not fix the blame upon +Nature. In natural wealth--in forests, mines, quarries, rich soil, in +the unlimited power supplied by water courses--the Southern States +formed perhaps the richest region in the country. These things North +Carolina and her sister communities had not developed; more startling +still, they had not developed a source of wealth that was infinitely +greater than all these combined; they had not developed their men and +their women. The Southern States represented the purest "Anglo-Saxon" +strain in the United States; to-day in North Carolina only one person in +four hundred is of "foreign stock," and a voting list of almost any town +contains practically nothing except the English and Scotch names that +were borne by the original settlers. Yet here democracy, in any real +sense, had scarcely obtained a footing. The region which had given +Thomas Jefferson and George Washington to the world was still, in the +year 1897, organized upon an essentially aristocratic basis. The +conception of education which prevailed in the most hide-bound +aristocracies of Europe still ruled south of the Potomac. There was no +acceptance of that fundamental American doctrine that education was the +function of the state. It was generally regarded as the luxury of the +rich and the socially high placed; it was certainly not for the poor; +and it was a generally accepted view that those who enjoyed this +privilege must pay for it out of their own pockets. Again Page returned +to the "mummy" theme--the fact that North Carolina, and the South +generally, were too much ruled by "dead men's" hands. The state was +ruled by a "little aristocracy, which, in its social and economic +character, made a failure and left a stubborn crop of wrong social +notions behind it--especially about education." The chief backward +influences were the stump and the pulpit. "From the days of King George +to this day, the politicians of North Carolina have declaimed against +taxes, thus laying the foundation of our poverty. It was a misfortune +for us that the quarrel with King George happened to turn upon the +question of taxation--so great was the dread of taxation that was +instilled into us." What had the upper classes done for the education of +the average man? The statistics of illiteracy, the deplorable economic +and social conditions of the rural population--and most of the +population of North Carolina was rural--furnished the answer. + +Thus the North Carolina aristocracy had failed in education and the +failure of the Church had been as complete and deplorable. The preachers +had established preparatory schools for boys and girls, but these were +under the control of sects; and so education was either a class or an +ecclesiastical concern. "The forgotten man remained forgotten. The +aristocratic scheme of education had passed him by. To a less extent, +but still to the extent of hundreds of thousands, the ecclesiastical +scheme had passed him by." But even the education which these +institutions gave was inferior. Page told his North Carolina audience +that the University of which they were so proud did not rank with +Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other universities of the North. The state +had not produced great scholars nor established great libraries. In the +estimation of publishers North Carolina was unimportant as a book +market. "By any test that may be made, both these systems have failed +even with the classes that they appealed to." The net result was that +"One in every four was wholly forgotten"--that is, was unable to read +and write. And the worst of it all was that the victim of this neglect +was not disturbed over his situation. "The forgotten man was content to +be forgotten. He became not only a dead weight, but a definite opponent +of social progress. He faithfully heard the politician on the stump +praise him for virtues that he did not have. The politicians told him +that he lived in the best state in the Union; told him that the other +politicians had some hare-brained plan to increase his taxes, told him +as a consolation for his ignorance how many of his kinsmen had been +killed in the war, told him to distrust any one who wished to change +anything. What was good enough for his fathers was good enough for him. +Thus the 'forgotten man' became a dupe, became thankful for being +neglected. And the preacher told him that the ills and misfortunes of +this life were blessings in disguise, that God meant his poverty as a +means of grace, and that if he accepted the right creed all would be +well with him. These influences encouraged inertia. There could not have +been a better means to prevent the development of the people." + +Even more tragic than these "forgotten men" were the "forgotten women." +"Thin and wrinkled in youth from ill-prepared food, clad without warmth +or grace, living in untidy houses, working from daylight till bedtime at +the dull round of weary duties, the slaves of men of equal slovenliness, +the mothers of joyless children--all uneducated if not illiterate." +"This sight," Page told his hearers, "every one of you has seen, not in +the countries whither we send missionaries, but in the borders of the +State of North Carolina, in this year of grace." + +"Our civilization," he declared, "has been a failure." Both the +politicians and the preacher had failed to lift the masses. "It is a +time for a wiser statesmanship and a more certain means of grace." He +admitted that there had been recent progress in North Carolina, owing +largely to the work of McIver and Alderman, but taxes for educational +purposes were still low. What was the solution? "A public school system +generously supported by public sentiment and generously maintained by +both state and local taxation, is the only effective means to develop +the forgotten man and even more surely the only means to develop the +forgotten woman. . . ." "If any beggar for a church school oppose a local +tax for schools or a higher school tax, take him to the huts of the +forgotten women and children, and in their hopeless presence remind him +that the church system of education has not touched tens of thousands of +these lives and ask him whether he thinks it wrong that the commonwealth +should educate them. If he think it wrong ask him and ask the people +plainly, whether he be a worthy preacher of the gospel that declares one +man equal to another in the sight of God? . . . The most sacred thing in +the commonwealth and to the commonwealth is the child, whether it be +your child or the child of the dull-faced mother of the hovel. The child +of the dull-faced mother may, as you know, be the most capable child in +the state. . . . Several of the strongest personalities that were ever born +in North Carolina were men whose very fathers were unknown. We have all +known two such, who held high places in Church and State. President +Eliot said a little while ago that the ablest man that he had known in +his many years' connection with Harvard University was the son of a +brick mason." + +In place of the ecclesiastical creed that had guided North Carolina for +so many generations Page proposed his creed of democracy. He advised +that North Carolina commit this to memory and teach it to its children. +It was as follows: + + "I believe in the free public training of both the hands and the + mind of every child born of woman. + + "I believe that by the right training of men we add to the wealth + of the world. All wealth is the creation of man, and he creates it + only in proportion to the trained uses of the community; and the + more men we train the more wealth everyone may create. + + "I believe in the perpetual regeneration of society, and in the + immortality of democracy and in growth everlasting." + +Thus Page nailed his theses upon the door of his native state, and +mighty was the reverberation. In a few weeks Page's Greensboro address +had made its way all over the Southern States, and his melancholy +figure, "the forgotten man" had become part of the indelible imagery of +the Southern people. The portrait etched itself deeply into the popular +consciousness for the very good reason that its truth was pretty +generally recognized. The higher type of newspaper, though it winced +somewhat at Page's strictures, manfully recognized that the best way of +meeting his charge was by setting to work and improving conditions. The +fact is that the better conscience of North Carolina welcomed this +eloquent description of unquestioned evils; but the gentlemen whom Page +used to stigmatize as "professional Southerners"--the men who +commercialized class and sectional prejudice to their own political and +financial or ecclesiastical profit--fell foul of this "renegade," this +"Southern Yankee" this sacrilegious "intruder" who had dared to visit +his old home and desecrate its traditions and its religion. This +clerical wrath was kindled into fresh flame when Page, in an editorial +in his magazine, declared that these same preachers, ignoring their real +duties, were content "to herd their women and children around the +stagnant pools of theology." For real religion Page had the deepest +reverence, and he had great respect also for the robust evangelical +preachers whose efforts had contributed so much to the opening up of the +frontier. In his Greensboro address Page had given these men high +praise. But for the assiduous idolaters of stratified dogma he +entertained a contempt which he was seldom at pains to conceal. North +Carolina had many clergymen of the more progressive type; these men +chuckled at Page's vigorous characterization of the brethren, but those +against whom it had been aimed raged with a fervour that was almost +unchristian. This clerical excitement, however, did not greatly disturb +the philosophic Page. The hubbub lasted for several years--for Page's +Greensboro speech was only the first of many pronouncements of the same +kind--but he never publicly referred to the attacks upon him. +Occasionally in letters to his friends he would good-naturedly discuss +them. "I have had several letters," he wrote to Professor Edwin Mims, of +Trinity College, North Carolina, "about an 'excoriation' (Great Heavens! +What a word!) that somebody in North Carolina has been giving me. I +never read these things and I don't know what it's all about--nor do I +care. But perhaps you'll be interested in a letter that I wrote an old +friend (a lady) who is concerned about it. I enclose a copy of it. I +shall never notice any 'excoriator.' But if you wish to add to the +gaiety of nations, give this copy to some newspaper and let it loose in +the state--if you care to do so. We must have patience with these puny +and peevish brethren. They've been trained to a false view of life. +Heaven knows I bear them no ill-will." + +The letter to which Page referred follows: + + MY DEAR FRIEND: + + I have your letter saying that some of the papers in North Carolina + are again "jumping on" me. I do not know which they are, and I am + glad that you did not tell me. I had heard of it before. A preacher + wrote me the other day that he approved of every word of an + "excoriation" that some religious editor had given me. A kindly + Christian act--wasn't it, to send a stranger word that you were + glad that he had been abused by a religious editor? I wrote him a + gentle letter, telling him that I hoped he'd have a long and happy + life preaching a gospel of friendliness and neighbourliness and + good-will, and that I cared nothing about "excoriations." Why + should he, then, forsake his calling and take delight in + disseminating personal abuse? + + And why do you not write me about things that I really care for in + the good old country--the budding trees, the pleasant weather, news + of old friends, gossip of good people--cheerful things? I pray you, + don't be concerned about what any poor whining soul may write about + me. I don't care for myself: I care only for him; for the writer of + personal abuse always suffers from it--never the man abused. + + I haven't read what my kindly clerical correspondent calls an + "excoriation" for ten years, and I never shall read one if I know + what it is beforehand. Why should I or anybody read such stuff? I + can't find time to do half the positive things that I should like + to do for the broadening of my own character and for the + encouragement of others. Why should I waste a single minute in such + a negative and cheerless way as reading anybody's personal abuse of + anybody else--least of all myself? + + These silly outbursts never reach me and they never can; and they, + therefore, utterly fail, and always will fail, of their aim; yet, + my dear friend, there is nevertheless a serious side to such folly. + For it shows the need of education, education, education. The + religious editor and the preacher who took joy in his abuse of me + have such a starved view of life that they cannot themselves, + perhaps, ever be educated into kindliness and dignity of thought. + But their children may be--must be. Think of beautiful children + growing up in a home where "excoriating" people who differ with you + is regarded as a manly Christian exercise! It is pitiful beyond + words. There is no way to lift up life that is on so low a level + except by the free education of all the people. Let us work for + that and, when the growlers are done growling and forgotten, better + men will remember us with gratitude. + + I felt greatly complimented and pleased to receive an invitation + the other day to attend the North Carolina Teachers' Assembly in + June. I have many things to do in June, but I am going--going with + great pleasure. I hope to see you there. I know of no other company + of people that I should be so glad to meet. They are doing noble + work--the most devoted and useful work in this whole wide world. + They are the true leaders of the people. I often wish that I were + one of them. They inspire me as nobody else does. They are the army + of our salvation. + + Write me what they are doing. Write me about the wonderful + educational progress. And write me about the peach trees and the + budding imminence of spring; and about the children who now live + all day outdoors and grow brown and plump. And never mind that + queer sect, "The Excoriators." They and their stage thunder will be + forgotten to-morrow. Meantime let us live and work for things + nobler than any controversies, for things that are larger than the + poor mission of any sect; and let us have charity and a patient + pity for those that think they serve God by abusing their + fellow-men. I wish I saw some way to help them to a broader and a + higher life. + + Faithfully yours, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + + +III + +That Page should have little interest in "excoriators" at the time this +letter was written--in April, 1902--was not surprising, for his +educational campaign and that of his friends was now bearing fruit. +"Write me about the wonderful educational progress," he says to this +correspondent; and, indeed, the change that was coming over North +Carolina and the South generally seemed to be tinged with the +miraculous. The "Forgotten Man" and the "Forgotten Woman" were rapidly +coming into their own. Two years after the delivery of Page's Greensboro +address, a small group of educational enthusiasts met at Capon Springs, +West Virginia, to discuss the general situation in the South. The leader +of this little gathering was Robert C. Ogden, a great New York merchant +who for many years had been President of the Board of Hampton Institute. +Out of this meeting grew the Southern Educational Conference, which was +little more than an annual meeting for advertising broadcast the +educational needs of the South. Each year Mr. Ogden chartered a railroad +train; a hundred or so of the leading editors, lawyers, bankers, and the +like became his guests; the train moved through the Southern States, +pausing now and then to investigate some particular institution or +locality; and at some Southern city, such as Birmingham or Atlanta or +Winston-Salem, a stop of several days would be made, a public building +engaged, and long meetings held. In all these proceedings Page was an +active figure, as he became in the Southern Education Board, which +directly resulted from Mr. Ogden's public spirited excursions. Like the +Conference, the Southern Education Board was a purely missionary +organization, and its most active worker was Page himself. He was +constantly speaking and writing on his favourite subject; he printed +article after article, not only in his own magazine, but in the +_Atlantic_, in the _Outlook_, and in a multitude of newspapers, such as +the Boston _Transcript_, the New York _Times_, and the Kansas City +_Star_. And always through his writings, and, indeed, through his life, +there ran, like the motif of an opera, that same perpetual plea for "the +forgotten man"--the need of uplifting the backward masses through +training, both of the mind and of the hand. + +The day came when this loyal group had other things to work with than +their voices and their pens; their efforts had attracted the attention +of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, who brought assistance of an extremely +substantial character. In 1902 Mr. Rockefeller organized the General +Education Board. Of the ten members six were taken from the Southern +Education Board; other members represented general educational interests +and especially the Baptist interests to which Mr. Rockefeller had been +contributing for years. In a large sense, therefore, especially in its +membership, the General Education Board was a development of the Ogden +organization; but it was much broader in its sweep, taking under its +view the entire nation and all forms of educational effort. It +immediately began to interest itself in the needs of the South. In 1902 +Mr. Rockefeller gave this new corporation $1,000,000; in 1905 he gave it +$10,000,000; in 1907 he astonished the Nation by giving $32,000,000, +and, in 1909, another $10,000,000; the whole making a total of +$53,000,000, the largest sum ever given by a single man, up to that +time, for social or philanthropic purposes. The General Education Board +now became the chief outside interest of Page's life. He was made a +member of the Executive Committee, faithfully attended all its sessions, +and participated intimately in every important plan. All such bodies +have their decorative members and their working members; Page belonged +emphatically in the latter class. Not only was he fertile in +suggestions, but his ready mind could give almost any proposal its +proper emphasis and clearly set forth its essential details. Between +Page and Dr. Buttrick, Secretary and now President of the Board, a close +personal intimacy grew up. Dr. Buttrick moved to Teaneck Road, +Englewood, where Page had his home, and many a long evening did the two +men spend together, many a long walk did they take in the surrounding +country, always discussing education, especially Southern education. A +letter to the present writer from Dr. Abraham Flexner, the present +Secretary of the Board, perhaps sums up the matter. "Page was one of the +real educational statesmen of this country," says Dr. Flexner, "probably +the greatest that we have had since the Civil War." + +And this Rockefeller support came at a time when that movement known as +the "educational awakening" had started in the South. In 1900 North +Carolina elected its greatest governor since the Civil War--Charles B. +Aycock. A much repeated anecdote attributes Lincoln's detestation of +slavery to a slave auction that he witnessed as a small boy; Aycock's +first zeal as an educational reformer had an origin that was even more +pathetic, for he always carried in his mind his recollection of his own +mother signing an important legal document with a cross. As a young man +fresh from the university Aycock also came under the influence of Page. +An old letter, preserved among Page's papers, dated February 26, 1886, +discloses that he was a sympathizing reader of the "mummy" controversy; +when the brickbats began flying in Page's direction Aycock wrote, +telling Page that "fully three fourths of the people are with you and +wish you Godspeed in your effort to awaken better work, greater +activity, and freer opinion in the state." And now under Aycock's +governorship North Carolina began to tackle the educational problem with +a purpose. School houses started up all over the state at the rate of +one a day--many of them beautiful, commodious, modern structures, in +every way the equals of any in the North or West; high schools, normal +schools, trade schools made their appearance wherever the need was +greatest; and in other parts of the South the response was similarly +energetic. The reform is not yet complete, but the description that Page +gave of Southern education in 1897, accurate in all its details as it +was then, has now become ancient history. + + +IV + +And in occupations of this kind Page passed his years of maturity. His +was not a spectacular life; his family for the most part still remained +his most immediate interest; the daily round of an editor has its +imaginative quality, but in the main it was for Page a quiet, even a +cloistered existence; the work that an editor does, the achievements +that he can put to his credit, are usually anonymous; and the American +public little understood the extent to which Page was influencing many +of the most vital forces of his time. The business association that he +had formed with Mr. Doubleday turned out most happily. Their publishing +house, in a short time, attained a position of great influence and +prosperity. The two men, on both the personal and the business side, +were congenial and complementary; and the love that both felt for +country life led to the establishment of a publishing and printing plant +of unusual beauty. In Garden City, Long Island, a great brick structure +was built, somewhat suggestive in its architecture of Hampton Court, +surrounded by pools and fountains, Italian gardens, green walks and +pergolas, gardens blooming in appropriate seasons with roses, peonies, +rhododendrons, chrysanthemums, and the like, and parks of evergreen, +fir, cedar, and more exotic trees and shrubs. Certainly fate could have +designed no more fitting setting for Page's favourite activities than +this. In assembling authors, in instigating the writing of books, in +watching the achievements and the tendencies of American life, in the +routine of editing his magazine--all this in association with partners +whose daily companionship was a delight and a stimulation--Page spent +his last years in America. + +Page's independence as an editor, sufficiently indicated in the days of +his vivacious youth, became even more emphatic in his maturer years. In +his eyes, merely inking over so many pages of good white paper was not +journalism; conviction, zeal, honesty--these were the important points. +Almost on the very day that his appointment as Ambassador to Great +Britain was announced his magazine published an editorial from his pen, +which contained not especially complimentary references to his new +chief, Mr. Bryan, the Secretary of State; naturally the newspapers found +much amusement in these few sentences; but the thing was typical of +Page's whole career as an editor. He held to the creed that an editor +should divorce himself entirely from prejudices, animosities, and +predilections; this seems an obvious, even a trite thing to say, yet +there are so few men who can leave personal considerations aside in +writing of men and events that it is worth while pointing out that Page +was such a man. When his firm was planning to establish its magazine, +his partner, Mr. Doubleday, was approached by a New York politician of +large influence but shady reputation who wished to be assured that it +would reflect correct political principles. "You should see Mr. Page +about that," was the response. "No, this is a business matter," the +insinuating gentleman went on, and then he proceeded to show that about +twenty-five thousand subscribers could be obtained if the publication +preached orthodox standpat doctrine. "I don't think you had better see +Mr. Page," said Mr. Doubleday, dismissing his caller. + +Many incidents which illustrate this independence could be given; one +will suffice. In 1907 and 1908, Page's magazine published the "Random +Reminiscences of John D. Rockefeller." While the articles were +appearing, the Hearst newspapers obtained a large number of letters +that, some years before, had passed between Mr. John D. Archbold, +President of the Standard Oil Company and one of Mr. Rockefeller's +business associates from the earliest days, and Senator Joseph B. +Foraker, of Ohio. These letters uncovered one of the gravest scandals +that had ever involved an American public man; they instantaneously +destroyed Senator Foraker's political career and hastened his death. +They showed that this brilliant man had been obtaining large sums of +money from the Standard Oil Company while he was filling the post of +United States Senator and that at the same time he was receiving +suggestions from Mr. Archbold about pending legislation. Mr. Rockefeller +was not personally involved, for he had retired from active business +many years before these things had been done; but the Standard Oil +Company, with which his name was intimately associated, was involved and +in a way that seemed to substantiate the worst charges that had been +made against it. At this time Page, as a member of the General Education +Board, was doing his part in helping to disperse the Rockefeller +millions for public purposes; his magazine was publishing Mr. +Rockefeller's reminiscences; there are editors who would have felt a +certain embarrassment in commenting on the Archbold transaction. Page, +however, did not hesitate. Mr. Archbold, hearing that he intended to +treat the subject fully, asked him to come and see him. Page replied +that he would be glad to have Mr. Archbold call upon him. The two men +were brought together by friendly intermediaries in a neutral place; but +the great oil magnate's explanation of his iniquities did not satisfy +Page. The November, 1908, issue of the magazine contained, in one +section, an interesting chapter by Mr. Rockefeller, describing the early +days of the Standard Oil Company, and, in another, ten columns by Page, +discussing the Archbold disclosures in language that was discriminating +and well tempered, but not at all complimentary to Mr. Archbold or to +the Standard Oil Company. + +Occasionally Page was summoned for services of a public character. Thus +President Roosevelt, whose friendship he had enjoyed for many years, +asked him to serve upon his Country Life Commission--a group of men +called by the President to study ways of improving the surroundings and +extending the opportunities of American farmers. Page's interest in +Negro education led to his appointment to the Jeanes Board. He early +became an admirer of Booker Washington, and especially approved his plan +for uplifting the Negro by industrial training. One of the great +services that Page rendered literature was his persuasion of Washington +to write that really great autobiography, "Up from Slavery," and another +biography in a different field, for which he was responsible, was Miss +Helen Keller's "Story of My Life." And only once, amid these fine but +not showy activities, did Page's life assume anything in the nature of +the sensational. This was in 1909, when he published his one effort at +novel writing, "The Southerner." To write novels had been an early +ambition with Page; indeed his papers disclose that he had meditated +several plans of this kind; but he never seriously settled himself to +the task until the year 1906. In July of that year the _Atlantic +Monthly_ began publishing a serial entitled "The Autobiography of a +Southerner Since the Civil War," by Nicholas Worth. The literary matter +that appeared under this title most readers accepted as veracious though +anonymous autobiography. It related the life adventures of a young man, +born in the South, of parents who had had little sympathy with the +Confederate cause, attempting to carve out his career in the section of +his birth and meeting opposition and defeat from the prejudices with +which he constantly found himself in conflict. The story found its main +theme and background in the fact that the Southern States were so +exclusively living in the memories of the Civil War that it was +impossible for modern ideas to obtain a foothold. "I have sometimes +thought," said the author, and this passage may be taken as embodying +the leading point of the narrative, "that many of the men who survived +that unnatural war unwittingly did us a greater hurt than the war +itself. It gave everyone of them the intensest experience of his life +and ever afterward he referred every other experience to this. Thus it +stopped the thought of most of them as an earthquake stops a clock. The +fierce blow of battle paralyzed the mind. Their speech was a vocabulary +of war, their loyalties were loyalties, not to living ideas or duties, +but to old commanders and to distorted traditions. They were dead men, +most of them, moving among the living as ghosts; and yet, as ghosts in a +play, they held the stage." In another passage the writer names the +"ghosts" which are chiefly responsible for preventing Southern progress. +They are three: "The Ghost of the Confederate dead, the Ghost of +religious orthodoxy, the Ghost of Negro domination." Everywhere the hero +finds his progress blocked by these obstructive wraiths of the past. He +seeks a livelihood in educational work--becomes a local superintendent +of Public Instruction, and loses his place because his religious views +are unorthodox, because he refuses to accept the popular estimate of +Confederate statesmen, and because he hopes to educate the black child +as well as the white one. He enters politics and runs for public office +on the platform of the new day, is elected, and then finds himself +counted out by political ringsters. Still he does not lose faith, and +finally settles down in the management of a cotton mill, convinced that +the real path of salvation lies in economic effort. This mere skeleton +of a story furnishes an excuse for rehearsing again the ideas that Page +had already made familiar in his writings and in his public addresses. +This time the lesson is enlivened by the portrayal of certain typical +characters of the post-bellum South. They are all there--the several +types of Negro, ranging all the way from the faithful and philosophic +plantation retainer to the lazy "Publican" office-seeker; the political +colonel, to whom the Confederate veterans and the "fair daughters of the +South (God bless 'em)" are the mainstays of "civerlerzation" and +indispensable instrumentalities in the game of partisan politics; the +evangelical clergymen who cared more for old-fashioned creeds than for +the education of the masses; the disreputable editor who specialized in +Negro crime and constantly preached the doctrine of the "white man's +country"; the Southern woman who, innocently and sincerely and even +charmingly, upheld the ancient tradition and the ancient feud. On the +other hand, Page's book portrays the buoyant enthusiast of the new day, +the reformer who was seeking to establish a public school system and to +strengthen the position of woman; and, above all, the quiet, +hard-working industrialist who cared nothing for stump speaking but much +for cotton mills, improved methods of farming, the introduction of +diversified crops, the tidying up of cities and the country. + +These chapters, extensively rewritten, were published as a book in 1909. +Probably Page was under no illusion that he had created a real romance +when he described his completed work as a "novel." The _Atlantic_ +autobiography had attracted wide attention, and the identification of +the author had been immediate and accurate. Page's friends began calling +his house on the telephone and asking for "Nicholas" and certain genial +spirits addressed him in letters as "Marse Little Nick"--the name under +which the hero was known to the old Negro family servant, Uncle +Ephraim--perhaps the best drawn character in the book. Page's real +purpose in calling the book a "novel" therefore, was to inform the +public that the story, so far as its incidents and most of its +characters were concerned, was pure fiction. Certain episodes, such as +those describing the hero's early days, were, in the main, veracious +transcripts from Page's own life, but the rest of the book bears +practically no relation to his career. The fact that he spent his +mature years in the North, editing magazines and publishing, whereas +Nicholas Worth spends his in the South, engaged in educational work and +in politics and industry, settles this point. The characters, too, are +rather types than specific individuals, though one or two of them, +particularly Professor Billy Bain, who is clearly Charles D. McIver, may +be accepted as fairly accurate portraits. But as a work of fiction "The +Southerner" can hardly be considered a success; the love story is too +slight, the women not well done, most of the characters rather +personified qualities than flesh and blood people. Its strength consists +in the picture that it gives of the so-called "Southern problem," and +especially of the devastating influence of slavery. From this standpoint +the book is an autobiography, for the ideas and convictions it presents +had formed the mental life of Page from his earliest days. + +And these were the things that hurt. Yet the stories of the anger caused +by "The Southerner" have been much exaggerated. It is said that a +certain distinguished Southern senator declared that, had he known that +Page was the author of "The Southerner," he would have blocked his +nomination as Ambassador to Great Britain; certain Southern newspapers +also severely denounced the volume; even some of Page's friends thought +that it was a little unkind in spots; yet as a whole the Southern people +accepted it as a fair, and certainly as an honest, treatment of a very +difficult subject. Possibly Page was a little hard upon the Confederate +veteran, and did not sufficiently portray the really pathetic aspects of +his character; any shortcomings of this sort are due, not to any failing +in sympathy, but to the fact that Page's zeal was absorbingly +concentrated upon certain glaring abuses. And as to the accuracy of his +vision in these respects there could be no question. The volume was a +welcome antidote to the sentimental Southern novels that had contented +themselves with glorifying a vanished society which, when the veil is +stripped, was not heroic in all its phases, for it was based upon an +institution so squalid as human slavery, and to those even more +pernicious books which, by luridly portraying the unquestioned vices of +reconstruction and the frightful consequences which resulted from giving +the Negro the ballot, simply aroused useless passions and made the way +out of the existing wilderness still more difficult. So the best public +opinion, North and South, regarded "The Southerner," and decided that +Page had performed a service to the section of his birth in writing it. +Indeed the fair-minded and intelligent spirit with which the best +elements in the South received "The Southerner" in itself demonstrated +that this great region had entered upon a new day. + + +V + +Nor was Page's work for the South yet ended. In the important five years +from 1905 to 1910 he performed two services of an extremely practical +kind. In 1906 the problem of Southern education assumed a new phase. Dr. +Wallace Buttrick, the Secretary of the General Education Board, had now +decided that the fundamental difficulty was economic. By that time the +Southern people had revised their original conception that education was +a private and not a public concern; there was now a general acceptance +of the doctrine that the mental and physical training of every child, +white and black, was the responsibility of the state; Aycock's campaign +had worked such a popular revolution on this subject that no politician +who aspired to public office would dare to take a contrary view. Yet the +economic difficulty still remained. The South was poor; whatever might +be the general desire, the taxable resources were not sufficient to +support such a comprehensive system of popular instruction as existed in +the North and West. Any permanent improvement must therefore be based +upon the strengthening of the South's economic position. Essentially the +task was to build up Southern agriculture, which for generations had +been wasteful, unintelligent and consequently unproductive. Such a +far-reaching programme might well appall the most energetic reformer, +but Dr. Buttrick set to work. He saw little light until his attention +was drawn to a quaint and philosophic gentleman--a kind of bucolic Ben +Franklin--who was then obscurely working in the cotton lands of +Louisiana, making warfare on the boll weevil in a way of his own. At +that time Dr. Seaman A. Knapp had made no national reputation; yet he +had evolved a plan for redeeming country life and making American farms +more fruitful that has since worked marvellous results. There was +nothing especially sensational about its details. Dr. Knapp had made the +discovery in relation to farms that the utilitarians had long since made +with reference to other human activities: that the only way to improve +agriculture was not to talk about it, but to go and do it. During the +preceding fifty years agricultural colleges had sprung up all over the +United States--Dr. Knapp had been president of one himself; practically +every Southern state had one or more; agricultural lecturers covered +thousands of miles annually telling their yawning audiences how to farm; +these efforts had scattered broadcast much valuable information about +the subject, but the difficulty lay in inducing the farmers to apply it. +Dr. Knapp had a new method. He selected a particular farmer and +persuaded him to work his fields for a period according to methods +which he prescribed. He told his pupil how to plough, what seed to +plant, how to space his rows, what fertilizers to use, and the like. If +a selected acreage yielded a profitable crop which the farmer could sell +at an increased price Dr. Knapp had sufficient faith in human nature to +believe that that particular farmer would continue to operate his farm +on the new method and that his neighbours, having this practical example +of growing prosperity, would imitate him. + +Such was the famous "Demonstration Work" of Dr. Seaman A. Knapp; this +activity is now a regular branch of the Department of Agriculture, +employing thousands of agents and spending not far from $18,000,000 a +year. Its application to the South has made practically a new and rich +country, and it has long since been extended to other regions. When Dr. +Buttrick first met Knapp, however, there were few indications of this +splendid future. He brought Dr. Knapp North and exhibited him to Page. +This was precisely the kind of man who appealed to Page's sympathies. +His mind was always keenly on the scent for the new man--the original +thinker who had some practical plan for uplifting humankind and making +life more worth while. And Dr. Knapp's mission was one that had filled +most of his thoughts for many years; its real purpose was the enrichment +of country life. Page therefore took to Dr. Knapp with a mighty zest. He +supported him on all occasions; he pled his cause with great eloquence +before the General Education Board, whose purse strings were liberally +unloosed in behalf of the Knapp work; in his writings, in speeches, in +letters, in all forms of public advocacy, he insisted that Dr. Knapp had +found the solution of the agricultural problem. The fact is that Page +regarded Knapp as one of the greatest men of the time. His feeling came +out with characteristic intensity on the occasion of the homely +reformer's funeral. "The exercises," Page once told a friend, "were held +in a rather dismal little church on the outskirts of Washington. The day +was bleak and chill, the attendants were few--chiefly officials of the +Department of Agriculture. The clergyman read the service in the most +perfunctory way. Then James Wilson, the Secretary of Agriculture, spoke +formally of Dr. Knapp as a faithful servant of the Department who always +did well what he was told to do, commending his life in an altogether +commonplace fashion. By that time my heart was pretty hot. No one seemed +to divine that in the coffin before them was the body of a really great +man, one who had hit upon a fruitful idea in American agriculture--an +idea that was destined to cover the nation and enrich rural life +immeasurably." Page was so moved by this lack of appreciation, so full +of sorrow at the loss of one of his dearest friends, that, when he rose +to speak, his appraisment took on a certain indignation. Their dead +associate, Page declared, would outrank the generals and the politicians +who received the world's plaudits, for he had devoted his life to a +really great purpose; his inspiration had been the love of the common +people, his faith, his sympathy had all been expended in an effort to +brighten the life of the too frequently neglected masses. Page's address +on this occasion was entirely extemporaneous; no record of it was ever +made, but those who heard it still carry the memory of an eloquent and +fiery outburst that placed Knapp's work in its proper relation to +American history and gave an unforgettable picture of a patient, +idealistic, achieving man whose name will loom large in the future. + +During this same period Page, always on the outlook for the exceptional +man, made another discovery which has had world-wide consequences. As a +member of President Roosevelt's Country Life Commission Page became one +of the committee assigned to investigate conditions in the Southern +States. The sanitarian of this commission was Dr. Charles W. Stiles, a +man who held high rank as a zooelogist, and who, as such, had for many +years done important work with the Department of Agriculture. Page had +hardly formed Dr. Stiles's acquaintance before he discovered that, at +that time, he was a man of one idea. And this one idea had for years +brought upon his head much good-natured ridicule. For Dr. Stiles had his +own explanation for much of the mental and physical sluggishness that +prevailed in the rural sections of the Southern States. Yet he could not +mention this without exciting uproarious laughter--even in the presence +of scientific men. Several years previously Dr. Stiles had discovered +that a hitherto unclassified species of a parasite popularly known as +the hookworm prevailed to an astonishing extent in all the Southern +States. The pathological effects of this creature had long been known; +it localized in the intestines, there secreted a poison that destroyed +the red blood corpuscles, and reduced its victims to a deplorable state +of anaemia, making them constantly ill, listless, mentally dull--in every +sense of the word useless units of society. The encouraging part of this +discovery was that the patients could quickly be cured and the hookworm +eradicated by a few simple improvements in sanitation. Dr. Stiles had +long been advocating such a campaign as an indispensable preliminary to +improving Southern life. But the humorous aspect of the hookworm always +interfered with his cause; the microbe of laziness had at last been +found! + +It was not until Dr. Stiles, in the course of this Southern trip, +cornered Page in a Pullman car, that he finally found an attentive +listener. Page, of course, had his preliminary laugh, but then the +hookworm began to work on his imagination. He quickly discovered that +Dr. Stiles was no fool; and before the expedition was finished, he had +become a convert and, like most converts, an extremely zealous one. The +hookworm now filled his thoughts as completely as it did those of his +friend; he studied it, he talked about it; and characteristically he set +to work to see what could be done. How much Southern history did the +thing explain? Was it not forces like this, and not statesmen and +generals, that really controlled the destinies of mankind? Page's North +Carolina country people had for generations been denounced as +"crackers," and as "hill-billies," but here was the discovery that the +great mass of them were ill--as ill as the tuberculosis patients in the +Adirondacks. Free these masses from the enervating parasite that +consumed all their energies--for Dr. Stiles had discovered that the +disease afflicted the great majority of the rural classes--and a new +generation would result. Naturally the cause strongly touched Page's +sympathies. He laid the case before the ever sympathetic Dr. Buttrick, +but here again progress was slow. By hard hammering, however, he half +converted Dr. Buttrick, who, in turn, took the case of the hookworm to +his old associate, Dr. Frederick T. Gates. What Page was determined to +obtain was a million dollars or so from Mr. John D. Rockefeller, for the +purpose of engaging in deadly warfare upon this pest. This was the +proper way to produce results: first persuade Dr. Buttrick, then induce +him to persuade Dr. Gates, who, if convinced, had ready access to the +great treasure house. But Dr. Gates also began to smile; even the +combined eloquence of Page and Dr. Buttrick could not move him. So the +reform marked time until one day Dr. Buttrick, Dr. Gates, and Dr. Simon +Flexner, the Director of the Rockefeller institute, happened to be +fellow travellers--again on a Pullman car. + +"Dr. Flexner," said Dr. Buttrick--this for the benefit of his +incredulous friend--"what is the scientific standing of Dr. Charles W. +Stiles?" + +"Very, very high," came the immediate response, and at this Dr. Gates +pricked up his ears. Yet the subsequent conversation disclosed that Dr. +Flexner was unfamiliar with the Stiles hookworm work. He, too, smiled at +the idea, but, like Page his smile was not one of ridicule. + +"If Dr. Stiles believes this," was his dictum, "it is something to be +taken most seriously." + +As Dr. Flexner is probably the leading medical scientist in the United +States, his judgment at once lifted the hookworm issue to a new plane. +Dr. Gates ceased laughing and events now moved rapidly. Mr. Rockefeller +gave a million dollars to a sanitary commission for the eradication of +the hookworm in the Southern States, and of this Page became a charter +member. In this way an enterprise that is the greatest sanitary and +health reform of modern times had its beginnings. So great was the +success of the Hookworm Commission in the South, so many thousands were +almost daily restored to health and usefulness, that Mr. Rockefeller +extended its work all over the world--to India, Egypt, China, Australia, +to all sections that fall within the now accurately located "hookworm +belt." Out of it grew the great International Health Commission, also +endowed with unlimited millions of Rockefeller money, which is engaged +in stamping out disease and promoting medical education in all quarters +of the globe. Dr. Stiles and Page's associates on the General Education +Board attribute the origin of this work to the simple fact that Page, +great humourist that he was, could temper his humour with +intelligence, and could therefore perceive the point at which a joke +ceased to be a joke and actually concealed a truth of the most +far-reaching importance to mankind. + +[Illustration: Walter H. Page (1899), from a photograph taken when he +was editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_] + +[Illustration: Dr. Wallace Buttrick, President of the General Education +Board] + +Page enjoyed the full results of this labour one night in the autumn of +1913, when Dr. Wickliffe Rose, the head of the International Health +Board, came to London to discuss the possibility of beginning hookworm +work in the British Empire, especially in Egypt and India. Page, as +Ambassador, arranged a dinner at the Marlborough Club, attended by the +leading medical scientists of the kingdom and several members of the +Cabinet. Dr. Rose's description of his work made a deep impression. He +was informed that the British Government was only too ready to cooeperate +with the Health Board. When the discussion was ended the Right +Honourable Lewis Harcourt, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, +concluded an eloquent address with these words: + +"The time will come when we shall look back on this evening as the +beginning of a new era in British colonial administration." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 5: A memorandum of an old _Atlantic_ balance sheet discloses +that James Russell Lowell's salary as editor was $1,500 a year.] + +[Footnote 6: A member of the firm of Houghton, Mifflin & Company.] + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE WILSONIAN ERA BEGINS + +I + + +It was Page's interest in the material and spiritual elevation of the +masses that first directed his attention to the Presidential aspirations +of Woodrow Wilson. So much history has been made since 1912 that the +public questions which then stirred the popular mind have largely passed +out of recollection. Yet the great rallying cry of that era was +democracy, spelled with a small "d." In the fifty years since the Civil +War only one Democratic President had occupied the White House. The +Republicans' long lease of power had produced certain symptoms which +their political foes now proceeded to describe as great public abuses. +The truth of the matter, of course, is that neither political virtue nor +political depravity was the exclusive possession of either of the great +national organizations. The Republican party, especially under the +enlightened autocracy of Roosevelt, had started such reforms as +conservation, the improvement of country life, the regulation of the +railroads, and the warfare on the trusts, and had shown successful +interest in such evidences of the new day as child labour laws, +employer's liability laws, corrupt practice acts, direct primaries and +the popular election of United States Senators--not all perhaps wise as +methods, but all certainly inspired with a new conception of democratic +government. Roosevelt also had led in the onslaught on that corporation +influence which, after all, constituted the great problem of American +politics. But Mr. Taft's administration had impressed many men, and +especially Page, as a discouraging slump back into the ancient system. +Page was never blind to the inadequacies of his own party; the three +campaigns of Bryan and his extensive influence with the Democratic +masses at times caused him deep despair; that even the corporations had +extended their tentacles into the ranks of Jefferson was all too obvious +a fact; yet the Democratic party at that time Page regarded as the most +available instrument for embodying in legislation and practice the new +things in which he most believed. Above all, the Democratic party in +1912 possessed one asset to which the Republicans could lay no claim--a +new man, a new leader, the first statesman who had crossed its threshold +since Grover Cleveland. + +Like many scholarly Americans, Page had been charmed by the intellectual +brilliancy of Woodrow Wilson. The utter commonplaceness of much of what +passes for political thinking in this country had for years discouraged +him. American political life may have possessed energy, character, even +greatness; but it was certainly lacking in distinction. It was this new +quality that Wilson brought, and it was this that attracted thousands of +cultivated Americans to his standard, irrespective of party. The man was +an original thinker; he exercised the priceless possession of literary +style. He entertained; he did not weary; even his temperamental +deficiencies, which were apparent to many observers in 1912, had at +least the advantage that attaches to the interesting and the unusual. + +What Page and thousands of other public-spirited men saw in Wilson was a +leader of fine intellectual gifts who was prepared to devote his +splendid energies to making life more attractive and profitable to the +"Forgotten Man." Here was the opportunity then, to embody in one +imaginative statesman all the interest which for a generation had been +accumulating in favour of the democratic revival. At any rate, after +thirty years of Republican half-success and half-failure, here was the +chance for a new deal. Amid a mob of shopworn public men, here was one +who had at least the charm of novelty. + +Page had known Mr. Wilson for thirty years, and all this time the +Princeton scholar had seemed to him to be one of the most helpful +influences at work in the United States. As already noted Page had met +the future President when he was serving a journalistic apprenticeship +in Atlanta, Georgia. Wilson was then spending his days in a dingy law +office and was putting to good use the time consumed in waiting for the +clients who never came by writing that famous book on "Congressional +Government" which first lifted his name out of obscurity. This work, the +product of a man of twenty-nine, was perhaps the first searching +examination to which the American Congressional system had ever been +subjected. It brought Wilson a professorship at the newly established +Bryn Mawr College and drew to him other growing minds like Page's. +"Watch that man!" was Page's admonition to his friends. Wilson then went +into academic work and Page plunged into the exactions of daily and +periodical journalism, but Page's papers show that the two men had kept +in touch with each other during the succeeding thirty years. These +papers include a collection of letters from Woodrow Wilson, the earliest +of which is dated October 30, 1885, when the future President was +beginning his career at Bryn Mawr. He was eager to come to New York, +Wilson said, and discuss with Page "half a hundred topics" suggested by +"Congressional Government." The atmosphere at Bryn Mawr was evidently +not stimulating. "Such a talk would give me a chance to let off some of +the enthusiasm I am just now painfully stirring up in enforced silence." +The _Forum_ and the _Atlantic Monthly_, when Page was editor, showed +many traces of his interest in Wilson, who was one of his most frequent +contributors. When Wilson became President of Princeton, he occasionally +called upon his old _Atlantic_ friend for advice. He writes to Page on +various matters--to ask for suggestions about filling a professorship or +a lectureship; and there are also references to the difficulties Wilson +is having with the Princeton trustees. + +Page's letters also portray the new hopes with which Wilson inspired +him. One of his best loved correspondents was Henry Wallace, editor of +_Wallace's Farmer_, a homely and genial Rooseveltian. Page was one of +those who immensely admired Roosevelt's career; but he regarded him as a +man who had finished his work, at least in domestic affairs, and whose +great claim upon posterity would be as the stimulator of the American +conscience. "I see you are coming around to Wilson," Page writes, "and +in pretty rapid fashion. I assure you that that is the solution of the +problem. I have known him since we were boys, and I have been studying +him lately with a great deal of care. I haven't any doubt but that is +the way out. The old labels 'Democrat' and 'Republican' have ceased to +have any meaning, not only in my mind and in yours, but I think in the +minds of nearly all the people. Don't you feel that way?" + +The campaign of 1912 was approaching its end when this letter was +written; and no proceeding in American politics had so aroused Page's +energies. He had himself played a part in Wilson's nomination. He was +one of the first to urge the Princeton President to seize the great +opportunity that was rising before him. These suggestions were coming +from many sources in the summer of 1910; Mr. Wilson was about to retire +from the Presidency of Princeton; the movement had started to make him +Governor of New Jersey, and it was well understood that this was merely +intended as the first step to the White House. But Mr. Wilson was +himself undecided; to escape the excitement of the moment he had retired +to a country house at Lyme, Connecticut. In this place, in response to a +letter, Page now sought him out. His visit was a plea that Mr. Wilson +should accept his proffered fate; the Governorship of New Jersey, then +the Presidency, and the opportunity to promote the causes in which both +men believed. + +"But do you think I can do it, Page?" asked the hesitating Wilson. + +"I am sure you can": and then Page again, with his customary gusto, +launched into his persuasive argument. His host at one moment would +assent; at another present the difficulties; it was apparent that he was +having trouble in reaching a decision. To what extent Page's +conversation converted him the record does not disclose; it is apparent, +however, that when, in the next two years, difficulties came, his mind +seemed naturally to turn in Page's direction. Especially noticeable is +it that he appeals to Page for help against his fool friends. An +indiscreet person in New Jersey is booming Mr. Wilson for the +Presidency; the activity of such a man inevitably brings ridicule upon +the object of his attention; cannot Page find some kindly way of calling +him off? Mr. Wilson asks Page's advice about a campaign manager, and +incidentally expresses his own aversion to a man of "large calibre" for +this engagement. There were occasional conferences with Mr. Wilson on +his Presidential prospects, one of which took place at Page's New York +apartment. Page was also the man who brought Mr. Wilson and Colonel +House together; this had the immediate result of placing the important +state of Texas on the Wilson side, and, as its ultimate consequence, +brought about one of the most important associations in the history of +American politics. Page had known Colonel House for many years and was +the advocate who convinced the sagacious Texan that Woodrow Wilson was +the man. Wilson also acquired the habit of referring to Page men who +offered themselves to him as volunteer workers in his cause. "Go and see +Walter Page" was his usual answer to this kind of an approach. But Page +was not a collector of delegates to nominating conventions; not his the +art of manipulating these assemblages in the interest of a favoured man; +yet his services to the Wilson cause, while less demonstrative, were +almost as practical. His talent lay in exposition; and he now took upon +himself the task of spreading Wilson's fame. In his own magazine and in +books published by his firm, in letters to friends, in personal +conferences, he set forth Wilson's achievements. Page also persuaded +Wilson to make his famous speechmaking trip through the Western States +in 1911 and this was perhaps his largest definite contribution to the +Wilson campaign. It was in the course of this historic pilgrimage that +the American masses obtained their first view of a previously too-much +hidden figure. + +On election day Page wrote the President-elect a letter of +congratulation which contains one item of the greatest interest. When +the time came for the new President to deliver his first message to +Congress, he surprised the country by abandoning the usual practice of +sending a long written communication to be droned out by a reading +clerk to a yawning company of legislators. He appeared in person and +read the document himself. As President Harding has followed his example +it seems likely that this innovation, which certainly represents a great +improvement over the old routine, has become the established custom. The +origin of the idea therefore has historic value. + + _To Woodrow Wilson_ + Garden City, N.Y. + Election Day, 1912. [Nov. 5] + + MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT-ELECT: + + Before going into town to hear the returns, I write you my + congratulations. Even if you were defeated, I should still + congratulate you on putting a Presidential campaign on a higher + level than it has ever before reached since Washington's time. Your + grip became firmer and your sweep wider every week. It was + inspiring to watch the unfolding of the deep meaning of it and to + see the people's grasp of the main idea. It was fairly, highly, + freely, won, and now we enter the Era of Great Opportunity. It is + hard to measure the extent or the thrill of the new interest in + public affairs and the new hope that you have aroused in thousands + of men who were becoming hopeless under the long-drawn-out reign of + privilege. + + To the big burden of suggestions that you are receiving, may I add + these small ones? + + 1. Call Congress in extra session mainly to revise the tariff and + incidentally to prepare the way for rural credit societies. + + Mr. Taft set the stage admirably in 1909 when he promptly called an + extra session; but then he let the villain run the play. To get the + main job in hand at once will be both dramatic and effective and it + will save time. Moreover, it will give you this great tactical + advantage--you can the better keep in line those who have debts or + doubts before you have answered their importunities for offices and + for favours. + + The time is come when the land must be developed by the new + agriculture and farming made a business. This calls for money. + Every acre will repay a reasonable loan on long time at a fair + interest rate, and group-borrowing develops the men quite as much + as the men will develop the soil. It saved the German Empire and is + remaking Italy. And this is the proper use of much of the money + that now flows into the reach of the credit barons. This building + up of farm life will restore the equilibrium of our civilization + and, besides, will prove to be one half the solution of our + currency and credit problem. . . . + + 2. Set your trusted friends immediately to work, every man in the + field he knows best, to prepare briefs for you on such great + subjects and departments as the Currency, the Post Office, + Conservation, Rural Credit, the Agricultural Department, which has + the most direct power for good to the most people--to make our + farmers as independent as Denmark's and to give our best country + folk the dignity of the old-time English gentleman--this expert, + independent information to compare with your own knowledge and with + official reports. + + 3. The President reads (or speaks) his Inaugural to the people. Why + not go back to the old custom of himself delivering his Messages to + Congress? Would that not restore a feeling of comradeship in + responsibility and make the Legislative branch feel nearer to the + Executive? Every President of our time has sooner or later got away + with Congress. + + I cannot keep from saying what a new thrill of hope and tingle of + expectancy I feel--as of a great event about to happen for our + country and for the restoration of popular government; for you will + keep your rudder true. + + Most heartily yours, + WALTER H. PAGE. + + To Governor Wilson, + Princeton, N.J. + +Page was one of the first of Mr. Wilson's friends to discuss with the +President-elect the new legislative programme. The memorandum which he +made of this interview shows how little any one, in 1912, appreciated +the tremendous problems that Mr. Wilson would have to face. Only +domestic matters then seemed to have the slightest importance. +Especially significant is the fact that even at this early date, Page +was chiefly impressed by Mr. Wilson's "loneliness." + + +_Memorandum dated November 15, 1912_ + +To use the Government, especially the Department of Agriculture and the +Bureau of Education, to help actively in the restoration of country +life--that's the great chance for Woodrow Wilson, ten days ago elected +President. Precisely how well he understands this chance, how well, for +example, he understands the grave difference between the Knapp +Demonstration method of teaching farmers and the usual Agricultural +College method of lecturing to them, and what he knows about the rising +movement for country schools of the right sort, and agricultural credit +societies--how all this great constructive problem of Country Life lies +in his mind, who knows? I do not. If I do not know, who does know? The +political managers who have surrounded him these six months have now +done their task. _They_ know nothing of this Big Chance and Great +Outlook. And for the moment they have left him alone. In two days he +will go to Bermuda for a month to rest and to meditate. He ought to +meditate on this Constructive programme. It seemed my duty to go and +tell him about it. I asked for an interview and he telegraphed to go +to-day at five o'clock. + +Arthur and I drove in the car and reached Princeton just before five--a +beautiful drive of something less than four hours from New York. +Presently we arrived at the Wilson house. + +"The Governor is engaged," I was informed by the man who opened the +door. "He can see nobody. He is going away to-morrow." + +"I have an appointment with him," said I, and I gave him my card. + +"I know he can't see anybody." + +"Will you send my card in?" + +We waited at the door till the maid took it in and returned to say the +Governor would presently come down. + +The reception room had a desk in the corner, and on a row of chairs +across the whole side of the room were piles of unopened letters. It is +a plain, modestly but decently furnished room, such as you would expect +to find in the modest house of a professor at Princeton. During his +presidency of the college, he had lived in the President's house in the +college yard. This was his own house of his professorial days. + +"Hello, Page, come out here: I am glad to see you." There he stood in a +door at the back of the room, which led to his library and work room. +"Come back here." + +"In the best of all possible worlds, the right thing does sometimes +happen," said I. + +"Yes." + +"And a great opportunity." + +He smiled and was cordial and said some pleasant words. But he was +weary. "I have cobwebs in my head." He was not depressed but +oppressed--rather shy, I thought, and I should say rather lonely. The +campaign noise and the little campaigners were hushed and gone. There +were no men of companionable size about him, and the Great Task lay +before him. The Democratic party has not brought forward large men in +public life during its long term of exclusion from the Government; and +the newly elected President has had few opportunities and a very short +time to make acquaintances of a continental kind. This little college +town, this little hitherto corrupt state, are both small. + +I went at my business without delay. The big country-life idea, the +working of great economic forces to put its vitalization within sight, +the coming equilibrium by the restoration of country life--all +coincident with his coming into the Presidency. His Administration must +fall in with it, guide it, further it. The chief instruments are the +Agricultural Department, the Bureau of Education, and the power of the +President himself to bring about Rural Credit Societies and similar +organized helps. He quickly saw the difference between Demonstration +Work by the Agricultural Department and the plan to vote large sums to +agricultural colleges and to the states to build up schools. + +"Who is the best man for Secretary of Agriculture?" + +I ought to have known, but I didn't. For who is? + +"May I look about and answer your question later?" + +"Yes, I will thank you." + +"I wish to find the very best men for my Cabinet, regardless of +consequences. I do not forget the party as an instrument of government, +and I do not wish to do violence to it. But I must have the best men in +the Nation"--with a very solemn tone as he sat bolt upright, with a +stern look on his face, and a lonely look. + +I told him my idea of the country school that must be and talked of the +Bureau of Education. He saw quickly and assented to all my propositions. + +And then we talked somewhat more conservatively of Conservation, about +which he knows less. + +I asked if he would care to have me make briefs about the Agricultural +Department, the Bureau of Education, the Rural Credit Societies, and +Conservation. "I shall be very grateful, if it be not too great a +sacrifice." + +I had gained that permission, which (if he respect my opinion) ought to +guide him somewhat toward a real understanding of how the Government may +help toward our Great Constructive Problem. + +I gained also the impression that he has no sympathy with the idea of +giving government grants to schools and agricultural colleges--a very +distinct impression. + +I had been with him an hour and had talked (I fear) too much. But he +seemed hearty in his thanks. He came to the front door with me, insisted +on helping me on with my coat, envied me the motor-car drive in the +night back to New York, spoke to eight or ten reporters who had crowded +into the hall for their interview--a most undignified method, it seemed +to me, for a President-elect to reach the public; I stepped out on the +muddy street, and, as I walked to the Inn, I had the feeling of the +man's oppressive loneliness as he faced his great task. There is no pomp +of circumstance, nor hardly dignity in this setting, except the dignity +of his seriousness and his loneliness. + + * * * * * + +There was a general expectation that Page would become a member of +President Wilson's Cabinet, and the place for which he seemed +particularly suited was the Secretaryship of Agriculture. The smoke of +battle had hardly passed away, therefore, when Page's admirers began +bringing pressure to bear upon the President-elect. There was probably +no man in the United States who had such completely developed views +about this Department as Page; and it is not improbable that, had +circumstances combined to offer him this position, he would have +accepted it. But fate in matters of this sort is sometimes kinder than a +man's friends. Page had a great horror of anything which suggested +office-seeking, and the campaign which now was started in his interest +greatly embarrassed him. He wrote Mr. Wilson, disclaiming all +responsibility and begging him to ignore these misguided efforts. As the +best way of checking the movement, Page now definitely answered Mr. +Wilson's question: Who was the best man for the Agricultural Department? +It is interesting to note that the candidate whom Page nominated in this +letter--a man who had been his friend for many years and an associate on +the Southern Education Board--was the man whom Mr. Wilson chose. + + +_To Woodrow Wilson_ + + Garden City, N.Y. + November 27, 1912. + + MY DEAR WILSON: + + I send you (wrongly, perhaps, when you are trying to rest) the + shortest statement that I could make about the demonstration + field-work of the Department of Agriculture. This is the best tool + yet invented to shape country life. Other (and shorter) briefs will + be ready in a little while. + + You asked me who I thought was the best man for Secretary of + Agriculture. Houston[7], I should say, of the men that I know. You + will find my estimate of him in the little packet of memoranda. Van + Hise[8] may be as good or even better if he be young in mind and + adaptable enough. But he seems to me a man who may already have + done his big job. + + I answer the other questions you asked at Princeton and I have + taken the liberty to send some memoranda about a few other men--on + the theory that every friend of yours ought now to tell you with + the utmost frankness about the men he knows, of whom you may be + thinking. + + The building up of the countryman is the big constructive job of + our time. When the countryman comes to his own, the town man will + no longer be able to tax, and to concentrate power, and to bully + the world. + + Very heartily yours, + WALTER H. PAGE. + + +_To Henry Wallace_ + + Garden City, N.Y. + 11 March, 1913. + + MY DEAR UNCLE HENRY: + + What a letter yours is! By George! we must get on the job, you and + I, of steering the world--get on it a little more actively. Else it + may run amuck. We have frightful responsibilities in this matter. + The subject weighs the more deeply and heavily on me because I am + just back from a month's vacation in North Carolina, where I am + going to build me a winter and old-age bungalow. No; you would be + disappointed if you went out of your way to see my boys. Moreover, + they are now merely clearing land. They sold out the farm they put + in shape, after two years' work, for just ten times what it had + cost, and they are now starting another one _de novo_. About a year + hence, they'll have something to show. And next winter, when my + house is built down there, I want you to come and see me and see + that country. I'll show you one of the most remarkable farmers' + clubs you ever saw and many other interesting things as well--many, + very many. I'm getting into this farm business in dead earnest. + That's the dickens of it: how can I do my share in our partnership + to run the universe if I give my time to cotton-growing problems? + It's a tangled world. + + Well, bless your soul! You and the younger Wallaces (my regards to + every one of them) and Poe[9]--you are all very kind to think of me + for that difficult place--too difficult by far, for me. Besides, it + would have cost me my life. If I were to go into public life, I + should have had to sell my whole interest here. This would have + meant that I could never make another dollar. More than that, I'd + have thrown away a trade that I've learned and gone at another one + that I know little about--a bad change, surely. So, you see, there + never was anything serious in this either in my mind or in the + President's. Arthur hit it off right one day when somebody asked + him: + + "Is your father going to take the Secretaryship of Agriculture?" + + He replied: "Not seriously." + + Besides, the President didn't ask me! He knew too much for that. + + [Illustration: Charles D. McIver of Greensboro, North Caroline, a + leader in the cause of Southern Education] + + [Illustration: Woodrow Wilson in 1912] + + But he did ask me who would be a good man and I said "Houston." You + are not quite fair to him in your editorial. He does know--knows + much and well and is the strongest man in the Cabinet--in promise. + The farmers don't yet know him: that's the only trouble. Give him a + chance. + + I've "put it up" to the new President and to the new Secretary to + get on the job immediately of _organizing country life_. I've drawn + up a scheme (a darned good one, too) which they have. I have good + hope that they'll get to it soon and to the thing that we have all + been working toward. I'm very hopeful about this. I told them both + last week to get their minds on this before the wolves devour them. + Don't you think it better to work with the Government and to try to + steer it right than to go off organizing other agencies? + + God pity our new masters! The President is all right. He's sound, + earnest, courageous. But his party! I still have some muscular + strength. In certain remote regions they still break stones in the + road by hand. Now I'll break stones before I'd have a job at + Washington now. I spent four days with them last week--the new + crowd. They'll try their best. I think they'll succeed. But, if + they do succeed and survive, they'll come out of the scrimmage + bleeding and torn. We've got to stand off and run 'em, Uncle Henry. + That's the only hope I see for the country. Don't damn Houston, + then, beforehand. He's a real man. Let's get on the job and tell + 'em how. + + Now, when you come East, come before you need to get any of your + meetings and strike a bee-line for Garden City; and don't be in a + hurry when you get here. If a Presbyterian meeting be necessary for + your happiness, I'll drum up one on the Island for you. And, of + course, you must come to my house and pack up right and get your + legs steady sometime before you sail--you and Mrs. Wallace: will + she not go with you? + + In the meantime, don't be disgruntled. We can steer the old world + right, if you'll just keep your shoulder to the wheel. We'll work + it all out here in the summer and verify it all (including your job + of setting the effete kingdoms of Europe all right)--we'll verify + it all next winter down in North Carolina. I think things have got + such a start that they'll keep going in some fashion, till we check + up the several items, political, ethical, agricultural, + journalistic, and international. God bless us all! + + Most heartily always yours, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + +Though Mr. Wilson did not offer Page the Agricultural Department, he +much desired to have him in his Cabinet, and had already decided upon +him for a post which the new President probably regarded as more +important--the Interior. The narrow margin with which Page escaped this +responsibility illustrates again the slender threads upon which history +is constructed. The episode is also not without its humorous side. For +there was only one reason why Page did not enter the Cabinet as +Secretary of the Interior; and that is revealed in the above letter to +"Uncle Henry"; he was so busy planning his new house in the sandhills of +North Carolina that, while cabinets were being formed and great +decisions taken, he was absent from New York. A short time before the +inauguration, Mr. Wilson asked Colonel House to arrange a meeting with +Page in the latter's apartment. Mr. Wilson wished to see him on a +Saturday; the purpose was to offer him the Secretaryship of the +Interior. Colonel House called up Page's office at Garden City and was +informed that he was in North Carolina. Colonel House then telegraphed +asking Page to start north immediately, and suggesting the succeeding +Monday as a good time for the interview. A reply was at once received +from Page that he was on his way. + +Meanwhile certain of Mr. Wilson's advisers had heard of the plan and +were raising objections. Page was a Southerner; the Interior Department +has supervision over the pension bureau, with its hundreds of thousands +of Civil War veterans as pensioners; moreover, Page was an outspoken +enemy of the whole pension system and had led several "campaigns" +against it. The appointment would never do! Mr. Wilson himself was +persuaded that it would be a mistake. + +"But what are we going to do about Page?" asked Colonel House. "I have +summoned him from North Carolina on important business. What excuse +shall I give for bringing him way up here?" + +But the President-elect was equal to the emergency. + +"Here's the cabinet list," he drily replied. "Show it to Page. Tell him +these are the people I have about decided to appoint and ask him what he +thinks of them. Then he will assume that we summoned him to get his +advice." + +When Page made his appearance, therefore, Colonel House gave him the +list of names and solemnly asked him what he thought of them. The first +name that attracted Page's attention was that of Josephus Daniels, as +Secretary of the Navy. Page at once expressed his energetic dissent. + +"Why, don't you think he is Cabinet timber?" asked Colonel House. + +"Timber!" Page fairly shouted. "He isn't a splinter! Have you got a time +table? When does the next train leave for Princeton?" + +In a couple of hours Page was sitting with Mr. Wilson, earnestly +protesting against Mr. Daniels's appointment. But Mr. Wilson said that +he had already offered Mr. Daniels the place. + + +II + +About the time of Wilson's election a great calamity befell one of +Page's dearest friends. Dr. Edwin A. Alderman, the President of the +University of Virginia, one of the pioneer educational forces in the +Southern States, and for years an associate of Page on the General +Education Board, was stricken with tuberculosis. He was taken to +Saranac, and here a patient course of treatment happily restored him to +health. One of the dreariest aspects of such an experience is its +tediousness and loneliness. Yet the maintenance of one's good spirits +and optimism is an essential part of the treatment. And it was in this +work that Page now proved an indispensable aid to the medical men. As +soon as Dr. Alderman found himself stretched out, a weak and isolated +figure, cut off from those activities and interests which had been his +inspiration for forty years, with no companions except his own thoughts +and a few sufferers like himself, letters began to arrive with weekly +regularity from the man whom he always refers to as "dear old Page." The +gayety and optimism of these letters, the lively comments which they +passed upon men and things, and their wholesome and genial philosophy, +were largely instrumental, Dr. Alderman has always believed, in his +recovery. Their effect was so instant and beneficial that the physicians +asked to have them read to the other patients, who also derived +abounding comfort and joy from them. The whole episode was one of the +most beautiful in Page's life, and brings out again that gift for +friendship which was perhaps his finest quality. For this reason it is +a calamity that most of these letters have not been preserved. The few +that have survived are interesting not only in themselves; they reveal +Page's innermost thoughts on the subject of Woodrow Wilson. That he +admired the new President is evident, yet these letters make it clear +that, even in 1912 and 1913, there was something about Mr. Wilson that +caused him to hesitate, to entertain doubts, to wonder how, after all, +the experiment was to end. + + To Edwin A. Alderman + + Garden City, L.I. + December 31, 1912. + + MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN: + + I have a new amusement, a new excitement, a new study, as you have + and as we all have who really believe in democracy--a new study, a + new hope, and sometimes a new fear; and its name is Wilson. I have + for many years regarded myself as an interested, but always a + somewhat detached, outsider, believing that the democratic idea was + real and safe and lifting, if we could ever get it put into action, + contenting myself ever with such patches of it as time and accident + and occasion now and then sewed on our gilded or tattered garments. + But now it is come--the real thing; at any rate a man somewhat like + us, whose thought and aim and dream are our thought and aim and + dream. That's enormously exciting! I didn't suppose I'd ever become + so interested in a general proposition or in a governmental hope. + + Will he do it? Can he do it? Can anybody do it? How can we help him + do it? Now that the task is on him, does he really understand? Do I + understand him and he me? There's a certain unreality about it. + + The man himself--I find that nobody quite knows him now. Alas! I + wonder if he quite knows himself. Temperamentally very shy, having + lived too much alone and far too much with women (how I wish two of + his daughters were sons!) this Big Thing having descended on him + before he knew or was quite prepared for it, thrust into a whirl of + self-seeking men even while he is trying to think out the theory of + the duties that press, knowing the necessity of silence, surrounded + by small people--well, I made up my mind that his real friends owed + it to him and to what we all hope for, to break over his reserve + and to volunteer help. He asks for conferences with official + folk--only, I think. So I began to write memoranda about those + subjects of government about which I know something and have + opinions and about men who are or who may be related to them. It + has been great sport to set down in words without any reserve + precisely what you think. It is imprudent, of course, as most + things worth doing are. But what have I to lose, I who have my life + now planned and laid out and have got far beyond the reach of + gratitude or hatred or praise or blame or fear of any man? I sent + him some such memoranda. Here came forthwith a note of almost + abject thanks. I sent more. Again, such a note--written in his own + hand. Yet not a word of what he thinks. The Sphinx was garrulous in + comparison. Then here comes a mob of my good friends crying for + office for me. So I sent a ten-line note, by the hand of my + secretary, saying that this should not disturb my perfect frankness + nor (I knew it would not) his confidence. Again, a note in his own + hand, of perfect understanding and with the very glow of gratitude. + And he talks--generalities to the public. Perhaps that's all he can + talk now. Wise? Yes. But does he know the men about him? Does he + really know men? Nobody knows. Thus 'twixt fear and hope I + see--suspense. I'll swear I can't doubt, I can't believe. Whether + it is going to work out or not--whether he or anybody can work it + out of the haze of theory--nobody knows; and nobody's speculation + is better than mine and mine is worthless. + + This is the game, this is the excitement, this is the doubthope and + the hopedoubt. I send this word about it to you (I could and would + to nobody else: you're snowbound, you see, and don't write much and + don't see many people: restrain your natural loquacity!) But for + the love of heaven tell me if you see any way _very clearly_. It's + a kind of misty dream to me. + + I ask myself why should I concern myself about it? Of course the + answer's easy and I think creditable: I do profoundly hold this + democratic faith and believe that it can be worked into action + among men; and it may be I shall yet see it done. That's the secret + of my interest. But when this awful office descends on a man, it + oppresses him, changes him, you are not quite so sure of him, you + doubt whether he knows himself or you in the old way. + + And I find among men the very crudest ideas of government or of + democracy. They have not thought the thing out. They hold no + ordered creed of human organization or advancement. They leave all + to chance and think, when they think at all, that chance determines + it. And yet the Great Hope persists, and I think I have grown an + inch by it. + + I wonder how it seems, looked at from the cold mountains of Lake + Saranac? + + It's the end of the year. Mrs. Page and I (alone!) have been + talking of democracy, of these very things I've written. The + bell-ringing and the dancing and the feasting are not, on this + particular year, to our liking. We see all our children gone--half + of them to nests of their own building, the rest on errands of + their own pleasure, and we are left, young yet, but the main job of + life behind us! We're going down to a cottage in southern North + Carolina (with our own cook and motor car, praise God!) for + February, still further to think this thing out and incidentally to + build us a library, in which we'll live when we can. That, for + convention's sake, we call a Vacation. + + Your brave note came to-day. Of course, you'll "get" 'em--those + small enemies. The gain of twelve pounds tells the story. The + danger is, your season of philosophy and reverie will be too soon + ended. Don't fret; the work and the friends will be here when you + come down. There's many a long day ahead; and there may not be so + many seasons of rest and meditation. You are the only man I know + who has time enough to think out a clear answer to this: "What + ought to be done with Bryan?" What _can_ be done with Bryan? When + you find the answer, telegraph it to me. + + I've a book or two more to send you. If they interest you, praise + the gods. If they bore you, fling 'em in the snow and think no + worse of me. You can't tell what a given book may be worth to a + given man in an unknown mood. They've become such a commodity to me + that I thank my stars for a month away from them when I may come at + 'em at a different angle and really need a few old + ones--Wordsworth, for instance. When you get old enough, you'll + wake up some day with the feeling that the world is much more + beautiful than it was when you were young, that a landscape has a + closer meaning, that the sky is more companionable, that outdoor + colour and motion are more splendidly audacious and beautifully + rhythmical than you had ever thought. That's true. The gently + snow-clad little pines out my window are more to me than the whole + Taft Administration. They'll soon be better than the year's + dividends. And the few great craftsmen in words who can confirm + this feeling--they are the masters you become grateful for. Then + the sordidness of the world lies far beneath you and your great + democracy is truly come--the democracy of Nature. To be akin to a + tree, in this sense, is as good as to be akin to a man. I have a + grove of little long-leaf pines down in the old country and I know + they'll have some consciousness of me after all men have forgotten + me: I've saved 'em, and they'll sing a century of gratitude if I + can keep 'em saved. Joe Holmes gave me a dissertation on them the + other day. He was down there "on a little Sunday jaunt" of forty + miles--the best legs and the best brain that ever worked together + in one anatomy. + + A conquering New Year--that's what you'll find, begun before this + reaches you, carrying all good wishes from + + Yours affectionately, + + W.H.P. + + To Edwin A. Alderman + + Garden City, New York, + + January 26, 1913. + + MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN: + + This has been "Board" [10] week, as you know. The men came from all + quarters of the land, and we had a good time. New work is opening; + old work is going well; the fellowship ran in good tide--except + that everybody asked everybody else: "What do you know about + Alderman?" Everybody who had late news of you gave a good report. + The Southern Board formally passed a resolution to send + affectionate greetings to you and high hope and expectation, and I + was commissioned to frame the message. This is it. I shall write no + formal resolution, for that wasn't the spirit of it. The fellows + all asked me, singly and collectively, to send their love. And we + don't put that sort of a message under _whereases_ and + _wherefores_. There they were, every one of them, except Peabody + and Bowie. Mr. Ogden in particular was anxious for his emphatic + remembrance and good wishes to go. The dear old man is fast passing + into the last stage of his illness and he knows it and he soon + expects the end, in a mood as brave and as game as he ever was. I + am sorry to tell you he suffers a good deal of pain. + + What a fine thing to look back over--this Southern Board's work! + Here was a fine, zealous merchant twenty years ago, then + fifty-seven years old, who saw this big job as a modest layman. If + he had known more about "Education" or more about "the South, + bygawd, sir!" he'd never have had the courage to tackle the job. + But with the bravery of ignorance, he turned out to be the wisest + man on that task in our generation. He has united every real, good + force, and he showed what can be done in a democracy even by one + zealous man. I've sometimes thought that this is possibly the + wisest single piece of work that I have ever seen done--_wisest_, + not smartest. I don't know what can be done when he's gone. His + phase of it is really done. But, if another real leader arise, + there will doubtless be another phase. + + The General Board doesn't find much more college-endowing to do. We + made only one or two gifts. But we are trying to get the country + school task rightly focussed. We haven't done it yet; but we will. + Buttrick and Rose will work it out. I wish to God I could throw + down my practical job and go at it with 'em. Darned if I couldn't + get it going! though _I_ say it, as shouldn't. And we are going + pretty soon to begin with the medical colleges; that, I think, is + good--very. + + But the most efficient workmanlike piece of organization that my + mortal eyes have ever seen is Rose's hookworm worm work. We're + going soon to organize country life in a sanitary way, the county + health officer being the biggest man on the horizon. Stiles has + moved his marine hospital and his staff to Wilmington, North + Carolina, and he and the local health men are quietly going to make + New Hanover the model county for sanitary condition and efficiency. + You'll know what a vast revolution that denotes!--And Congress + seems likely to charter the big Rockefeller Foundation, which will + at once make five millions available for chasing the hookworm off + the face of the earth. Rose will spread himself over Honduras, + etc., etc., and China, and India! This does literally beat the + devil; for, if the hookworm isn't the devil, what is? + + I'm going to farming. I've two brothers and two sons, all young and + strong, who believe in the game. We have land without end, + thousands of acres; engines to pull stumps, to plough, to plant, to + reap. The nigger go hang! A white boy with an engine can outdo a + dozen of 'em. Cotton and corn for staple crops; peaches, figs, + scuppernongs, vegetables, melons for incidental crops; God's good + air in North Carolina; good roads, too--why, man, Moore County has + authorized the laying out of a strip of land along all highways to + be planted in shrubbery and fruit trees and kept as a park, so that + you will motor for 100 miles through odorous bloom in spring!--I + mean I am going down there to-morrow for a month, one day for golf + at Pinehurst, the next day for clearing land with an oil + locomotive, ripping up stumps! Every day for life out-of-doors and + every night, too. I'm going to grow dasheens. You know what a + dasheen is? It's a Trinidad potato, which keeps and tastes like a + sweet potato stuffed with chestnuts. There are lots of things to + learn in this world. + + God bless us all, old man. It's a pretty good world, whether seen + from the petty excitements of reforming the world and dreaming of a + diseaseless earth in New York, or from the stump-pulling recreation + of a North Carolina wilderness. + + Health be with you! + + W.H.P. + + To Edwin A. Alderman + + Garden City, L.I. + + March 10, 1913. + + MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN: + + I'm home from a month of perfect climate in the sandhills of North + Carolina, where I am preparing a farm and building a home at least + for winter use; and I had the most instructive and interesting + month of my life there. I believe I see, even in my life-time, the + coming of a kind of man and a kind of life that shall come pretty + near to being the model American citizen and the model American way + to live. Half of it is climate; a fourth of it occupation; the + other fourth, companionship. And the climate (with what it does) is + three fourths companionship. + + Then I came to Washington and saw Wilson made President--a very + impressive experience indeed. The future--God knows; but I believe + in Wilson very thoroughly. Men fool him yet. Men fool us all. He + has already made some mistakes. But he's sound. And, if we have + moral courage enough to beat back the grafters, little and big--I + mean if we, the people, will vote two years and four years hence, + to keep them back, I think that we shall now really work toward a + democratic government. I have a stronger confidence in government + now as an instrument of human progress than I have ever had before. + And I find it an exhilarating and exciting experience. + + I have seen many of your good friends in North Carolina, Virginia, + and Washington. How we all do love you, old man! Don't forget that, + in your successful fight. And, with my affectionate greetings to + Mrs. Alderman, ask her to send me the news of your progress. + + Always affectionately yours, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + + _To Edwin A. Alderman_ + + On the _Baltic_, New York to Liverpool, + + May 19, 1913. + + MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN: + + It was the best kind of news I heard of you during my last weeks at + home--every day of which I wished to go to Briarcliff to see you. + At a distance, it seems absurd to say that it was impossible to go. + But it was. I set down five different days in my calendar for this + use; and somehow every one of them was taken. Two were taken by + unexpected calls to Washington. Another was taken by my partners + who arranged a little good-bye dinner. Another was taken by the + British Ambassador--and so on. Absurd--of course it was absurd, and + I feel now as if it approached the criminal. But every stolen day I + said, "Well, I'll find another." But another never came. + + But good news of you came by many hands and mouths. My + congratulations, my cheers, my love, old man. Now when you do take + up work again, don't take up all the work. Show the fine virtue + called self-restraint. We work too much and too hard and do too + many things even when we are well. There are three titled + Englishmen who sit at the table with me on this ship--one a former + Lord Mayor of London, another a peer, and the third an M.P. Damn + their self-sufficiencies! They do excite my envy. _They_ don't + shoulder the work of the world: they shoulder the world and leave + the work to be done by somebody else. Three days' stories and + political discussion with them have made me wonder why the devil + I've been so industrious all my life. They know more than I know; + they are richer than I am; they have been about the world more than + I have; they are far more influential than I am; and yet one of + them asked me to-day if George Washington was a born American! I + said to him, "Where the devil do you suppose he came from--Hades?" + And he laughed at himself as heartily as the rest of us laughed at + him, and didn't care a hang! + + If that's British, I've a mind to become British; and, the point + is, you must, too. Work is a curse. There was some truth in that + old doctrine. At any rate a little of it must henceforth go a long + way with you. + + A sermon? Yes. But, since it's a good one, I know you'll forgive + me; for it is preached in love, my dear boy, and accompanied with + the hearty and insistent hope that you'll write to me. + + Affectionately, + WALTER PAGE. + +This last letter apparently anticipates the story. A few weeks before it +was written President Wilson had succeeded in carrying out his +determination to make Page an important part of his Administration. One +morning Page's telephone rang and Colonel House's well-known and +well-modulated voice came over the wire. + +"Good morning, Your Excellency," was his greeting. + +"What the devil are you talking about?" asked Page. + +Then Colonel House explained himself. The night before, he said, he had +dined at the White House. In a pause of the conversation the President +had quietly remarked: + +"I've about made up my mind to send Walter Page to England. What do you +think of that?" + +Colonel House thought very well of it indeed and the result of his +conversation was this telephone call, in which he was authorized to +offer Page the Ambassadorship to Great Britain. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 7: Mr. David F. Houston, ex-President of the University of +Texas, and in 1912 Chancellor of the Washington University of St. +Louis.] + +[Footnote 8: Charles R. Van Hise, President of the University of +Wisconsin.] + +[Footnote 9: Clarence Poe, editor of _The Progressive Farmer_.] + +[Footnote 10: The reference is to the meeting of the Southern and the +General Education Boards.] + + + + +CHAPTER V + +ENGLAND BEFORE THE WAR + + +The London Embassy is the greatest diplomatic gift at the disposal of +the President, and, in the minds of the American people, it possesses a +glamour and an historic importance all its own. Page came to the +position, as his predecessors had come, with a sense of awe; the great +traditions of the office; the long line of distinguished men, from +Thomas Pinckney to Whitelaw Reid, who had filled it; the peculiar +delicacy of the problems that then existed between the two countries; +the reverent respect which Page had always entertained for English +history, English literature, and English public men--all these +considerations naturally quickened the new ambassador's imagination and, +at the same time, made his arrival in England a rather solemn event. Yet +his first days in London had their grotesque side as well. He himself +has recorded his impressions, and, since they contain an important +lesson for the citizens of the world's richest and most powerful +Republic, they should be preserved. When the ambassador of practically +any other country reaches London, he finds waiting for him a spacious +and beautiful embassy, filled with a large corps of secretaries and +servants--everything ready, to the minutest detail, for the beginning of +his labours. He simply enters these elaborate state-owned and +state-supported quarters and starts work. How differently the mighty +United States welcomes its ambassadors let Page's memorandum tell: + +The boat touched at Queenstown, and a mass of Irish reporters came +aboard and wished to know what I thought of Ireland. Some of them +printed the important announcement that I was quite friendly to Ireland! +At Liverpool was Mr. Laughlin[11], Charge d'Affaires in London since Mr. +Reid's death, to meet me, and of course the consul, Mr. Washington. . . . +On our arrival in London, Laughlin explained that he had taken quarters +for me at the Coburg Hotel, whither we drove, after having fought my way +through a mob of reporters at the station. One fellow told me that since +I left New York the papers had published a declaration by me that I +meant to be very "democratic" and would under no conditions wear "knee +breeches"; and he asked me about that report. I was foolish enough to +reply that the existence of an ass in the United States ought not +necessarily to require the existence of a corresponding ass in London. +He printed that! I never knew the origin of this "knee breeches" story. + +That residence at the Coburg Hotel for three months was a crowded and +uncomfortable nightmare. The indignity and inconvenience--even the +humiliation--of an ambassador beginning his career in an hotel, +especially during the Court season, and a green ambassador at that! I +hope I may not die before our Government does the conventional duty to +provide ambassadors' residences. + +The next morning I went to the Chancery (123, Victoria Street) and my +heart sank. I had never in my life been in an American Embassy. I had +had no business with them in Paris or in London on my previous visits. +In fact I had never been in any embassy except the British Embassy at +Washington. But the moment I entered that dark and dingy hall at 123, +Victoria Street, between two cheap stores--the same entrance that the +dwellers in the cheap flats above used--I knew that Uncle Sam had no fit +dwelling there. And the Ambassador's room greatly depressed me--dingy +with twenty-nine years of dirt and darkness, and utterly undignified. +And the rooms for the secretaries and attaches were the little bedrooms, +kitchen, etc., of that cheap flat; that's all it was. For the place we +paid $1,500 a year. I did not understand then and I do not understand +yet how Lowell, Bayard, Phelps, Hay, Choate, and Reid endured that cheap +hole. Of course they stayed there only about an hour a day; but they +sometimes saw important people there. And, whether they ever saw anybody +there or not, the offices of the United States Government in London +ought at least to be as good as a common lawyer's office in a country +town in a rural state of our Union. Nobody asked for anything for an +embassy: nobody got anything for an embassy. I made up my mind in ten +minutes that I'd get out of this place[12]. + +At the Coburg Hotel, we were very well situated; but the hotel became +intolerably tiresome. Harold Fowler and Frank and I were there until +W.A.W.P.[13] and Kitty[14] came (and Frances Clark came with them). Then +we were just a little too big a hotel party. Every morning I drove down +to the old hole of a Chancery and remained about two hours. There wasn't +very much work to do; and my main business was to become acquainted with +the work and with people--to find myself with reference to this task, +with reference to official life and to London life in general. + +Every afternoon people came to the hotel to see me--some to pay their +respects and to make life pleasant, some out of mere curiosity, and many +for ends of their own. I confess that on many days nightfall found me +completely worn out. But the evenings seldom brought a chance to rest. +The social season was going at its full gait; and the new ambassador +(any new ambassador) would have been invited to many functions. A very +few days after my arrival, the Duchess of X invited Frank and me to +dinner. The powdered footmen were the chief novelty of the occasion for +us. But I was much confused because nobody introduced anybody to anybody +else. If a juxtaposition, as at the dinner table, made an introduction +imperative, the name of the lady next you was so slurred that you +couldn't possibly understand it. + +Party succeeded party. I went to them because they gave me a chance to +become acquainted with people. + +But very early after my arrival, I was of course summoned by the King. I +had presented a copy of my credentials to the Foreign Secretary (Sir +Edward Grey) and the real credentials--the original in a sealed +envelope--I must present to His Majesty. One morning the King's Master +of the Ceremonies, Sir Arthur Walsh, came to the hotel with the royal +coaches, four or five of them, and the richly caparisoned grooms. The +whole staff of the Embassy must go with me. We drove to Buckingham +Palace, and, after waiting a few moments, I was ushered into the King's +presence. He stood in one of the drawing rooms on the ground floor +looking out on the garden. There stood with him in uniform Sir Edward +Grey. I entered and bowed. He shook my hand, and I spoke my little piece +of three or four sentences. + +He replied, welcoming me and immediately proceeded to express his +surprise and regret that a great and rich country like the United States +had not provided a residence for its ambassadors. "It is not fair to an +ambassador," said he; and he spoke most earnestly. + +I reminded him that, although the lack of a home was an inconvenience, +the trouble or discomfort that fell on an ambassador was not so bad as +the wrong impression which I feared was produced about the United States +and its Government, and I explained that we had had so many absorbing +domestic tasks and, in general, so few absorbing foreign relations, that +we had only begun to develop what might be called an international +consciousness. + +Sir Edward was kind enough the next time I saw him to remark that I did +that very well and made a good impression on the King. + +I could now begin my ambassadorial career proper--call on the other +ambassadors and accept invitations to dinners and the like. + +I was told after I came from the King's presence that the Queen would +receive me in a few minutes. I was shown upstairs, the door opened, and +there in a small drawing room, stood the Queen alone--a pleasant woman, +very royal in appearance. The one thing that sticks in my memory out of +this first conversation with her Majesty was her remark that she had +seen only one man who had been President of the United States--Mr. +Roosevelt. She hoped he was well. I felt moved to remark that she was +not likely to see many former Presidents because the office was so hard +a task that most of them did not long survive. + +"I'm hoping that office will not soon kill the King," she said. + +In time Page obtained an entirely adequate and dignified house at 6 +Grosvenor Square, and soon found that the American Ambassadorship had +compensations which were hardly suggested by his first glimpse of the +lugubrious Chancery. He brought to this new existence his plastic and +inquisitive mind, and his mighty gusto for the interesting and the +unusual; he immensely enjoyed his meetings with the most important +representatives of all types of British life. The period of his arrival +marked a crisis in British history; Mr. Lloyd George was supposed to be +taxing the aristocracy out of existence; Mr. Asquith was accused of +plotting the destruction of the House of Lords; the tide of liberalism, +even of radicalism, was running high, and, in the judgment of the +conservative forces, England was tottering to its fall; the gathering +mob was about to submerge everything that had made it great. And the +Irish question had reached another crisis with the passage of the Home +Rule Bill, which Sir Edward Carson was preparing to resist with his +Irish "volunteers." + +All these matters formed the staple of talk at dinner tables, at country +houses and at the clubs; and Page found constant entertainment in the +variegated pageant. There were important American matters to discuss +with the Foreign Office--more important than any that had arisen in +recent years--particularly Mexico and the Panama Tolls. Before these +questions are considered, however, it may be profitable to print a +selection from the many letters which Page wrote during his first year, +giving his impressions of this England which he had always loved and +which a closer view made him love and admire still more. These letters +have the advantage of presenting a frank and yet sympathetic picture of +British society and British life as it was just before the war. + + _To Frank N Doubleday_ + + The Coburg Hotel, + Carlos Place, Grosvenor Square, + London, W. + + DEAR EFFENDI:[15] + + You can't imagine the intensity of the party feeling here. I dined + to-night in an old Tory family. They had just had a "division" an + hour or two before in the House of Lords on the Home Rule Bill. Six + Lords were at the dinner and their wives. One was a Duke, two were + Bishops, and the other three were Earls. They expect a general + "bust-up." If the King does so and so, off with the King! That's + what they fear the Liberals will do. It sounds very silly to me; + but you can't exaggerate their fear. The Great Lady, who was our + hostess, told me, with tears in her voice, that she had suspended + all social relations with the Liberal leaders. + + At lunch--just five or six hours before--we were at the Prime + Minister's, where the talk was precisely on the other side. + Gladstone's granddaughter was there and several members of the + Cabinet. + + Somehow it reminds me of the tense days of the slavery controversy + just before the Civil War. + + Yet in the everyday life of the people, you hear nothing about it. + It is impossible to believe that the ordinary man cares a fig! + + Good-night. You don't care a fig for this. But I'll get time to + write you something interesting in a little while. + + Yours, + W.H.P. + + _To Herbert S. Houston_ + + American Embassy + London + Sunday, 24 Aug., 1913. + + DEAR H.S.H.: + + . . . You know there's been much discussion of the decadence of the + English people. I don't believe a word of it. They have an awful + slum, I hear, as everybody knows, and they have an idle class. + Worse, from an equal-opportunity point-of-view, they have a very + large servant-class, and a large class that depends on the nobility + and the rich. All these are economic and social drawbacks. But they + have always had all these--except that the slum has become larger + in modern years. And I don't see or find any reason to believe in + the theory of decadence. The world never saw a finer lot of men + than the best of their ruling class. You may search the world and + you may search history for finer men than Lord Morley, Sir Edward + Grey, Mr. Harcourt, and other members of the present Cabinet. And I + meet such men everywhere--gently bred, high-minded, physically fit, + intellectually cultivated, patriotic. If the devotion to old forms + and the inertia which makes any change almost impossible strike an + American as out-of-date, you must remember that in the grand old + times of England, they had all these things and had them worse than + they are now. I can't see that the race is breaking down or giving + out. Consider how their political morals have been pulled up since + the days of the rotten boroughs; consider how their court-life is + now high and decent, and think what it once was. British trade is + larger this year than it ever was, Englishmen are richer then they + ever were and more of them are rich. They write and speak and play + cricket, and govern, and fight as well as they have ever + done--excepting, of course, the writing of Shakespeare. + + Another conclusion that is confirmed the more you see of English + life is their high art of living. When they make their money, they + stop money-making and cultivate their minds and their gardens and + entertain their friends and do all the high arts of living--to + perfection. Three days ago a retired soldier gave a garden-party in + my honour, twenty-five miles out of London. There was his historic + house, a part of it 500 years old; there were his ten acres of + garden, his lawn, his trees; and they walk with you over it all; + they sit out-of-doors; they serve tea; they take life rationally; + they talk pleasantly (not jocularly, nor story-telling); they abhor + the smart in talk or in conduct; they have gentleness, cultivation, + the best manners in the world; and they are genuine. The hostess + has me take a basket and go with her while she cuts it full of + flowers for us to bring home; and, as we walk, she tells the story + of the place. She is a tenant-for-life; it is entailed. Her husband + was wounded in South Africa. Her heir is her nephew. The home, of + course, will remain in the family forever. No, they don't go to + London much in recent years: why should they? But they travel a + month or more. They give three big tea-parties--one when the + rhododendrons bloom and the others at stated times. They have + friends to stay with them half the time, perhaps--sometimes parties + of a dozen. England never had a finer lot of folk than these. And + you see them everywhere. The art of living sanely they have + developed to as high a level, I think, as you will find at any time + in any land. + + The present political battle is fiercer than you would ever guess. + The Lords feel that they are sure to be robbed: they see the end + of the ordered world. Chaos and confiscation lie before them. Yet + that, too, has nearly always been so. It was so in the Reform Bill + days. Lord Morley said to me the other day that when all the + abolitions had been done, there would be fewer things abolished + than anybody hopes or fears, and that there would be the same + problems in some form for many generations. I'm beginning to + believe that the Englishman has always been afraid of the + future--that's what's keeps him so alert. They say to me: "You have + frightful things happen in the United States--your Governor of New + York[16], your Thaw case, your corruption, etc., etc.; and yet you + seem sure and tell us that your countrymen feel sure of the safety + of your government." In the newspaper comments on my + Southampton[17] speech the other day, this same feeling cropped up; + the American Ambassador assures us that the note of hope is the + dominant note of the Republic--etc., etc. Yes, they are dull, _in a + way_--not dull, so much as steady; and yet they have more solid + sense than any other people. + + It's an interesting study--the most interesting in the world. The + genuineness of the courtesy, the real kindness and the hospitality + of the English are beyond praise and without limit. In this they + show a strange contradiction to their dickering habits in trade and + their "unctuous rectitude" in stealing continents. I know a place + in the world now where they are steadily moving their boundary line + into other people's territory. I guess they really believe that the + earth belongs to them. + + Sincerely, + W.H.P. + + To Arthur W. Page[18] + + Gordon Arms Hotel, Elgin, Scotland. + September 6, 1913. + + Dear Arthur: + + Your mother and Kitty[19] and I are on our way to see Andy[20]. Had + you any idea that to motor from London to Skibo means driving more + than eight hundred miles? Our speedometer now shows more than seven + hundred and we've another day to go--at least one hundred and + thirty miles. And we haven't even had a tire accident. We're having + a delightful journey--only this country yields neither vegetables + nor fruits, and I have to live on oatmeal. They spell it + p-o-r-r-i-d-g-e, and they call it puruge. But they beat all + creation as carnivorous folk. We stayed last night at a beautiful + mountain hotel at Braemar (the same town whereat Stevenson wrote + "Treasure Island") and they had nine kinds of meat for dinner and + eggs in three ways, and no vegetables but potatoes. But this + morning we struck the same thin oatbread that you ate at + Grandfather Mountain. + + I've never understood the Scotch. I think they are, without doubt, + the most capable race in the world--away from home. But how they + came to be so and how they keep up their character and supremacy + and keep breeding true needs explanation. As you come through the + country, you see the most monotonous and dingy little houses and + thousands of robust children, all dirtier than niggers. In the + fertile parts of the country, the fields are beautifully + cultivated--for Lord This-and-T'Other who lives in London and comes + up here in summer to collect his rents and to shoot. The country + people seem desperately poor. But they don't lose their robustness. + In the solid cities--the solidest you ever saw, all being of + granite--such as Edinburgh and Aberdeen, where you see the + prosperous class, they look the sturdiest and most independent + fellows you ever saw. As they grow old they all look like + blue-bellied Presbyterian elders. Scotch to the marrow--everybody + and everything seem--bare knees alike on the street and in the + hotel with dress coats on, bagpipes--there's no sense in these + things, yet being Scotch they live forever. The first men I saw + early this morning on the street in front of the hotel were two + weather-beaten old chaps, with gray beards under their chins. + "Guddddd Murrrrninggggg, Andy," said one. "Guddddd murrninggggg, + Sandy," said the other; and they trudged on. They'd dethrone kings + before they'd shave differently or drop their burrs and gutturals + or cover their knees or cease lying about the bagpipe. And you + can't get it out of the blood. Your mother[21] becomes provoked + when I say these things, and I shouldn't wonder if you yourself + resent them and break out quoting Burns. Now the Highlands can't + support a population larger than the mountain counties of Kentucky. + Now your Kentucky feud is a mere disgrace to civilization. But your + Highland feud is celebrated in song and story. Every clan keeps + itself together to this day by its history and by its plaid. At a + turn in the road in the mountains yesterday, there stood a statue + of Rob Roy painted every stripe to life. We saw his sword and purse + in Sir Walter's house at Abbotsford. The King himself wore the kilt + and one of the plaids at the last court ball at Buckingham Palace, + and there is a man who writes his name and is called "The + Macintosh of Macintosh," and that's a prouder title than the + King's. A little handful of sheep-stealing bandits got themselves + immortalized and heroized, and they are now all Presbyterian + elders. They got _their_ church "established" in Scotland, and when + the King comes to Scotland, by Jehoshaphat! he is obliged to become + a Presbyterian. Yet your Kentucky feudist--poor devil--he comes too + late. The Scotchman has pre-empted that particular field of glory. + And all such comparisons make your mother fighting mad. . . . + + Affectionately, + W.H.P. + + _To the President_ + + American Embassy, London. + October 25, 1913. + + Dear Mr. President: + + I am moved once in a while to write you privately, not about any + specific piece of public business, but only, if I can, to transmit + something of the atmosphere of the work here. And, since this is + meant quite as much for your amusement as for any information it + may carry, don't read it "in office hours." + + The future of the world belongs to us. A man needs to live here, + with two economic eyes in his head, a very little time to become + very sure of this. Everybody will see it presently. These English + are spending their capital, and it is their capital that continues + to give them their vast power. Now what are we going to do with the + leadership of the world presently when it clearly falls into our + hands[22]? And how can we use the English for the highest uses of + democracy? + + You see their fear of an on-sweeping democracy in their social + treatment of party opponents. A Tory lady told me with tears that + she could no longer invite her Liberal friends to her house: "I + have lost them--they are robbing us, you know." I made the mistake + of saying a word in praise of Sir Edward Grey to a duke. "Yes, yes, + no doubt an able man; but you must understand, sir, that I don't + train with that gang." A bishop explained to me at elaborate length + why the very monarchy is doomed unless something befalls Lloyd + George and his programme. Every dinner party is made up with strict + reference to the party politics of the guests. Sometimes you + imagine you see something like civil war; and money is flowing out + of the Kingdom into Canada in the greatest volume ever known and I + am told that a number of old families are investing their fortunes + in African lands. + + These and such things are, of course, mere chips which show the + direction the slow stream runs. The great economic tide of the + century flows our way. _We_ shall have the big world questions to + decide presently. Then we shall need world policies; and it will be + these old-time world leaders that we shall then have to work with, + more closely than now. + + The English make a sharp distinction between the American people + and the American Government--a distinction that they are conscious + of and that they themselves talk about. They do not think of our + _people_ as foreigners. I have a club book on my table wherein the + members are classified as British, Colonial, American, and + Foreign--quite unconsciously. But they do think of our Government + as foreign, and as a frontier sort of thing without good manners or + good faith. This distinction presents the big task of implanting + here a real respect for our Government. People often think to + compliment the American Ambassador by assuming that he is better + than his Government and must at times be ashamed of it. Of course + the Government never does this--never--but persons in unofficial + life; and I have sometimes hit some hard blows under this + condescending provocation. This is the one experience that I have + found irritating. They commiserate me on having a Government that + will not provide an Ambassador's residence--from the King to my + servants. They talk about American lynchings. Even the _Spectator,_ + in an early editorial about you, said that we should now see what + stuff there is in the new President by watching whether you would + stop lynchings. They forever quote Bryce on the badness of our + municipal government. They pretend to think that the impeachment of + governors is common and ought to be commoner. One delicious M.P. + asked me: "Now, since the Governor of New York is impeached, who + becomes Vice-President[23]?" Ignorance, unfathomable ignorance, is + at the bottom of much of it; if the Town Treasurer of Yuba Dam gets + a $100 "rake off" on a paving contract, our city government is a + failure. + + I am about to conclude that our yellow press does us more harm + abroad than at home, and many of the American correspondents of the + English papers send exactly the wrong news. The whole governing + class of England has a possibly exaggerated admiration for the + American people and something very like contempt for the American + Government. + + If I make it out right two causes (in addition to their ignorance) + of their dislike of our Government are (1) its lack of manners in + the past, and (2) its indiscretions of publicity about foreign + affairs. We ostentatiously stand aloof from their polite ways and + courteous manners in many of the every-day, ordinary, unimportant + dealings with them--aloof from the common amenities of + long-organized political life. . . . + + Not one of these things is worth mentioning or remembering. But + generations of them have caused our Government to be regarded as + thoughtless of the fine little acts of life--as rude. The more I + find out about diplomatic customs and the more I hear of the + little-big troubles of others, the more need I find to be careful + about details of courtesy. + + Thus we are making as brave a show as becomes us. I no longer + dismiss a princess after supper or keep the whole diplomatic corps + waiting while I talk to an interesting man till the Master of + Ceremonies comes up and whispers: "Your Excellency, I think they + are waiting for you to move." But I am both young and green, and + even these folk forgive much to green youth, if it show a + willingness to learn. + + But our Government, though green, isn't young enough to plead its + youth. It is time that it, too, were learning Old World manners in + dealing with Old World peoples. I do not know whether we need a + Bureau, or a Major-Domo, or a Master of Ceremonies at Washington, + but we need somebody to prompt us to act as polite as we really + are, somebody to think of those gentler touches that we naturally + forget. Some other governments have such officers--perhaps all. The + Japanese, for instance, are newcomers in world politics. But this + Japanese Ambassador and his wife here never miss a trick; and they + come across the square and ask us how to do it! All the other + governments, too, play the game of small courtesies to + perfection--the French, of course, and the Spanish and--even the + old Turk. + + Another reason for the English distrust of our Government is its + indiscretions in the past of this sort: one of our Ministers to + Germany, you will recall, was obliged to resign because the + Government at Washington inadvertently published one of his + confidential despatches; Griscom saved his neck only by the skin, + when he was in Japan, for a similar reason. These things travel all + round the world from one chancery to another and all governments + know them. Yesterday somebody in Washington talked about my + despatch summarizing my talk with Sir Edward Grey about Mexico, and + it appeared in the papers here this morning that Sir Edward had + told me that the big business interests were pushing him hard. This + I sent as only _my_ inference. I had at once to disclaim it. This + leaves in his mind a doubt about our care for secrecy. They have + monstrous big doors and silent men in Downing Street; and, I am + told, a stenographer sits behind a big screen in Sir Edward's room + while an Ambassador talks[24]! I wonder if my comments on certain + poets, which I have poured forth there to provoke his, are + preserved in the archives of the British Empire. The British Empire + is surely very welcome to them. I have twice found it useful, by + the way, to bring up Wordsworth when he has begun to talk about + Panama tolls. Then your friend Canon Rawnsley[25] has, without + suspecting it, done good service in diplomacy. + + The newspaper men here, by the way, both English and American, are + disposed to treat us fairly and to be helpful. The London _Times_, + on most subjects, is very friendly, and I find its editors worth + cultivating for their own sakes and because of their position. It + is still the greatest English newspaper. Its general friendliness + to the United States, by the way, has started a rumour that I hear + once in a while--that it is really owned by Americans--nonsense yet + awhile. To the fairness and helpfulness of the newspaper men there + are one or two exceptions, for instance, a certain sneaking whelp + who writes for several papers. He went to the Navy League dinner + last night at which I made a little speech. When I sat down, he + remarked to his neighbour, with a yawn, "Well, nothing in it for + me. The Ambassador, I am afraid, said nothing for which I can + demand his recall." They, of course, don't care thrippence about + me; it's you they hope to annoy. + + Then after beating them at their own game of daily little + courtesies, we want a fight with them--a good stiff fight about + something wherein we are dead right, to remind them sharply that we + have sand in our craw[26]. I pray every night for such a fight; for + they like fighting men. Then they'll respect our Government as they + already respect us--if we are dead right. + + But I've little hope for a fight of the right kind with Sir Edward + Grey. He is the very reverse of insolent--fair, frank, + sympathetic, and he has so clear an understanding of our real + character that he'd yield anything that his party and Parliament + would permit. He'd make a good American with the use of very little + sandpaper. Of course I know him better than I know any other member + of the Cabinet, but he seems to me the best-balanced man of them + all. + + I can assure you emphatically that the tariff act[27] does command + their respect and is already having an amazing influence on their + opinion of our Government. Lord Mersey, a distinguished law lord + and a fine old fellow of the very best type of Englishman, said to + me last Sunday, "I wish to thank you for stopping half-way in + reducing your tariff; that will only half ruin us." A lady of a + political family (Liberal) next whom I sat at dinner the other + night (and these women know their politics as no class of women + among us do) said: "Tell me something about your great President. + We hadn't heard much about him nor felt his hand till your tariff + bill passed. He seems to have real power in the Government. You + know we do not always know who has power in your Government." Lord + Grey, the one-time Governor-General of Canada, stopped looking at + the royal wedding presents the other evening long enough to say: + "The United States Government is waking up--waking up." + + I sum up these atmospheric conditions--I do not presume to call + them by so definite a name as recommendations: + + We are in the international game--not in its Old World intrigues + and burdens and sorrows and melancholy, but in the inevitable way + to leadership and to cheerful mastery in the future; and everybody + knows that we are in it but us. It is a sheer blind habit that + causes us to continue to try to think of ourselves as aloof. They + think in terms of races here, and we are of their race, and we + shall become the strongest and the happiest branch of it. + + While we play the game with them, we shall play it better by + playing it under their long-wrought-out rules of courtesy in + everyday affairs. + + We shall play it better, too, if our Government play it + quietly--except when the subject demands publicity. I have heard + that in past years the foreign representatives of our Government + have reported too few things and much too meagrely. I have heard + since I have been here that these representatives become timid + because Washington has for many a year conducted its foreign + business too much in the newspapers; and the foreign governments + themselves are always afraid of this. + + Meantime I hardly need tell you of my appreciation of such a chance + to make so interesting a study and to enjoy so greatly the most + interesting experience, I really believe, in the whole world. I + only hope that in time I may see how to shape the constant + progression of incidents into a constructive course of events; for + we are soon coming into a time of big changes. + + Most heartily yours, + WALTER H. PAGE. + + _To David F. Houston_[28] + American Embassy, London [undated]. + + DEAR HOUSTON: + + You're doing the bigger job: as the world now is, there is no other + job so big as yours or so well worth doing; but I'm having more + fun. I'm having more fun than anybody else anywhere. It's a large + window you look through on the big world--here in London; and, + while I am for the moment missing many of the things that I've most + cared about hitherto (such as working for the countryman, guessing + at American public opinion, coffee that's fit to drink, corn bread, + sunshine, and old faces) big new things come on the horizon. Yet a + man's personal experiences are nothing in comparison with the large + job that our Government has to do in its Foreign Relations. I'm + beginning to begin to see what it is. The American people are taken + most seriously here. I'm sometimes almost afraid of the respect and + even awe in which they hold us. But the American Government is a + mere joke to them. They don't even believe that we ourselves + believe in it. We've had no foreign policy, no continuity of plan, + no matured scheme, no settled way of doing things and we seem + afraid of Irishmen or Germans or some "element" when a chance for + real action comes. I'm writing to the President about this and + telling him stories to show how it works. + + We needn't talk any longer about keeping aloof. If Cecil Spring + Rice would tell you the complaints he has already presented and if + you saw the work that goes on here--more than in all the other + posts in Europe--you'd see that all the old talk about keeping + aloof is Missouri buncombe. We're very much "in," but not frankly + in. + + I wish you'd keep your eye on these things in cabinet meetings. The + English and the whole English world are ours, if we have the + courtesy to take them--fleet and trade and all; and we go on + pretending we are afraid of "entangling alliances." What about + disentangling alliances? + + We're in the game. There's no use in letting a few wild Irish or + cocky Germans scare us. We need courtesy and frankness, and the + destinies of the world will be in our hands. They'll fall there + anyhow after we are dead; but I wish to see them come, while my own + eyes last. Don't you? + + Heartily yours, + + W.H.P. + + _To Robert N. Page_[29] + + London, December 22, 1913. + + MY DEAR BOB: + + . . . We have a splendid, big old house--not in any way + pretentious--a commonplace house in fact for fashionable London and + the least showy and costly of the Embassies. But it does very + well--it's big and elegantly plain and dignified. We have fifteen + servants in the house. They do just about what seven good ones + would do in the United States, but they do it a great deal better. + They pretty nearly run themselves and the place. The servant + question is admirably solved here. They divide the work according + to a fixed and unchangeable system and they do it remarkably + well--in their own slow English way. We simply let them alone, + unless something important happens to go wrong. Katharine simply + tells the butler that we'll have twenty-four people to dinner + to-morrow night and gives him a list of them. As they come in, the + men at the door address every one correctly--Your Lordship or Your + Grace, or what not. When they are all in, the butler comes to the + reception room and announces dinner. We do the rest. As every man + goes out, the butler asks him if he'll have a glass of water or of + grog or a cigar; he calls his car, puts him in it, and that's the + end of it. Bully good plan. But in the United States that butler, + whose wages are less than the ramshackle nigger I had at Garden + City to keep the place neat, would have a business of his own. But + here he is a sort of duke downstairs. He sits at the head of the + servants' table and orders them around and that's worth more than + money to an Old World servile mind. + + The "season" doesn't begin till the King comes back and Parliament + opens, in February. But every kind of club and patriotic and + educational organization is giving its annual dinner now. I've been + going to them and making after-dinner speeches to get acquainted + and also to preach into them some little knowledge of American ways + and ideals. They are very nice--very. You could not suggest or + imagine any improvement in their kindness and courtesy. They do all + these things in some ways better than we. They have more courtesy. + They make far shorter speeches. But they do them all too much + alike. Still they do get much pleasure out of them and much + instruction too. + + Then we are invited to twice as many private dinners and luncheons + as we can attend. At these, these people are at their best. But it + is yet quite confusing. A sea of friendly faces greets you--you + can't remember the names. Nobody ever introduces anybody to + anybody; and if by accident anybody ever tries, he simply says + "Uh-o-oh-Lord Xzwwxkmpt." You couldn't understand it if you had to + be hanged. + + But we are untangling some of this confusion and coming to make + very real and very charming friends. + + About December 20, everybody who is anybody leaves London. They go + to their country places for about a fortnight or they go to the + continent. Almost everything stops. It has been the only dull time + at the Embassy that I've had. Nothing is going on now. But up to + two days ago, it kept a furious gait. I'm glad of a little rest. + + Dealing with the Government doesn't present the difficulties that + I feared. Sir Edward Grey is in the main responsible for the ease + with which it is done. He is a frank and fair and truthful man. You + will find him the day after to-morrow precisely where you left him + the day before yesterday. We get along very well indeed. I think we + should get along if we had harder tasks one with the other. And the + English people are even more friendly than the Government. You have + no idea of their respect for the American Nation. Of course there + is much ignorance, sometimes of a surprising sort. Very many + people, for instance, think that all the Americans are rich. A lady + told me the other night how poor she is--she is worth only + $1,250,000--"nothing like all you Americans." She was quite + sincere. In fact the wealth of the world (and the poverty, too) is + centred here in an amazing way. You can't easily take it in--how + rich or how many rich English families there are. They have had + wealth for generation after generation, and the surprising thing + is, they take care of it. They spend enormously--seldom + ostentatiously--but they are more than likely to add some of their + income every year to their principal. They have better houses in + town and in the country than I had imagined. They spend vast + fortunes in making homes in which they expect to live + forever--generation after generation. + + To an American democrat the sad thing is the servile class. Before + the law the chimney sweep and the peer have exactly the same + standing. They have worked that out with absolute justice. But + there it stops. The serving class is what we should call abject. It + does not occur to them that they might ever become--or that their + descendants might ever become--ladies and gentlemen. + + The "courts" are a very fine sight. The diplomatic ladies sit on a + row of seats on one side the throne room, the Duchesses on a row + opposite. The King and Queen sit on a raised platform with the + royal family. The Ambassadors come in first and bow and the King + shakes hands with them. Then come the forty or more Ministers--no + shake for them. In front of the King are a few officers in gaudy + uniform, some Indians of high rank (from India) and the court + officials are all round about, with pages who hold up the Queen's + train. Whenever the Queen and King move, two court officials back + before them, one carrying a gold stick and the other a silver + stick. + + The ladies to be presented come along. They curtsy to the King, + then to the Queen, and disappear in the rooms farther on. The + Ambassadors (all in gaudy uniforms but me) stand near the + throne--stand through the whole performance. One night after an + hour or two of ladies coming along and curtsying and disappearing, + I whispered to the Spanish Ambassador, "There must be five hundred + of these ladies." "U-m," said he, as he shifted his weight to the + other foot, "I'm sure there are five thousand!" When they've all + been presented, the King and Queen go into a room where a stand-up + supper is served. The royalty and the diplomatic folks go into that + room, too; and their Majesties walk around and talk with whom they + please. Into another and bigger room everybody else goes and gets + supper. Then we all flock back to the throne room; and preceded by + the backing courtiers, their Majesties come out into the floor and + bow to the Ambassadors, then to the Duchesses, then to the general + diplomatic group and they go out. The show is ended. We come + downstairs and wait an hour for our car and come home about + midnight. The uniforms on the men and the jewels on the ladies (by + the ton) and their trains--all this makes a very brilliant + spectacle. The American Ambassador and his Secretaries and the + Swiss and the Portuguese are the only ones dressed in citizens' + clothes. + + At a levee, the King receives only gentlemen. Here they come in all + kinds of uniforms. If you are not entitled to wear a uniform, you + have a dark suit, knee breeches, and a funny little tin sword. I'm + going to adopt the knee breeches part of it for good when I go + home--golf breeches in the day time and knee breeches at night. + You've no idea how nice and comfortable they are--though it is a + devil of a lot of trouble to put 'em on. Of course every sort of + man here but the Americans wears some sort of decorations around + his neck or on his stomach, at these functions. For my part, I like + it--here. The women sparkle with diamonds, the men strut; the King + is a fine man with a big bass voice and he talks very well and is + most agreeable; the Queen is very gracious; the royal ladies (Queen + Victoria's daughters, chiefly) are nice; you see all the big + Generals and all the big Admirals and the great folk of every + sort--fine show. + + You've no idea how much time and money they spend on shooting. The + King has been shooting most of the time for three months. He's said + to be a very good shot. He has sent me, on different occasions, + grouse, a haunch of venison, and pheasants. + + But except on these occasions, you never think about the King. The + people go about their business as if he didn't exist, of course. + They begin work much later than we do. You'll not find any of the + shops open till about ten o'clock. The sun doesn't shine except + once in a while and you don't know it's daylight till about ten. + You know the House of Commons has night sessions always. Nobody is + in the Government offices, except clerks and secretaries, till the + afternoon. We dine at eight, and, when we have a big dinner, at + eight thirty. + + I like these people (most of 'em) immensely. They are very genuine + and frank, good fighters and folk of our own sort--after you come + to know them. At first they have no manners and don't know what to + do. But they warm up to you later. They have abundant wit, but much + less humour than we. And they know how to live. + + Except that part of life which is ministered to in mechanical ways, + they resist conveniences. They don't really like bathrooms yet. + They prefer great tin tubs, and they use bowls and pitchers when a + bathroom is next door. The telephone--Lord deliver us!--I've given + it up. They know nothing about it. (It is a government concern, but + so is the telegraph and the post-office, and they are remarkably + good and swift.) You can't buy a newspaper on the street, except in + the afternoon. Cigar-stores are as scarce as hen's teeth. + Barber-shops are all "hairdressers"--dirty and wretched beyond + description. You can't get a decent pen; their newspapers are as + big as tablecloths. In this aquarium in which we live (it rains + every day) they have only three vegetables and two of them are + cabbages. They grow all kinds of fruit in hothouses, and (I can't + explain this) good land in admirable cultivation thirty miles from + London sells for about half what good corn land in Iowa brings. + Lloyd George has scared the land-owners to death. + + Party politics runs so high that many Tories will not invite + Liberals to dinner. They are almost at the point of civil war. I + asked the Prime Minister the other day how he was going to prevent + war. He didn't give any clear answer. During this recess of + Parliament, though there's no election pending, all the Cabinet are + all the time going about making speeches on Ireland. They talk to + me about it. + + "What would you do?" + + "Send 'em all to the United States," say I. + + "No, no." + + They have had the Irish question three hundred years and they + wouldn't be happy without it. One old Tory talked me deaf abusing + the Liberal Government. + + "You do this way in the United States--hate one another, don't + you?" + + "No," said I, "we live like angels in perfect harmony except a few + weeks before election." + + "The devil you do! You don't hate one another? What do you do for + enemies? I couldn't get along without enemies to swear at." + + If you think it's all play, you fool yourself; I mean this job. + There's no end of the work. It consists of these parts: Receiving + people for two hours every day, some on some sort of business, some + merely "to pay respects," attending to a large (and exceedingly + miscellaneous) mail; going to the Foreign Office on all sorts of + errands; looking up the oddest assortment of information that you + ever heard of; making reports to Washington on all sorts of things; + then the so-called social duties--giving dinners, receptions, etc., + and attending them. I hear the most important news I get at + so-called social functions. Then the court functions; and the + meetings and speeches! The American Ambassador must go all over + England and explain every American thing. You'd never recover from + the shock if you could hear me speaking about Education, + Agriculture, the observance of Christmas, the Navy, the + Anglo-Saxon, Mexico, the Monroe Doctrine, Co-education, Woman + Suffrage, Medicine, Law, Radio-Activity, Flying, the Supreme Court, + the President as a Man of letters, Hookworm, the Negro--just get + down the Encyclopaedia and continue the list. I've done this every + week-night for a month, hand running, with a few afternoon + performances thrown in! I have missed only one engagement in these + seven months; and that was merely a private luncheon. I have been + late only once. I have the best chauffeur in the world--he deserves + credit for much of that. Of course, I don't get time to read a + book. In fact, I can't keep up with what goes on at home. To read a + newspaper eight or ten days old, when they come in bundles of three + or four--is impossible. What isn't telegraphed here, I miss; and + that means I miss most things. + + I forgot, there are a dozen other kinds of activities, such as + American marriages, which they always want the Ambassador to + attend; getting them out of jail, when they are jugged (I have an + American woman on my hands now, whose four children come to see me + every day); looking after the American insane; helping Americans + move the bones of their ancestors; interpreting the income-tax law; + receiving medals for Americans; hearing American fiddlers, + pianists, players; sitting for American sculptors and + photographers; sending telegrams for property owners in Mexico; + reading letters from thousands of people who have shares in estates + here; writing letters of introduction; getting tickets to the House + Gallery; getting seats in the Abbey; going with people to this and + that and t'other; getting tickets to the races, the art-galleries, + the House of Lords; answering fool questions about the United + States put by Englishmen. With a military attache, a naval attache, + three secretaries, a private secretary, two automobiles, Alice's + private secretary, a veterinarian, an immigration agent, consuls + everywhere, a despatch agent, lawyers, doctors, messengers--they + keep us all busy. A woman turned up dying the other day. I sent + for a big doctor. She got well. As if that wasn't enough, both the + woman and the doctor had to come and thank me (fifteen minutes + each). Then each wrote a letter! Then there are people who are + going to have a Fair here; others who have a Fair coming on at San + Francisco; others at San Diego; secretaries and returning and + outgoing diplomats come and go (lunch for 'em all); niggers come up + from Liberia; Rhodes Scholars from Oxford; Presidential candidates + to succeed Huerta; people who present books; women who wish to go + to court; Jews who are excited about Rumania; passports, passports + to sign; peace committees about the hundred years of peace; opera + singers going to the United States; artists who have painted some + American's portrait--don't you see? I haven't said a word about + reporters and editors: the city's full of them. + + A Happy New Year. + + Affectionately, + WAT. + + _To Ralph W. Page_[30] + London, December 23, 1913. + + DEAR RALPH: + + . . . The game is pretty much as it has been. I can't think of any + new kinds of things to write you. The old kinds simply multiply and + repeat themselves. But we are beginning now really to become + acquainted, and some life friendships will grow out of our + experience. And there's no doubt about its being instructive. I get + glimpses of the way in which great governments deal with one + another, in ways that our isolated, and, therefore, safe government + seldom has any experience of. For instance, one of the Lords of the + Admiralty told me the other night that he never gets out of + telephone reach of the office--not even half an hour. "The + Admiralty," said he, "never sleeps." He has a telephone by his bed + which he can hear at any moment in the night. I don't believe that + they really expect the German fleet to attack them any day or + night. But they would not be at all surprised if it did so + to-night. They talk all the time of the danger and of the + probability of war; they don't expect it; but most wars have come + without warning, and they are all the time prepared to begin a + fight in an hour. + + They talk about how much Germany must do to strengthen her frontier + against Russia and her new frontier on the Balkan States. They now + have these problems in hand and therefore they are for the moment + not likely to provoke a fight. But they might. + + It is all pitiful to see them thinking forever about danger and + defense. The controversy about training boys for the army never + ends. We don't know in the United States what we owe to the + Atlantic Ocean--safe separation from all these troubles. . . . + + But I've often asked both Englishmen and Americans in a dining room + where there were many men of each country, whether they could look + over the company and say which were English and which were + Americans. Nobody can tell till--they begin to talk. + + The ignorance of the two countries, each of the other, is beyond + all belief. A friend of Kitty's--an American--received a letter + from the United States yesterday. The maid noticed the stamp, which + had the head of George Washington on it. Every stamp in this + kingdom bears the image of King George. She asked if the American + stamp had on it the head of the American Ambassador! I've known far + wiser people to ask far more foolish questions. + + Affectionately, + W.H.P. + + _To Mrs. Ralph W. Page_ + + London, Christmas-is-coming, 1913. + + MY DEAR LEILA: + + . . . Her work [Mrs. Walter H. Page's] is all the work of going and + receiving and--of reading. She reads incessantly and enormously; + and, when she gets tired, she goes to bed. That's all there is + about it. Lord! I wish I could. But, when I get tired, I have to go + and make another speech. They think the American Ambassador has + omniscience for a foible and oratory as a pastime. + + In some ways my duties are very instructive. We get different + points of view on many things, some better than we had before had, + some worse. For instance, life is pretty well laid out here in + water-tight compartments; and you can't let a stream in from one to + another without danger of sinking the ship. Four reporters have + been here to-day because Mr. and Mrs. Sayre[31] arrived this + morning. Every one of 'em asked the same question, "Who met them at + the station?" That's the chief thing they wished to know. When I + said "I did"--that fixed the whole thing on the highest peg of + dignity. They could classify the whole proceeding properly, and + they went off happy. Again: You've got to go in to dinner in the + exact order prescribed by the constitution; and, if you avoid that + or confuse that, you'll never be able to live it down. And so about + Government, Literature, Art--everything. Don't you forget your + water-tight compartments. If you do, you are gone! They have the + same toasts at every public dinner. One is to "the guests." Now you + needn't say a word about the guests when you respond. But they've + been having toasts to the guests since the time of James I and they + can't change it. They had me speak to "the guests" at a club last + night, when they wanted me to talk about Mexico! The winter has + come--the winter months at least. But they have had no cold + weather--not so cold as you have in Pinehurst. But the sun has gone + out to sea--clean gone. We never see it. A damp darkness + (semi-darkness at least) hangs over us all the time. But we manage + to feel our way about. + + A poor photograph goes to you for Xmas--a poor thing enough surely. + But you get Uncle Bob[32] busy on the job of paying for an + Ambassador's house. Then we'll bring Christmas presents home for + you. What a game we are playing, we poor folks here, along with + Ambassadors whose governments pay them four times what ours pays. + But we don't give the game away, you bet! We throw the bluff with a + fine, straight poker face. + + Affectionately, + W.H.P. + + _To Frank N. Doubleday and Others_ + + London, Sunday, December 28, 1913. + + MY DEAR COMRADES: + + I was never one of those abnormal creatures who got Christmas all + ready by the Fourth of July. The true spirit of the celebration has + just now begun to work on me--three days late. In this respect the + spirit is very like Christmas plum-pudding. Moreover, we've just + got the patriotic fervour flowing at high tide this morning. This + is the President's birthday. We've put up the Stars and Stripes on + the roof; and half an hour ago the King's Master of Ceremonies + drove up in a huge motor car and, being shown into my presence in + the state drawing room, held his hat in his hand and (said he): + + "Your Excellency: I am commanded by the King to express to you His + Majesty's congratulations on the birthday of the President, to wish + him a successful administration and good health and long life and + to convey His Majesty's greetings to Your Excellency: and His + Majesty commands me to express the hope that you will acquaint the + President with His Majesty's good wishes." + + Whereto I made just as pretty a little speech as your 'umble + sarvant could. Then we sat down, I called in Mrs. Page and my + secretary and we talked like human beings. + + Having worked like the devil, upon whom, I imagine, at this + bibulous season many heavy duties fall--having thus toiled for two + months--the international docket is clean, I've got done a round of + twenty-five speeches (O Lord!) I've slept three whole nights, I've + made my dinner-calls--you see I'm feeling pretty well, in this + first period of quiet life I've yet found in this Babylon. Praise + Heaven! they go off for Christmas. Everything's shut up tight. The + streets of London are as lonely and as quiet as the road to Oyster + Bay while the Oyster is in South America. It's about as mild here + as with you in October and as damp as Sheepshead's Bay in an autumn + storm. But such people as you meet complain of the c-o-l-d--the + c-o-l-d; and they run into their heatless houses and put on extra + waistcoats and furs and throw shawls over their knees and curse + Lloyd George and enjoy themselves. They are a great people--even + without mint juleps in summer or eggnog in winter; and I like them. + The old gouty Lords curse the Americans for the decline of + drinking. And you can't live among them without laughing yourself + to death and admiring them, too. It's a fine race to be sprung + from. + + All this field of international relations--you fellows regard it as + a bore. So it used to be before my entrance into the game! But it's + everlastingly interesting. Just to give him a shock, I asked the + Foreign Secretary the other day what difference it would make if + the Foreign Offices were all to go out of business and all the + Ambassadors were to be hanged. He thought a minute and said: + "Suppose war kept on in the Balkans, the Russians killed all their + Jews, Germany took Holland and sent an air-fleet over London, the + Japanese landed in California, the English took all the oil-wells + in Central and South America and--" + + "Good Lord!" said I, "do you and I prevent all these calamities? If + so, we don't get half the credit that is due us--do we?" + + You could ask the same question about any group or profession of + men in the world; and on a scratch, I imagine that any of them + would be missed less than they think. But the realness and the + bigness of the job here in London is simply oppressive. We don't + even know what it is in the United States and, of course, we don't + go about doing it right. If we did, we shouldn't pick up a green + fellow on the plain of Long Island and send him here: we'd train + the most capable male babies we have from the cradle. But this + leads a long way. + + As I look back over these six or seven months, from the pause that + has come this week, I'm bound to say (being frank, not to say vain) + that I had the good fortune to do one piece of work that was worth + the effort and worth coming to do--about that infernal Mexican + situation. An abler man would have done it better; but, as it was, + I did it; and I have a most appreciative letter about it from the + President. + + By thunder, he's doing _his_ job, isn't he? Whether you like the + job or not, you've got to grant that. When I first came over here, + I found a mild curiosity about Wilson--only mild. But now they sit + up and listen and ask most eager questions. He has pressed his + personality most strongly on the governing class here. + + Yours heartily, + W.H.P. + + _To the President_ + + American Embassy, London + [May 11, 1914.] + + DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: + + The King of Denmark (I always think of Hamlet) having come to make + his royal kinsman of these Isles a visit, his royal kinsman + to-night gave a state dinner at the palace whereto the Ambassadors + of the eight Great Powers were, of course, invited. Now I don't + know how other kings do, but I'm willing to swear by King George + for a job of this sort. The splendour of the thing is truly regal + and the friendliness of it very real and human; and the company + most uncommon. Of course the Ambassadors and their wives were + there, the chief rulers of the Empire and men and women of + distinction and most of the royal family. The dinner and the music + and the plate and the decorations and the jewels and the + uniforms--all these were regal; but there is a human touch about it + that seems almost democratic. + + All for His Majesty of Denmark, a country with fewer people and + less wealth than New Jersey. This whole royal game is most + interesting. Lloyd George and H.H. Asquith and John Morley were + there, all in white knee breeches of silk, and swords and most + gaudy coats--these that are the radicals of the Kingdom, in + literature and in action. Veterans of Indian and South African wars + stood on either side of every door and of every stairway, dressed + as Sir Walter Raleigh dressed, like so many statues, never blinking + an eye. Every person in the company is printed, in all the papers, + with every title he bears. Crowds lined the streets in front of the + palace to see the carriages go in and to guess who was in each. + To-morrow the Diplomatic Corps calls on King Christian and + to-morrow night King George commands us to attend the opera as his + guests. + + Whether it's the court, or the honours and the orders and all the + social and imperial spoils, that keep the illusion up, or whether + it is the Old World inability to change anything, you can't ever + quite decide. In Defoe's time they put pots of herbs on the desks + of every court in London to keep the plague off. The pots of herbs + are yet put on every desk in every court room in London. Several + centuries ago somebody tried to break into the Bank of England. A + special guard was detached--a little company of soldiers--to stand + watch at night. The bank has twice been moved and is now housed in + a building that would stand a siege; but that guard, in the same + uniform goes on duty every night. Nothing is ever abolished, + nothing ever changed. On the anniversary of King Charles's + execution, his statue in Trafalgar Square is covered with flowers. + Every month, too, new books appear about the mistresses of old + kings--as if they, too, were of more than usual interest: I mean + serious, historical books. From the King's palace to the humblest + house I've been in, there are pictures of kings and queens. In + every house, too (to show how nothing ever changes), the towels are + folded in the same peculiar way. In every grate in the kingdom the + coal fire is laid in precisely the same way. There is not a + salesman in any shop on Piccadilly who does not, in the season, + wear a long-tail coat. Everywhere they say a second grace at + dinner--not at the end--but before the dessert, because two hundred + years ago they dared not wait longer lest the parson be under the + table: the grace is said to-day _before_ dessert! I tried three + months to persuade my "Boots" to leave off blacking the soles of my + shoes under the instep. He simply couldn't do it. Every "Boots" in + the Kingdom does it. A man of learning had an article in an + afternoon paper a few weeks ago which began thus: "It is now + universally conceded by the French and the Americans that the + decimal system is a failure," and he went on to concoct a scheme + for our money that would be more "rational" and "historical." In + this hot debate about Ulster a frequent phrase used is, "Let us see + if we can't find the right formula to solve the difficulty"; their + whole lives are formulas. Now may not all the honours and garters + and thistles and O.M.'s and K.C.B.'s and all manner of gaudy + sinecures be secure, only because they can't abolish anything? My + servants sit at table in a certain order, and Mrs. Page's maid + wouldn't yield her precedence to a mere housemaid for any mortal + consideration--any more than a royal person of a certain rank would + yield to one of a lower rank. A real democracy is as far off as + doomsday. So you argue, till you remember that it is these same + people who made human liberty possible--to a degree--and till you + sit day after day and hear them in the House of Commons, + mercilessly pounding one another. Then you are puzzled. Do they + keep all these outworn things because they are incapable of + changing anything, or do these outworn burdens keep them from + becoming able to change anything? I daresay it works both ways. + Every venerable ruin, every outworn custom, makes the King more + secure; and the King gives veneration to every ruin and keeps + respect for every outworn custom. + + Praise God for the Atlantic Ocean! It is the geographical + foundation of our liberties. Yet, as I've often written, there are + men here, real men, ruling men, mighty men, and a vigorous stock. + + A civilization, especially an old civilization, isn't an easy nut + to crack. But I notice that the men of vision keep their thought on + us. They never forget that we are 100 million strong and that we + dare do new things; and they dearly love to ask questions + about--Rockefeller! Our power, our adaptability, our potential + wealth they never forget. They'll hold fast to our favour for + reasons of prudence as well as for reasons of kinship. And, + whenever we choose to assume the leadership of the world, they'll + grant it--gradually--and follow loyally. They cannot become French, + and they dislike the Germans. They must keep in our boat for safety + as well as for comfort. + + Yours heartily, + WALTER H. PAGE. + +The following extracts are made from other letters written at this time: + + * * * * * + +. . . To-night I had a long talk with the Duchess of X, a kindly woman who +spends much time and money in the most helpful "uplift" work; that's the +kind of woman she is. + +Now she and the Duke are invited to dine at the French Ambassador's +to-morrow night. "If the Duke went into any house where there was any +member of this Government," said she, "he'd turn and walk out again. We +thought we'd better find out who the French Ambassador's guests are. We +didn't wish to ask him nor to have correspondence about it. Therefore +the Duke sent his Secretary quietly to ask the Ambassador's +Secretary--before we accepted." + +This is now a common occurrence. We had Sir Edward Grey to dinner a +little while ago and we had to make sure we had no Tory guests that +night. + +This same Duchess of X sat in the Peeresses' gallery of the House of +Lords to-night till 7 o'clock. "I had to sit in plain sight of the wives +of two members of the Cabinet and of the wife and daughter of the Prime +Minister. I used to know them," she said, "and it was embarrassing." + +Thus the revolution proceeds. For that's what it is. + + * * * * * + +. . . On the other hand the existing order is the most skilfully devised +machinery for perpetuating itself that has ever grown up among civilized +men. Did you ever see a London directory? It hasn't names +alphabetically; but one section is "Tradesmen," another "The City," +etc., etc., and another "The Court." Any one who has ever been presented +at Court is in the "Court" section, and you must sometimes look in +several sections to find a man. Yet everybody so values these +distinctions that nobody complains of the inconvenience. When the +Liberal party makes Liberals Peers in order to have Liberals in the +House of Lords, lo! they soon turn Conservative after they get there. +The system perpetuates itself and stifles the natural desire for change +that most men in a state of nature instinctively desire in order to +assert their own personalities. . . . + + * * * * * + +. . . All this social life which engages us at this particular season, +sets a man to thinking. The mass of the people are very slow--almost +dull; and the privileged are most firmly entrenched. The really alert +people are the aristocracy. They see the drift of events. "What is the +pleasantest part of your country to live in?" Dowager Lady X asked me on +Sunday, more than half in earnest. "My husband's ancestors sat in the +House of Lords for six hundred years. My son sits there now--a dummy. +They have taken all power from the Lords; they are taxing us out of our +lands; they are saving the monarchy for destruction last. England is of +the past--all is going. God knows what is coming." . . . + + * * * * * + +. . . And presently the presentations come. Lord! how sensible American +women scramble for this privilege! It royally fits a few of them. Well, +I've made some rules about presentations myself, since it's really a +sort of personal perquisite of the Ambassador. One rule is, I don't +present any but handsome women. Pretty girls: that's what you want when +you are getting up a show. Far too many of ours come here and marry +Englishmen. I think I shall make another rule and exact a promise that +after presentation they shall go home. But the American women do enliven +London. . . . + + * * * * * + +That triumph with the tariff is historic. I wrote to the President: +"Score one!" And I have been telling the London writers on big subjects, +notably the editor of the _Economist_, that this event, so quiet and +undramatic, will mark a new epoch in the trade history of the world. . . . +This island is a good breeding place for men whose children find +themselves and develop into real men in freer lands. All that is needed +to show the whole world that the future is ours is just this sort of an +act of self-confidence. You know the old story of the Negro who saw a +ghost--"Git outen de way, Mr. Rabbit, and let somebody come who _kin_ +run!" Score one! We're making History, and these people here know it. +The trade of the world, or as much of it as is profitable, we may take +as we will. The over-taxed, under-productive, army-burdened men of the +Old World--alas! I read a settled melancholy in much of their +statesmanship and in more of their literature. The most cheerful men in +official life here are the High Commissioners of Canada, Australia, New +Zealand, and such fellows who know what the English race is doing and +can do freed from uniforms and heavy taxes and class feeling and such +like. . . . + + * * * * * + +. . . The two things that this island has of eternal value are its gardens +and its men. Nature sprinkles it almost every day and holds its moisture +down so that every inch of it is forever green; and somehow men thrive +as the lawns do--the most excellent of all races for progenitors. You +and I[33] can never be thankful enough that our ancestors came of this +stock. Even those that have stayed have cut a wide swath, and they wield +good scythes yet. But I have moods when I pity them--for their +dependence, for instance, on a navy (2 keels to 1) for their very bread +and meat. They frantically resent conveniences. They build their great +law court building (the architecture ecclesiastical) so as to provide an +entrance hall of imposing proportions which they use once a year; and to +get this fine hall they have to make their court rooms, which they must +use all the time, dark and small and inaccessible. They think as much of +that once-a-year ceremony of opening their courts as they think of the +even justice that they dispense; somehow they feel that the justice +depends on the ceremony. + +This moss that has grown all over their lives (some of it very pretty +and most of it very comfortable--it's soft and warm) is of no great +consequence--except that they think they'd die if it were removed. And +this state of mind gives us a good key to their character and habits. + +What are we going to do with this England and this Empire, presently, +when economic forces unmistakably put the leadership of the race in our +hands? How can we lead it and use it for the highest purposes of the +world and of democracy? We can do what we like if we go about it +heartily and with good manners (any man prefers to yield to a gentleman +rather than to a rustic) and throw away--gradually--our isolating fears +and alternate boasting and bashfulness. "What do we most need to learn +from you?" I asked a gentle and bejewelled nobleman the other Sunday, in +a country garden that invited confidences. "If I may speak without +offence, modesty." A commoner in the company, who had seen the Rocky +Mountains, laughed, and said: "No; see your chance and take it: that's +what we did in the years when we made the world's history." . . . + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 11: Mr. Irwin Laughlin, first secretary of the American +Embassy in London.] + +[Footnote 12: In about a year Page moved the Chancery to the present +satisfactory quarters at No. 4 Grosvenor Gardens.] + +[Footnote 13: Mrs. Walter H. Page.] + +[Footnote 14: Miss Katharine A. Page, the Ambassador's daughter.] + +[Footnote 15: "Effendi" is the name by which Mr. F.N. Doubleday, Page's +partner, is known to his intimates. It is obviously suggested by the +initials of his name.] + +[Footnote 16: A reference to William Sulzer, Governor of New York, who +at this time was undergoing impeachment.] + +[Footnote 17: See Chapter VIII, page 258.] + +[Footnote 18: The Ambassador's son.] + +[Footnote 19: Miss Katharine A. Page.] + +[Footnote 20: Mr. Andrew Carnegie.] + +[Footnote 21: Mrs. Walter H. Page is the daughter of a Scotchman from +Ayrshire.] + +[Footnote 22: The astonishing thing about Page's comment on the +leadership of the United States--if it would only take this +leadership--is that these letters were written in 1913, a year before +the outbreak of the war, and eight years before the Washington +Disarmament Conference of 1921-22.] + +[Footnote 23: Just what this critical Briton had in mind, in thinking +that the removal of a New York governor created a vacancy in the +Vice-Presidency, is not clear. Possibly, however, he had a cloudy +recollection of the fact that Theodore Roosevelt, after serving as +Governor of New York State, became Vice-President, and may have +concluded from this that the two offices were held by the same man.] + +[Footnote 24: For years this idea of the stenographer back of a screen +in the Foreign Office has been abroad, but it is entirely unfounded. +Several years ago a Foreign Secretary, perhaps Lord Salisbury, put a +screen behind his desk to keep off the draughts and from this precaution +the myth arose that it shielded a stenographer who took a complete +record of ambassadorial conversations. After an ambassador leaves, the +Foreign Secretary, however, does write out the important points in the +conversation. Copies are made and printed, and sent to the King, the +Prime Minister, the British Ambassador in the country to which the +interview relates, and occasionally to others. All these records are, of +course, carefully preserved in the archives of the Foreign Office.] + +[Footnote 25: The Rev. Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley, the well-known Vicar +of Crosthwaite, Keswick, poet and student of Wordsworth. President +Wilson, who used occasionally to spend his vacation in the Lake region, +was one of his friends.] + +[Footnote 26: It is perhaps unnecessary to say that the Ambassador was +thinking only of a diplomatic "fight."] + +[Footnote 27: The Underwood Bill revising the tariff "downward" became a +law October, 1913. It was one of the first important measures of the new +Wilson Administration.] + +[Footnote 28: Secretary of Agriculture in President Wilson's Cabinet.] + +[Footnote 29: Of Aberdeen, North Carolina, the Ambassador's brother.] + +[Footnote 30: Of Pinehurst, North Carolina, the Ambassador's eldest +son.] + +[Footnote 31: Mr. and Mrs. Francis B. Sayre, son-in-law and daughter of +President Wilson, at that time on their honeymoon trip in Europe.] + +[Footnote 32: Mr. Robert N. Page, the Ambassador's brother, was at this +time a Congressman from North Carolina.] + +[Footnote 33: This is from a letter to President Wilson.] + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +"POLICY" AND "PRINCIPLE" IN MEXICO + +I + + +The last days of February, 1913, witnessed one of those sanguinary +scenes in Mexico which for generations had accompanied changes in the +government of that distracted country. A group of revolutionists +assailed the feeble power of Francisco Madero and virtually imprisoned +that executive and his forces in the Presidential Palace. The Mexican +army, whose most influential officers were General Blanquet and General +Victoriano Huerta, was hastily summoned to the rescue of the Government; +instead of relieving the besieged officials, however, these generals +turned their guns upon them, and so assured the success of the uprising. +The speedy outcome of these transactions was the assassination of +President Madero and the seizure of the Presidency by General Huerta. +Another outcome was the presentation to Page of one of the most delicate +problems in the history of Anglo-American relations. + +At almost any other time this change in the Mexican succession would +have caused only a momentary disturbance. There was nothing new in the +violent overthrow of government in Latin-America; in Mexico itself no +president had ever risen to power except by revolution. The career of +Porfirio Diaz, who had maintained his authority for a third of a +century, had somewhat obscured this fundamental fact in Mexican +politics, but Diaz had dominated Mexico for seven presidential terms, +not because his methods differed from the accepted methods of his +country, but because he was himself an executive of great force and a +statesman of genius, and could successfully hold his own against any +aspiring antagonist. The civilized world, including the United States, +had long since become reconciled to this situation as almost a normal +one. In recognizing momentarily successful adventurers, Great Britain +and the United States had never considered such details as justice or +constitutionalism: the legality of the presidential title had never been +the point at issue; the only question involved was whether the +successful aspirant actually controlled the country, whether he had +established a state of affairs that approximately represented order, and +whether he could be depended upon to protect life and property. During +the long dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, however, certain events had +taken place which had awakened the minds of Americans to the possibility +of a new international relationship with all backward peoples. The +consequences of the Spanish War had profoundly impressed Page. This +conflict had left the United States a new problem in Cuba and the +Philippines. Under the principles that for generations had governed the +Old World there would have been no particular difficulty in meeting this +problem. The United States would have candidly annexed the islands, and +exploited their resources and their peoples; we should have concerned +ourselves little about any duties that might be owed to the several +millions of human beings who inhabited them. Indeed, what other +alternatives were there? + +One was to hand the possessions back to Spain, who in a four hundred +years' experiment had demonstrated her unfitness to govern them; another +was to give the islands their independence, which would have meant +merely an indefinite continuance of anarchy. It is one of the greatest +triumphs of American statesmanship that it discovered a more +satisfactory solution. Essentially, the new plan was to establish in +these undeveloped and politically undisciplined regions the fundamental +conditions that may make possible the ultimate creation of democratic, +self-governing states. It was recognized that constitutions and election +ballots in themselves did not necessarily imply a democratic order. +Before these there must come other things that were far more important, +such as popular education, scientific agriculture, sanitation, public +highways, railroads, and the development of the resources of nature. If +the backward peoples of the world could be schooled in such a +preliminary apprenticeship, the time might come when the intelligence +and the conscience of the masses would be so enlightened that they could +be trusted with independence. The labour of Leonard Wood in Cuba, and of +other Americans in the Philippines, had apparently pointed the way to +the only treatment of such peoples that was just to them and safe for +mankind. + +With the experience of Cuba and the Philippines as a guide, it is not +surprising that the situation in Mexico appealed to many Americans as +opening a similar opportunity to the United States. The two facts that +outstood all others were that Mexico, in her existing condition of +popular ignorance, could not govern herself, and that the twentieth +century could not accept indefinitely a condition of disorder and +bloodshed that had apparently satisfied the nineteenth. The basic +difficulty in this American republic was one of race and of national +character. The fact that was constantly overlooked was that Mexico was +not a Caucasian country: it was a great shambling Indian Republic. Of +its 15,000,000 people less than 3,000,000 were of unmixed white blood, +about 35 per cent. were pure Indian, and the rest represented varying +mixtures of white and aboriginal stock. The masses had advanced little +in civilization since the days of Cortez. Eighty per cent. were +illiterate; their lives for the most part were a dull and squalid +routine; protection against disease was unknown; the agricultural +methods were most primitive; the larger number still spoke the native +dialects which had been used in the days of Montezuma; and over good +stretches of the country the old tribal regime still represented the +only form of political organization. The one encouraging feature was +that these Mexican Indians, backward as they might be, were far superior +to the other native tribes of the North American Continent; in ancient +times, they had developed a state of society far superior to that of the +traditional Redskin. Nevertheless, it was true that the progress of +Mexico in the preceding fifty years had been due almost entirely to +foreign enterprise. By 1913, about 75,000 Americans were living in +Mexico as miners, engineers, merchants, and agriculturists; American +investments amounted to about $1,200,000,000--a larger sum than that of +all the other foreigners combined. Though the work of European +countries, particularly Great Britain, was important, yet Mexico was +practically an economic colony of the United States. Most observers +agree that these foreign activities had not only profited the +foreigners, but that they had greatly benefited the Mexicans themselves. +The enterprise of Americans had disclosed enormous riches, had given +hundreds of thousands employment at very high wages, had built up new +Mexican towns on modern American lines, had extended the American +railway system over a large part of the land, and had developed street +railways, electric lighting, and other modern necessities in all +sections of the Republic. The opening up of Mexican oil resources was +perhaps the most typical of these achievements, as it was certainly the +most adventurous. Americans had created this, perhaps the greatest of +Mexican industries, and in 1913, these Americans owned nearly 80 per +cent. of Mexican oil. Their success had persuaded several Englishmen, +the best known of whom was Lord Cowdray, to enter this same field. The +activities of the Americans and the British in oil had an historic +significance which was not foreseen in 1913, but which assumed the +greatest importance in the World War; for the oil drawn from these +Mexican fields largely supplied the Allied fleets and thus became an +important element in the defeat of the Central Powers. In 1913, however, +American and British oil operators were objects of general suspicion in +both continents. They were accused of participating too actively in +Mexican politics and there were those who even held them responsible for +the revolutionary condition of the country. One picturesque legend +insisted that the American oil interests looked with jealous hostility +upon the great favours shown by the Diaz Administration to Lord +Cowdray's company, and that they had instigated the Madero revolution in +order to put in power politicians who would be more friendly to +themselves. The inevitable complement to this interpretation of events +was a prevailing suspicion that the Cowdray interests had promoted the +Huerta revolt in order to turn the tables on "Standard Oil," to make +safe the "concessions" already obtained from Diaz and to obtain still +more from the new Mexican dictator. + +To determine the truth in all these allegations, which were freely +printed in the American press of the time, would demand more facts than +are at present available; yet it is clear that these oil and other +"concessions" presented the perpetual Mexican problem in a new and +difficult light. The Wilson Administration came into power a few days +after Huerta had seized the Mexican Government. The first difficulty +presented to the State Department was to determine its attitude toward +this usurper. + +A few days after President Wilson's inauguration Mr. Irwin Laughlin, +then Charge d'Affaires in London--this was several weeks before Page's +arrival--was instructed to ask the British Foreign Office what its +attitude would be in regard to the recognition of President Huerta. Mr. +Laughlin informed the Foreign Office that he was not instructed that the +United States had decided on any policy, but that he felt sure it would +be to the advantage of both countries to follow the same line. The query +was not an informal one; it was made in definite obedience to +instructions and was intended to elicit a formal commitment. The +unequivocal answer that Mr. Laughlin received was that the British +Government would not recognize Huerta, either formally or tacitly. + +Mr. Laughlin sent his message immediately to Washington, where it +apparently made a favourable impression. The Administration then let it +be known that the United States would not recognize the new Mexican +regime. Whether Mr. Wilson would at this time have taken such a +position, irrespective of the British attitude, is not known, but at +this stage of the proceedings Great Britain and the United States were +standing side by side. + +About three weeks afterward Mr. Laughlin heard that the British Foreign +Office was about to recognize Huerta. Naturally the report astonished +him; he at once called again on the Foreign Office, taking with him the +despatch that he had recently sent to Washington. Why had the British +Government recognized Huerta when it had given definite assurances to +Washington that it had no intention of doing so? The outcome of the +affair was that Sir Cecil Spring Rice, British Ambassador in Washington, +was instructed to inform the State Department that Great Britain had +changed its mind. France, Germany, Spain, and most other governments +followed the British example in recognizing the new President of Mexico. + +It is thus apparent that the initial mistake in the Huerta affair was +made by Great Britain. Its action produced the most unpleasant +impression upon the new Administration. Mr. Wilson, Mr. Bryan, and their +associates in the cabinet easily found an explanation that was +satisfactory to themselves and to the political enthusiasms upon which +they had come into power. They believed that the sudden change in the +British attitude was the result of pressure from British commercial +interests which hoped to profit from the Huerta influence. Lord Cowdray +was a rich and powerful Liberal; he had great concessions in Mexico +which had been obtained from President Diaz; it was known that Huerta +aimed to make his dictatorship a continuation of that of Diaz, to rule +Mexico as Diaz had ruled it, that is, by force, and to extend a +welcoming hand to foreign capitalists. An important consideration was +that the British Navy had a contract with the Cowdray Company for oil, +which was rapidly becoming indispensable as a fuel for warships, and +this fact necessarily made the British Government almost a champion of +the Cowdray interests. It was not necessary to believe all the rumours +that were then afloat in the American press to conclude that a Huerta +administration would be far more acceptable to the Cowdray Company than +any headed by one of the military chieftains who were then disputing the +control of Mexico. Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bryan believed that these events +proved that certain "interests," similar to the "interests" which, in +their view, had exercised so baleful an influence on American politics, +were also active in Great Britain. The Wilson election in 1912 had been +a protest against the dominance of "Wall Street" in American politics; +Mr. Bryan's political stock-in-trade for a generation had consisted of +little except a campaign against these forces; naturally, therefore, the +suspicion that Great Britain was giving way to a British "Standard Oil" +was enough to arm these statesmen against the Huerta policy, and to +intensify that profound dislike of Huerta himself that was soon to +become almost an obsession. + +With this as a starting point President Wilson presently formulated an +entirely new principle for dealing with Latin-American republics. There +could be no permanent order in these turbulent countries and nothing +approaching a democratic system until the habit of revolution should he +checked. One of the greatest encouragements to revolution, said the +President, was the willingness of foreign governments to recognize any +politician who succeeded in seizing the executive power. He therefore +believed that a refusal to recognize any government "founded upon +violence" would exercise a wholesome influence in checking this national +habit; if Great Britain and the United States and the other powers would +set the example by refusing to have any diplomatic dealings with General +Huerta, such an unfriendly attitude would discourage other forceful +intriguers from attempting to repeat his experiment. The result would be +that the decent elements in Mexico and other Latin-American countries +would at last assert themselves, establish a constitutional system, and +select their governments by constitutional means. At the bottom of the +whole business were, in the President's and Mr. Bryan's opinion, the +"concession" seekers, the "exploiters," who were constantly obtaining +advantages at the hands of these corrupt governments and constantly +stirring up revolutions for their financial profit. The time had now +come to end the whole miserable business. "We are closing one chapter in +the history of the world," said Mr. Wilson, "and opening another of +unimaginable significance. . . . It is a very perilous thing to determine +the foreign policy of a nation in the terms of material interests. . . . We +have seen such material interests threaten constitutional freedom in the +United States. Therefore we will now know how to sympathize with those +in the rest of America who have to contend with such powers, not only +within their borders, but from outside their borders." + +In this way General Huerta, who, in his own eyes, was merely another in +the long succession of Mexican revolutionary chieftains, was translated +into an epochal figure in the history of American foreign policy; he +became a symbol in Mr. Wilson's new scheme of things--the representative +of the order which was to come to an end, the man who, all unwittingly, +was to point the new way not only in Mexico, but in all Latin-American +countries. The first diplomatic task imposed upon Page therefore was one +that would have dismayed a more experienced ambassador. This was to +persuade Great Britain to retrace its steps, to withdraw its recognition +of Huerta, and to join hands with the United States in bringing about +his downfall. The new ambassador sympathized with Mr. Wilson's ideas to +a certain extent; the point at which he parted company with the +President's Mexican policy will appear in due course. He therefore began +zealously to preach the new Latin-American doctrine to the British +Foreign Office, with results that appear in his letters of this period. + +_To the President_ + + 6 Grosvenor Square, London, + Friday night, October 24, 1913. + + DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: + + In this wretched Mexican business, about which I have read columns + and columns and columns of comment these two days and turned every + conceivable proposition back and forth in my mind--in this whole + wretched waste of comment, I have not seen even an allusion to any + moral principle involved nor a word of concern about the Mexican + people. It is all about who is the stronger, Huerta or some other + bandit, and about the necessity of order for the sake of financial + interests. Nobody recalls our action in giving Cuba to the Cubans + or our pledge to the people of the Philippine Islands. But there is + reference to the influence of Standard Oil in the American policy. + This illustrates the complete divorce of European politics from + fundamental morals, and it shocks even a man who before knew of + this divorce. + + In my last talk with Sir Edward Grey I drove this home by + emphasizing strongly the impossibility of your playing primary heed + to any American business interest in Mexico--even the immorality of + your doing so; there are many things that come before business and + there are some things that come before order. I used American + business interests because I couldn't speak openly of British + business interests and his Government. I am sure he saw the obvious + inference. But not even from him came a word about the moral + foundation of government or about the welfare of the Mexican + people. These are not in the European governing vocabulary. + + I have been trying to find a way to help this Government to wake up + to the effect of its pro-Huerta position and to give them a chance + to refrain from repeating that mistake--and to save their faces; + and I have telegraphed one plan to Mr. Bryan to-day. I think they + ought now to be forced to show their hand without the possibility + of evasion. They will not risk losing our good-will--if it seem + wise to you to put them to a square test. + + It's a wretched business, and the sordid level of European + statecraft is sad. + + I ran across the Prime Minister at the royal wedding reception[34] + the other day. + + "What do you infer from the latest news from Mexico?" he asked. + + "Several things." + + "Tell me the most important inference you draw." + + "Well, the danger of prematurely making up one's mind about a + Mexican adventurer." + + "Ah!" and he moved on. + + Very heartily yours, + WALTER H. PAGE. + + _To the President_ + + London, Sunday, Nov. 16, 1913. + + . . . About the obligations and inferences of democracy, they are + dense. They don't really believe in it; and they are slow to see + what good will come of ousting Huerta unless we know beforehand who + will succeed him. Sir Edward Grey is not dense, but in this matter + even he is slow fully to understand. The Lord knows I've told him + plainly over and over again and, I fear, even preached to him. At + first he couldn't see the practical nature of so "idealistic" a + programme. I explained to him how the immemorial "policy" that we + all followed of recognizing momentarily successful adventurers in + Latin-America had put a premium on revolution; that you had found + something better than a policy, namely, a principle; that policies + change, but principles do not; that he need not he greatly + concerned about the successor to Huerta; that this is primarily and + ultimately an American problem; that Great Britain's interest being + only commercial is far less than the interest of the United States, + which is commercial and also ethical; and so on and so on. His + sympathies and his friendliness are all right. But Egypt and India + were in his mind. He confessed to me that he was much + impressed--"if you can carry it through." Many men are seeing the + new idea (I wonder if you are conscious how new it is and how + incredible to the Old World mind?) and they express the greatest + and sincerest admiration for "your brave new President"; and a wave + of friendliness to the United States swept over the Kingdom when + the Government took its open stand. At the annual dinner of the + oldest and richest of the merchants' guilds at which they invited + me to respond to a toast the other night they proposed your health + most heartily and, when I arose, they cheered longer and louder + than I had before heard men cheer in this kingdom. There is, I am + sure, more enthusiasm for the United States here, by far, than for + England in the United States. They are simply dense about any sort + of government but their own--particularly dense about the + application of democracy to "dependencies" and inferior peoples. I + have a neighbour who spent many years as an administrator in India. + He has talked me deaf about the inevitable failure of this + "idealistic" Mexican programme. He is wholly friendly, and wholly + incredulous. And for old-time Toryism gone to seed commend me to + the _Spectator_. Not a glimmering of the idea has entered + Strachey's head. The _Times_, however, now sees it pretty clearly. + I spent Sunday a few weeks ago with two of its editors in the + country, and they have come to see me several times since and + written fairly good "leaders" out of my conversation with them. So + much for this head. For the moment at least that is satisfactory. + You must not forget that they can't all at once take it in, for + they do not really know what democracy is or whither it leads and + at bottom they do not really believe in it as a scheme of + government--not even this Liberal Cabinet. + + The British concern for commercial interests, which never sleeps, + will, I fear, come up continuously. But we shall simply do justice + and stand firm, when this phase of the subject comes forward. + + It's amusing, when you forget its sadness, that their first impulse + is to regard an unselfish international act as what Cecil Rhodes + called the English "unctuous rectitude." But this experience that + we are having with them will be worth much in future dealings. They + already feel very clearly that a different hand has the helm in + Washington; and we can drive them hard, if need be, for they will + not forfeit our friendship. + + It is worth something to discover that Downing Street makes many + mistakes. Infallibility dwells a long way from them. In this matter + they have made two terrible blunders--the recognition of Huerta + (they know that now) and the sending of Carden (they may already + suspect that: they'll know it presently). + + Yours always faithfully, + WALTER H. PAGE. + + P.S. By Jove, I didn't know that I'd ever have to put the British + Government through an elementary course in Democracy! + + To the President. + +Occasionally Page discussed with Sir Edward Grey an alternative +American policy which was in the minds of most people at that time: + + _To the President_ + + . . . The foregoing I wrote before this Mexican business took its + present place. I can't get away from the feeling that the English + simply do not and will not believe in any unselfish public + action--further than the keeping of order. They have a mania for + order, sheer order, order for the sake of order. They can't see how + anything can come in any one's thought before order or how anything + need come afterward. Even Sir Edward Grey jocularly ran me across + our history with questions like this: + + "Suppose you have to intervene, what then?" + + "Make 'em vote and live by their decisions." + + "But suppose they will not so live?" + + "We'll go in again and make 'em vote again." + + "And keep this up 200 years?" asked he. + + "Yes," said I. "The United States will he here two hundred years + and it can continue to shoot men for that little space till they + learn to vote and to rule themselves." + + I have never seen him laugh so heartily. Shooting men into + self-government! Shooting them into orderliness--he comprehends + that; and that's all right. But that's as far as his habit of mind + goes. At Sheffield last night, when I had to make a speech, I + explained "idealism" (they always quote it) in Government. They + listened attentively and even eagerly. Then they came up and asked + if I really meant that Government should concern itself with + idealistic things--beyond keeping order. Ought they to do so in + India?--I assure you they don't think beyond order. A nigger + lynched in Mississippi offends them more than a tyrant in Mexico. + + _To Edward M. House_ + + London, November 2, 1913. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + I've been writing to the President that the Englishman has a mania + for order, order for order's sake, and for--trade. He has reduced a + large part of the world to order. He is the best policeman in + creation; and--he has the policeman's ethics! Talk to him about + character as a basis of government or about a moral basis of + government in any outlying country, he'll think you daft. Bah! what + matter who governs or how he governs or where he got his authority + or how, so long as he keeps order. He won't see anything else. The + lesson of our dealing with Cuba is lost on him. He doesn't believe + _that_. We may bring this Government in line with us on Mexico. But + in this case and in general, the moral uplift of government must be + forced by us--I mean government in outlying countries. + + Mexico is only part of Central America, and the only way we can + ever forge a Central and South American policy that will endure is + _this_ way, precisely, by saying that your momentarily successful + adventurer can't count on us anywhere; the man that rules must + govern for the governed. Then we have a policy; and nobody else has + that policy. This Mexican business is worth worlds to us--to + establish this. + + We may have a diplomatic fight here; and I'm ready! Very ready on + this, for its own sake and for reasons that follow, to wit: + + Extraordinary and sincere and profound as is the respect of the + English for the American people, they hold the American Government + in contempt. It shifts and doesn't keep its treaty, etc., + etc.--They are right, too. But they need to feel the hand that now + has the helm. + + But one or two things have first to be got out of the way. That + Panama tolls is the worst. We are dead wrong in that, as we are + dead right on the Mexican matter. If it were possible (I don't know + that it is) for the President to say (quietly, not openly) that he + agrees with us--if he do--then the field would be open for a fight + on Mexico; and the reenforcement of our position would he + incalculable. + + Then we need in Washington some sort of Bureau or Master of + Courtesies for the Government, to do and to permit us to do those + little courtesies that the English spend half their time in + doing--this in the course of our everyday life and intercourse. For + example: When I was instructed to inform this Government that our + fleet would go to the Mediterranean, I was instructed also to say + that they mustn't trouble to welcome us--don't pay no 'tention to + us! Well, that's what they live for in times of peace--ceremonies. + We come along and say, "We're comin' but, hell! don't kick up no + fuss over us, we're from Missouri, we are!" And the Briton shrugs + his shoulders and says, "Boor!" These things are happening all the + time. Of course no one nor a dozen nor a hundred count; but + generations of 'em have counted badly. A Government without + manners. + + If I could outdo these folk at their game of courtesy, and could + keep our treaty faith with 'em, then I could lick 'em into the next + century on the moral aspects of the Mexican Government, and make + 'em look up and salute every time the American Government is + mentioned. See?--Is there any hope?--Such is the job exactly. And + you know what it would lead to--even in our lifetime--_to the + leadership of the world_: and we should presently be considering + how we may best use the British fleet, the British Empire, and the + English race for the betterment of mankind. + + Yours eagerly, + W.H.P. + +A word of caution is necessary to understand Page's references to the +British democracy. That the parliamentary system is democratic in the +sense that it is responsive to public opinion he would have been the +first to admit. That Great Britain is a democracy in the sense that the +suffrage is general is also apparent. But, in these reflections on the +British commonwealth, the Ambassador was thinking of his old familiar +figure, the "Forgotten Man"--the neglected man, woman, and child of the +masses. In an address delivered, in June, 1914, before the Royal +Institution of Great Britain, Page gave what he regarded as the +definition of the American ideal. "The fundamental article in the creed +of the American democracy--you may call it the fundamental dogma if you +like--is the unchanging and unchangeable resolve that every human being +shall have his opportunity for his utmost development--his chance to +become and to do the best that he can." Democracy is not only a system +of government--"it is a scheme of society." Every citizen must have not +only the suffrage, he must likewise enjoy the same advantages as his +neighbour for education, for social opportunity, for good health, for +success in agriculture, manufacture, finance, and business and +professional life. The country that most successfully opened all these +avenues to every boy or girl, exclusively on individual merit, was in +Page's view the most democratic. He believed that the United States did +this more completely than Great Britain or any other country; and +therefore he believed that we were far more democratic. He had not found +in other countries the splendid phenomenon presented by America's great +agricultural region. "The most striking single fact about the United +States is, I think, this spectacle, which, so far as I know, is new in +the world: On that great agricultural area are about seven million farms +of an average size of about 140 acres, most of which are tilled by the +owners themselves, a population that varies greatly, of course, in its +thrift and efficiency, but most of which is well housed, in houses they +themselves own, well clad, well fed, and a population that trains +practically all its children in schools maintained by public taxation." +It was some such vision as this that Page hoped to see realized +ultimately in Mexico. And some such development as this would make +Mexico a democracy. It was his difficulty in making the British see the +Mexican problem in this light that persuaded him that, in this +comprehensive meaning of the word, the democratic ideal had made an +inappreciable progress in Europe--and even in Great Britain itself. + + +II + +These letters are printed somewhat out of their chronological order +because they picture definitely the two opposing viewpoints of Great +Britain and the United States on Mexico and Latin-America generally. +Here, then, was the sharp issue drawn between the Old World and the +New--on one side the dreary conception of outlying countries as fields +to be exploited for the benefit of "investors," successful +revolutionists to be recognized in so far as they promoted such ends, +and no consideration to be shown to the victims of their rapacity; and +the new American idea, the idea which had been made reality in Cuba and +the Philippines, that the enlightened and successful nations stood +something in the position of trustees to such unfortunate lands and that +it was their duty to lead them along the slow pathway of progress and +democracy. So far the Wilsonian principle could be joyfully supported by +the Ambassador. Page disagreed with the President, however, in that he +accepted the logical consequences of this programme. His formula of +"shooting people into self-government," which had so entertained the +British Foreign Secretary, was a characteristically breezy description +of the alternative that Page, in the last resort, was ready to adopt, +but which President Wilson and Secretary Bryan persistently refused to +consider. Page was just as insistent as the Washington Administration +that Huerta should resign and that Great Britain should assist the +United States in accomplishing his dethronement, and that the Mexican +people should have a real opportunity of setting up for themselves. He +was not enough of an "idealist," however, to believe that the Mexicans, +without the assistance of their powerful neighbours, could succeed in +establishing a constitutional government. In early August, 1913, +President Wilson sent Mr. John Lind, ex-Governor of Minnesota, to Mexico +as his personal representative. His mission was to invite Huerta to +remove himself from Mexican politics, and to permit the Mexican people +to hold a presidential election at which Huerta would himself agree not +to be a candidate. Mr. Lind presented these proposals on August 15th, +and President Huerta rejected every one of them with a somewhat +disconcerting promptitude. + +That Page was prepared to accept the consequences of this failure +appears in the following letter. The lack of confidence which it +discloses in Secretary Bryan was a feeling that became stronger as the +Mexican drama unfolded. + + _To Edward M. House_ + + London, August 25, 1913. + + MY DEAR HOUSE: + + . . . If you find a chance, get the substance of this memorandum into + the hands of two men: the President and the Secretary of + Agriculture. Get 'em in Houston's at once--into the President's + whenever the time is ripe. I send the substance to Washington and I + send many other such things. But I never feel sure that they reach + the President. The most confidential letter I have written was lost + in Washington, and there is pretty good testimony that it reached + the Secretary's desk. He does not acknowledge the important things, + but writes me confidentially to inquire if the office of the man + who attends to the mail pouches (the diplomatic and naval + despatches in London[35]) is not an office into which he might put + a Democrat.--But I keep at it. It would he a pleasure to know that + the President knows what I am trying to do. . . . + + Yours heartily, + WALTER H. PAGE. + +Following is the memorandum: + + In October the provisional recognition of Huerta by England will + end. Then this Government will be free. Then is the time for the + United States to propose to England joint intervention merely to + reduce this turbulent scandal of a country to order--on an + agreement, of course, to preserve the territorial integrity of + Mexico. It's a mere police duty that all great nations have to + do--as they did in the case of the Boxer riots in China. Of course + Germany and France, etc., ought to be invited--on the same pledge: + the preservation of territorial integrity. If Germany should come + in, she will thereby practically acknowledge the Monroe Doctrine, + as England has already done. If Germany stay out, then she can't + complain. England and the United States would have only to announce + their intention: there'd be no need to fire a gun. Besides settling + the Mexican trouble, we'd gain much--having had England by our side + in a praise-worthy enterprise. That, and the President's visit[36] + would give the world notice to whom it belongs, and cause it to be + quiet and to go about its proper business of peaceful industry. + + Moreover, it would show all the Central and South American States + that we don't want any of their territory, that we will not let + anybody else have any, but that they, too, must keep orderly + government or the great Nations of the earth, will, at our bidding, + forcibly demand quiet in their borders. I believe a new era of + security would come in all Spanish America. Investments would be + safer, governments more careful and orderly. And--we would not have + made any entangling alliance with anybody. All this would prevent + perhaps dozens of little wars. It's merely using the English fleet + and ours to make the world understand that the time has come for + orderliness and peace and for the honest development of backward, + turbulent lands and peoples. + + If you don't put this through, tell me what's the matter with it. + I've sent it to Washington after talking and being talked to for a + month and after the hardest kind of thinking. Isn't this + constructive? Isn't it using the great power lying idle about the + world, to do the thing that most needs to be done? + +Colonel House presented this memorandum to the President, but events +sufficiently disclosed that it had no influence upon his Mexican policy. +Two days after it was written Mr. Wilson went before Congress, announced +that the Lind Mission had failed, and that conditions in Mexico had +grown worse. He advised all Americans to leave the country, and declared +that he would lay an embargo on the shipment of munitions--an embargo +that would affect both the Huerta forces and the revolutionary groups +that were fighting them. + +Meanwhile Great Britain had taken another step that made as unpleasant +an impression on Washington as had the recognition of Huerta. Sir Lionel +Edward Gresley Carden had for several years been occupying British +diplomatic posts in Central America, in all of which he had had +disagreeable social and diplomatic relations with Americans. Sir Lionel +had always shown great zeal in promoting British commercial interests, +and, justly or unjustly, had acquired the fame of being intensely +anti-American. From 1911 to 1913 Carden had served as British Minister +to Cuba; here his anti-Americanism had shown itself in such obnoxious +ways that Mr. Knox, Secretary of State under President Taft, had +instructed Ambassador Reid to bring his behaviour to the attention of +the British Foreign Office. These representations took practically the +form of requesting Carden's removal from Cuba. Perhaps the unusual +relations that the United States bore toward Cuba warranted Mr. Knox in +making such an approach; yet the British refused to see the matter in +that light; not only did they fail to displace Carden, but they knighted +him--the traditional British way of defending a faithful public servant +who has been attacked. Sir Lionel Carden refused to mend his ways; he +continued to indulge in what Washington regarded as anti-American +propaganda; and a second time Secretary Knox intimated that his removal +would he acceptable to this country, and a second time this request was +refused. With this preliminary history of Carden as a background, and +with the British-American misunderstanding over Huerta at its most +serious stage, the emotions of Washington may well be imagined when the +news came, in July, 1913, that this same gentleman had been appointed +British Minister to Mexico. If the British Government had ransacked its +diplomatic force to find the one man who would have been most +objectionable to the United States, it could have made no better +selection. The President and Mr. Bryan were pretty well persuaded that +the "oil concessionaires" were dictating British-Mexican policy, and +this appointment translated their suspicion into a conviction. Carden +had seen much service in Mexico; he had been on the friendliest terms +with Diaz; and the newspapers openly charged that the British oil +capitalists had dictated his selection. All these assertions Carden and +the oil interests denied; yet Carden's behaviour from the day of his +appointment showed great hostility to the United States. A few days +after he had reached New York, on his way to his new post, the New York +_World_ published an interview with Carden in which he was reported as +declaring that President Wilson knew nothing about the Mexican situation +and in which he took the stand that Huerta was the man to handle Mexico +at this crisis. His appearance in the Mexican capital was accompanied by +other highly undiplomatic publications. In late October President Huerta +arrested all his enemies in the Mexican Congress, threw them into jail, +and proclaimed himself dictator. Washington was much displeased that Sir +Lionel Carden should have selected the day of these high-handed +proceedings to present to Huerta his credentials as minister; in its +sensitive condition, the State Department interpreted this act as a +reaffirmation of that recognition that had already caused so much +confusion in Mexican affairs. + +Carden made things worse by giving out more newspaper interviews, a +tendency that had apparently grown into a habit. "I do not believe that +the United States recognizes the seriousness of the situation here. . . . I +see no reason why Huerta should be displaced by another man whose +abilities are yet to be tried. . . . Safety in Mexico can be secured only +by punitive and remedial methods, and a strong man;"--such were a few of +the reflections that the reporters attributed to this astonishing +diplomat. Meanwhile, the newspapers were filled with reports that the +British Minister was daily consorting with Huerta, that he was +constantly strengthening that chieftain's backbone in opposition to the +United States and that he was obtaining concessions in return for this +support. To what extent these press accounts rested on fact cannot be +ascertained definitely at this time; yet it is a truth that Carden's +general behaviour gave great encouragement to Huerta and that it had the +deplorable effect of placing Great Britain and the United States in +opposition. The interpretation of the casual reader was that Great +Britain was determined to seat Huerta in the Presidency against the +determination of the United States to keep him out. The attitude of the +Washington cabinet was almost bitter at this time against the British +Government. "There is a feeling here," wrote Secretary Lane to Page, +"that England is playing a game unworthy of her." + +The British Government promptly denied the authenticity of the Carden +interview, but that helped matters little, for the American public +insisted on regarding such denials as purely diplomatic. Something of a +storm against Carden arose in England itself, where it was believed that +his conception of his duties was estranging two friendly countries. +Probably the chief difficulty was that the British Foreign Office could +see no logical sequence in the Washington policy. Put Huerta out--yes, +by all means: but what then? Page's notes of his visit to Sir Edward +Grey a few days after the latest Carden interview confirm this: + + * * * * * + +I have just come from an hour's talk with Grey about Mexico. He showed +me his telegram to Carden, asking about Carden's reported interview +criticizing the United States, and Carden's flat denial. He showed me +another telegram to Carden about Huerta's reported boast that he would +have the backing of London, Paris, and Berlin against the United States, +in which Grey advised Carden that British policy should be to keep aloof +from Huerta's boasts and plans. Carden denied that Huerta made such a +boast in his statement to the Diplomatic Corps. Grey wishes the +President to know of these telegrams. + +Talk then became personal and informal. I went over the whole subject +again, telling how the Press and people of the United States were +becoming critical of the British Government; that they regarded the +problem as wholly American; that they resented aid to Huerta, whom they +regarded as a mere tyrant; that they suspected British interests of +giving financial help to Huerta; that many newspapers and persons +refused to believe Carden's denial; that the President's policy was not +academic but was the only policy that would square with American ideals +and that it was unchangeable. I cited our treatment of Cuba. I explained +again that I was talking unofficially and giving him only my own +interpretation of the people's mood. He asked, if the British Government +should withdraw the recognition of Huerta, what would happen. + +"In my opinion," I replied, "he would collapse." + +"What would happen then--worse chaos?" + +"That is impossible," I said. "There is no worse chaos than deputies in +jail, the dictatorial doubling of the tariff, the suppression of +opinion, and the practical banishment of independent men. If Huerta +should fall, there is hope that suppressed men and opinion will set up a +successful government." + +"Suppose that fail," he asked--"what then?" + +I replied that, in case of continued and utter failure, the United +States might feel obliged to repeat its dealings with Cuba and that the +continued excitement of opinion in the United States might precipitate +this. + +Grey protested that he knew nothing of what British interests had done +or were doing, that he wished time to think the matter out and that he +was glad to await the President's communication. He thanked me cordially +for my frank statements and declared that he understood perfectly their +personal nature. I impressed him with the seriousness of American public +opinion. + + * * * * * + +The last thing that the British Government desired at this time was a +serious misunderstanding with the United States, on Mexico or any other +matter. Yet the Mexican situation, in early November, 1913, clearly +demanded a complete cleaning up. The occasion soon presented itself. Sir +William Tyrrell, the private secretary of Sir Edward Grey sailed, in +late October, for the United States. The purpose of his visit was not +diplomatic, but Page evidently believed that his presence in the United +States offered too good an opportunity to be lost. + + To Edward M. House + + Newton Hall, Newton, Cambridge. + + Sunday, October 26, 1913. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + Sir William Tyrrell, the secretary of Sir Edward Grey--himself, I + think, an M.P.--has gone to the United States to visit his friend, + Sir Cecil Spring Rice. He sailed yesterday, going first to Dublin, + N.H., thence with the Ambassador to Washington. He has never before + been to the United States, and he went off in high glee, alone, to + see it. He's a good fellow, a thoroughly good fellow, and he's an + important man. He of course has Sir Edward's complete confidence, + but he's also a man on his own account. I have come to reckon it + worth while to get ideas that I want driven home into his head. + It's a good head and a good place to put good ideas. + + The Lord knows you have far too much to do; but in this juncture I + should count it worth your while to pay him some attention. I want + him to get the President's ideas about Mexico, good and firm and + hard. They are so far from altruistic in their politics here that + it would be a good piece of work to get our ideas and aims into + this man's head. His going gives you and the President and + everybody a capital chance to help me keep our good + American-English understanding. + + Whatever happen in Mexico, I'm afraid there will be a disturbance + of the very friendly feeling between the American people and the + English. I am delivering a series of well-thought-out discourses to + Sir Edward--with what effect, I don't know. If the American press + could be held in a little, that would be as good as it is + impossible. + + I'm now giving the Foreign Office the chance to refrain from more + premature recognizing. + + Very hastily yours, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + +Sir William Tyrrell, to whom Page refers so pleasantly, was one of the +most engaging men personally in the British Foreign Office, as well as +one of the most influential. Though he came to America on no official +mission to our Government, he was exceptionally qualified to discuss +Mexico and other pending questions with the Washington Administration. +He had an excellent background, and a keen insight into the human +aspects of all problems, but perhaps his most impressive physical trait +was a twinkling eye, as his most conspicuous mental quality was +certainly a sense of humour. Constant association with Sir Edward Grey +had given his mind a cast not dissimilar to that of his chief--a belief +in ordinary decency in international relations, an enthusiasm for the +better ordering of the world, a sincere admiration for the United States +and a desire to maintain British-American friendship. In his first +encounter with official Washington Sir William needed all that sense of +the ludicrous with which he is abundantly endowed. This took the form of +a long interview with Secretary Bryan on the foreign policy of Great +Britain. The Secretary harangued Sir William on the wickedness of the +British Empire, particularly in Egypt and India and in Mexico. The +British oil men, Mr. Bryan declared, was nothing but the "paymasters" of +the British Cabinet. + +"You are wrong," replied the Englishman, who saw that the only thing to +do on an occasion of this kind was to refuse to take the Secretary +seriously. "Lord Cowdray hasn't money enough. Through a long experience +with corruption the Cabinet has grown so greedy that Cowdray hasn't the +money necessary to reach their price." + +"Ah," said Mr. Bryan, triumphantly, accepting Sir William's bantering +answer as made in all seriousness. "Then you admit the charge." + +From this he proceeded to denounce Great Britain in still more +unmeasured terms. The British, he declared, had only one interest in +Mexico, and that was oil. The Foreign Office had simply handed its +Mexican policy over to the "oil barons" for predatory purposes. + +"That's just what the Standard Oil people told me in New York," the +British diplomat replied. "Mr. Secretary, you are talking just like a +Standard Oil man. The ideas that you hold are the ones which the +Standard Oil is disseminating. You are pursuing the policy which they +have decided on. Without knowing it you are promoting the interest of +Standard Oil." + +Sir William saw that it was useless to discuss Mexico with Mr. +Bryan--that the Secretary was not a thinker but an emotionalist. +However, despite their differences, the two men liked each other and had +a good time. As Sir William was leaving, he bowed deferentially to the +Secretary of State and said: + +"You have stripped me naked, Mr. Secretary, but I am unashamed." + +With President Wilson, however, the Englishman had a more satisfactory +experience. He was delighted by the President's courtesy, charm, +intelligence, and conversational powers. The impression which Sir +William obtained of the American President on this occasion remained +with him for several years and was itself an important element in +British-American relations after the outbreak of the World War. And the +visit was a profitable one for Mr. Wilson, since he obtained a clear +understanding of the British policy toward Mexico. Sir William succeeded +in persuading the President that the so-called oil interests were not +dictating the policy of Sir Edward Grey. That British oil men were +active in Mexico was apparent; but they were not using a statesman of so +high a character as Sir Edward Grey for their purposes and would not be +able to do so. The British Government entertained no ambitions in Mexico +that meant unfriendliness to the United States. In no way was the policy +of Great Britain hostile to our own. In fact, the British recognized the +predominant character of the American interest in Mexico and were +willing to accept any policy in which Washington would take the lead. +All it asked was that British property and British lives be protected; +once these were safeguarded Great Britain was ready to stand aside and +let the United States deal with Mexico in its own way. + +The one disappointment of this visit was that Sir William Tyrrell was +unable to obtain from President Wilson any satisfactory statement of his +Mexican policy. + +"When I go back to England," said the Englishman, as the interview was +approaching an end, "I shall be asked to explain your Mexican policy. +Can you tell me what it is?" + +President Wilson looked at him earnestly and said, in his most decisive +manner: + +"I am going to teach the South American Republics to elect good men!" + +This was excellent as a purpose, but it could hardly be regarded as a +programme. + +"Yes," replied Sir William, "but, Mr. President, I shall have to explain +this to Englishmen, who, as you know, lack imagination. They cannot see +what is the difference between Huerta, Carranza, and Villa." + +The only answer he could obtain was that Carranza was the best of the +three and that Villa was not so bad as he had been painted. But the +phrase that remained with the British diplomat was that one so +characteristically Wilsonian: "I propose to teach the South American +Republics to elect good men." In its attitude, its phrasing, it held the +key to much Wilson history. + +Additional details of this historic interview are given in Colonel +House's letters: + + From Edward M. House + + 145 East 35th Street, + + New York City. + + November 4, 1913. + + DEAR PAGE: + + Your cablegram, telling me of the arrival of Sir William Tyrrell on + the _Imperator_, was handed me on my way to the train as I left for + Washington. + + The President talked with me about the Mexican situation and it + looks as if something positive will be done in a few days unless + Huerta abdicates. + + It is to be the policy of this Administration henceforth not to + recognize any Central American government that is not formed along + constitutional lines. Anything else would be a makeshift policy. As + you know, revolutions and assassinations in order to obtain control + of governments are instituted almost wholly for the purpose of loot + and when it is found that these methods will not bring the desired + results, they will cease. + + The President also feels strongly in regard to foreign financial + interests seeking to control those unstable governments through + concessions and otherwise. This, too, he is determined to + discourage as far as it is possible to do so. + + This was a great opportunity for England and America to get + together. You know how strongly we both feel upon this subject and + I do not believe that the President differed greatly from us, but + the recent actions of the British Government have produced a + decided irritation, which to say the least is unfortunate. + + Faithfully yours, + + E.M. HOUSE. + + + 145 East 35th Street, + New York City. + November 14, 1913. + + DEAR PAGE: + + Things have happened quickly since I last wrote to you. I went to + Washington Monday night as the guest of the Bryans. They have been + wanting me to come to them and I thought this a good opportunity. + + I talked the Mexican situation out thoroughly with him and one of + your dispatches came while I was there. I found that he was + becoming prejudiced against the British Government, believing that + their Mexican policy was based purely upon commercialism, that they + were backing Huerta quietly at the instance of Lord Cowdray, and + that Cowdray had not only already obtained concessions from the + Huerta Government, but expected to obtain others. Sir Lionel Carden + was also all to the bad. + + I saw the President and his views were not very different from + those of Mr. Bryan. I asked the President to permit me to see Sir + William Tyrrell and talk to him frankly and to attempt to + straighten the tangle out. He gave me a free hand. + + I lunched with Sir William at the British Embassy although Sir + Cecil Spring Rice was not well enough to be present. I had a long + talk with Sir William after lunch and found that our suspicions + were unwarranted and that we could get together without any + difficulty whatever. + + I told him very frankly what our purpose was in Mexico and that we + were determined to carry it through if it was within our power to + do so. That being so I suggested that he get his government to + cooeperate cordially with ours rather than to accept our policy + reluctantly. + + I told him that you and I had dreamed of a sympathetic alliance + between the two countries and that it seemed to me that this dream + might come true very quickly because of the President and Sir + Edward Grey. He expressed a willingness to cooeperate freely and I + told him I would arrange an early meeting with the President. I + thought it better to bring the President into the game rather than + Mr. Bryan. I told him of the President's attitude upon the Panama + toll question but I touched upon that lightly and in confidence, + preferring for the President himself to make his own statement. + + I left the Bryans in the morning of the luncheon with Sir William, + intending to take an afternoon train for New York, but the + President wanted me to stay with him at the White House over night + and meet Sir William with him at half past nine the following + morning. He was so tired that I did not have the heart to urge a + meeting that night. + + From half past nine until half past ten the President and Sir + William repeated to each other what they had said separately to me, + and which I had given to each, and then the President elaborated + upon the toll question much to the satisfaction of Sir William. + + He explained the matter in detail and assured him of his entire + sympathy and purpose to carry out our treaty obligations, both in + the letter and the spirit. + + Sir William was very happy after the interview and when the + President left us he remained to talk to me and to express his + gratification. He cleared up in the President's mind all suspicion, + I think, in regard to concessions and as to the intentions and + purposes of the British Government. He assured the President that + his government would work cordially with ours and that they would + do all that they could to bring about joint pressure through + Germany and France for the elimination of Huerta. + + We are going to give them a chance to see what they can do with + Huerta before moving any further. Sir William thinks that if we are + willing to let Huerta save his face he can be got out without force + of arms. + + Sir William said that if foreign diplomats could have heard our + conversation they would have fallen in a faint; it was so frankly + indiscreet and undiplomatic. I did not tell him so, but I had it in + the back of my mind that where people wanted to do right and had + the power to carry out their intentions there was no need to cloak + their thoughts in diplomatic language. + + All this makes me very happy for it looks as if we are in sight of + the promised land. + + I am pleased to tell you of the compliments that have been thrown + at you by the President, Mr. Bryan, and Sir William. They were all + enthusiastic over your work in London and expressed the keenest + appreciation of the way in which you have handled matters. Sir + William told me that he did not remember an American Ambassador + that was your equal. + + Faithfully yours, + + E.M. HOUSE. + +So far as a meeting between a British diplomat and the President of the +United States could solve the Mexican problem, that problem was +apparently solved. The dearest wish of Mr. Wilson, the elimination of +Huerta, seemed to be approaching realization, now that he had persuaded +Great Britain to support him in this enterprise. Whether Sir William +Tyrrell, or Sir Edward Grey, had really become converted to the +President's "idealistic" plans for Mexico is an entirely different +question. At this time there was another matter in which Great Britain's +interest was even greater than in Mexico. These letters have already +contained reference to tolls on the Panama Canal. Colonel House's letter +shows that the President discussed this topic with Sir William Tyrrell +and gave him assurances that this would be settled on terms satisfactory +to Great Britain. It cannot be maintained that that assurance was really +the consideration which paved the way to an understanding on Huerta. The +conversation was entirely informal; indeed, it could not be otherwise, +for Sir William Tyrrell brought no credentials; there could be no +definite bargain or agreement, but there is little question that Mr. +Wilson's friendly disposition toward British shipping through the Panama +Canal made it easy for Great Britain to give him a free hand in Mexico. + +A few days after this White House interview Sir Lionel Carden performed +what must have been for him an uncongenial duty. This loquacious +minister led a procession of European diplomats to General Huerta, +formally advised that warrior to yield to the American demands and +withdraw from the Presidency of Mexico. The delegation informed the grim +dictator that their governments were supporting the American policy and +Sir Lionel brought him the unwelcome news that he could not depend upon +British support. About the same time Premier Asquith made conciliatory +remarks on Mexico at the Guildhall banquet. He denied that the British +Government had undertaken any policy "deliberately opposed to that of +the United States. There is no vestige of foundation for such a rumour." +These events changed the atmosphere at Washington, which now became +almost as cordial to Great Britain as it had for several months been +suspicious. + + _To Edward M. House_ + + London, November 15, 1913. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + All's well here. The whole trouble was caused not here but in + Mexico City; and that is to be remedied yet. And it will be! For + the moment it is nullified. But you need give yourself no concern + about the English Government or people, in the long run. It is + taking them some time to see the vast difference between acting by + a principle and acting by what they call a "policy." They and we + ourselves too have from immemorial time been recognizing successful + adventurers, and they didn't instantly understand this new + "idealistic" move; they didn't know the man at the helm! I preached + many sermons to our friend, I explained the difference to many + private groups, I made after-dinner speeches leading right up to + the point--as far as I dared, I inspired many newspaper articles; + and they see it now and have said it and have made it public; and + the British people are enthusiastic as far as they understand it. + + And anybody concerned here understands the language that the + President speaks now. You mustn't forget that in all previous + experiences in Latin America we ourselves have been as much to + blame as anybody else. Now we have a clear road to travel, a policy + based on character to follow forever--a new era. Our dealing with + Cuba was a new chapter in the history of the world. Our dealing + with Mexico is Chapter II of the same Revelation. Tell 'em this in + Washington. + + The remaining task will be done too and I think pretty soon. For + that I need well-loaded shells. I'll supply the gunpowder. + + And don't you concern yourself about the English. They're all + right--a little slow, but all right. + + Heartily yours, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + + _To Edward M. House_ + + Newtimber Place, Hassocks, Sussex, + Sunday, November 23, 1913. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + Your letter telling me about Tyrrell and the President brought me + great joy. Tyrrell is in every way a square fellow, much like his + Chief; and, you may depend on it, they are playing fair--in their + slow way. They always think of India and of Egypt--never of Cuba. + Lord! Lord! the fun I've had, the holy joy I am having (I never + expected to have such exalted and invigorating felicity) in + delivering elementary courses of instruction in democracy to the + British Government. Deep down at the bottom, they don't know what + Democracy means. Their Empire is in the way. Their centuries of + land-stealing are in the way. Their unsleeping watchfulness of + British commerce is in the way. "You say you'll shoot men into + self-government," said Sir Edward. "Doesn't that strike you as + comical?" And I answered, "It is comical only to the Briton and to + others who have associated shooting with subjugation. We associate + shooting with freedom." Half this blessed Sunday at this country + house I have been ramming the idea down the throat of the Lord + Chancellor[37]. _He_ sees it, too, being a Scotchman. I take the + members of the Government, as I get the chance or can make it, and + go over with them the A B C of the President's principle: no + territorial annexation; no trafficking with tyrants; no stealing of + American governments by concession or financial thimble-rigging. + They'll not recognize another Huerta--they're sick of that. And + they'll not endanger our friendship. They didn't see the idea in + the beginning. Of course the real trouble has been in Mexico + City--Carden. They don't know yet just what he did. But they will, + if _I_ can find out. I haven't yet been able to make them tell me + at Washington. Washington is a deep hole of silence toward + ambassadors. By gradual approaches, I'm going to prove that Carden + can do--and in a degree has already done--as much harm as Bryce did + good--and all about a paltry few hundreds of million dollars' worth + of oil. What the devil does the oil or the commerce of Mexico or + the investments there amount to in comparison with the close + friendship of the two nations? Carden can't be good long: he'll + break out again presently. He has no political imagination. That's + a rather common disease here, too. Few men have. It's good fun. I'm + inviting the Central and South American Ministers to lunch with me, + one by one, and I'm incidentally loading them up. I have all the + boys in the Embassy full of zeal and they are tackling the + Secretaries of the Central and South American legations. We've got + a _principle_ now to deal by with them. They'll see after a while. + + English people are all right, too--except the Doctrinaires. They + write much rank ignorance. But the learned men learn things last of + all. + + I thank you heartily for your good news about Tyrrell, about the + President (but I'm sorry he's tired: make him quit eating meat and + play golf); about the Panama tolls; about the Currency Bill (my + love to McAdoo); about my own little affairs.--We are looking with + the very greatest pleasure to the coming of the young White House + couple. I've got two big dinners for them--Sir Edward, the Lord + Chancellor, a duchess or two, some good folk, Ruth Bryan, a couple + of ambassadors, etc., etc., etc. Then we'll take 'em to a literary + speaking-feast or two, have 'em invited to a few great houses; then + we'll give 'em another dinner, and then we'll get a guide for them + to see all the reforming institutions in London, to their hearts' + content--lots of fun. + + Lots of fun: I got the American Society for its Thanksgiving dinner + to invite the Lord Chancellor to respond to a toast to the + President. He's been to the United States lately and he is greatly + pleased. So far, so good. Then I came down here--where he, too, is + staying. After five or six hours' talk about everything else he + said, "By the way, your countrymen have invited me," etc., etc. + "Now what would be appropriate to talk about?" Then I poured him + full of the New Principle as regards Central and South America; + for, if he will talk on that, what he says will be reported and + read on both continents. He's a foxy Scot, and he didn't say he + would, but he said that he'd consider it. "Consider it" means that + he will confer with Sir Edward. I'm beginning to learn their + vocabulary. Anyhow the Lord Chancellor is in line. + + It's good news you send always. Keep it up--keep it up. The volume + of silence that I get is oppressive. You remember the old nigger + that wished to pick a quarrel with another old nigger? Nigger No. 1 + swore and stormed at nigger No. 2, and kept on swearing and + storming, hoping to provoke him. Nigger No. 2 said not a word, but + kept at his work. Nigger No. 1 swore and stormed more. Nigger No. 2 + said not a word. Nigger No. 1 frothed still more. Nigger No. 2, + still silent. Nigger No. 1 got desperate and said: "Look here, you + kinky-headed, flat-nosed, slab-footed nigger, I warns you 'fore + God, don't you keep givin' me none o' your damned silence!" I wish + you'd tell all my friends that story. + + Always heartily yours, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 34: Prince Arthur of Connaught and the Duchess of Fife were +married in the Chapel Royal, October 16, 1913.] + +[Footnote 35: See the Appendix (at end of Vol. II) for this episode in +detail.] + +[Footnote 36: There was a suggestion, which the Ambassador endorsed, +that President Wilson should visit England to accept, in the name of the +United States, Sulgrave Manor, the ancestral hone, of the Washingtons. +See Chapter IX, page 274.] + +[Footnote 37: Viscount Haldane, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain +since 1912.] + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +PERSONALITIES OF THE MEXICAN PROBLEM + + +Page's remarks about the "trouble in Mexico City" and the "remaining +task" refer, of course, to Sir Lionel Carden. "As I make Carden out," he +wrote about this time, "he's a slow-minded, unimaginative, commercial +Briton, with as much nimbleness as an elephant. British commerce is his +deity, British advantage his duty and mission; and he goes about his +work with blunt dullness and ineptitude. That's his mental calibre as I +read him--a dull, commercial man." + +Although Sir Lionel Carden had been compelled to harmonize himself with +the American policy, Page regarded his continued presence in Mexico City +as a standing menace to British-American relations. He therefore set +himself to accomplish the minister's removal. The failure of President +Taft's attempt to obtain Carden's transfer from Havana, in 1912, showed +that Page's new enterprise was a delicate and difficult one; yet he did +not hesitate. + +The part that the wives of diplomats and statesmen play in international +relations is one that few Americans understand. Yet in London, the +Ambassador's wife is almost as important a person as the Ambassador +himself. An event which now took place in the American Embassy +emphasized this point. A certain lady, well known in London, called upon +Mrs. Page and gave her a message on Mexican affairs for the Ambassador's +benefit. The purport was that the activities of certain British +commercial interests in Mexico, if not checked, would produce a serious +situation between Great Britain and the United States. The lady in +question was herself a sincere worker for Anglo-American amity, and this +was the motive that led her to take an unusual step. + +"It's all being done for the benefit of one man," she said. + +The facts were presented in the form of a memorandum, which Mrs. Page +copied and gave the Ambassador. This, in turn, Page sent to President +Wilson. + + _To Edward M. House_ + + London, November 26, 1913. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + Won't you read the enclosed and get it to the President? It is + somewhat extra-official but it is very confidential, and I have a + special reason for wishing it to go through your hands. Perhaps it + will interest you. + + The lady that wrote it is one of the very best-informed women I + know, one of those active and most influential women in the high + political society of this Kingdom, at whose table statesmen and + diplomats meet and important things come to pass. . . . + + I am sure she has no motive but the avowed one. She has taken a + liking to Mrs. Page and this is merely a friendly and patriotic + act. + + I had heard most of the things before as gossip--never before as + here put together by a responsible hand. + + Mrs. Page went to see her and, as evidence of our appreciation and + safety, gave the original back to her. We have kept no copy, and I + wish this burned, if you please. It would raise a riot here, if any + breath of it were to get out, that would put bedlam to shame. + + Lord Cowdray has been to see me for four successive days. I have a + suspicion (though I don't know) that, instead of his running the + Government, the Government has now turned the tables and is running + him. His government contract is becoming a bad thing to sleep with. + He told me this morning that he (through Lord Murray) had withdrawn + the request for any concession in Colombia[38]. I congratulated + him. "That, Lord Cowdray, will save you as well as some other + people I know a good deal of possible trouble." I have explained to + him the whole New Principle _in extenso_, "so that you may see + clearly where the line of danger runs." Lord! how he's changed! + Several weeks ago when I ran across him accidentally he was + humorous, almost cynical. Now he's very serious. I explained to him + that the only thing that had kept South America from being + parcelled out as Africa has been is the Monroe Doctrine and the + United States behind it. He granted that. + + "In Monroe's time," said I, "the only way to take a part of South + America was to take land. Now finance has new ways of its own!" + + "Perhaps," said he. + + "Right there," I answered, "where you put your 'perhaps,' I put a + danger signal. That, I assure you, you will read about in the + histories as 'The Wilson Doctrine'!" + + You don't know how easy it all is with our friend and leader in + command. I've almost grown bold. You feel steady ground beneath + you. They are taking to their tents. + + "What's going to happen in Mexico City?" + + "A peaceful tragedy, followed by emancipation." + + "And the great industries of Mexico?" + + "They will not have to depend on adventurers' favours!" + + "But in the meantime, what?" + + "Patience, looking towards justice!" + + Yours heartily and in health (you bet!) + W.H.P. + + + _From Edward M. House_ + + 145 East 35th Street, + New York City. + December 12, 1913. + + DEAR PAGE: + + Your budget under dates, November 15th, 23rd, and 26th came to me + last week, just after the President had been here. I saved the + letters until I went to Washington, from which place I have just + returned. + + The President has been in bed for nearly a week and Doctor Grayson + permitted no one to see him but me. Yesterday before I left he was + feeling so well that I asked him if he did not want to feel better + and then I read him your letters. Mrs. Wilson was present. + + I cannot tell you how pleased he was. He laughed repeatedly at the + different comments you made and he was delighted with what you had + to say concerning Lord Cowdray. We do not love him for we think + that between Cowdray and Carden a large part of our troubles in + Mexico has been made. Your description of his attitude at the + beginning and his present one pleased us much. + + After I had read the confidential letter the President said "now + let me see if I have the facts." He then recited them in + consecutive order just as the English lady had written them, almost + using the same phrases, showing the well-trained mind that he has. + I then dropped the letter in the grate. + + He enjoyed heartily the expression "Washington is a deep hole of + silence towards ambassadors," and again "The volume of silence that + I get is oppressive," and of course the story apropos of this last + remark. + + I was with him for more than an hour and he was distinctly better + when I left. I hated to look at him in bed for I could not help + realizing what his life means to the Democratic Party, to the + Nation and almost to the world. + + Of course you know that I only read your letters to him. Mr. Bryan + was my guest on Wednesday and I returned to Washington with him but + I made no mention of our correspondence and I never have. The + President seems to like our way of doing things and further than + that I do not care. + + Upon my soul I do not believe the President could be better pleased + than he is with the work you are doing. + + Faithfully yours, + + E.M. HOUSE. + +From now on the Ambassador exerted a round-about pressure--the method of +"gradual approach" already referred to--upon the Foreign Office for +Carden's removal. An extract from a letter to the President gives a hint +concerning this method: + + * * * * * + +I have already worked upon Sir Edward's mind about his Minister to +Mexico as far as I could. Now that the other matter is settled and while +Carden is behaving, I go at it. Two years ago Mr. Knox made a bad +blunder in protesting against Carden's "anti-Americanism" in Cuba. Mr. +Knox sent Mr. Reid no definite facts nor even accusations to base a +protest on. The result was a failure--a bad failure. I have again asked +Mr. Bryan for all the definite reports he has heard about Carden. That +man, in my judgment, has caused nine tenths of the trouble here. + + * * * * * + +Naturally Page did not ask the Minister's removal directly--that would +have been an unpardonable blunder. His meetings during this period with +Sir Edward were taking place almost every day, and Carden, in one way or +another, kept coming to the front in their conversation. Sir Edward, +like Page, would sacrifice much in the cause of Anglo-American +relations; Page would occasionally express his regret that the British +Minister to Mexico was not a man who shared their enthusiasm on this +subject; in numerous other ways the impression was conveyed that the two +countries could solve the Mexican entanglement much better if a more +congenial person represented British interests in the Southern Republic. +This reasoning evidently produced the desired results. In early January, +1914, a hint was unofficially conveyed to the American Ambassador that +Carden was to be summoned to London for a "conversation" with Sir Edward +Grey, and that his return to Mexico would depend upon the outcome of +that interview. There was a likelihood that, in future, Sir Lionel +Carden would represent the British Empire in Brazil. + +This news, sent in discreet cipher to Washington, delighted the +Administration. "It is fine about Carden," wrote Colonel House on +January 10th. "I knew you had done it when I saw it in the papers, but I +did not know just how. You could not have brought it about in a more +diplomatic and effectual way." + +And the following came from the President: + + From President Wilson + + Pass Christian, + + January 6, 1914. + + MY DEAR PAGE: + + I have your letter of December twenty-first, which I have greatly + enjoyed. + + Almost at the very time I was reading it, the report came through + the Associated Press from London that Carden was to be transferred + immediately to Brazil. If this is true, it is indeed a most + fortunate thing and I feel sure it is to be ascribed to your + tactful and yet very plain representations to Sir Edward Grey. I do + not think you realize how hard we worked to get from either Lind or + O'Shaughnessy[39] definite items of speech or conduct which we + could furnish you as material for what you had to say to the + Ministers about Carden. It simply was not obtainable. Everything + that we got was at second or third hand. That he was working + against us was too plain for denial, and yet he seems to have done + it in a very astute way which nobody could take direct hold of. I + congratulate you with all my heart on his transference. + + I long, as you do, for an opportunity to do constructive work all + along the line in our foreign relations, particularly with Great + Britain and the Latin-American states, but surely, my dear fellow, + you are deceiving yourself in supposing that constructive work is + not now actually going on, and going on at your hands quite as much + as at ours. The change of attitude and the growing ability to + understand what we are thinking about and purposing on the part of + the official circle in London is directly attributable to what you + have been doing, and I feel more and more grateful every day that + you are our spokesman and interpreter there. This is the only + possible constructive work in foreign affairs, aside from definite + acts of policy. So far as the policy is concerned, you may be sure + I will strive to the utmost to obtain both a repeal of the + discrimination in the matter of tolls and a renewal of the + arbitration treaties, and I am not without hope that I can + accomplish both at this session. Indeed this is the session in + which these things must be done if they are to be done at all. + + Back of the smile which came to my face when you spoke of the + impenetrable silence of the State Department toward its foreign + representatives lay thoughts of very serious concern. We must + certainly manage to keep our foreign representatives properly + informed. The real trouble is to conduct genuinely confidential + correspondence except through private letters, but surely the thing + can be changed and it will be if I can manage it. + + We are deeply indebted to you for your kindness and generous + hospitality to our young folks[40] and we have learned with delight + through your letters and theirs of their happy days in England. + + With deep regard and appreciation, + + Cordially and faithfully yours, + + WOODROW WILSON. + + HON. WALTER H. PAGE, + + American Embassy, + + London, England. + +Yet for the American Ambassador the experience was not one of unmixed +satisfaction. These letters have contained references to the demoralized +condition of the State Department under Mr. Bryan and the succeeding +ones will contain more; the Carden episode portrayed the stupidity and +ignorance of that Department at their worst. By commanding Carden to +cease his anti-American tactics and to support the American policy the +Foreign Office had performed an act of the utmost courtesy and +consideration to this country. By quietly "promoting" the same minister +to another sphere, several thousand miles away from Mexico and +Washington, it was now preparing to eliminate all possible causes of +friction between the two countries. The British, that is, had met the +wishes of the United States in the two great matters that were then +making serious trouble--Huerta and Carden. Yet no government, Great +Britain least of all, wishes to be placed in the position of moving its +diplomats about at the request of another Power. The whole deplorable +story appears in the following letter. + + _To Edward M. House_ + + January 8th, 1914. + + MY DEAR HOUSE: + + Two days ago I sent a telegram to the Department saying that I had + information from a private, _unofficial_ source that the report + that Carden would be transferred was true, and from another source + that Marling would succeed him. The Government here has given out + nothing. I know nothing from official sources. Of course the only + decent thing to do at Washington was to sit still till this + Government should see fit to make an announcement. But what do they + do? Give my telegram to the press! It appears here almost verbatim + in this morning's _Mail_.--I have to make an humiliating + explanation to the Foreign Office. This is the third time I've had + to make such an humiliating explanation to Sir Edward. It's getting + a little monotonous. He's getting tired, and so am I. They now deny + at the Foreign Office that anything has been decided about Carden, + and this meddling by us (as they look at it) will surely cause a + delay and may even cause a change of purpose. + + That's the practical result of their leaking at Washington. On a + previous occasion they leaked the same way. When I telegraphed a + remonstrance, they telegraphed back to me that the leak had been + _here_! That was the end of it--except that I had to explain to Sir + Edward the best I could. And about a lesser matter, I did the same + thing a third time, in a conversation. Three times this sort of + thing has happened.--On the other hand, the King's Master of + Ceremonies called on me on the President's Birthday and requested + for His Majesty that I send His Majesty's congratulations. Just ten + days passed before a telegraphic answer came! The very hour it + came, I was myself making up an answer for the President that I was + going to send, to save our face. + + Now, I'm trying with all my might to do this job. I spend all my + time, all my ingenuity, all my money at it. I have organized my + staff as a sort of Cabinet. We meet every day. We go over + everything conceivable that we may do or try to do. We do good team + work. I am not sure but I doubt whether these secretaries have + before been taken into just such a relation to their chief. They + are enthusiastic and ambitious and industrious and--_safe_. There's + no possibility of any leak. We arrange our dinners with reference + to the possibility of getting information and of carrying points. + Mrs. Page gives and accepts invitations with the same end in view. + We're on the job to the very limit of our abilities. + + And I've got the Foreign Office in such a relation that they are + frank and friendly. (I can't keep 'em so, if this sort of thing + goes on.) + + Now the State Department seems (as it touches us) to be utterly + chaotic--silent when it ought to respond, loquacious when it ought + to be silent. There are questions that I have put to it at this + Government's request to which I can get no answer. + + It's hard to keep my staff enthusiastic under these conditions. + When I reached the Chancery this morning, they were in my room, + with all the morning papers marked, on the table, eagerly + discussing what we ought to do about this publication of my + dispatch. The enthusiasm and buoyancy were all gone out of them. By + their looks they said, "Oh! what's the use of our bestirring + ourselves to send news to Washington when they use it to embarrass + us?"--While we are thus at work, the only two communications from + the Department to-day are two letters from two of the Secretaries + about--presenting "Democratic" ladies from Texas and Oklahoma at + court! And Bryan is now lecturing in Kansas. + + Since I began to write this letter, Lord Cowdray came here to the + house and stayed two and a half hours, talking about possible joint + intervention in Mexico. Possibly he came from the Foreign Office. I + don't know whether to dare send a despatch to the State Department, + telling what he told me, for fear they'd leak. And to leak + this--Good Lord! Two of the Secretaries were here to dinner, and I + asked them if I should send such a despatch. They both answered + instantly: "No, sir, don't dare: _write_ it to the President." I + said: "No, I have no right to bother the President with regular + business nor with frequent letters." To that they agreed; but the + interesting and somewhat appalling thing is, they're actually + afraid to have a confidential despatch go to the State Department. + + I see nothing to do but to suggest to the President to put + somebody in the Department who will stay there and give intelligent + attention to the diplomatic telegrams and letters--some + conscientious assistant or clerk. For I hear mutterings, somewhat + like these mutterings of mine, from some of the continental + embassies.--The whole thing is disorganizing and demoralizing + beyond description. + + All these and more are _my_ troubles. I'll take care of them. But + remember what I am going to write on the next sheet. For here may + come a trouble for _you:_ + + Mrs. Page has learned something more about Secretary Bryan's + proposed visit here in the spring. He's coming to talk his peace + plan which, you know, is a sort of grape-juice arbitration--a + distinct step backward from a real arbitration treaty. Well, if he + comes with _that_, when you come to talk about reducing armaments, + you'll wish you'd never been born. Get your ingenuity together, + then, and prevent that visit[41]. + + Not the least funny thing in the world is--Senator X turned up + to-day. As he danced around the room begging everybody's pardon + (nobody knew what for) he complimented everybody in sight, + explained the forged letter, dilated on state politics, set the + Irish question on the right end, cleared Bacon[42] of all hostility + to me, declined tea because he had insomnia and explained just how + it works to keep you awake, danced more and declared himself happy + and bowed himself out--well pleased. He's as funny a cuss as I've + seen in many a day. Lord Cowdray, who was telling Mexican woes to + Katharine in the corner, looked up and asked, "Who's the little + dancing gentleman?" Suppose X had known he was dancing for--Lord + Cowdray's amusement, what do y' suppose he'd've thought? There are + some strange combinations in our house on Mrs. Page's days at home. + Cowdray has, I am sure, lost (that is, failed to make) a hundred + million dollars that he had within easy reach by this Wilson + Doctrine, but he's game. He doesn't lie awake. He's a dead-game + sport, and he knows he's knocked out in that quarter and he doesn't + squeal. His experiences will serve us many a good turn in the + future--as a warning. I rather like him. He eats out of my hand in + the afternoon and has one of his papers jump on me in the morning. + Some time in the twenty-four hours, he must attain about the normal + temperature--say about noon. He admires the President + greatly--sincerely. Force meets force, you see. With the President + behind me I could really enjoy Cowdray centuries after X had danced + himself into oblivion. + + By the way, Cowdray said to me to-day: "Whatever the United States + and Great Britain agree on the world must do." He's right. (1) The + President must come here, perhaps in his second term; (2) these two + Governments must enter a compact for peace and for gradual + disarmament. Then we can go about our business for (say) a hundred + years. + + Heartily, + W.H.P. + +In spite of the continued pressure of the United States and the passive +support of its anti-Huerta policy by Great Britain, the Mexican usurper +refused to resign. President Wilson now began to espouse the interests +of Villa and Carranza. His letters to Page indicate that he took these +men at their own valuation, believed that they were sincere patriots +working for the cause of "democracy" and "constitutionalism" and that +their triumph would usher in a day of enlightenment and progress for +Mexico. It was the opinion of the Foreign Office that Villa and Carranza +were worse men than Huerta and that any recognition of their +revolutionary activities would represent no moral gain. + + _From President Wilson_ + + The White House, Washington, + May 18, 1914. + + MY DEAR PAGE: + + . . . As to the attitude of mind on that side of the water toward the + Constitutionalists, it is based upon prejudices which cannot be + sustained by the facts. I am enclosing a copy of an interview by a + Mr. Reid[43] which appeared in one of the afternoon papers recently + and which sums up as well as they could be summed up my own + conclusions with regard to the issues and the personnel of the + pending contest in Mexico. I can verify it from a hundred different + sources, most of them sources not in the least touched by + predilections for such men as our friends in London have supposed + Carranza and Villa to be. + + Cordially and faithfully yours, + WOODROW WILSON. + + HON. WALTER H. PAGE, + U.S. Embassy, + London, England. + + The White House, Washington, + June 1, 1914. + + MY DEAR PAGE: + + . . . The fundamental thing is that they (British critics of Villa) + are all radically mistaken. There has been less disorder and less + danger to life where the Constitutionalists have gained control + than there has been where Huerta is in control. I should think that + if they are getting correct advices from Tampico, people in England + would be very much enlightened by what has happened there. Before + the Constitutionalists took the place there was constant danger to + the oil properties and to foreign residents. Now there is no danger + and the men who felt obliged to leave the oil wells to their + Mexican employees are returning, to find, by the way, that their + Mexican employees guarded them most faithfully without wages, and + in some instances almost without food. I am told that the + Constitutionalists cheered the American flag when they entered + Tampico. + + I believe that Mexico City will be much quieter and a much safer + place to live in after the Constitutionalists get there than it is + now. The men who are approaching and are sure to reach it are much + less savage and much more capable of government than Huerta. + + These, I need not tell you, are not fancies of mine but conclusions + I have drawn from facts which are at last becoming very plain and + palpable, at least to us on this side of the water. If they are not + becoming plain in Great Britain, it is because their papers are not + serving them with the truth. Our own papers were prejudiced enough + in all conscience against Villa and Carranza and everything that + was happening in the north of Mexico, but at last the light is + dawning on them in spite of themselves and they are beginning to + see things as they really are. I would be as nervous and impatient + as your friends in London are if I feared the same things that they + fear, but I do not. I am convinced that even Zapata would restrain + his followers and leave, at any rate, all foreigners and all + foreign property untouched if he were the first to enter Mexico + City. + + Cordially and faithfully yours, + WOODROW WILSON. + + HON. WALTER H. PAGE, + American Embassy, + London, England. + +On this issue, however, the President and his Ambassador to Great +Britain permanently disagreed. The events which took place in April, +1914--the insult to the American flag at Tampico, the bombardment and +capture of Vera Cruz by American forces--made stronger Page's +conviction, already set forth in this correspondence, that there was +only one solution of the Mexican problem. + + _To Edward M. House_ + + April 27, 1914. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + . . . And, as for war with Mexico--I confess I've had a continually + growing fear of it for six months. I've no confidence in the + Mexican leaders--none of 'em. We shall have to Cuba-ize the + country, which means thrashing 'em first--I fear, I fear, I fear; + and I feel sorry for us all, the President in particular. It's + inexpressibly hard fortune for him. I can't tell you with what + eager fear we look for despatches every day and twice a day hurry + to get the newspapers. All England believes we've got to fight it + out. + + Well, the English are with us, you see. Admiral Cradock, I + understand, does not approve our policy, but he stands firmly with + us whatever we do. The word to stand firmly with us has, I am very + sure, been passed along the whole line--naval, newspaper, + financial, diplomatic. Carden won't give us any more trouble + during the rest of his stay in Mexico. The yellow press's abuse of + the President and me has actually helped us here. + + Heartily yours, + W.H.P. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 38: This was another manifestation of British friendliness. +When the American excitement was most acute, it became known that +British capitalists had secured oil concessions in Colombia. At the +demand of the British Government they gave them up.] + +[Footnote 39: Mr. Nelson O'Shaughnessy, Charge d'Affaires in Mexico.] + +[Footnote 40: Mr. and Mrs. Francis B. Sayre.] + +[Footnote 41: Colonel House succeeded in preventing it.] + +[Footnote 42: Senator Augustus O. Bacon, of Georgia who was reported to +nourish ill-feeling toward Page for his authorship of "The Southerner."] + +[Footnote 43: Probably an error for John Reed, at that time a newspaper +correspondent in Mexico--afterward well known as a champion of the +Bolshevist regime in Russia.] + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +HONOUR AND DISHONOUR IN PANAMA + + +In the early part of January, 1914, Colonel House wrote Page, asking +whether he would consider favourably an offer to enter President +Wilson's Cabinet, as Secretary of Agriculture. Mr. David F. Houston, who +was then most acceptably filling that position, was also an authority on +banking and finance; the plan was to make him governor of the new +Federal Reserve Board, then in process of formation, and to transfer +Page to the vacant place in the Cabinet. The proposal was not carried +through, but Page's reply took the form of a review of his +ambassadorship up to date, of his vexations, his embarrassments, his +successes, and especially of the very important task which still lay +before him. There were certain reasons, it will appear, why he would +have liked to leave London; and there was one impelling reason why he +preferred to stay. From the day of his arrival in England, Page had been +humiliated, and his work had been constantly impeded, by the almost +studied neglect with which Washington treated its diplomatic service. +The fact that the American Government provided no official residence for +its Ambassador, and no adequate financial allowance for maintaining the +office, had made his position almost an intolerable one. All Page's +predecessors for twenty-five years had been rich men who could advance +the cost of the Embassy from their own private purses; to meet these +expenses, however, Page had been obliged to encroach on the savings of a +lifetime, and such liberality on his part necessarily had its +limitations. + + _To Edward M. House_ + + London, England, + February 13, 1914. + + MY DEAR HOUSE: + + . . . Of course I am open to the criticism of having taken the place + at all. But I was both uninformed and misinformed about the cost as + well as about the frightful handicap of having no Embassy. It's a + kind of scandal in London and it has its serious effect. Everybody + talks about it all the time: "Will you explain to me why it is that + your great Government has no Embassy: it's very odd!" "What a + frugal Government you have!" "It's a damned mean outfit, your + American Government." Mrs. Page collapses many an evening when she + gets to her room. "If they'd only quit talking about it!" The other + Ambassadors, now that we're coming to know them fairly well, + commiserate us. It's a constant humiliation. Of course this aspect + of it doesn't worry me much--I've got hardened to it. But it is a + good deal of a real handicap, and it adds that much dead weight + that a man must overcome; and it greatly lessens the respect in + which our Government and its Ambassador are held. If I had known + this fully in advance, I should not have had the courage to come + here. Now, of course, I've got used to it, have discounted it, and + can "bull" it through--could "bull" it through if I could afford to + pay the bill. But I shouldn't advise any friend of mine to come + here and face this humiliation without realizing precisely what it + means--wholly apart, of course, from the cost of it. . . . + + My dear House, on the present basis much of the diplomatic + business is sheer humbug. It will always be so till we have our own + Embassies and an established position in consequence. Without a + home or a house or a fixed background, every man has to establish + his own position for himself; and unless he be unusual, this throws + him clean out of the way of giving emphasis to the right things. . . . + + As for our position, I think I don't fool myself. The job at the + Foreign Office is easy because there is no real trouble between us, + and because Sir Edward Grey is pretty nearly an ideal man to get on + with. I think he likes me, too, because, of course, I'm + straightforward and frank with him, and he likes the things we + stand for. Outside this official part of the job, of course, we're + commonplace--a successful commonplace, I hope. But that's all. We + don't know how to try to be anything but what we naturally are. I + dare say we are laughed at here and there about this and that. + Sometimes I hear criticisms, now and then more or less serious + ones. Much of it comes of our greenness; some of it from the very + nature of the situation. Those who expect to find us brilliant are, + of course, disappointed. Nor are we smart, and the smart set (both + American and English) find us uninteresting. But we drive ahead and + keep a philosophical temper and simply do the best we can, and, you + may be sure, a good deal of it. It _is_ laborious. For instance, + I've made two trips lately to speak before important bodies, one at + Leeds, the other at Newcastle, at both of which, in different ways, + I have tried to explain the President's principle in dealing with + Central American turbulent states--and, incidentally, the American + ideals of government. The audiences see it, approve it, applaud it. + The newspaper editorial writers never quite go the length--it + involves a denial of the divine right of the British Empire; at + least they fear so. The fewest possible Englishmen really + understand our governmental aims and ideals. I have delivered + unnumbered and innumerable little speeches, directly or indirectly, + about them; and they seem to like them. But it would take an army + of oratorical ambassadors a lifetime to get the idea into the heads + of them all. In some ways they are incredibly far back in + mediaevalism--incredibly. + + If I have to leave in the fall or in December, it will be said and + thought that I've failed, unless there be some reason that can be + made public. I should be perfectly willing to tell the reason--the + failure of the Government to make it financially possible. I've + nothing to conceal--only definite amounts. I'd never say what it + has cost--only that it costs more than I or anybody but a rich man + can afford. If then, or in the meantime, the President should wish + me to serve elsewhere, that would, of course, be a sufficient + reason for my going. + + Now another matter, with which I shall not bother the President--he + has enough to bear on that score. It was announced in one of the + London papers the other day that Mr. Bryan would deliver a lecture + here, and probably in each of the principal European capitals, on + Peace. Now, God restrain me from saying, much more from doing, + anything rash. But if I've got to go home at all, I'd rather go + before he comes. It'll take years for the American Ambassadors to + recover what they'll lose if he carry out this plan. They now laugh + at him here. Only the President's great personality saves the + situation in foreign relations. Of course the public here doesn't + know how utterly unorganized the State Department is--how we can't + get answers to important questions, and how they publish most + secret despatches or allow them to leak out. But "bad breaks" like + this occur. Mr. Z, of the 100-years'-Peace Committee[44], came + here a week ago, with a letter from Bryan to the Prime Minister! Z + told me that this 100-year business gave a chance to bind the + nations together that ought not to be missed. Hence Bryan had asked + him to take up the relations of the countries with the Prime + Minister! Bryan sent a telegram to Z to be read at a big 100-year + meeting here. As for the personal indignity to me--I overlook that. + I don't think he means it. But if he doesn't mean it, what does he + mean? That's what the Prime Minister asks himself. Fortunately Mr. + Asquith and I get along mighty well. He met Bryan once, and he told + me with a smile that he regarded him as "a peculiar product of your + country." But the Secretary is always doing things like this. He + dashes off letters of introduction to people asking me to present + them to Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, etc. + + In the United States we know Mr. Bryan. We know his good points, + his good services, his good intentions. We not only tolerate him; + we like him. But when he comes here as "the American Prime + Minister" [45]--good-bye, John! All that we've tried to do to gain + respect for our Government (as they respect our great nation) will + disappear in one day. Of course they'll feel obliged to give him + big official dinners, etc. And-- + + Now you'd just as well abandon your trip if he comes; and (I + confess) I'd rather be gone. No member of another government ever + came here and lectured. T.R. did it as a private citizen, and even + then he split the heavens asunder[46]. Most Englishmen will regard + it as a piece of effrontery. Of course, I'm not in the least + concerned about mere matters of taste. It's only the bigger effects + that I have in mind in _queering_ our Government in their eyes. He + must be kept at home on the Mexican problem, or some other. + + Yours faithfully, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + + P.S. But, by George, it's a fine game! This Government and ours are + standing together all right, especially since the President has + taken hold of our foreign relations himself. With such a man at the + helm at home, we can do whatever we wish to do with the English, as + I've often told you. (But it raises doubts every time the + shoestring necktie, broad-brimmed black hat, oratorical, old-time, + River Platte kind of note is heard.) We've come a long way in a + year--a very joyful long way, full of progress and real + understanding; there's no doubt about that. A year ago they knew + very well the failure that had saddled them with the tolls trouble + and the failure of arbitration, and an unknown President had just + come in. Presently an unknown Ambassador arrived. Mexico got worse; + would we not recognize Huerta? They send Carden. We had nothing to + say about the tolls--simply asked for time. They were very + friendly; but our slang phrase fits the situation--"nothin' doin'." + They declined San Francisco[47]. Then presently they began to see + some plan in Mexico; they began to see our attitude on the tolls; + they began to understand our attitude toward concessions and + governments run for profit; they began dimly to see that Carden was + a misfit; the Tariff Bill passed; the Currency Bill; the President + loomed up; even the Ambassador, they said, really believed what he + preached; he wasn't merely making pretty, friendly speeches.--Now, + when we get this tolls job done, we've got 'em where we can do any + proper and reasonable thing we want. It's been a great three + quarters of a year--immense, in fact. No man has been in the White + House who is so regarded since Lincoln; in fact, they didn't regard + Lincoln while he lived. + + Meantime, I've got to be more or less at home. The Prime Minister + dines with me, the Foreign Secretary, the Archbishop, the Colonial + Secretary--all the rest of 'em; the King talks very freely; Mr. + Asquith tells me some of his troubles; Sir Edward is become a good + personal friend; Lord Bryce warms up; the Lord Chancellor is + chummy; and so it goes. + + So you may be sure we are all in high feather after all; and the + President's (I fear exaggerated) appreciation of what I've done is + very gratifying indeed. I've got only one emotion about it + all--gratitude; and gratitude begets eagerness to go on. Of course + I can do future jobs better than I have done any past ones. + + There are two shadows in the background--not disturbing, but + shadows none the less: + + 1. The constant reminder that the American Ambassador's homeless + position (to this Government and to this whole people) shows that + the American Government and the American people know nothing about + foreign relations and care nothing--regard them as not worth buying + a house for. This leaves a doubt about any continuity of any + American policy. It even suggests a sort of fear that we don't + really care. + + The other is (2) the dispiriting experience of writing and + telegraphing about important things and never hearing a word + concerning many of them, and the consequent fear of some dead bad + break in the State Department. The clubs are full of stories of the + silly and incredible things that are _said_ to happen there. + + After all, these are old troubles. They are not new--neither of + them. And we are the happiest group you ever saw. + + W.H.P. + +Page's letters of this period contain many references to his inability +to maintain touch with the State Department. His letters remained +unacknowledged, his telegrams unanswered; and he was himself left +completely in the dark as to the plans and opinions at Washington. + + To Edward M. House + + February 28, 1914. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + . . . _Couldn't the business with Great Britain be put into + Moore's[48] hands_? It is surely important enough at times to + warrant separate attention--or (I might say) attention. You know, + after eight or nine months of this sort of thing, the feeling grows + on us all here that perhaps many of our telegrams and letters may + not be read by anybody at all. You begin to feel that they may not + be deciphered or even opened. Then comes the feeling (for a + moment), why send any more? Why do anything but answer such + questions as come now and then? Corresponding with Nobody--can you + imagine how that feels?--What the devil do you suppose does become + of the letters and telegrams that I send, from which and about + which I never hear a word? As a mere matter of curiosity I should + like to know who receives them and what he does with them! + + I've a great mind some day to send a despatch saying that an + earthquake has swallowed up the Thames, that a suffragette has + kissed the King, and that the statue of Cromwell has made an + assault on the House of Lords--just to see if anybody deciphers it. + + Alter the Civil War an old fellow in Virginia was tired of the + world. He'd have no more to do with it. He cut a slit in a box in + his house and nailed up the box. Whenever a letter came for him, + he'd read the postmark and say "Baltimore--Baltimore--there isn't + anybody in Baltimore that I care to hear from." Then he'd drop the + letter unopened through the slit into the box. "Philadelphia? I + have no friend in Philadelphia"--into the box, unopened. When he + died, the big box was nearly full of unopened letters. When I get + to Washington again, I'm going to look for a big box that must now + be nearly full of my unopened letters and telegrams. + + W.H.P. + +The real reason why the Ambassador wished to remain in London was to +assist in undoing a great wrong which the United States had done itself +and the world. Page was attempting to perform his part in introducing +new standards into diplomacy. His discussions of Mexico had taken the +form of that "idealism" which he was apparently having some difficulty +in persuading British statesmen and the British public to accept. He was +doing his best to help bring about that day when, in Gladstone's famous +words, "the idea of public right would be the governing idea" of +international relations. But while the American Ambassador was preaching +this new conception, the position of his own country on one important +matter was a constant impediment to his efforts. Page was continually +confronted by the fact that the United States, high-minded as its +foreign policy might pretend to be, was far from "idealistic" in the +observance of the treaty that it had made with Great Britain concerning +the Panama Canal. There was a certain embarrassment involved in +preaching unselfishness in Mexico and Central America at a time when the +United States was practising selfishness and dishonesty in Panama. For, +in the opinion of the Ambassador and that of most other dispassionate +students of the Panama treaty, the American policy on Panama tolls +amounted to nothing less. + +To one unskilled in legal technicalities, the Panama controversy +involved no great difficulty. Since 1850 the United States and Great +Britain had had a written understanding upon the construction of the +Panama Canal. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which was adopted that year, +provided that the two countries should share equally in the construction +and control of the proposed waterway across the Isthmus. This idea of +joint control had always rankled in the United States, and in 1901 the +American Government persuaded Great Britain to abrogate the +Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and agree to another--the Hay-Pauncefote--which +transferred the rights of ownership and construction exclusively to this +country. In consenting to this important change, Great Britain had made +only one stipulation. "The Canal," so read Article III of the Convention +of 1901, "shall be free and open to the vessels of commerce and war of +all nations observing these rules, on terms of entire equality, so that +there shall be no discrimination against any such nation, or its +citizens or subjects, in respect of the conditions or charges of +traffic, or otherwise." It would seem as though the English language +could utter no thought more clearly than this. The agreement said, not +inferentially, but in so many words, that the "charges" levied on the +ships of "all nations" that used the Canal should be the same. The +history of British-American negotiations on the subject of the Canal had +always emphasized this same point. All American witnesses to drawing the +Treaty have testified that this was the American understanding. The +correspondence of John Hay, who was Secretary of State at the time, +makes it clear that this was the agreement. Mr. Elihu Root, who, as +Secretary of War, sat next to John Hay in the Cabinet which authorized +the treaty, has taken the same stand. The man who conducted the +preliminary negotiations with Lord Salisbury, Mr. Henry White, has +emphasized the same point. Mr. Joseph H. Choate, who, as American +Ambassador to Great Britain in 1901, had charge of the negotiations, has +testified that the British and American Governments "meant what they +said and said what they meant." + +In the face of this solemn understanding, the American Congress, in +1912, passed the Panama Canal Act, which provided that "no tolls shall +be levied upon vessels engaged in the coastwise trade of the United +States." A technical argument, based upon the theory that "all nations" +did not include the United States, and that, inasmuch as this country +had obtained sovereign rights upon the Isthmus, the situation had +changed, persuaded President Taft to sign this bill. Perhaps this line +of reasoning satisfied the legal consciences of President Taft and Mr. +Knox, his Secretary of State, but it really cut little figure in the +acrimonious discussion that ensued. Of course, there was only one +question involved; that was as to whether the exemption violated the +Treaty. This is precisely the one point that nearly all the +controversialists avoided. The statement that the United States had +built the Canal with its own money and its own genius, that it had +achieved a great success where other nations had achieved a great +failure, and that it had the right of passing its own ships through its +own highway without assessing tolls--this was apparently argument +enough. When Great Britain protested the exemption as a violation of the +Treaty, there were not lacking plenty of elements in American politics +and journalism to denounce her as committing an act of high-handed +impertinence, as having intruded herself in matters which were not +properly her concern, and as having attempted to rob the American public +of the fruits of its own enterprise. That animosity to Great Britain, +which is always present in certain parts of the hyphenated population, +burst into full flame. + +Clear as were the legal aspects of the dispute, the position of the +Wilson Administration was a difficult one. The Irish-American elements, +which have specialized in making trouble between the United States and +Great Britain, represented a strength to the Democratic Party in most +large cities. The great mass of Democratic Senators and Congressmen had +voted for the exemption bill. The Democratic platform of 1912 had +endorsed this same legislation. This declaration was the handiwork of +Senator O'Gorman, of New York State, who had long been a leader of the +anti-British crusade in American politics. More awkward still, President +Wilson, in the course of his Presidential campaign, had himself spoken +approvingly of free tolls for American ships. The probability is that, +when the President made this unfortunate reference to this clause in the +Democratic programme, he had given the matter little personal +investigation; it must be held to his credit that, when the facts were +clearly presented to him, his mind quickly grasped the real point at +issue--that it was not a matter of commercial advantage or +disadvantage, but one simply of national honour, of whether the United +States proposed to keep its word or to break it. + +Page's contempt for the hair-drawn technicalities of lawyers was +profound, and the tortuous effort to make the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty mean +something quite different from what it said, inevitably moved him to +righteous wrath. Before sailing for England he spent several days in the +State Department studying the several questions that were then at issue +between his country and Great Britain. A memorandum contains his +impressions of the free tolls contention: + + "A little later I went to Washington again to acquaint myself with + the business between the United States and Great Britain. About + that time the Senate confirmed my appointment, and I spent a number + of days reading the recent correspondence between the two + governments. The two documents that stand out in my memory are the + wretched lawyer's note of Knox about the Panama tolls (I never read + a less sincere, less convincing, more purely artificial argument) + and Bryce's brief reply, which did have the ring of sincerity in + it. The diplomatic correspondence in general seemed to me very dull + stuff, and, after wading through it all day, on several nights as I + went to bed the thought came to me whether this sort of activity + were really worth a man's while." + +Anything which affected British shipping adversely touched Great Britain +in a sensitive spot; and Page had not been long in London before he +perceived the acute nature of the Panama situation. In July, 1913, Col. +Edward M. House reached the British capital. A letter of Page's to Sir +Edward Grey gives such a succinct description of this new and +influential force in American public life that it is worth quoting: + + To Sir Edward Grey + + Coburg Hotel, London. + + [No date.] + + DEAR SIR EDWARD: + + There is an American gentleman in London, the like of whom I do not + know. Mr. Edward M. House is his name. He is "the silent partner" + of President Wilson--that is to say, he is the most trusted + political adviser and the nearest friend of the President. He is a + private citizen, a man without personal political ambition, a + modest, quiet, even shy fellow. He helps to make Cabinets, to shape + policies, to select judges and ambassadors and suchlike merely for + the pleasure of seeing that these tasks are well done. + + He is suffering from over-indulgence in advising, and he has come + here to rest. I cannot get him far outside his hotel, for he cares + to see few people. But he is very eager to meet you. + + I wonder if you would do me the honour to take luncheon at the + Coburg Hotel with me, to meet him either on July 1, or 3, or 5--if + you happen to be free? I shall have only you and Mr. House. + + Very sincerely yours, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + +The chief reason why Colonel House wished to meet the British Foreign +Secretary was to bring him a message from President Wilson on the +subject of the Panama tolls. The three men--Sir Edward, Colonel House, +and Mr. Page--met at the suggested luncheon on July 3rd. Colonel House +informed the Foreign Secretary that President Wilson was now convinced +that the Panama Act violated the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty and that he +intended to use all his influence to secure its repeal. The matter, the +American urged, was a difficult one, since it would be necessary to +persuade Congress to pass a law acknowledging its mistake. The best way +in which Great Britain could aid in the process was by taking no public +action. If the British should keep protesting or discussing the subject +acrimoniously in the press and Parliament, such a course would merely +reenforce the elements that would certainly oppose the President. Any +protests would give them the opportunity to set up the cry of "British +dictation," and a change in the Washington policy would subject it to +the criticism of having yielded to British pressure. The inevitable +effect would be to defeat the whole proceeding. Colonel House therefore +suggested that President Wilson be left to handle the matter in his own +way and in his own time, and he assured the British statesman that the +result would be satisfactory to both countries. Sir Edward Grey at once +saw that Colonel House's statement of the matter was simply common +sense, and expressed his willingness to leave the Panama matter in the +President's hands. + +Thus, from July 3, 1913, there was a complete understanding between the +British Government and the Washington Administration on the question of +the tolls. But neither the British nor the American public knew that +President Wilson had pledged himself to a policy of repeal. All during +the summer and fall of 1913 this matter was as generally discussed in +England as was Mexico. Everywhere the Ambassador went--country houses, +London dinner tables, the colleges and the clubs--he was constantly +confronted with what was universally regarded as America's great breach +of faith. How deeply he felt in the matter his letters show. + + To Edward M. House + + August 25, 1913. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + . . . The English Government and the English people without regard to + party--I hear it and feel it everywhere--are of one mind about + this: they think we have acted dishonourably. They really think + so--it isn't any mere political or diplomatic pretense. We made a + bargain, they say, and we have repudiated it. If it were a mere + bluff or game or party contention--that would be one thing. We + could "bull" it through or live it down. But they look upon it as + we look upon the repudiation of a debt by a state. Whatever the + arguments by which the state may excuse itself, we never feel the + same toward it--never quite so safe about it. They say, "You are a + wonderful nation and a wonderful people. We like you. But your + Government is not a government of honour. Your honourable men do + not seem to get control." You can't measure the damage that this + does us. Whatever the United States may propose till this is fixed + and forgotten will be regarded with a certain hesitancy. They will + not fully trust the honour of our Government. They say, too, "See, + you've preached arbitration and you propose peace agreements, and + yet you will not arbitrate this: you know you are wrong, and this + attitude proves it." Whatever Mr. Hay might or could have done, he + made a bargain. The Senate ratified it. We accepted it. Whether it + were a good bargain or a bad one, we ought to keep it. The English + feeling was shown just the other week when Senator Root received an + honourary degree at Oxford. The thing that gave him fame here was + his speech on this treaty[49]. There is no end of ways in which + they show their feeling and conviction. + + Now, if in the next regular session the President takes a firm + stand against the ship subsidy that this discrimination gives, + couldn't Congress be carried to repeal this discrimination? For + this economic objection also exists. + + No Ambassador can do any very large constructive piece of work so + long as this suspicion of the honour of our Government exists. Sir + Edward Grey will take it up in October or November. If I could say + then that the President will exert all his influence for this + repeal--that would go far. If, when he takes it up, I can say + nothing, it will be practically useless for me to take up any other + large plan. This is the most important thing for us on the + diplomatic horizon. + + To the President + + Dornoch, Scotland, + + September 10, 1913. + + DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: + + I am spending ten or more of the dog days visiting the Englishman + and the Scotchman in their proper setting--their country + homes--where they show themselves the best of hosts and reveal + their real opinions. There are, for example, in the house where I + happen to be to-day, the principals of three of the Scotch + universities, and a Member of Parliament, and an influential + editor. + + They have, of course--I mean all the educated folk I meet--the most + intelligent interest in American affairs, and they have an + unbounded admiration for the American people--their energy, their + resourcefulness, their wealth, their economic power and social + independence. I think that no people ever really admired and, in a + sense, envied another people more. They know we hold the keys of + the future. + + But they make a sharp distinction between our people and our + Government. They are sincere, God-fearing people who speak their + convictions. They cite Tammany, the Thaw case, Sulzer, the + Congressional lobby, and sincerely regret that a democracy does not + seem to be able to justify itself. I am constantly amazed and + sometimes dumbfounded at the profound effect that the yellow press + (including the American correspondents of the English papers) has + had upon the British mind. Here is a most serious journalistic + problem, upon which I have already begun to work seriously with + some of the editors of the better London papers. But it is more + than a journalistic problem. It becomes political. To eradicate + this impression will take years of well-planned work. I am going to + make this the subject of one of the dozen addresses that I must + deliver during the next six months--"The United States as an + Example of Honest and Honourable Government." + + And everywhere--in circles the most friendly to us, and the best + informed--I receive commiseration because of the dishonourable + attitude of our Government about the Panama Canal tolls. This, I + confess, is hard to meet. We made a bargain--a solemn compact--and + we have broken it. Whether it were a good bargain or a bad one, a + silly one or a wise one; that's far from the point. Isn't it? I + confess that this bothers me. . . . + + And this Canal tolls matter stands in the way of everything. It is + in their minds all the time--the minds of all parties and all + sections of opinion. They have no respect for Mr. Taft, for they + remember that he might have vetoed the bill; and they ask, + whenever they dare, what you will do about it. They hold our + Government in shame so long as this thing stands. + + As for the folly of having made such a treaty--that's now passed. + As for our unwillingness to arbitrate it--that's taken as a + confession of guilt. . . . + + We can command these people, this Government, this tight island, + and its world-wide empire; they honour us, they envy us, they see + the time near at hand when we shall command the capital and the + commerce of the world if we unfetter our mighty people; they wish + to keep very close to us. But they are suspicious of our Government + because, they contend, it has violated its faith. Is it so or is it + not? + + Life meantime is brimful of interest; and, despite this reflex + result of the English long-blunder with Ireland (how our sins come + home to roost), the Great Republic casts its beams across the whole + world and I was never so proud to be an American democrat, as I see + it light this hemisphere in a thousand ways. + + All health and mastery to you! + + WALTER H. PAGE. + +The story of Sir William Tyrrell's[50] visit to the White House in +November, 1913, has already been told. On this occasion, it will be +recalled, not only was an agreement reached on Mexico, but President +Wilson also repeated the assurances already given by Colonel House on +the repeal of the tolls legislation. Now that Great Britain had accepted +the President's leadership in Mexico, the time was approaching when +President Wilson might be expected to take his promised stand on Panama +tolls. Yet it must be repeated that there had been no definite +diplomatic bargain. But Page was exerting all his efforts to establish +the best relations between the two countries on the basis of fair +dealing and mutual respect. Great Britain had shown her good faith in +the Mexican matter; now the turn of the United States had come. + + _To the President_ + + London, 6 Grosvenor Square. + + January 6, 1914. + + DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: + + We've travelled a long way since this Mexican trouble began--a long + way with His Majesty's Government. When your policy was first flung + at 'em, they showed at best a friendly incredulity: what! set up a + moral standard for government in Mexico? Everybody's mind was fixed + merely on the restoring of order--the safety of investments. They + thought of course our army would go down in a few weeks. I recall + that Sir Edward Grey asked me one day if you would not consult the + European governments about the successor to Huerta, speaking of it + as a problem that would come up next week. And there was also much + unofficial talk about joint intervention. + + Well, they've followed a long way. They apologized for Carden + (that's what the Prime Minister's speech was); they ordered him to + be more prudent. Then the real meaning of concessions began to get + into their heads. They took up the dangers that lurked in the + Government's contract with Cowdray for oil; and they pulled Cowdray + out of Colombia and Nicaragua--granting the application of the + Monroe Doctrine to concessions that might imperil a country's + autonomy. Then Sir Edward asked me if you would not consult him + about such concessions--a long way had been travelled since his + other question! Lord Haldane made the Thanksgiving speech that I + suggested to him. And now they have transferred Carden. They've + done all we asked and more; and, more wonderful yet, they've come + to understand what we are driving at. + + As this poor world goes, all this seems to me rather handsomely + done. At any rate, it's square and it's friendly. + + Now in diplomacy, as in other contests, there must be give and + take; it's our turn. + + If you see your way clear, it would help the Liberal Government + (which needs help) and would be much appreciated if, before + February 10th, when Parliament meets, you could say a public word + friendly to our keeping the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty--on the tolls. + You only, of course, can judge whether you would be justified in + doing so. I presume only to assure you of the most excellent effect + it would have here. If you will pardon me for taking a personal + view of it, too, I will say that such an expression would cap the + climax of the enormously heightened esteem and great respect in + which recent events and achievements have caused you to be held + here. It would put the English of all parties in the happiest + possible mood toward you for whatever subsequent dealings may await + us. It was as friendly a man as Kipling who said to me the night I + spent with him: "You know your great Government, which does many + great things greatly, does _not_ lie awake o' nights to keep its + promises." + + It's our turn next, whenever you see your way clear. + + Most heartily yours, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + + From Edward M. House + + 145 East 35th Street, + + New York City. + + January 24, 1914. + + DEAR PAGE: + + I was with the President for twenty-four hours and we went over + everything thoroughly. + + He decided to call the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to the + White House on Monday and tell them of his intentions regarding + Panama tolls. We discussed whether it would be better to see some + of them individually, or to take them collectively. It was agreed + that the latter course was better. It was decided, however, to have + Senator Jones poll the Senate in order to find just how it stood + before getting the Committee together. The reason for this quick + action was in response to your letter urging that something be done + before the 10th of February. . . . + + Faithfully yours, + + E.M. HOUSE. + +On March 5th the President made good his promise by going before +Congress and asking the two houses to repeal that clause in the Panama +legislation which granted preferential treatment to American coastwise +shipping. The President's address was very brief and did not discuss the +matter in the slightest detail. Mr. Wilson made the question one simply +of national honour. The exemption, he said, clearly violated the +Hay-Pauncefote Treaty and there was nothing left to do but to set the +matter right. The part of the President's address that aroused the +greatest interest was the conclusion: + +"I ask this of you in support of the foreign policy of the +Administration. I shall not know how to deal with other matters of even +greater delicacy and nearer consequence, if you do not grant it to me in +ungrudging measure." + +The impression that this speech made upon the statesman who then +presided over the British Foreign office is evident from the following +letter that he wrote to the Ambassador in Washington. + + _Sir Edward Grey to Sir C. Spring Rice_ + Foreign Office, + + March 13, 1914. + + SIR: + + In the course of a conversation with the American Ambassador + to-day, I took the opportunity of saying how much I had been struck + by President Wilson's Message to Congress about the Panama Canal + tolls. When I read it, it struck me that, whether it succeeded or + failed in accomplishing the President's object, it was something to + the good of public life, for it helped to lift public life to a + higher plane and to strengthen its morale. + + I am, &c., + + E. GREY. + +Two days after his appearance before Congress the President wrote to his +Ambassador: + + _From the President_ + The White House, Washington, + + March 7, 1914. + + MY DEAR PAGE: + + I have your letters of the twenty-second and twenty-fourth of + February and I thank you for them most warmly. Happily, things are + clearing up a little in the matters which have embarrassed our + relations with Great Britain, and I hope that the temper of public + opinion is in fact changing there, as it seems to us from this + distance to be changing. + + Your letters are a lamp to my feet. I feel as I read that their + analysis is searching and true. + + Things over here go on a tolerably even keel. The prospect at this + moment for the repeal of the tolls exemption is very good indeed. I + am beginning to feel a considerable degree of confidence that the + repeal will go through, and the Press of the country is certainly + standing by me in great shape. + + My thoughts turn to you very often with gratitude and affectionate + regard. If there is ever at any time anything specific you want to + learn, pray do not hesitate to ask it of me directly, if you think + best. + + Carden was here the other day and I spent an hour with him, but I + got not even a glimpse of his mind. I showed him all of mine that + he cared to see. + + With warmest regards from us all, + + Faithfully yours, + + WOODROW WILSON. + +The debate which now took place in Congress proved to be one of the +stormiest in the history of that body. The proceeding did not prove to +be the easy victory that the Administration had evidently expected. The +struggle was protracted for three months; and it signalized Mr. Wilson's +first serious conflict with the Senate--that same Senate which was +destined to play such a vexatious and destructive role in his career. At +this time, however, Mr. Wilson had reached the zenith of his control +over the law-making bodies. It was early in his Presidential term, and +in these early days Senators are likely to be careful about quarrelling +with the White House--especially the Senators who are members of the +President's political party. In this struggle, moreover, Mr. Wilson had +the intelligence and the character of the Senate largely on his side, +though, strangely enough, his strongest supporters were Republicans and +his bitterest opponents were Democrats. Senator Root, Senator Burton, +Senator Lodge, Senator Kenyon, Senator McCumber, all Republicans, day +after day and week after week upheld the national honour; while Senators +O'Gorman, Chamberlain, Vardaman, and Reed, all members of the +President's party, just as persistently led the fight for the baser +cause. The debate inspired an outburst of Anglophobia which was most +distressing to the best friends of the United States and Great Britain. +The American press, as a whole, honoured itself by championing the +President, but certain newspapers made the debate an occasion for +unrestrained abuse of Great Britain, and of any one who believed that +the United States should treat that nation honestly. The Hearst organs, +in cartoon and editorial page, shrieked against the ancient enemy. All +the well-known episodes and characters in American history--Lexington, +Bunker Hill, John Paul Jones, Washington, and Franklin--were paraded as +arguments against the repeal of an illegal discrimination. Petitions +from the Ancient Order of Hibernians and other Irish societies were +showered upon Congress--in almost unending procession they clogged the +pages of the Congressional Record; public meetings were held in New York +and elsewhere where denouncing an administration that disgraced the +country by "truckling" to Great Britain. The President was accused of +seeking an Anglo-American Alliance and of sacrificing American shipping +to the glory of British trade, while the history of our diplomatic +relations was surveyed in detail for the purpose of proving that Great +Britain had broken every treaty she had ever made. In the midst of this +deafening hubbub the quiet voice of Senator McCumber--"we are too big in +national power to be too little in national integrity"--and that of +Senator Root, demolishing one after another the pettifogging arguments +of the exemptionists, demonstrated that, after all, the spirit and the +eloquence that had given the Senate its great fame were still +influential forces in that body. + +In all this excitement, Page himself came in for his share of hard +knocks. Irish meetings "resolved" against the Ambassador as a statesman +who "looks on English claims as superior to American rights," and +demanded that President Wilson recall him. It has been the fate of +practically every American ambassador to Great Britain to be accused of +Anglomania. Lowell, John Hay, and Joseph H. Choate fell under the ban of +those elements in American life who seem to think that the main duty of +an American diplomat in Great Britain is to insult the country of which +he has become the guest. In 1895 the house of Representatives solemnly +passed a resolution censuring Ambassador Thomas F. Bayard for a few +sentiments friendly to Great Britain which he had uttered at a public +banquet. That Page was no undiscriminating idolater of Great Britain +these letters have abundantly revealed. That he had the profoundest +respect for the British character and British institutions has been made +just as clear. With Page this was no sudden enthusiasm; the conviction +that British conceptions of liberty and government and British ideals of +life represented the fine flower of human progress was one that he felt +deeply. The fact that these fundamentals had had the opportunity of even +freer development in America he regarded as most fortunate both for the +United States and for the world. He had never concealed his belief that +the destinies of mankind depended more upon the friendly cooeperation of +the United States and Great Britain than upon any other single +influence. He had preached this in public addresses, and in his writings +for twenty-five years preceding his mission to Great Britain. But the +mere fact that he should hold such convictions and presume to express +them as American Ambassador apparently outraged those same elements in +this country who railed against Great Britain in this Panama Tolls +debate. + +On August 16, 1913, the City of Southampton, England, dedicated a +monument in honour of the _Mayflower_ Pilgrims--Southampton having been +their original point of departure for Massachusetts. Quite appropriately +the city invited the American Ambassador to deliver an address on this +occasion; and quite appropriately the Ambassador acknowledged the debt +that Americans of to-day owed to the England that had sent these +adventurers to lay the foundations of new communities on foreign soil. +Yet certain historic truths embodied in this very beautiful and eloquent +address aroused considerable anger in certain parts of the United +States. "Blood," said the Ambassador, "carries with it that particular +trick of thought which makes us all English in the last resort. . . . And +Puritan and Pilgrim and Cavalier, different yet, are yet one in that +they are English still. And thus, despite the fusion of races and of the +great contributions of other nations to her 100 millions of people and +to her incalculable wealth, the United States is yet English-led and +English-ruled." This was merely a way of phrasing a great historic +truth--that overwhelmingly the largest element in the American +population is British in origin[51]; that such vital things as its +speech and its literature are English; and that our political +institutions, our liberty, our law, our conceptions of morality and of +life are similarly derived from the British Isles. Page applied the word +"English" to Americans in the same sense in which that word is used by +John Richard Green, when he traces the history of the English race from +a German forest to the Mississippi Valley and the wilds of Australia. +But the anti-British elements on this side of the water, taking +"English-led and English-ruled" out of its context, misinterpreted the +phrase as meaning that the American Ambassador had approvingly called +attention to the fact that the United States was at present under the +political control of Great Britain! Senator Chamberlain of Oregon +presented a petition from the _Staatsverband Deutschsprechender Vereine +von Oregon_, demanding the Ambassador's removal, while the +Irish-American press and politicians became extremely vocal. + +Animated as was this outburst, it was mild compared with the excitement +caused by a speech that Page made while the Panama debate was raging in +Congress. At a dinner of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, in early +March, the Ambassador made a few impromptu remarks. The occasion was one +of good fellowship and good humour, and Page, under the inspiration of +the occasion, indulged in a few half-serious, half-jocular references to +the Panama Canal and British-American good-feeling, which, when +inaccurately reported, caused a great disturbance in the England-baiting +press. "I would not say that we constructed the Panama Canal even for +you," he said, "for I am speaking with great frankness and not with +diplomatic indirection. We built it for reasons of our own. But I will +say that it adds to the pleasure of that great work that you will profit +by it. You will profit most by it, for you have the greatest carrying +trade." A few paragraphs on the Monroe Doctrine, which practically +repeated President Wilson's Mobile speech on that subject, but in which +Mr. Page used the expression, "we prefer that European Powers shall +acquire no more territory on this continent," alarmed those precisians +in language, who pretended to believe that the Ambassador had used the +word "prefer" in its literal sense, and interpreted the sentence to mean +that, while the United States would "prefer" that Europe should not +overrun North and South America, it would really raise no serious +objection if Europe did so. + +Senator Chamberlain of Oregon, who by this time had apparently become +the Senatorial leader of the anti-Page propaganda, introduced a +resolution demanding that the Ambassador furnish the Senate a complete +copy of this highly pro-British outgiving. The copy was furnished +forthwith--and with that the tempest subsided. + + _To the President_ + + American Embassy, London, + March 18, 1914. + + DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: + + About this infernal racket in the Senate over my poor speech, I + have telegraphed you all there is to say. Of course, it was a + harmless courtesy--no bowing low to the British or any such + thing--as it was spoken and heard. Of course, too, nothing would + have been said about it but for the controversy over the Canal + tolls. That was my mistake--in being betrayed by the friendly + dinner and the high compliments paid to us into mentioning a + subject under controversy. + + I am greatly distressed lest possibly it may embarrass you. I do + hope not. + + I think I have now learned _that_ lesson pretty thoroughly. These + Anglophobiacs--Irish and Panama--hound me wherever I go. I think I + told you of one of their correspondents, who one night got up and + yawned at a public dinner as soon as I had spoken and said to his + neighbours: "Well, I'll go, the Ambassador didn't say anything that + I can get him into trouble about." + + I shall, hereafter, write out my speeches and have them gone over + carefully by my little Cabinet of Secretaries. Yet something + (perhaps not much) will be lost. For these people are infinitely + kind and friendly and courteous. + + They cannot be driven by anybody to do anything, but they can be + led by us to do anything--by the use of spontaneous courtesy. It is + by spontaneous courtesy that I have achieved whatever I have + achieved, and it is for this that those like me who do like me. Of + course, what some of the American newspapers have said is + true--that I am too free and too untrained to be a great + Ambassador. But the conventional type of Ambassador would not be + worth his salt to represent the United States here now, when they + are eager to work with us for the peace of the world, if they are + convinced of our honour and right-mindedness and the genuineness of + our friendship. + + I talked this over with Sir Edward Grey the other day, and after + telling me that I need fear no trouble at this end of the line, he + told me how severely he is now criticized by a "certain element" + for "bowing too low to the Americans." We then each bowed low to + the other. The yellow press and Chamberlain would give a year's + growth for a photograph of us in that posture! + + I am infinitely obliged to you for your kind understanding and your + toleration of my errors. + + Yours always heartily, + WALTER H. PAGE. + + To the President. + + P.S. The serious part of the speech--made to convince the financial + people, who are restive about Mexico, that we do not mean to forbid + legitimate investments in Central America--has had a good effect + here. I have received the thanks of many important men. + + W.H.P. + + _From the President_ + + The White House, Washington, + March 25, 1914. + + MY DEAR PAGE: + + Thank you for your little note of March thirteenth[52]. You may be + sure that none of us who knew you or read the speech felt anything + but admiration for it. It is very astonishing to me how some + Democrats in the Senate themselves bring these artificial + difficulties on the Administration, and it distresses me not a + little. Mr. Bryan read your speech yesterday to the Cabinet, who + greatly enjoyed it. It was at once sent to the Senate and I hope + will there be given out for publication in full. + + I want you to feel constantly how I value the intelligent and + effective work you are doing in London. I do not know what I should + do without you. + + The fight is on now about the tolls, but I feel perfectly confident + of winning in the matter, though there is not a little opposition + in Congress--more in the House, it strangely turns out, where a + majority of the Democrats originally voted against the exemption, + than in the Senate, where a majority of the Democrats voted for it. + The vicissitudes of politics are certainly incalculable. + + With the warmest regard, in necessary haste, + + Cordially and faithfully yours, + WOODROW WILSON. + + + HON. WALTER H. PAGE, + American Embassy, + London, England. + + _To the President_ + + American Embassy, London, + March 2, 1914. + + DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: + + I have read in the newspapers here that, after you had read my + poor, unfortunate speech, you remarked to callers that you regarded + it as proper. I cannot withhold this word of affectionate thanks. + + I do not agree with you, heartily as I thank you. The speech + itself, in the surroundings and the atmosphere, was harmless and + was perfectly understood. But I ought not to have been betrayed + into forgetting that the subject was about to come up for fierce + discussion in Congress. . . . + + Of course, I know that the whole infernal thing is cooked up to + beat you, if possible. But that is the greater reason why you must + win. I am willing to be sacrificed, if that will help--for + forgetting the impending row or for any reason you will. + + I suppose we've got to go through such a struggle to pull our + Government and our people up to an understanding of our own place + in the world--a place so high and big and so powerful that all the + future belongs to us. From an economic point of view, we _are_ the + world; and from a political point of view also. How any man who + sees this can have any feeling but pity for the Old World, passes + understanding. Our role is to treat it most courteously and to make + it respect our character--nothing more. Time will do the rest. + + I congratulate you most heartily on the character of most of your + opposition--the wild Irish (they must be sat upon some time, why + not now?), the Clark[53] crowd (characteristically making a stand + on a position of dishonour), the Hearst press, and demagogues + generally. I have confidence in the people. + + This stand is necessary to set us right before the world, to enable + us to build up an influential foreign policy, to make us respected + and feared, and to make the Democratic Party the party of honour, + and to give it the best reason to live and to win. + + May I make a suggestion? + + The curiously tenacious hold that Anglophobia has on a certain + class of our people--might it not be worth your while to make, at + some convenient time and in some natural way, a direct attack on + it--in a letter to someone, which could be published, or in some + address, or possibly in a statement to a Senate committee, which + could be given to the press? Say how big and strong and + sure-of-the-future we are; so big that we envy nobody, and that + those who have Anglophobia or any Europe-phobia are the only + persons who "truckle" to any foreign folk or power; that in this + tolls-fight all the Continental governments are a unit; that we + respect them all, fear none, have no favours, except proper favours + among friendly nations, to ask of anybody; and that the idea of a + "trade" with England for holding off in Mexico is (if you will + excuse my French) a common gutter lie. + + This may or may not be wise; but you will forgive me for venturing + to suggest it. It is _we_ who are the proud and erect and patriotic + Americans, fearing nobody; but the other fellows are fooling some + of the people in making them think that _they_ are. + + Yours most gratefully, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + +To the President. + + _From the President_ + The White House, Washington, + + April 2, 1914. + + MY DEAR PAGE: + + Please do not distress yourself about that speech. I think with you + that it was a mistake to touch upon that matter while it was right + hot, because any touch would be sure to burn the finger; but as for + the speech itself, I would be willing to subscribe to every bit of + it myself, and there can be no rational objection to it. We shall + try to cool the excited persons on this side of the water and I + think nothing further will come of it. In the meantime, pray + realize how thoroughly and entirely you are enjoying my confidence + and admiration. + + Your letter about Cowdray and Murray was very illuminating and will + be very serviceable to me. I have come to see that the real + knowledge of the relations between countries in matters of public + policy is to be gained at country houses and dinner tables, and not + in diplomatic correspondence; in brief, that when we know the men + and the currents of opinion, we know more than foreign ministers + can tell us; and your letters give me, in a thoroughly dignified + way, just the sidelights that are necessary to illuminate the + picture. I am heartily obliged to you. + + All unite with me in the warmest regards as always. + + In haste, + + Faithfully yours, + + WOODROW WILSON. + + HON. WALTER H. PAGE, + American Embassy, + London, England. + +A note of a conversation with Sir Edward Grey touches the same point: +"April 1, 1914. Sir Edward Grey recalled to me to-day that he had waited +for the President to take up the Canal tolls controversy at his +convenience. 'When he took it up at his own time to suit his own plans, +he took it up in the most admirable way possible.' This whole story is +too good to be lost. If the repeal of the tolls clause passes the +Senate, I propose to make a speech in the House of Commons on 'The +Proper Way for Great Governments to Deal with One Another,' and use this +experience. + +"Sir Edward also spoke of being somewhat 'depressed' by the fierce +opposition to the President on the tolls question--the extent of +Anglophobia in the United States. + +"Here is a place for a campaign of education--Chautaqua and whatnot. + +"The amount of Anglophobia _is_ great. But I doubt if it be as great as +it seems; for it is organized and is very vociferous. If you collected +together or thoroughly organized all the people in the United States who +have birthmarks on their faces, you'd be 'depressed' by the number of +them." + +Nothing could have more eloquently proved the truth of this last remark +than the history of this Panama bill itself. After all the politicians +in the House and Senate had filled pages of the _Congressional Record_ +with denunciations of Great Britain--most of it intended for the +entertainment of Irish-Americans and German-Americans in the +constituencies--the two Houses proceeded to the really serious business +of voting. The House quickly passed the bill by 216 to 71, and the +Senate by 50 to 35. Apparently the amount of Anglophobia was not +portentous, when it came to putting this emotion to the test of counting +heads. The bill went at once to the President, was signed--and the +dishonour was atoned for. + +Mr. and Mrs. Page were attending a ball in Buckingham Palace when the +great news reached London. The gathering represented all that was most +distinguished in the official and diplomatic life of the British +capital. The word was rapidly passed from guest to guest, and the +American Ambassador and his wife soon found themselves the centre of a +company which could hardly restrain itself in expressing its admiration +for the United States. Never in the history of the country had American +prestige stood so high as on that night. The King and the Prime Minister +were especially affected by this display of fair-dealing in Washington. +The slight commercial advantage which Great Britain had obtained was not +the thought that was uppermost in everybody's mind. The thing that +really moved these assembled statesmen and diplomats was the fact that +something new had appeared in the history of legislative chambers. A +great nation had committed an outrageous wrong--that was something that +had happened many times before in all countries. But the unprecedented +thing was that this same nation had exposed its fault boldly to the +world--had lifted up its hands and cried, "We have sinned!" and then had +publicly undone its error. Proud as Page had always been of his country, +that moment was perhaps the most triumphant in his life. The action of +Congress emphasized all that he had been saying of the ideals of the +United States, and gave point to his arguments that justice and honour +and right, and not temporary selfish interest, should control the +foreign policy of any nation which really claimed to be enlightened. The +general feeling of Great Britain was perhaps best expressed by the +remark made to Mrs. Page, on this occasion, by Lady D----: + +"The United States has set a high standard for all nations to live up +to. I don't believe that there is any other nation that would have done +it." + +One significant feature of this great episode was the act of Congress in +accepting the President's statement that the repeal of the Panama +discrimination was a necessary preliminary to the success of American +foreign policy. Mr. Wilson's declaration, that, unless this legislation +should be repealed, he would not "know how to deal with other matters of +even greater delicacy and nearer consequence" had puzzled Congress and +the country. The debates show the keenest curiosity as to what the +President had in mind. The newspapers turned the matter over and over, +without obtaining any clew to the mystery. Some thought that the +President had planned to intervene in Mexico, and that the tolls +legislation was the consideration demanded by Great Britain for a free +hand in this matter. But this correspondence has already demolished that +theory. Others thought that Japan was in some way involved--but that +explanation also failed to satisfy. + +Congress accepted the President's statement trustfully and blindly, and +passed the asked-for legislation. Up to the present moment this passage +in the Presidential message has been unexplained. Page's papers, +however, disclose what seems to be a satisfactory solution to the +mystery. They show that the President and Colonel House and Page were at +this time engaged in a negotiation of the utmost importance. At the very +time that the tolls bill was under discussion Colonel House was making +arrangements for a visit to Great Britain, France, and Germany, the +purpose of which was to bring these nations to some kind of an +understanding that would prevent a European war. This evidently was the +great business that could not be disclosed at the time and for which the +repeal of the tolls legislation was the necessary preliminary. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 44: The Committee to celebrate the centennial of the signing +of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. The plan to make +this an elaborate commemoration of a 100 years' peace between the +English-speaking peoples was upset by the outbreak of the World War.] + +[Footnote 45: This was the designation Mr. Bryan's admirers sometimes +gave him.] + +[Footnote 46: The reference is to President Roosevelt's speech at the +Guildhall in June, 1910.] + +[Footnote 47: This refers to the declination of the British Government +to be represented at the San Francisco world exhibition, held in 1915.] + +[Footnote 48: John Bassett Moore, at that time the very able counsellor +of the State Department.] + +[Footnote 49: Mr. Root's masterly speech on Panama tolls was made in the +United States Senate, January 21, 1913.] + +[Footnote 50: Ante: page 202.] + +[Footnote 51: This is the fact that is too frequently lost sight of in +current discussions of the melting pot. In the _Atlantic Monthly_ for +August, 1920, Mr. William S. Rossiter, for many years chief clerk of the +United States Census and a statistician of high standing, shows that, of +the 95,000,000 white people of the United States, 55,000,000 trace their +origin to England, Scotland, and Wales.] + +[Footnote 52: The Ambassador's letter is dated March 18th.] + +[Footnote 53: Mr. Champ Clark, Speaker of the House of Representatives, +was one of the most blatant opponents of Panama repeal.] + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +AMERICA TRIES TO PREVENT THE EUROPEAN WAR + + +Page's mind, from the day of his arrival in England, had been filled +with that portent which was the most outstanding fact in European life. +Could nothing be done to prevent the dangers threatened by European +militarism? Was there no way of forestalling the war which seemed every +day to be approaching nearer? The dates of the following letters, +August, 1913, show that this was one of the first ideas which Page +presented to the new Administration. + + _To Edward M. House_ + Aug. 28, 1913. + + MY DEAR HOUSE: + + . . . Everything is lovely and the goose hangs high. We're having a + fine time. Only, only, only--I do wish to do something constructive + and lasting. Here are great navies and armies and great withdrawals + of men from industry--an enormous waste. Here are kings and courts + and gold lace and ceremonies which, without producing anything, + require great cost to keep them going. Here are all the privileges + and taxes that this state of things implies--every one a hindrance + to human progress. We are free from most of these. We have more + people and more capable people and many times more territory than + both England and Germany; and we have more potential wealth than + all Europe. They know that. They'd like to find a way to escape. + The Hague programmes, for the most part, just lead them around a + circle in the dark back to the place where they started. Somebody + needs to _do_ something. If we could find some friendly use for + these navies and armies and kings and things--in the service of + humanity--they'd follow us. We ought to find a way to use them in + cleaning up the tropics under our leadership and under our code of + ethics--that everything must be done for the good of the tropical + peoples and that nobody may annex a foot of land. They want a job. + Then they'd quit sitting on their haunches, growling at one + another. + + I wonder if we couldn't serve notice that the land-stealing game is + forever ended and that the cleaning up of backward lands is now in + order--for the people that live there; and then invite Europe's + help to make the tropics as healthful as the Panama Zone? + + There's no future in Europe's vision--no long look ahead. They give + all their thought to the immediate danger. Consider this Balkan + War; all European energy was spent merely to keep the Great Powers + at peace. The two wars in the Balkans have simply impoverished the + people--left the world that much worse than it was before. Nobody + has considered the well-being or the future of those peoples nor of + their land. The Great Powers are mere threats to one another, + content to check, one the other! There can come no help to the + progress of the world from this sort of action--no step forward. + + Work on a world-plan. Nothing but blue chips, you know. Is it not + possible that Mexico may give an entering wedge for this kind of + thing? + + Heartily yours, + WALTER H. PAGE. + +In a memorandum, written about the same time, Mr. Page explains his +idea in more detail: + + Was there ever greater need than there is now of a first-class mind + unselfishly working on world problems? The ablest ruling minds are + engaged on domestic tasks. There is no world-girdling intelligence + at work in government. On the continent of Europe, the Kaiser is + probably the foremost man. Yet he cannot think far beyond the + provincial views of the Germans. In England, Sir Edward Grey is the + largest-visioned statesman. All the Europeans are spending their + thought and money in watching and checkmating one another and in + maintaining their armed and balanced _status quo_. + + A way must be found out of this stagnant watching. Else a way will + have to be fought out of it; and a great European war would set the + Old World, perhaps the whole world, back a long way; and + thereafter, the present armed watching would recur; we should have + gained nothing. It seems impossible to talk the Great Powers out of + their fear of one another or to "Hague" them out of it. They'll + never be persuaded to disarm. The only way left seems to be to find + some common and useful work for these great armies to do. Then, + perhaps, they'll work themselves out of their jealous position. + Isn't this sound psychology? + + To produce a new situation, the vast energy that now spends itself + in maintaining armies and navies must find a new outlet. Something + new must be found for them to do, some great unselfish task that + they can do together. + + Nobody can lead in such a new era but the United States. + + May there not come such a chance in Mexico--to clean out bandits, + yellow fever, malaria, hookworm--all to make the country + healthful, safe for life and investment, and for orderly + self-government at last? What we did in Cuba might thus be made the + beginning of a new epoch in history--conquest for the sole benefit + of the conquered, worked out by a sanitary reformation. The new + sanitation will reclaim all tropical lands; but the work must be + first done by military power--probably from the outside. + + May not the existing military power of Europe conceivably be + diverted, gradually, to this use? One step at a time, as political + and financial occasions arise? As presently in Mexico? + + This present order must change. It holds the Old World still. It + keeps all parts of the world apart, in spite of the friendly + cohesive forces of trade and travel. It keeps back self-government + and the progress of man. + + And the tropics cry out for sanitation, which is at first an + essentially military task. + +A strange idea this may have seemed in August, 1913, a year before the +outbreak of the European war; yet the scheme is not dissimilar to the +"mandatory" principle, adopted by the Versailles Peace Conference as the +only practical method of dealing with backward peoples. In this work, as +in everything that would help mankind on its weary way to a more +efficient and more democratic civilization, Page regarded the United +States, Great Britain, and the British Dominions as inevitable partners. +Anything that would bring these two nations into a closer cooeperation he +looked upon as a step making for human advancement. He believed that any +opportunity of sweeping away misconceptions and prejudices and of +impressing upon the two peoples their common mission should be eagerly +seized by the statesmen of the two countries. And circumstances at this +particular moment, Page believed, presented a large opportunity of this +kind. It is one of the minor ironies of modern history that the United +States and Great Britain should have selected 1914 as a year for a great +peace celebration. That year marked the one hundredth anniversary of the +signing of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812, and in 1913 +comprehensive plans had already been formed for observing this +impressive centennial. The plan was to make it more than the mere +observance of a hundred years of peaceful intercourse; it was the +intention to use the occasion to emphasize the fundamental identity of +American and British ideals and to lay the foundation of a permanent +understanding and friendship. The erection of a monument to Abraham +Lincoln at Westminster--a plan that has since been realized--was one +detail of this programme. Another was the restoration of Sulgrave Manor, +the English country seat of the Washingtons, and its preservation as a +place where the peoples of both countries could share their common +traditions. Page now dared to hope that President Wilson might associate +himself with this great purpose to the extent of coming to England and +accepting this gift in the name of the American nation. Such a +Presidential visit, he believed, would exercise a mighty influence in +forestalling a threatening European war. The ultimate purpose, that is, +was world peace--precisely the same motive that led President Wilson, in +1919, to make a European pilgrimage. + +This idea was no passing fancy with Page: it was with him a favourite +topic of conversation. Such a presidential visit, he believed, would +accomplish more than any other influences in dissipating the clouds that +were darkening the European landscape. He would elaborate the idea at +length in discussions with his intimates. + +"What I want," he would say, "is to have the President of the United +States and the King of England stand up side by side and let the world +take a good look at them!" + + _To Edward M. House_ + + August 25, 1913. + + . . . I wrote him (President Wilson) my plan--a mere outline. He'll + only smile now. But when the tariff and the currency and Mexico are + off his hands, and when he can be invited to come and deliver an + oration on George Washington next year at the presentation of the + old Washington homestead here, he may be "pushed over." You do the + pushing. Mrs. Page has invited the young White House couple to + visit us on their honeymoon[54]. Encourage that and that may + encourage the larger plan later. Nothing else would give such a + friendly turn to the whole world as the President's coming here. + The old Earth would sit up and rub its eyes and take notice to whom + it belongs. This visit might prevent an English-German war and an + American-Japanese war, by this mere show of friendliness. It would + be one of the greatest occasions of our time. Even at my little + speeches, they "whoop it up!" What would they do over the + President's! + +But at that time Washington was too busy with its domestic programme to +consider such a proposal seriously. "Your two letters," wrote Colonel +House in reply, "have come to me and lifted me out of the rut of things +and given me a glimpse of a fair land. What you are thinking of and what +you want this Administration to do is beyond the power of +accomplishment for the moment. My desk is covered with matters of no +lasting importance, but which come to me as a part of the day's work, +and which must be done if I am to help lift the load that is pressing +upon the President. It tells me better than anything else what he has to +bear, and how utterly futile it is for him to attempt such problems as +you present." + + _From the President_ + + MY DEAR PAGE: + + . . . As for your suggestion that I should myself visit England + during my term of office, I must say that I agree with all your + arguments for it, and yet the case against the President's leaving + the country, particularly now that he is expected to exercise a + constant leadership in all parts of the business of the government, + is very strong and I am afraid overwhelming. It might be the + beginning of a practice of visiting foreign countries which would + lead Presidents rather far afield. + + It is a most attractive idea, I can assure you, and I turn away + from it with the greatest reluctance. + + We hear golden opinions of the impression you are making in + England, and I have only to say that it is just what I had + expected. + + Cordially and faithfully yours, + WOODROW WILSON. + + HON. WALTER H. PAGE, + American Embassy, + London, England. + +In December, however, evidently Colonel House's mind had turned to the +general subject that had so engaged that of the Ambassador. + + _From Edward M. House_ + 145 East 35th Street, + New York City. + + December 13th, 1913. + + DEAR PAGE: + + In my budget of yesterday I did not tell you of the suggestion + which I made to Sir William Tyrrell when he was here, and which I + also made to the President. + + It occurred to me that between us all we might bring about the + naval holiday which Winston Churchill has proposed. My plan is that + I should go to Germany in the spring and see the Kaiser, and try to + win him over to the thought that is uppermost in our mind and that + of the British Government. + + Sir William thought there was a good sporting chance of success. He + offered to let me have all the correspondence that had passed + between the British and German governments upon this question so + that I might be thoroughly informed as to the position of them + both. He thought I should go directly to Germany without stopping + in England, and that Gerard should prepare the Kaiser for my + coming, telling him of my relations with the President. He thought + this would be sufficient without any further credentials. + + In other words, he would do with the Kaiser what you did with Sir + Edward Grey last summer. + + I spoke to the President about the matter and he seemed pleased + with the suggestion; in fact, I might say, he was enthusiastic. He + said, just as Sir William did, that it would be too late for this + year's budget; but he made a suggestion that he get the + Appropriations Committee to incorporate a clause, permitting him to + eliminate certain parts of the battleship budget in the event that + other nations declared for a naval holiday. So this will be done + and will further the plan. + + Now I want to get you into the game. If you think it advisable, + take the matter up with Sir William Tyrrell and then with Sir + Edward Grey, or directly with Sir Edward, if you prefer, and give + me the benefit of your advice and conclusions. + + Please tell Sir William that I lunched at the Embassy with the + Spring Rices yesterday, and had a satisfactory talk with both Lady + Spring Rice and Sir Cecil. + + Faithfully yours, + E.M. HOUSE. + + * * * * * + +It is apparent from Page's letters that the suggestion now contained in +Colonel House's communication would receive a friendly hearing. The idea +that Colonel House suggested was merely the initial stage of a plan +which soon took on more ambitious proportions. At the time of Sir +William Tyrrell's American visit, the Winston Churchill proposal for a +naval holiday was being actively discussed by the British and the +American press. In one form or another it had been figuring in the news +for nearly two years. Viscount Haldane, in the course of his famous +visit to Berlin in February, 1912, had attempted to reach some +understanding with the German Government on the limitation of the German +and the British fleets. The Agadir crisis of the year before had left +Europe with a bad state of nerves, and there was a general belief that +only some agreement on shipbuilding could prevent a European war. Lord +Haldane and von Tirpitz spent many hours discussing the relative sizes +of the two navies, but the discussions led to no definite +understanding. In March, 1913, Mr. Churchill, then First Lord of the +Admiralty, took up the same subject in a different form. In this speech +he first used the words "naval holiday," and proposed that Germany and +Great Britain should cease building first-class battleships for one +year, thus giving the two nations a breathing space, during which time +they might discuss their future plans in the hope of reaching a +permanent agreement. The matter lagged again until October 18, 1913, +when, in a speech at Manchester, Mr. Churchill placed his proposal in +this form: "Now, we say to our great neighbour, Germany, 'If you will +put off beginning your two ships for twelve months from the ordinary +date when you would have begun them, we will put off beginning our four +ships, in absolute good faith, for exactly the same period.'" About the +same time Premier Asquith made it clear that the Ministry was back of +the suggested programme. In Germany, however, the "naval holiday" soon +became an object of derision. The official answer was that Germany had a +definite naval law and that the Government could not entertain any +suggestion of departing from it. Great Britain then answered that, for +every keel Germany laid down, the Admiralty would lay down two. The +outcome, therefore, of this attempt at friendship was that the two +nations had been placed farther apart than ever. + +The dates of this discussion, it will be observed, almost corresponded +with the period covered by the Tyrrell visit to America. This fact, and +Page's letters of this period, had apparently implanted in Colonel +House's mind an ambition for definite action. He now proposed that +President Wilson should take up the broken threads of the rapprochement +and attempt to bring them together again. From this, as will be made +plain, the plan developed into something more comprehensive. Page's +ideas on the treatment of backward nations had strongly impressed both +the President and Colonel House. The discussion on Mexico which had just +taken place between the American and the British Governments seemed to +have developed ideas that could have a much wider application. The +fundamental difficulties in Mexico were not peculiar to that country nor +indeed to Latin-America. Perhaps the most prolific cause of war among +the more enlightened countries was that produced by the jealousies and +antagonisms which were developed by their contacts with unprogressive +peoples--in the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire, Asia, and the Far East. The +method of dealing with such peoples, which the United States had found +so successful in Cuba and the Philippines, had proved that there was +just one honourable way of dealing with the less fortunate and more +primitive races in all parts of the world. Was it not possible to bring +the greatest nations, especially the United States, Great Britain, and +Germany, to some agreement on this question, as well as on the question +of disarmament? This once accomplished, the way could be prepared for +joint action on the numerous other problems which were then threatening +the peace of the world. The League of Nations was then not even a +phrase, but the plan that was forming in Colonel House's mind was at +least some scheme for permanent international cooeperation. For several +years Germany had been the nation which had proved the greatest obstacle +to such international friendliness and arbitration. The Kaiser had +destroyed both Hague Conferences as influential forces in the remaking +of the world; and in the autumn of 1913 he had taken on a more +belligerent attitude than ever. If this attempt to establish a better +condition of things was to succeed, Germany's cooeperation would be +indispensable. This is the reason why Colonel House proposed first of +all to visit Berlin. + + _From Edward M. House_ + 145 East 35th Street, + New York City. + January 4th, 1914. + + Dear Page: + + . . . Benj. Ide Wheeler[55] took lunch with me the other day. He is + just back from Germany and he is on the most intimate terms with + the Kaiser. He tells me he often takes dinner with the family + alone, and spends the evening with them. + + I know, now, the different Cabinet officials who have the Kaiser's + confidence and I know his attitude toward England, naval armaments, + war, and world politics in general. + + Wheeler spoke to me very frankly and the information he gave me + will be invaluable in the event that my plans carry. The general + idea is to bring about a sympathetic understanding between England, + Germany, and America, not only upon the question of disarmament, + but upon other matters of equal importance to themselves, and to + the world at large. + + It seems to me that Japan should come into this pact, but Wheeler + tells me that the Kaiser feels very strongly upon the question of + Asiatics. He thinks the contest of the future will be between the + Eastern and Western civilizations. + + Your friend always, + E.M. House. + +By January 4, 1914, the House-Wilson plan had thus grown into an +Anglo-American-German "pact," to deal not only with "disarmament, but +other matters of equal importance to themselves and to the world at +large." Page's response to this idea was consistent and characteristic. +He had no faith in Germany and believed that the existence of Kaiserism +was incompatible with the extension of the democratic ideal. Even at +this early time--eight months before the outbreak of the World War--he +had no enthusiasm for anything in the nature of an alliance, or a +"pact," that included Germany as an equal partner. He did, however, have +great faith in the cooeperation of the English-speaking peoples as a +force that would make for permanent peace and international justice. In +his reply to Colonel House, therefore, Page fell back at once upon his +favourite plan for an understanding between the United States, Great +Britain, and the British colonies. That he would completely sympathize +with the Washington aspiration for disarmament was to be expected. + + To Edward M. House + January 2, 1914. + + My Dear House: + + You have set my imagination going. I've been thinking of this thing + for months, and now you've given me a fresh start. It can be worked + out somehow--doubtless, not in the form that anybody may at first + see; but experiment and frank discussion will find a way. + + As I think of it, turning it this way and that, there always comes + to me just as I am falling to sleep this reflection: the + English-speaking peoples now rule the world in all essential facts. + They alone and Switzerland have permanent free government. In + France there's freedom--but for how long? In Germany and + Austria--hardly. In the Scandinavian States--yes, but they are + small and exposed as are Belgium and Holland. In the big secure + South American States--yes, it's coming. In Japan--? Only the + British lands and the United States have secure liberty. They also + have the most treasure, the best fighters, the most land, the most + ships--the future in fact. + + Now, because George Washington warned us against alliances, we've + gone on as if an alliance were a kind of smallpox. Suppose there + were--let us say for argument's sake--the tightest sort of an + alliance, offensive and defensive, between all Britain, colonies + and all, and the United States--what would happen? Anything we'd + say would go, whether we should say, "Come in out of the wet," or, + "Disarm." That might be the beginning of a real world-alliance and + union to accomplish certain large results--disarmament, for + instance, or arbitration--dozens of good things. + + Of course, we'd have to draw and quarter the O'Gormans[56]. But + that ought to be done anyhow in the general interest of good sense + in the world. We could force any nation into this "trust" that we + wanted in it. + + Isn't it time we tackled such a job frankly, fighting out the Irish + problem once for all, and having done with it? + + I'm not proposing a programme. I'm only thinking out loud. I see + little hope of doing anything so long as we choose to be ruled by + an obsolete remark made by George Washington. + + W.H.P. + + January H, 1914. + + . . . But this armament flurry is worth serious thought. Lloyd George + gave out an interview, seeming to imply the necessity of reducing + the navy programme. The French allies of the British went up in + the air! They raised a great howl. Churchill went to see them, to + soothe them. They would not be soothed. Now the Prime Minister is + going to Paris--ostensibly to see his daughter off to the Riviera. + Nobody believes that reason. They say he's going to smooth out the + French. Meantime the Germans are gleeful. + + And the British Navy League is receiving money and encouraging + letters from British subjects, praying greater activity to keep the + navy up. You touch the navy and you touch the quick--that's the + lesson. It's an enormous excitement that this small incident has + caused. + + W.H.P. + + + _To Edward M. House_ + London, February 24, 1914. + + My Dear House: + + You'll be interested in these pamphlets by Sir Max Waechter, who + has opened an office here and is spending much money to "federate" + Europe, and to bring a lessening of armaments. I enclose also an + article about him from the _Daily Telegraph_, which tells how he + has interviewed most of the Old World monarchs. Get also, + immediately, the new two-volume life of Lord Lyons, Minister to the + United States during the Civil War, and subsequently Ambassador to + France. You will find an interesting account of the campaign of + about 1870 to reduce armaments, when old Bismarck dumped the whole + basket of apples by marching against France. You know I sometimes + fear some sort of repetition of that experience. Some government + (probably Germany) will see bankruptcy staring it in the face and + the easiest way out will seem a great war. Bankruptcy before a war + would be ignominious; after a war, it could be charged to "Glory." + It'll take a long time to bankrupt England. It's unspeakably rich; + they pay enormous taxes, but they pay them out of their incomes, + not out of their principal, except their inheritance tax. That + looks to me as if it came out of the principal. . . . + + I hope you had a good time in Texas and escaped some cold weather. + This deceptive sort of winter here is grippe-laden. I've had the + thing, but I'm now getting over it. . . . + + This Benton[57]-Mexican business is causing great excitement here. + + Always heartily yours, + W.H.P. + + P.S. There's nothing like the President. By George! the passage of + the arbitration treaty (renewal) almost right off the bat, and + apparently the tolls discrimination coming presently to its repeal! + Sir Edward Grey remarked to me yesterday: "Things are clearing up!" + I came near saying to him: "Have you any miracles in mind that + you'd like to see worked?" Wilson stock is at a high premium on + this side of the water in spite of the momentary impatience caused + by Benton's death. + + W.H.P. + + _From Edward M. House_ + 145 East 35th Street, + New York City. + April 19th, 1914. + + DEAR PAGE: + + I have had a long talk with Mr. Laughlin[58]. At first he thought I + would not have more than one chance in a million to do anything + with the Kaiser, but after talking with him further, he concluded + that I would have a fairly good sporting chance. I have about + concluded to take it. + + If I can do anything, I can do it in a few days. I was with the + President most of last week. . . . + + He spoke of your letters to him and to me as being classics, and + said they were the best letters, as far as he knew, that any one + had ever written. Of course you know how heartily I concur in this. + He said that sometime they should be published. + + The President is now crystallizing his mind in regard to the + Federal Reserve Board, and if you are not to remain in London, then + he would probably put Houston on the Board and ask you to take the + Secretaryship of Agriculture. + + You have no idea the feeling that is being aroused by the tolls + question. The Hearst papers are screaming at all of us every day. + They have at last honoured me with their abuse. . . . + + With love and best wishes, I am, + + Faithfully yours, + + E.M. HOUSE. + + + _From Edward M. House_ + + 145 East 35th Street, + New York City. + April 20th, 1914. + + Dear Page: + + . . . It is our purpose to sail on the _Imperator_, May 16th, and go + directly to Germany. I expect to be there a week or more, but Mrs. + House will reach London by the 1st or 2nd of June. . . . + + Our friend[59] in Washington thinks it is worth while for me to go + to Germany, and that determines the matter. The press is shrieking + to-day over the Mexican situation, but I hope they will be + disappointed. It is not the intention to do anything further for + the moment than to blockade the ports, and unless some overt act is + made from the North, our troops will not cross the border. + + Your friend always, + E.M. HOUSE. + + _To Edward M. House_ + London, April 27, 1914. + + MY DEAR HOUSE: + + Of course you decided wisely to carry out your original Berlin + plan, and you ought never to have had a moment's hesitation, if you + did have any hesitation. I do not expect you to produce any visible + or immediate results. I hope I am mistaken in this. But you know + that the German Government has a well-laid progressive plan for + shipbuilding for a certain number of years. I believe that the work + has, in fact, already been arranged for. But that has nothing to do + with the case. You are going to see what effect you can produce on + the mind of a man. Perhaps you will never know just what effect you + will produce. Yet the fact that you are who you are, that you make + this journey for this especial purpose, that you are everlastingly + right--these are enough. + + Moreover, you can't ever tell results, nor can you afford to make + your plans in this sort of high work with the slightest reference + to probable results. That's the bigness and the glory of it. Any + ordinary man can, on any ordinary day, go and do a task, the + favourable results of which may be foreseen. _That's_ easy. The big + thing is to go confidently to work on a task, the results of which + nobody can possibly foresee--a task so vague and improbable of + definite results that small men hesitate. It is in this spirit that + very many of the biggest things in history have been done. Wasn't + the purchase of Louisiana such a thing? Who'd ever have supposed + that that could have been brought about? I applaud your errand and + I am eagerly impatient to hear the results. When will _you_ get + here? I assume that Mrs. House will not go with you to Berlin. No + matter so you both turn up here for a good long stay. + + I've taken me a little bit of a house about twenty miles out of + town whither we are going in July as soon as we can get away from + London. I hope to stay down there till far into October, coming up + to London about thrice a week. That's the dull season of the year. + It's a charming little country place--big enough for you to visit + us. . . . + + _From Edward M. House_ + + An Bord des Dampfers _Imperator_ + + den May 21, 1914. + + Hamburg-Amerika Linie + + Dear Page: + + Here we are again. The Wallaces[60] land at Cherbourg, Friday + morning, and we of course go on to Berlin. I wish I might have the + benefit of your advice just now, for the chances for success in + this great adventure are slender enough at best. The President has + done his part in the letter I have with me, and it is clearly up to + me to do mine. . . . + + Faithfully yours, + + E.M. House. + +It will be observed that Colonel House had taken the advice of Sir +William Tyrrell, and had sailed directly to Germany on a German +ship--the _Imperator_. Ambassador Gerard had made preparations for his +reception in Berlin, and the American soon had long talks with Admiral +von Tirpitz, Falkenhayn, Von Jagow, Solf, and others. Von +Bethmann-Hollweg's wife died almost on the day of his arrival in Berlin, +so it was impossible for him to see the Chancellor--the man who would +have probably been the most receptive to these peace ideas. All the +leaders of the government, except Von Tirpitz, gave Colonel House's +proposals a respectful if somewhat cynical hearing. Von Tirpitz was +openly and demonstratively hostile. The leader of the German Navy simply +bristled with antagonism at any suggestion for peace or disarmament or +world cooeperation. He consumed a large part of the time which Colonel +House spent with him denouncing England and all its works. Hatred of the +"Island Kingdom" was apparently the consuming passion of his existence. +On the whole, Von Tirpitz thus made no attempt to conceal his feeling +that the purpose of the House mission was extremely distasteful to him. +The other members of the Government, while not so tactlessly hostile, +were not particularly encouraging. The usual objections to disarmament +were urged--the fear of other Powers, the walled-in state of Germany, +the vigilant enemies against which it was necessary constantly to be +prepared and watchful. Even more than the unsympathetic politeness of +the German Cabinet the general atmosphere of Berlin was depressing to +Colonel House. The militaristic oligarchy was absolutely in control. +Militarism possessed not only the army, the navy, and the chief officers +of state, but the populace as well. One almost trivial circumstance has +left a lasting impression on Colonel House's mind. Ambassador Gerard +took him out one evening for a little relaxation. Both Mr. Gerard and +Colonel House were fond of target shooting and the two men sought one of +the numerous rifle galleries of Berlin. They visited gallery after +gallery, but could not get into one. Great crowds lined up at every +place, waiting their turns at the target; it seemed as though every +able-bodied man in Berlin was spending all his time improving his +marksmanship. But this was merely a small indication of the atmosphere +of militarism which prevailed in the larger aspects of life. Colonel +House found himself in a strange place to preach international accord +for the ending of war! + +He had come to Berlin not merely to talk with the Cabinet heads; his +goal was the Kaiser himself. But he perceived at once a persistent +opposition to his plan. As he was the President's personal +representative, and carried a letter from the President to the Kaiser, +an audience could not be refused--indeed, it had already been duly +arranged; but there was a quiet opposition to his consorting with the +"All Highest" alone. It was not usual, Colonel House was informed, for +His Imperial Majesty to discuss such matters except in the presence of a +representative of the Foreign Office. Germany had not yet recovered from +the shock which the Emperor's conversation with certain foreign +correspondents had given the nation. The effects were still felt of the +famous interviews of October 28, 1908, which, when published in the +London _Telegraph_, had caused the bitterest resentment in Great +Britain. The Kaiser had given his solemn word that he would indulge in +no more indiscretions of this sort, and a private interview with Colonel +House was regarded by his advisers as a possible infraction of that +promise. But the American would not be denied. He knew that an +interview with a third person present would be simply time thrown away +since his message was intended for the Kaiser's own ears; and ultimately +his persistence succeeded. The next Monday would be June 1st--a great +day in Germany. It was the occasion of the Schrippenfest, a day which +for many years had been set aside for the glorification of the German +Army. On that festival, the Kaiser entertained with great pomp +representative army officers and representative privates, as well as the +diplomatic corps and other distinguished foreigners. Colonel House was +invited to attend the Kaiser's luncheon on that occasion, and was +informed that, after this function was over, he would have an +opportunity of having a private conversation with His Majesty. + +The affair took place in the palace at Potsdam. The militarism which +Colonel House had felt so oppressively in Berlin society was especially +manifest on this occasion. There were two luncheon parties--that of the +Kaiser and his officers and guests in the state dining room, and that of +the selected private soldiers outside. The Kaiser and the Kaiserin spent +a few moments with their humbler subjects, drinking beer with them and +passing a few comradely remarks; they then proceeded to the large dining +hall and took their places with the gorgeously caparisoned and +bemedalled chieftains of the German Army. The whole proceeding has an +historic interest, in that it was the last Schrippenfest held. Whether +another will ever be held is problematical, for the occasion was an +inevitable part of the trappings of Hohenzollernism. Despite the gravity +of the occasion, Colonel House's chief memory of this function is +slightly tinged with the ludicrous. He had spent the better part of a +lifetime attempting to rid himself of his military title, but uselessly. +He was now embarrassed because these solemn German officers persisted +in regarding him as an important part of the American Army, and in +discussing technical and strategical problems. The visitor made several +attempts to explain that he was merely a "geographical colonel"--that +the title was constantly conferred in an informal sense on Americans, +especially Southerners, and that the handle to his name had, therefore, +no military significance. But the round-faced Teutons stared at his +explanation in blank amazement; they couldn't grasp the point at all, +and continued to ask his opinion of matters purely military. + +When the lunch was finished, the Kaiser took Colonel House aside, and +the two men withdrew to the terrace, out of earshot of the rest of the +gathering. However, they were not out of sight. For nearly half an hour +the Kaiser and the American stood side by side upon the terrace, the +German generals, at a respectful distance, watching the proceeding, +resentful, puzzled, curious as to what it was all about. The quiet +demeanour of the American "Colonel," his plain citizen's clothes, and +his almost impassive face, formed a striking contrast to the Kaiser's +dazzling uniform and the general scene of military display. Two or three +of the generals and admirals present were in the secret, but only two or +three; the mass of officers watching this meeting little guessed that +the purpose of House's visit was to persuade the Kaiser to abandon +everything for which the Schrippenfest stood; to enter an international +compact with the United States and Great Britain for reducing armaments, +to reach an agreement about trade and the treatment of backward peoples, +and to form something of a permanent association for the preservation of +peace. The one thing which was apparent to the watchers was that the +American was only now and then saying a brief word, but that the Kaiser +was, as usual, doing a vast amount of talking. His speech rattled on +with the utmost animation, his arms were constantly gesticulating, he +would bring one fist down into his palm to register an emphatic point, +and enforce certain ideas with a menacing forefinger. At times Colonel +House would show slight signs of impatience and interrupt the flow of +talk. But the Kaiser was clearly absorbed in the subject under +discussion. His entourage several times attempted to break up the +interview. The Court Chamberlain twice gingerly approached and informed +His Majesty that the Imperial train was waiting to take the party back +to Berlin. Each time the Kaiser, with an angry gesture, waved the +interrupter away. Despairing of the usual resources, the Kaiserin was +sent with the same message. The Kaiser did not treat her so summarily, +but he paid no attention to the request, and continued to discuss the +European situation with the American. + +[Illustration: Walter H. Page, from a photograph taken a few years +before he became American Ambassador to Great Britain] + +[Illustration: The British Foreign Office, Downing Street] + +The subject that had mainly aroused the Imperial warmth was the "Yellow +Peril." For years this had been an obsession with the Kaiser, and he +launched into the subject as soon as Colonel House broached the purpose +of his visit. There could be no question of disarmament, the Kaiser +vehemently declared, as long as this danger to civilization existed. "We +white nations should join hands," he said, "to oppose Japan and the +other yellow nations, or some day they will destroy us." + +It was with difficulty that Colonel House could get His Majesty away +from this subject. Whatever topic he touched upon, the Kaiser would +immediately start declaiming on the dangers that faced Europe from the +East. His insistence on this accounted partly for the slight signs of +impatience which the American showed. He feared that all the time +allotted for the interview would be devoted to discussing the Japanese. +About another nation, the Kaiser showed almost as much alarm as he did +about Japan, and that was Russia. He spoke contemptuously of France and +Great Britain as possible enemies, for he apparently had no fear of +them. But the size of Russia and the exposed eastern frontier of Germany +seemed to appal him. How could Germany join a peace pact, and reduce its +army, so long as 175,000,000 Slavs threatened them from this direction? + +Another matter that the Kaiser discussed with derision was Mr. Bryan's +arbitration treaty. Practically all the great nations had already +ratified this treaty except Germany. The Kaiser now laughed at the +treaties and pooh-poohed Bryan. Germany, he declared, would never accept +such an arbitration plan. Colonel House had particular cause to remember +this part of the conversation three years afterward, when the United +States declared war on Germany. The outstanding feature of the Bryan +treaty was the clause which pledged the high contracting parties not to +go to war without taking a breathing spell of one year in which to think +the matter over. Had Germany adopted this treaty, the United States, in +April, 1917, after Germany had presented a _casus belli_ by resuming +unrestricted submarine warfare, could not have gone to war. We should +have been obliged to wait a year, or until April, 1918, before engaging +in hostilities. That is, an honourable observance of this Bryan treaty +by the United States would have meant that Germany would have starved +Great Britain into surrender, and crushed Europe with her army. Had the +Kaiser, on this June afternoon, not notified Colonel House that Germany +would not accept this treaty, but, instead, had notified him that he +would accept it, William II might now be sitting on the throne of a +victorious Germany, with Europe for a footstool. + +Despite the Kaiser's hostile attitude toward these details, his general +reception of the President's proposals was not outwardly unfriendly. +Perhaps he was sincere, perhaps not; yet the fact is that he manifested +more cordiality to this somewhat vague "get-together" proposal than had +any of his official advisers. He encouraged Colonel House to visit +London, talk the matter over with British statesmen, and then return to +Berlin. + +"The last thing," he said, "that Germany wants is war We are getting to +be a great commercial country. In a few years Germany will be a rich +country, like England and the United States. We don't want a war to +interfere with our progress." + +Any peace suggestion that was compatible with German safety, he said, +would be entertained. Yet his parting words were not reassuring. + +"Every nation in Europe," he said, "has its bayonets pointed at Germany. +But--"--and with this he gave a proud and smiling glance at the +glistening representatives of his army gathered on this brilliant +occasion--"we are ready!" + +Colonel house left Berlin, not particularly hopeful; the Kaiser +impressed him as a man of unstable nervous organization--as one who was +just hovering on the borderland of insanity. Certainly, this was no man +to be entrusted with such powers as the American had witnessed that day +at Potsdam. Dangerous as the Kaiser was, however, he did not seem to +Colonel House to be as great a menace to mankind as were his military +advisers. The American came away from Berlin with the conviction that +the most powerful force in Germany was the militaristic clique, and +second, the Hohenzollern dynasty. He has always insisted that this +represented the real precedence in power. So long as the Kaiser was +obedient to the will of militarism, so long could he maintain his +standing. He was confident, however, that the militaristic oligarchy was +determined to have its will, and would dethrone the Kaiser the moment he +showed indications of taking a course that would lead to peace. Colonel +House was also convinced that this militaristic oligarchy was determined +on war. The coolness with which it listened to his proposals, the +attempts it made to keep him from seeing the Kaiser alone, its repeated +efforts to break up the conversation after it had begun, all pointed to +the inevitable tragedy. The fact that the Kaiser expressed a wish to +discuss the matter again, after Colonel House had sounded London, was +the one hopeful feature of an otherwise discouraging experience, and +accounts for the tone of faint optimism in his letters describing the +visit. + + _From Edward M. House_ + + Embassy of the United States of America, + Berlin, + + May 28, 1914. + + Dear Page: + + . . . I have done something here already--not much, but enough to + open negotiations with London. I lunch with the Kaiser on Monday. I + was advised to avoid Admiral von Tirpitz as being very + unsympathetic. However, I went directly at him and had a most + interesting talk. He is a forceful fellow. Von Jagow is pleasant + but not forceful. I have had a long talk with him. The Chancellor's + wife died last week so I have not got in touch with him. I will + write you more fully from Paris. My address there will be Hotel + Ritz. + + Hastily, + + E.M.H. + + _From Edward M. House_ + + Hotel Ritz, 15, Place Vendome, Paris. + + June 3, 1914. + + Dear Page: + + I had a satisfactory talk with the Kaiser on Monday. I have now + seen everyone worthwhile in Germany except the Chancellor. I am + ready now for London. Perhaps you had better prepare the way. The + Kaiser knows I am to see them, and I have arranged to keep him in + touch with results--if there are any. We must work quickly after I + arrive, for it may be advisable for me to return to Germany, and I + am counting on sailing for home July 15th or 28th. . . . I am eager to + see you and tell you what I know. + + Yours, + + E.M.H. + +Colonel House left that night for Paris, but there the situation was a +hopeless one. France was not thinking of a foreign war; it was engrossed +with its domestic troubles. There had been three French ministries in +two weeks; and the trial of Madame Caillaux for the murder of Gaston +Calmette, editor of the Paris _Figaro_, was monopolizing all the +nation's capacity for emotion. Colonel House saw that it would be a +waste of energy to take up his mission at Paris--there was no government +stable enough to make a discussion worth while. He therefore immediately +left for London. + +The political situation in Great Britain was almost as confused as that +in Paris. The country was in a state approaching civil war on the +question of Home Rule for Ireland; the suffragettes were threatening to +dynamite the Houses of Parliament; and the eternal struggle between the +Liberal and the Conservative elements was raging with unprecedented +virulence. A European war was far from everybody's mind. It was this +utter inability to grasp the realities of the European situation which +proved the main impediment to Colonel House's work in England. He met +all the important people--Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, Sir Edward +Grey, and others. With them he discussed his "pact" proposal in great +detail. + +Naturally, ideas of this sort were listened to sympathetically by +statesmen of the stamp of Asquith, Grey, and Lloyd George. The +difficulty, however, was that none of these men apprehended an immediate +war. They saw no necessity of hurrying about the matter. They had the +utmost confidence in Prince Lichnowsky, the German Ambassador in London, +and Von Bethmann-Hollweg, the German Chancellor. Both these men were +regarded by the Foreign Office as guarantees against a German attack; +their continuance in their office was looked upon as an assurance that +Germany entertained no immediately aggressive plans. Though the British +statesmen did not say so definitely, the impression was conveyed that +the mission on which Colonel House was engaged was an unnecessary one--a +preparation against a danger that did not exist. Colonel House attempted +to persuade Sir Edward Grey to visit the Kiel regatta, which was to take +place in a few days, see the Kaiser, and discuss the plan with him. But +the Government feared that such a visit would be very disturbing to +France and Russia. Already Mr. Churchill's proposal for a "naval +holiday" had so wrought up the French that a hurried trip to France by +Mr. Asquith had been necessary to quiet them; the consternation that +would have been caused in Paris by the presence of Sir Edward Grey at +Kiel can only be imagined. The fact that the British statesmen +entertained so little apprehension of a German attack may possibly be a +reflection on their judgment; yet Colonel House's visit has great +historical value, for the experience afterward convinced him that Great +Britain had had no part in bringing on the European war, and that +Germany was solely responsible. It certainly should have put the Wilson +Administration right on this all-important point, when the great storm +broke. + +The most vivid recollection which the British statesmen whom Colonel +House met retain of his visit, was his consternation at the spirit that +had confronted him everywhere in Germany. The four men most +interested--Sir Edward Grey, Sir William Tyrrell, Mr. Page, and Colonel +House--met at luncheon in the American Embassy a few days after +President Wilson's emissary had returned from Berlin. Colonel House +could talk of little except the preparations for war which were manifest +on every hand. + +"I feel as though I had been living near a mighty electric dynamo," +Colonel House told his friends. "The whole of Germany is charged with +electricity. Everybody's nerves are tense. It needs only a spark to set +the whole thing off." + +The "spark" came two weeks afterward with the assassination of the +Archduke Ferdinand. + + * * * * * + +"It is all a bad business," Colonel House wrote to Page when war broke +out, "and just think how near we came to making such a catastrophe +impossible! If England had moved a little faster and had let me go back +to Germany, the thing, perhaps, could have been done." + +To which Page at once replied: + +"No, no, no--no power on earth could have prevented it. The German +militarism, which is _the_ crime of the last fifty years, has been +working for this for twenty-five years. It is the logical result of +their spirit and enterprise and doctrine. It had to come. But, of +course, they chose the wrong time and the wrong issue. Militarism has no +judgment. Don't let your conscience be worried. You did all that any +mortal man could do. But nobody could have done anything effective. + +"We've got to see to it that this system doesn't grow up again. That's +all." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 54: Mr. and Mrs. Francis B. Sayre, son-in-law and daughter of +President Wilson.] + +[Footnote 55: Ex-President of the University of California, Roosevelt +Professor at the University of Berlin, 1909-10.] + +[Footnote 56: James A. O'Gorman was the anti-British Senator from New +York State at this time working hard against the repeal of the Panama +tolls discrimination.] + +[Footnote 57: In February, 1915, William S. Benton, an English subject +who had spent the larger part of his life in Mexico, was murdered in the +presence of Francisco Villa.] + +[Footnote 58: Mr. Irwin Laughlin, first secretary of the American +Embassy in London; at this time spending a few weeks in the United +States.] + +[Footnote 59: Obviously President Wilson.] + +[Footnote 60: Mr. Hugh C. Wallace, afterward Ambassador to France, and +Mrs. Wallace. Mr. and Mrs. Wallace accompanied Mr. and Mrs. House on +this journey.] + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE GRAND SMASH + + +In the latter part of July the Pages took a small house at Ockham, in +Surrey, and here they spent the fateful week that preceded the outbreak +of war. The Ambassador's emotions on this event are reflected in a +memorandum written on Sunday, August 2nd--a day that was full of +negotiations, ultimatums, and other precursors of the approaching +struggle. + + Bachelor's Farm, Ockham, Surrey. + Sunday, August 2, 1914. + +The Grand Smash is come. Last night the German Ambassador at St. +Petersburg handed the Russian Government a declaration of war. To-day +the German Government asked the United States to take its diplomatic and +consular business in Russia in hand. Herrick, our Ambassador in Paris, +has already taken the German interests there. + +It is reported in London to-day that the Germans have invaded Luxemburg +and France. + +Troops were marching through London at one o'clock this morning. Colonel +Squier[61] came out to luncheon. He sees no way for England to keep out +of it. There is no way. If she keep out, Germany will take Belgium and +Holland, France would be betrayed, and England would be accused of +forsaking her friends. + +People came to the Embassy all day to-day (Sunday), to learn how they +can get to the United States--a rather hard question to answer. I +thought several times of going in, but Greene and Squier said there was +no need of it. People merely hoped we might tell them what we can't tell +them. + +Returned travellers from Paris report indescribable confusion--people +unable to obtain beds and fighting for seats in railway carriages. + +It's been a hard day here. I have a lot (not a big lot either) of +routine work on my desk which I meant to do. But it has been impossible +to get my mind off this Great Smash. It holds one in spite of one's +self. I revolve it and revolve it--of course getting nowhere. + +It will revive our shipping. In a jiffy, under stress of a general +European war, the United States Senate passed a bill permitting American +registry to ships built abroad. Thus a real emergency knocked the old +Protectionists out, who had held on for fifty years! Correspondingly the +political parties here have agreed to suspend their Home Rule quarrel +till this war is ended. Artificial structures fall when a real wind +blows. + +The United States is the only great Power wholly out of it. The United +States, most likely, therefore, will be able to play a helpful and +historic part at its end. It will give President Wilson, no doubt, a +great opportunity. It will probably help us politically and it will +surely help us economically. + +The possible consequences stagger the imagination. Germany has staked +everything on her ability to win primacy. England and France (to say +nothing of Russia) really ought to give her a drubbing. If they do not, +this side of the world will henceforth be German. If they do flog +Germany, Germany will for a long time be in discredit. + +I walked out in the night a while ago. The stars are bright, the night +is silent, the country quiet--as quiet as peace itself. Millions of men +are in camp and on warships. Will they all have to fight and many of +them die--to untangle this network of treaties and affiances and to blow +off huge debts with gunpowder so that the world may start again? + +A hurried picture of the events of the next seven days is given in the +following letter to the President: + + _To the President_ + London, Sunday, August 9, 1914. + + DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: + + God save us! What a week it has been! Last Sunday I was down here + at the cottage I have taken for the summer--an hour out of + London--uneasy because of the apparent danger and of what Sir + Edward Grey had told me. During the day people began to go to the + Embassy, but not in great numbers--merely to ask what they should + do in case of war. The Secretary whom I had left in charge on + Sunday telephoned me every few hours and laughingly told funny + experiences with nervous women who came in and asked absurd + questions. Of course, we all knew the grave danger that war might + come but nobody could by the wildest imagination guess at what + awaited us. On Monday I was at the Embassy earlier than I think I + had ever been there before and every member of the staff was + already on duty. Before breakfast time the place was + filled-packed--like sardines. This was two days before war was + declared. There was no chance to talk to individuals, such was the + jam. I got on a chair and explained that I had already telegraphed + to Washington--on Saturday--suggesting the sending of money and + ships, and asking them to be patient. I made a speech to them + several times during the day, and kept the Secretaries doing so at + intervals. More than 2,000 Americans crowded into those offices + (which are not large) that day. We were kept there till two o'clock + in the morning. The Embassy has not been closed since. + + Mr. Kent of the Bankers Trust Company in New York volunteered to + form an American Citizens' Relief Committee. He and other men of + experience and influence organized themselves at the Savoy Hotel. + The hotel gave the use of nearly a whole floor. They organized + themselves quickly and admirably and got information about + steamships and currency, etc. We began to send callers at the + Embassy to this Committee for such information. The banks were all + closed for four days. These men got money enough--put it up + themselves and used their English banking friends for help--to + relieve all cases of actual want of cash that came to them. Tuesday + the crowd at the Embassy was still great but smaller. The big space + at the Savoy Hotel gave them room to talk to one another and to get + relief for immediate needs. By that time I had accepted the + volunteer services of five or six men to help us explain to the + people--and they have all worked manfully day and night. We now + have an orderly organization at four places: The Embassy, the + Consul-General's Office, the Savoy, and the American Society in + London, and everything is going well. Those two first days, there + was, of course, great confusion. Crazy men and weeping women were + imploring and cursing and demanding--God knows it was bedlam + turned loose. I have been called a man of the greatest genius for + an emergency by some, by others a damned fool, by others every + epithet between these extremes. Men shook English banknotes in my + face and demanded United States money and swore our Government and + its agents ought all to be shot. Women expected me to hand them + steamship tickets home. When some found out that they could not get + tickets on the transports (which they assumed would sail the next + day) they accused me of favouritism. These absurd experiences will + give you a hint of the panic. But now it has worked out all right, + thanks to the Savoy Committee and other helpers. + + Meantime, of course, our telegrams and mail increased almost as + much as our callers. I have filled the place with stenographers, I + have got the Savoy people to answer certain classes of letters, and + we have caught up. My own time and the time of two of the + secretaries has been almost wholly taken with governmental + problems; hundreds of questions have come in from every quarter + that were never asked before. But even with them we have now + practically caught up--it has been a wonderful week! + + Then the Austrian Ambassador came to give up his Embassy--to have + me take over his business. Every detail was arranged. The next + morning I called on him to assume charge and to say good-bye, when + he told me that he was not yet going! That was a stroke of genius + by Sir Edward Grey, who informed him that Austria had not given + England cause for war. That _may_ work out, or it may not. Pray + Heaven it may! Poor Mensdorff, the Austrian Ambassador, does not + know where he is. He is practically shut up in his guarded Embassy, + weeping and waiting the decree of fate. + + Then came the declaration of war, most dramatically. Tuesday + night, five minutes after the ultimatum had expired, the Admiralty + telegraphed to the fleet "Go." In a few minutes the answer came + back "Off." Soldiers began to march through the city going to the + railway stations. An indescribable crowd so blocked the streets + about the Admiralty, the War Office, and the Foreign Office, that + at one o'clock in the morning I had to drive in my car by other + streets to get home. + + The next day the German Embassy was turned over to me. I went to + see the German Ambassador at three o'clock in the afternoon. He + came down in his pajamas, a crazy man. I feared he might literally + go mad. He is of the anti-war party and he had done his best and + utterly failed. This interview was one of the most pathetic + experiences of my life. The poor man had not slept for several + nights. Then came the crowds of frightened Germans, afraid that + they would be arrested. They besieged the German Embassy and our + Embassy. I put one of our naval officers in the German Embassy, put + the United States seal on the door to protect it, and we began + business there, too. Our naval officer has moved in--sleeps there. + He has an assistant, a stenographer, a messenger: and I gave him + the German automobile and chauffeur and two English servants that + were left there. He has the job well in hand now, under my and + Laughlin's supervision. But this has brought still another new lot + of diplomatic and governmental problems--a lot of them. Three + enormous German banks in London have, of course, been closed. Their + managers pray for my aid. Howling women come and say their innocent + German husbands have been arrested as spies. English, Germans, + Americans--everybody has daughters and wives and invalid + grandmothers alone in Germany. In God's name, they ask, what can I + do for them? Here come stacks of letters sent under the impression + that I can send them to Germany. But the German business is already + well in hand and I think that that will take little of my own time + and will give little trouble. I shall send a report about it in + detail to the Department the very first day I can find time to + write it. In spite of the effort of the English Government to + remain at peace with Austria, I fear I shall yet have the Austrian + Embassy too. But I can attend to it. + + Now, however, comes the financial job of wisely using the $300,000 + which I shall have to-morrow. I am using Mr. Chandler Anderson as + counsel, of course. I have appointed a Committee--Skinner, the + Consul-General, Lieut.-Commander McCrary of our Navy, Kent of the + Bankers Trust Company, New York, and one other man yet to be + chosen--to advise, after investigation, about every proposed + expenditure. Anderson has been at work all day to-day drawing up + proper forms, etc., to fit the Department's very excellent + instructions. I have the feeling that more of that money may be + wisely spent in helping to get people off the continent (except in + France, where they seem admirably to be managing it, under Herrick) + than is immediately needed in England. All this merely to show you + the diversity and multiplicity of the job. + + I am having a card catalogue, each containing a sort of who's who, + of all Americans in Europe of whom we hear. This will be ready by + the time the _Tennessee_[62] comes. Fifty or more stranded + Americans--men and women--are doing this work free. + + I have a member of Congress[63] in the general reception room of + the Embassy answering people's questions--three other volunteers as + well. + + We had a world of confusion for two or three days. But all this + work is now well organized and it can be continued without + confusion or cross purposes. I meet committees and lay plans and + read and write telegrams from the time I wake till I go to bed. + But, since it is now all in order, it is easy. Of course I am + running up the expenses of the Embassy--there is no help for that; + but the bill will be really exceedingly small because of the + volunteer work--for awhile. I have not and shall not consider the + expense of whatever it seems absolutely necessary to do--of other + things I shall always consider the expense most critically. + Everybody is working with everybody else in the finest possible + spirit. I have made out a sort of military order to the Embassy + staff, detailing one man with clerks for each night and forbidding + the others to stay there till midnight. None of us slept more than + a few hours last week. It was not the work that kept them after the + first night or two, but the sheer excitement of this awful + cataclysm. All London has been awake for a week. Soldiers are + marching day and night; immense throngs block the streets about the + government offices. But they are all very orderly. Every day + Germans are arrested on suspicion; and several of them have + committed suicide. Yesterday one poor American woman yielded to the + excitement and cut her throat. I find it hard to get about much. + People stop me on the street, follow me to luncheon, grab me as I + come out of any committee meeting--to know my opinion of this or + that--how can they get home? Will such-and-such a boat fly the + American flag? Why did I take the German Embassy? I have to fight + my way about and rush to an automobile. I have had to buy me a + second one to keep up the racket. Buy?--no--only bargain for it, + for I have not any money. But everybody is considerate, and that + makes no matter for the moment. This little cottage in an + out-of-the-way place, twenty-five miles from London, where I am + trying to write and sleep, has been found by people to-day, who + come in automobiles to know how they may reach their sick + kinspeople in Germany. I have not had a bath for three days: as + soon as I got in the tub, the telephone rang an "urgent" call! + + [Illustration: No. 6 Grosvenor Square, the American Embassy under + Mr. Page] + + [Illustration: Irwin Laughlin, Secretary of the American Embassy at + Longon, 1912-1917, Counsellor 1916-1919]. + + Upon my word, if one could forget the awful tragedy, all this + experience would be worth a lifetime of commonplace. One surprise + follows another so rapidly that one loses all sense of time: it + seems an age since last Sunday. I shall never forget Sir Edward + Grey's telling me of the ultimatum--while he wept; nor the poor + German Ambassador who has lost in his high game--almost a demented + man; nor the King as he declaimed at me for half-an-hour and threw + up his hands and said, "My God, Mr. Page, what else could we do?" + Nor the Austrian Ambassador's wringing his hands and weeping and + crying out, "My dear Colleague, my dear Colleague." + + Along with all this tragedy come two reverend American peace + delegates who got out of Germany by the skin of their teeth and + complain that they lost all the clothes they had except what they + had on. "Don't complain," said I, "but thank God you saved your + skins." Everybody has forgotten what war means--forgotten that + folks get hurt. But they are coming around to it now. A United + States Senator telegraphs me: "Send my wife and daughter home on + the first ship." Ladies and gentlemen filled the steerage of that + ship--not a bunk left; and his wife and daughter are found three + days later sitting in a swell hotel waiting for me to bring them + stateroom tickets on a silver tray! One of my young fellows in the + Embassy rushes into my office saying that a man from Boston, with + letters of introduction from Senators and Governors and + Secretaries, et al., was demanding tickets of admission to a + picture gallery, and a secretary to escort him there. + + "What shall I do with him?" + + "Put his proposal to a vote of the 200 Americans in the room and + see them draw and quarter him." + + I have not yet heard what happened. A woman writes me four pages to + prove how dearly she loves my sister and invites me to her + hotel--five miles away--"please to tell her about the sailing of + the steamships." Six American preachers pass a resolution + unanimously "urging our Ambassador to telegraph our beloved, + peace-loving President to stop this awful war"; and they come with + simple solemnity to present their resolution. Lord save us, what a + world! + + And this awful tragedy moves on to--what? We do not know what is + really happening, so strict is the censorship. But it seems + inevitable to me that Germany will be beaten, that the horrid + period of alliances and armaments will not come again, that England + will gain even more of the earth's surface, that Russia may next + play the menace; that all Europe (as much as survives) will be + bankrupt; that relatively we shall be immensely stronger + financially and politically--there must surely come many great + changes--very many, yet undreamed of. Be ready; for you will be + called on to compose this huge quarrel. I thank Heaven for many + things--first, the Atlantic Ocean; second, that you refrained from + war in Mexico; third, that we kept our treaty--the canal tolls + victory, I mean. Now, when all this half of the world will suffer + the unspeakable brutalization of war, we shall preserve our moral + strength, our political powers, and our ideals. + + God save us! + + W.H.P. + +Vivid as is the above letter, it lacks several impressive details. +Probably the one event that afterward stood out most conspicuously in +Page's mind was his interview with Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign +Secretary. Sir Edward asked the American Ambassador to call Tuesday +afternoon; his purpose was to inform him that Great Britain had sent an +ultimatum to Germany. By this time Page and the Foreign Secretary had +established not only cordial official relations but a warm friendship. +The two men had many things in common; they had the same general outlook +on world affairs, the same ideas of justice and fair dealing, the same +belief that other motives than greed and aggrandizement should control +the attitude of one nation to another. The political tendencies of both +men were idealistic; both placed character above everything else as the +first requisite of a statesman; both hated war, and looked forward to +the time when more rational methods of conducting international +relations would prevail. Moreover, their purely personal qualities had +drawn Sir Edward and Page closely together. A common love of nature and +of out-of-door life had made them akin; both loved trees, birds, +flowers, and hedgerows; the same intellectual diversions and similar +tastes in reading had strengthened the tie. "I could never mention a +book I liked that Mr. Page had not read and liked too," Sir Edward Grey +once remarked to the present writer, and the enthusiasm that both men +felt for Wordsworth's poetry in itself formed a strong bond of union. +The part that the American Ambassador had played in the repeal of the +Panama discrimination had also made a great impression upon this British +statesman--a man to whom honour means more in international dealings +than any other consideration. "Mr. Page is one of the finest +illustrations I have ever known," Grey once said, "of the value of +character in a public man." In their intercourse for the past year the +two men had grown accustomed to disregard all pretense of diplomatic +technique; their discussions had been straightforward man-to-man talks; +there had been nothing suggestive of pose or finesse, and no attempts at +cleverness--merely an effort to get to the bottom of things and to +discover a common meeting ground. The Ambassador, moreover, represented +a nation for which the Foreign Secretary had always entertained the +highest respect and even affection, and he and Page could find no +happier common meeting-ground than an effort to bring about the closest +cooeperation between the two countries. Sir Edward, far-seeing statesman +that he was, had already appreciated, even amid the exciting and +engrossing experiences through which he was then passing, the critical +and almost determining part which the United States was destined to play +in the war, and he had now sent for the American Ambassador because he +believed that the President was entitled to a complete explanation of +the momentous decision which Great Britain had just made. + +The meeting took place at three o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, August +4th--a fateful date in modern history. The time represented the interval +which elapsed between the transmission of the British ultimatum to +Germany and the hour set for the German reply. The place was that same +historic room in the Foreign Office where so many interviews had already +taken place and where so many were to take place in the next four years. +As Page came in, Sir Edward, a tall and worn and rather pallid figure, +was standing against the mantelpiece; he greeted the Ambassador with a +grave handshake and the two men sat down. Overwrought the Foreign +Secretary may have been, after the racking week which had just passed, +but there was nothing flurried or excited in his manner; his whole +bearing was calm and dignified, his speech was quiet and restrained, he +uttered not one bitter word against Germany, but his measured accents +had a sureness, a conviction of the justice of his course, that went +home in almost deadly fashion. He sat in a characteristic pose, his +elbows resting on the sides of his chair, his hands folded and placed +beneath his chin, the whole body leaning forward eagerly and his eyes +searching those of his American friend. The British Foreign Secretary +was a handsome and an inspiring figure. He was a man of large, but of +well knit, robust, and slender frame, wiry and even athletic; he had a +large head, surmounted with dark brown hair, slightly touched with gray; +a finely cut, somewhat rugged and bronzed face, suggestive of that +out-of-door life in which he had always found his greatest pleasure; +light blue eyes that shone with straightforwardness and that on this +occasion were somewhat pensive with anxiety; thin, ascetic lips that +could smile in the most confidential manner or close tightly with +grimness and fixed purpose. He was a man who was at the same time shy +and determined, elusive and definite, but if there was one note in his +bearing that predominated all others, it was a solemn and quiet +sincerity. He seemed utterly without guile and magnificently simple. + +Sir Edward at once referred to the German invasion of Belgium. + +"The neutrality of Belgium," he said, and there was the touch of +finality in his voice, "is assured by treaty. Germany is a signatory +power to that treaty. It is upon such solemn compacts as this that +civilization rests. If we give them up, or permit them to be violated, +what becomes of civilization? Ordered society differs from mere force +only by such solemn agreements or compacts. But Germany has violated the +neutrality of Belgium. That means bad faith. It means also the end of +Belgium's independence. And it will not end with Belgium. Next will come +Holland, and, after Holland, Denmark. This very morning the Swedish +Minister informed me that Germany had made overtures to Sweden to come +in on Germany's side. The whole plan is thus clear. This one great +military power means to annex Belgium, Holland, and the Scandinavian +states and to subjugate France." + +Sir Edward energetically rose; he again stood near the mantelpiece, his +figure straightened, his eyes were fairly flashing--it was a picture, +Page once told me, that was afterward indelibly fixed in his mind. + +"England would be forever contemptible," Sir Edward said, "if it should +sit by and see this treaty violated. Its position would be gone if +Germany were thus permitted to dominate Europe. I have therefore asked +you to come to tell you that this morning we sent an ultimatum to +Germany. We have told Germany that, if this assault on Belgium's +neutrality is not reversed, England will declare war." + +"Do you expect Germany to accept it?" asked the Ambassador. + +Sir Edward shook his head. + +"No. Of course everybody knows that there will be war." + +There was a moment's pause and then the Foreign Secretary spoke again: + +"Yet we must remember that there are two Germanys. There is the Germany +of men like ourselves--of men like Lichnowsky and Jagow. Then there is +the Germany of men of the war party. The war party has got the upper +hand." + +At this point Sir Edward's eyes filled with tears. + +"Thus the efforts of a lifetime go for nothing. I feel like a man who +has wasted his life." + +"This scene was most affecting," Page said afterward. "Sir Edward not +only realized what the whole thing meant, but he showed that he realized +the awful responsibility for it." + +Sir Edward then asked the Ambassador to explain the situation to +President Wilson; he expressed the hope that the United States would +take an attitude of neutrality and that Great Britain might look for +"the courtesies of neutrality" from this country. Page tried to tell him +of the sincere pain that such a war would cause the President and the +American people. + +"I came away," the Ambassador afterward said, "with a sort of stunned +sense of the impending ruin of half the world[64]." + +The significant fact in this interview is that the British Foreign +Secretary justified the attitude of his country exclusively on the +ground of the violation of a treaty. This is something that is not yet +completely understood in the United States. The participation of Great +Britain in this great continental struggle is usually regarded as having +been inevitable, irrespective of the German invasion of Belgium; yet the +fact is that, had Germany not invaded Belgium, Great Britain would not +have declared war, at least at this critical time. Sir Edward came to +Page after a week's experience with a wavering cabinet. Upon the general +question of Britain's participation in a European war the Asquith +Ministry had been by no means unanimous. Probably Mr. Asquith himself +and Mr. Lloyd George would have voted against taking such a step. It is +quite unlikely that the cabinet could have carried a majority of the +House of Commons on this issue. But the violation of the Belgian treaty +changed the situation in a twinkling. The House of Commons at once took +its stand in favour of intervention. All members of the cabinet, +excepting John Morley and John Burns, who resigned, immediately aligned +themselves on the side of war. In the minds of British statesmen the +violation of this treaty gave Britain no choice. Germany thus forced +Great Britain into the war, just as, two and a half years afterward, the +Prussian war lords compelled the United States to take up arms. Sir +Edward Grey's interview with the American Ambassador thus had great +historic importance, for it makes this point clear. The two men had +recently had many discussions on another subject in which the violation +of a treaty was the great consideration--that of Panama tolls--and there +was a certain appropriateness in this explanation of the British Foreign +Secretary that precisely the same point had determined Great Britain's +participation in the greatest struggle that has ever devastated Europe. + +Inevitably the question of American mediation had come to the surface in +this trying time. Several days before Page's interview with Grey, the +American Ambassador, acting in response to a cablegram from Washington, +had asked if the good offices of the United States could be used in any +way. "Sir Edward is very appreciative of our mood and willingness," Page +wrote in reference to this visit. "But they don't want peace on the +continent--the ruling classes do not. But they will want it presently +and then our opportunity will come. Ours is the only great government in +the world that is not in some way entangled. Of course I'll keep in +daily touch with Sir Edward and with everybody who can and will keep me +informed." + +This was written about July 27th; at that time Austria had sent her +ultimatum to Serbia but there was no certainty that Europe would become +involved in war. A demand for American mediation soon became widespread +in the United States; the Senate passed a resolution requesting the +President to proffer his good offices to that end. On this subject the +following communications were exchanged between President Wilson and his +chief adviser, then sojourning at his summer home in Massachusetts. Like +Mr. Tumulty, the President's Secretary, Colonel House usually addressed +the President in terms reminiscent of the days when Mr. Wilson was +Governor of New Jersey. Especially interesting also are Colonel House's +references to his own trip to Berlin and the joint efforts made by the +President and himself in the preceding June to forestall the war which +had now broken out. + + _Edward M. House to the President_ + + Pride's Crossing (Mass.), + + August 3, 1914. [Monday.] + + The President, + + The White House, Washington, D.C. + + Dear Governor: + + Our people are deeply shocked at the enormity of this general + European war, and I see here and there regret that you did not use + your good offices in behalf of peace. + + If this grows into criticism so as to become noticeable I believe + everyone would be pleased and proud that you had anticipated this + world-wide horror and had done all that was humanly possible to + avert it. + + The more terrible the war becomes, the greater credit it will be + that you saw the trend of events long before it was seen by other + statesmen of the world. + + Your very faithful, + E.M. House. + + P.S. The question might be asked why negotiations were only with + Germany and England and not with France and Russia. This, of + course, was because it was thought that Germany would act for the + Triple Alliance and England for the Triple Entente[65]. + + _The President to Edward M. House_ + + The White House, + + Washington, D.C. + + August 4th, 1914. [Tuesday.] + + Edward M. House, + + Pride's Crossing, Mass. + +Letter of third received. Do you think I could and should act now and if +so how? + + Woodrow Wilson. + + _Edward M. House to the President_ + + [Telegram] + + Pride's Crossing, Mass. + + August 5th, 1914. [Wednesday.] + + The President, + + The White House, Washington, D.C. + + Olney[66] and I agree that in response to the Senate resolution it + would be unwise to tender your good offices at this time. We + believe it would lessen your influence when the proper moment + arrives. He thinks it advisable that you make a direct or indirect + statement to the effect that you have done what was humanly + possible to compose the situation before this crisis had been + reached. He thinks this would satisfy the Senate and the public in + view of your disinclination to act now upon the Senate resolution. + The story might be told to the correspondents at Washington and + they might use the expression "we have it from high authority." + + He agrees to my suggestion that nothing further should be done now + than to instruct our different ambassadors to inform the respective + governments to whom they are accredited, that you stand ready to + tender your good offices whenever such an offer is desired. + + Olney agrees with me that the shipping bill[67] is full of lurking + dangers. + + E.M. House. + +For some reason, however, the suggested statement was not made. The fact +that Colonel House had visited London, Paris, and Berlin six weeks +before the outbreak of war, in an effort to bring about a plan for +disarmament, was not permitted to reach the public ear. Probably the +real reason why this fact was concealed was that its publication at that +time would have reflected so seriously upon Germany that it would have +been regarded as "un-neutral." Colonel House, as already described, had +found Germany in a most belligerent frame of mind, its army "ready," to +use the Kaiser's own word, for an immediate spring at France; on the +other hand he had found Great Britain in a most pacific frame of mind, +entirely unsuspicious of Germany, and confident that the European +situation was daily improving. It is interesting now to speculate on the +public sensation that would have been caused had Colonel House's account +of his visit to Berlin been published at that exciting time. + +Page's telegrams and letters show that any suggestion at mediation would +have been a waste of effort. The President seriously forebore, but the +desire to mediate was constantly in his mind for the next few months, +and he now interested himself in laying the foundations of future +action. Page was instructed to ask for an audience with King George and +to present the following document: + + _From the President of the United States + to His Majesty the King_ + + SIR: + + As official head of one of the Powers signatory to the Hague + Convention, I feel it to be my privilege and my duty under Article + 3 of that Convention to say to your Majesty, in a spirit of most + earnest friendship, that I should welcome an opportunity to act in + the interest of European peace either now or at any time that might + be thought more suitable as an occasion, to serve your Majesty and + all concerned in a way that would afford me lasting cause for + gratitude and happiness. + + WOODROW WILSON. + +This, of course, was not mediation, but a mere expression of the +President's willingness to mediate at any time that such a tender from +him, in the opinion of the warring Powers, would serve the cause of +peace. Identically the same message was sent to the American +Ambassadors at the capitals of all the belligerent Powers for +presentation to the heads of state. Page's letter of August 9th, printed +above, refers to the earnestness and cordiality with which King George +received him and to the freedom with which His Majesty discussed the +situation. + +In this exciting week Page was thrown into intimate contact with the two +most pathetic figures in the diplomatic circle of London--the Austrian +and the German Ambassadors. To both of these men the war was more than a +great personal sorrow: it was a tragedy. Mensdorff, the Austrian +Ambassador, had long enjoyed an intimacy with the British royal family. +Indeed he was a distant relative of King George, for he was a member of +the family of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a fact which was emphasized by his +physical resemblance to Prince Albert, the consort of Queen Victoria. +Mensdorff was not a robust man, physically or mentally, and he showed +his consternation at the impending war in most unrestrained and even +unmanly fashion. As his government directed him to turn the Austrian +Embassy over to the American Ambassador, it was necessary for Page to +call and arrange the details. The interview, as Page's letter indicates, +was little less than a paroxysm of grief on the Austrian's part. He +denounced Germany and the Kaiser; he paraded up and down the room +wringing his hands; he could be pacified only by suggestions from the +American that perhaps something might happen to keep Austria out of the +war. The whole atmosphere of the Austrian Embassy radiated this same +feeling. "Austria has no quarrel with England," remarked one of +Mensdorff's assistants to one of the ladies of the American Embassy; and +this sentiment was the general one in Austrian diplomatic circles. The +disinclination of both Great Britain and Austria to war was so great +that, as Page relates, for several days there was no official +declaration. + +Even more tragical than the fate of the Austrian Ambassador was that of +his colleague, the representative of the German Emperor. It was more +tragical because Prince Lichnowsky represented the power that was +primarily responsible, and because he had himself been an unwilling tool +in bringing on the cataclysm. It was more profound because Lichnowsky +was a man of deeper feeling and greater moral purpose than his Austrian +colleague, and because for two years he had been devoting his strongest +energies to preventing the very calamity which had now become a fact. As +the war went on Lichnowsky gradually emerged as one of its finest +figures; the pamphlet which he wrote, at a time when Germany's military +fortunes were still high, boldly placing the responsibility upon his own +country and his own Kaiser, was one of the bravest acts which history +records. Through all his brief Ambassadorship Lichnowsky had shown these +same friendly traits. The mere fact that he had been selected as +Ambassador at this time was little less than a personal calamity. His +appointment gives a fair measure of the depths of duplicity to which the +Prussian system could descend. For more than fourteen years Lichnowsky +had led the quiet life of a Polish country gentleman; he had never +enjoyed the favour of the Kaiser; in his own mind and in that of his +friends his career had long since been finished; yet from this +retirement he had been suddenly called upon to represent the Fatherland +at the greatest of European capitals. The motive for this elevation, +which was unfathomable then, is evident enough now. Prince Lichnowsky +was known to be an Anglophile; everything English--English literature, +English country life, English public men--had for him an irresistible +charm; and his greatest ambition as a diplomat had been to maintain the +most cordial relations between his own country and Great Britain. This +was precisely the type of Ambassador that fitted into the Imperial +purpose at that crisis. Germany was preparing energetically but quietly +for war; it was highly essential that its most formidable potential foe, +Great Britain, should be deceived as to the Imperial plans and lulled +into a sense of security. The diabolical character of Prince +Lichnowsky's selection for this purpose was that, though his mission was +one of deception, he was not himself a party to it and did not realize +until it was too late that he had been used merely as a tool. Prince +Lichnowsky was not called upon to assume a mask; all that was necessary +was that he should simply be himself. And he acquitted himself with +great success. He soon became a favourite in London society; the Foreign +Office found him always ready to cooeperate in any plan that tended to +improve relations between the two countries. It will be remembered that, +when Colonel House returned to London from his interview with the Kaiser +in June, 1914, he found British statesmen incredulous about any trouble +with Germany. This attitude was the consequence of Lichnowsky's work. +The fact is that relations between the two countries had not been so +harmonious in twenty years. All causes of possible friction had been +adjusted. The treaty regulating the future of the Bagdad Railroad, the +only problem that clouded the future, had been initialled by both the +British and the German Foreign Offices and was about to be signed at the +moment when the ultimatums began to fly through the air. Prince +Lichnowsky was thus entitled to look upon his ambassadorship as one of +the most successful in modern history, for it had removed all possible +cause of war. + +And then suddenly came the stunning blow. For several days Lichnowsky's +behaviour was that of an irresponsible person. Those who came into +contact with him found his mind wandering and incoherent. Page describes +the German Ambassador as coming down and receiving him in his pajamas; +he was not the only one who had that experience, for members of the +British Foreign Office transacted business with this most punctilious of +diplomats in a similar condition of personal disarray. And the +dishabille extended to his mental operations as well. + +But Lichnowsky's and Mensdorff's behaviour merely portrayed the general +atmosphere that prevailed in London during that week. This atmosphere +was simply hysterical. Among all the intimate participants, however, +there was one man who kept his poise and who saw things clearly. That +was the American Ambassador. It was certainly a strange trick which +fortune had played upon Page. He had come to London with no experience +in diplomacy. Though the possibility of such an outbreak as this war had +been in every man's consciousness for a generation, it had always been +as something certain yet remote; most men thought of it as most men +think of death--as a fatality which is inevitable, but which is so +distant that it never becomes a reality. Thus Page, when he arrived in +London, did not have the faintest idea of the experience that awaited +him. Most people would have thought that his quiet and studious and +unworldly life had hardly prepared him to become the representative of +the most powerful neutral power at the world's capital during the +greatest crisis of modern history. To what an extent that impression was +justified the happenings of the next four years will disclose; it is +enough to point out in this place that in one respect at least the war +found the American Ambassador well prepared. From the instant +hostilities began his mind seized the significance of it all. "Mr. Page +had one fine qualification for his post," a great British statesman once +remarked to the present writer. "From the beginning he saw that there +was a right and a wrong to the matter. He did not believe that Great +Britain and Germany were equally to blame. He believed that Great +Britain was right and that Germany was wrong. I regard it as one of the +greatest blessings of modern times that the United States had an +ambassador in London in August, 1914, who had grasped this overwhelming +fact. It seems almost like a dispensation of Providence." + +It is important to insist on this point now, for it explains Page's +entire course as Ambassador. The confidential telegram which Page sent +directly to President Wilson in early September, 1914, furnishes the +standpoint from which his career as war Ambassador can be understood: + + _Confidential to the President_ + September 11, 3 A.M. + No. 645. + + Accounts of atrocities are so inevitably a part of every war that + for some time I did not believe the unbelievable reports that were + sent from Europe, and there are many that I find incredible even + now. But American and other neutral observers who have seen these + things in France and especially in Belgium now convince me that the + Germans have perpetrated some of the most barbarous deeds in + history. Apparently credible persons relate such things without + end. + + Those who have violated the Belgian treaty, those who have sown + torpedoes in the open sea, those who have dropped bombs on Antwerp + and Paris indiscriminately with the idea of killing whom they may + strike, have taken to heart Bernhardi's doctrine that war is a + glorious occupation. Can any one longer disbelieve the completely + barbarous behaviour of the Prussians? + + PAGE. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 61: At this time American military attache.] + +[Footnote 62: The American Government, on the outbreak of war, sent the +U.S.S. _Tennessee_ to Europe, with large supplies of gold for the relief +of stranded Americans.] + +[Footnote 63: The late Augustus P. Gardner, of Massachusetts.] + +[Footnote 64: The materials on which this account is based are a +memorandum of the interview made by Sir Edward Grey, now in the archives +of the British Foreign Office, a similar memorandum made by Page, and a +detailed description given verbally by Page to the writer.] + +[Footnote 65: Colonel House, of course, is again referring to his +experience in Berlin and London, described in the preceding chapter.] + +[Footnote 66: Richard Olney, Secretary of State in the Cabinet of +President Cleveland, who was a neighbour of Colonel House at his summer +home, and with whom the latter apparently consulted.] + +[Footnote 67: This is the bill passed soon after the outbreak of war +admitting foreign built ships to American registry. Subsequent events +showed that it was "full of lurking dangers."] + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +ENGLAND UNDER THE STRESS OF WAR + + +The months following the outbreak of the war were busy ones for the +American Embassy in London. The Embassies of all the great Powers with +which Great Britain was contending were handed over to Page, and the +citizens of these countries--Germany, Austria, Turkey--who found +themselves stranded in England, were practically made his wards. It is a +constant astonishment to his biographer that, during all the labour and +distractions of this period, Page should have found time to write long +letters describing the disturbing scene. There are scores of them, all +penned in the beautiful copper-plate handwriting that shows no signs of +excitement or weariness, but is in itself an evidence of mental poise +and of the sure grip which Page had upon the evolving drama. From the +many sent in these autumn and early winter months the following +selections are made: + + _To Edward M. House_ + September 22nd, 1914. + + MY DEAR HOUSE: + + When the day of settlement comes, the settlement must make sure + that the day of militarism is done and can come no more. If sheer + brute force is to rule the world, it will not be worth living in. + If German bureaucratic brute force could conquer Europe, presently + it would try to conquer the United States; and we should all go + back to the era of war as man's chief industry and back to the + domination of kings by divine right. It seems to me, therefore, + that the Hohenzollern idea must perish--be utterly strangled in the + making of peace. + + Just how to do this, it is not yet easy to say. If the German + defeat be emphatic enough and dramatic enough, the question may + answer itself--how's the best way to be rid of the danger of the + recurrence of a military bureaucracy? But in any event, this thing + must be killed forever--somehow. I think that a firm insistence on + this is the main task that mediation will bring. The rest will be + corollaries of this. + + The danger, of course, as all the world is beginning to fear, is + that the Kaiser, after a local victory--especially if he should yet + take Paris--will propose peace, saying that he dreads the very + sight of blood--propose peace in time, as he will hope, to save his + throne, his dynasty, his system. That will be a dangerous day. The + horror of war will have a tendency to make many persons in the + countries of the Allies accept it. All the peace folk in the world + will say "Accept it!" But if he and his throne and his dynasty and + his system be saved, in twenty-five years the whole job must be + done over again. We are settling down to a routine of double work + and to an oppression of gloom. Dead men, dead men, maimed men, the + dull gray dread of what may happen next, the impossibility of + changing the subject, the monotony of gloom, the consequent dimness + of ideals, the overworking of the emotions and the heavy bondage of + thought--the days go swiftly: that's one blessing. + + The diplomatic work proper brings fewer difficulties than you would + guess. New subjects and new duties come with great rapidity, but + they soon fall into formulas--at least into classes. We shall have + no sharp crises nor grave difficulties so long as our Government + and this Government keep their more than friendly relations. I see + Sir Edward Grey almost every day. We talk of many things--all + phases of one vast wreck; and all the clear-cut points that come up + I report by telegraph. To-day the talk was of American cargoes in + British ships and the machinery they have set up here for fair + settlement. Then of Americans applying for enlistment in Canadian + regiments. "If sheer brute force conquer Europe," said he, "the + United States will be the only country where life will be worth + living; and in time you will have to fight against it, too, if it + conquer Europe." He spoke of the letter he had just received from + the President, and he asked me many sympathetic questions about you + also and about your health. I ventured to express some solicitude + for him. + + "How much do you get out now + + "Only for an automobile drive Sunday afternoon." + + This from a man who is never happy away from nature and is at home + only in the woods and along the streams. He looks worn. + + I hear nothing but satisfaction with our neutrality tight-rope + walk. I think we are keeping it here, by close attention to our + work and by silence. + + Our volunteer and temporary aids are doing well--especially the + army and navy officers. We now occupy three work-places: (1) the + over-crowded embassy; (2) a suite of offices around the corner + where the ever-lengthening list of inquiries for persons is handled + and where an army officer pays money to persons whose friends have + deposited it for them with the Government in Washington--just now + at the rate of about $15,000 a day; and (3) two great rooms at the + Savoy Hotel, where the admirable relief committee (which meets all + trains that bring people from the continent) gives aid to the + needy and helps people to get tickets home. They have this week + helped about 400 with more or less money--after full investigation. + + At the Embassy a secretary remains till bed-time, which generally + means till midnight; and I go back there for an hour or two every + night. + + The financial help we give to German and Austrian subjects (poor + devils) is given, of course, at their embassies, where we have + men--our men-in charge. Each of these governments accepted my offer + to give our Ambassadors (Gerard and Penfield) a sum of money to + help Americans if I would set aside an equal sum to help their + people here. The German fund that I thus began with was $50,000; + the Austrian, $25,000. All this and more will be needed before the + war ends.--All this activity is kept up with scrupulous attention + to the British rules and regulations. In fact, we are helping this + Government much in the management of these "alien enemies," as they + call them. + + I am amazed at the good health we all keep with this big volume of + work and the long hours. Not a man nor a woman has been ill a day. + I have known something about work and the spirit of good work in + other organizations of various sorts; but I never saw one work in + better spirit than this. And remember, most of them are volunteers. + + The soldiers here complained for weeks in private about the + lethargy of the people--the slowness of men to enlist. But they + seemed to me to complain with insufficient reason. For now they + come by thousands. They do need more men in the field, and they may + conscript them, but I doubt the necessity. But I run across such + incidents as these: I met the Dowager Countess of D---- + yesterday--a woman of 65, as tall as I and as erect herself as a + soldier, who might be taken for a woman of 40, prematurely gray. + "I had five sons in the Boer War. I have three in this war. I do + not know where any one of them is." Mrs. Page's maid is talking of + leaving her. "My two brothers have gone to the war and perhaps I + ought to help their wives and children." The Countess and the maid + are of the same blood, each alike unconquerable. My chauffeur has + talked all day about the naval battle in which five German ships + were lately sunk[68]. He reminded me of the night two months ago + when he drove Mrs. Page and me to dine with Sir John and Lady + Jellicoe--Jellicoe now, you know, being in command of the British + fleet. + + This Kingdom has settled down to war as its one great piece of + business now in hand, and it is impossible, as the busy, burdensome + days pass, to pick out events or impressions that one can be sure + are worth writing. For instance a soldier--a man in the War + Office--told me to-day that Lord Kitchener had just told him that + the war may last for several years. That, I confess, seems to me + very improbable, and (what is of more importance) it is not the + notion held by most men whose judgment I respect. But all the + military men say it will be long. It would take several years to + kill that vast horde of Germans, but it will not take so long to + starve them out. Food here is practically as cheap as it was three + months ago and the sea routes are all open to England and + practically all closed to Germany. The ultimate result, of course, + will be Germany's defeat. But the British are now going about the + business of war as if they knew they would continue it + indefinitely. The grim efficiency of their work even in small + details was illustrated to-day by the Government's informing us + that a German handy man, whom the German Ambassador left at his + Embassy, with the English Government's consent, is a spy--that he + sends verbal messages to Germany by women who are permitted to go + home, and that they have found letters written by him sewed in some + of these women's undergarments! This man has been at work there + every day under the two very good men whom I have put in charge + there and who have never suspected him. How on earth they found + this out simply passes my understanding. Fortunately it doesn't + bring any embarrassment to us; he was not in our pay and he was + left by the German Ambassador with the British Government's + consent, to take care of the house. Again, when the German + Chancellor made a statement two days ago about the causes of the + war, in a few hours Sir Edward Grey issued a statement showing that + the Chancellor had misstated every important historic fact.--The + other day a commercial telegram was sent (or started) by Mr. Bryan + for some bank or trading concern in the United States, managed by + Germans, to some correspondent of theirs in Germany. It contained + the words, "Where is Harry?" The censor here stopped it. It was + brought to me with the explanation that "Harry" is one of the most + notorious of German spies--whom they would like to catch. The + English were slow in getting into full action, but now they never + miss a trick, little or big. + + The Germans have far more than their match in resources and in + shrewdness and--in character. As the bloody drama unfolds itself, + the hollow pretence and essential barbarity of Prussian militarism + become plainer and plainer: there is no doubt of that. And so does + the invincibility of this race. A well-known Englishman told me + to-day that his three sons, his son-in-law, and half his office men + are in the military service, "where they belong in a time like + this." The lady who once so sharply criticized this gentleman to + Mrs. Page has a son and a brother in the army in France. It makes + you take a fresh grip on your eyelids to hear either of these talk. + In fact the strain on one's emotions, day in and day out, makes one + wonder if the world is real--or is this a vast dream? From sheer + emotional exhaustion I slept almost all day last Sunday, though I + had not for several days lost sleep at all. Many persons tell me of + their similar experiences. The universe seems muffled. There is a + ghostly silence in London (so it seems); and only dim street lights + are lighted at night. No experience seems normal. A vast + organization is working day and night down town receiving Belgian + refugees. They become the guests of the English. They are assigned + to people's homes, to boarding houses, to institutions. They are + taking care of them--this government and this people are. I do not + recall when one nation ever did another whole nation just such a + hospitable service as this. You can't see that work going on and + remain unmoved. An old woman who has an income of $15 a week + decided that she could live on $7.50. She buys milk with the other + $7.50 and goes to meet every train at one of the big stations with + a basket filled with baby bottles, and she gives milk to every + hungry-looking baby she sees. Our American committeeman, Hoover, + saw her in trouble the other day and asked her what was the matter. + She explained that the police would no longer admit her to the + platform because she didn't belong to any relief committee. He took + her to headquarters and said: "Do you see this good old lady? She + puts you and me and everybody else to shame--do you understand?" + The old lady now gets to the platform. Hoover himself gave $5,000 + for helping stranded Americans and he goes to the trains to meet + them, while the war has stopped his big business and his big + income. This is a sample of the noble American end of the story. + + These are the saving class of people to whom life becomes a bore + unless they can help somebody. There's just such a fellow in + Brussels--you may have heard of him, for his name is Whitlock. + Stories of his showing himself a man come out of that closed-up + city every week. To a really big man, it doesn't matter whether his + post is a little post, or a big post but, if I were President, I'd + give Whitlock a big post. There's another fellow somewhere in + Germany--a consul--of whom I never heard till the other day. But + people have taken to coming in my office--English ladies--who wish + to thank "you and your great government" for the courage and + courtesy of this consul[69]. Stories about him will follow. + Herrick, too, in Paris, somehow causes Americans and English and + even Guatemalans who come along to go out of their way to say what + he has done for them. Now there is a quality in the old woman with + the baby bottles, and in the consul and in Whitlock and Hoover and + Herrick and this English nation which adopts the Belgians--a + quality that is invincible. When folk like these come down the + road, I respectfully do obeisance to them. And--it's this kind of + folk that the Germans have run up against. I thank Heaven I'm of + their race and blood. + + The whole world is bound to be changed as a result of this war. If + Germany should win, our Monroe Doctrine would at once be shot in + two, and we should have to get "out of the sun." The military party + is a party of conquest--absolutely. If England wins, as of course + she will, it'll be a bigger and a stronger England, with no strong + enemy in the world, with her Empire knit closer than ever--India, + Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Egypt; under + obligations to and in alliance with Russia! England will not need + our friendship as much as she now needs it; and there may come + governments here that will show they do not. In any event, you see, + the world will be changed. It's changed already: witness + Bernstorff[70] and Muensterberg[71] playing the part once played by + Irish agitators! + + All of which means that it is high time we were constructing a + foreign service. First of all, Congress ought to make it possible + to have half a dozen or more permanent foreign + under-secretaries--men who, after service in the Department, could + go out as Ministers and Ambassadors; it ought generously to + reorganize the whole thing. It ought to have a competent study made + of the foreign offices of other governments. Of course it ought to + get room to work in. Then it ought at once to give its Ambassadors + and Ministers homes and dignified treatment. We've got to play a + part in the world whether we wish to or not. Think of these things. + + The blindest great force in this world to-day is the Prussian War + Party--blind and stupid.--Well, and the most weary man in London + just at this hour is + + Your humble servant, + W.H.P, + +but he'll be all right in the morning. + + _To Arthur W. Page_ + [Undated][72] + + DEAR ARTHUR: + + . . . I recall one night when we were dining at Sir John Jellicoe's, he + told me that the Admiralty never slept--that he had a telephone by + his bed every night. + + "Did it ever ring?" I asked. + + "No; but it will." + + You begin to see pretty clearly how English history has been made + and makes itself. This afternoon Lady S---- told your mother of her + three sons, one on a warship in the North Sea, another with the + army in France, and a third in training to go. "How brave you all + are!" said your mother, and her answer was: "They belong to their + country; we can't do anything else." One of the daughters-in-law of + the late Lord Salisbury came to see me to find out if I could make + an inquiry about her son who was reported "missing" after the + battle of Mons. She was dry-eyed, calm, self-restrained--very + grateful for the effort I promised to make; but a Spartan woman + would have envied her self-possession. It turned out that her son + was dead. + + You hear experiences like these almost every day. These are the + kinds of women and the kinds of men that have made the British + Empire and the English race. You needn't talk of decadence. All + their great qualities are in them here and now. I believe that half + the young men who came to Katharine's[73] dances last winter and + who used to drop in at the house once in a while are dead in France + already. They went as a matter of course. This is the reason they + are going to win. Now these things impress you, as they come to you + day by day. + + There isn't any formal social life now--no dinners, no parties. A + few friends dine with a few friends now and then very quietly. The + ladies of fashion are hospital nurses and Red Cross workers, or + they are collecting socks and blankets for the soldiers. One such + woman told your mother to-day that she went to one of the + recruiting camps every day and taught the young fellows what + colloquial French she could. Every man, woman, and child seems to + be doing something. In the ordinary daily life, we see few of them: + everybody is at work somewhere. + + We live in a world of mystery: nothing can surprise us. The rumour + is that a servant in one of the great families sent word to the + Germans where the three English cruisers[74] were that German + submarines blew up the other day. Not a German in the Kingdom can + earn a penny. We're giving thousands of them money at the German + Embassy to keep them alive. Our Austrian Embassy runs a soup + kitchen where it feeds a lot of Austrians. Your mother went around + there the other day and they showed that they thought they owe + their daily bread to her. One day she went to one of the big houses + where the English receive and distribute the thousands of Belgians + who come here, poor creatures, to be taken care of. One old woman + asked your mother in French if she were a princess. The lady that + was with your mother answered, "Une Grande Dame." That seemed to do + as well. + + This government doesn't now let anybody carry any food away. But + to-day they consented on condition I'd receive the food (for the + Belgians) and consign it to Whitlock. This is their way of keeping + it out of German hands--have the Stars and Stripes, so to speak, to + cover every bag of flour and of salt. That's only one of 1,000 + queer activities that I engage in. I have a German princess's[75] + jewels in our safe--$100,000 worth of them in my keeping; I have an + old English nobleman's check for $40,000 to be sent to men who have + been building a house for his daughter in Dresden--to be sent as + soon as the German Government agrees not to arrest the lady for + debt. I have sent Miss Latimer[76] over to France to bring an + Austrian baby eight months old whose mother will take it to the + United States and bring it up an American citizen! The mother can't + go and get it for fear the French might detain her; I've got the + English Government's permission for the family to go to the United + States. Harold[77] is in Belgium, trying to get a group of English + ladies home who went there to nurse wounded English and Belgians + and whom the Germans threaten to kidnap and transport to German + hospitals--every day a dozen new kinds of jobs. + + London is weird and muffled and dark and, in the West End, + deserted. Half the lamps are not lighted, and the upper half of the + globes of the street lights are painted black--so the Zeppelin + raiders may not see them. You've no idea what a strange feeling it + gives one. The papers have next to no news. The 23rd day of the + great battle is reported very much in the same words as the 3rd day + was. Yet nobody talks of much else. The censor erases most of the + matter the correspondents write. We're in a sort of dumb as well as + dark world. And yet, of course, we know much more here than they + know in any other European capital. + + _To the President_ + + [Undated.] + + Dear Mr. President: + + When England, France, and Russia agreed the other day not to make + peace separately, that cooked the Kaiser's goose. They'll wear him + out. Since England thus has Frenchmen and Russians bound, the + Allies are strength-cued at their only weak place. That done, + England is now going in deliberately, methodically, patiently to do + the task. Even a fortnight ago, the people of this Kingdom didn't + realize all that the war means to them. But the fever is rising + now. The wounded are coming back, the dead are mourned, and the + agony of hearing only that such-and-such a man is missing--these + are having a prodigious effect. The men I meet now say in a + matter-of-fact way: "Oh, yes! we'll get 'em, of course; the only + question is, how long it will take us and how many of us it will + cost. But no matter, we'll get 'em." + + Old ladies and gentlemen of the high, titled world now begin by + driving to my house almost every morning while I am at breakfast. + With many apologies for calling so soon and with the fear that they + interrupt me, they ask if I can make an inquiry in Germany for "my + son," or "my nephew"--"he's among the missing." They never weep; + their voices do not falter; they are brave and proud and + self-restrained. It seems a sort of matter-of-course to them. + Sometimes when they get home, they write me polite notes thanking + me for receiving them. This morning the first man was Sir Dighton + Probyn of Queen Alexandra's household--so dignified and courteous + that you'd hardly have guessed his errand. And at intervals they + come all day. Not a tear have I seen yet. They take it as a part of + the price of greatness and of empire. You guess at their grief only + by their reticence. They use as few words as possible and then + courteously take themselves away. It isn't an accident that these + people own a fifth of the world. Utterly unwarlike, they outlast + anybody else when war comes. You don't get a sense of fighting + here--only of endurance and of high resolve. Fighting is a sort of + incident in the struggle to keep their world from German + domination. . . . + + _To Edward M. House_ + October 11, 1914. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + There is absolutely nothing to write. It's war, war, war all the + time; no change of subject; and, if you changed with your tongue, + you couldn't change in your thought; war, war, war--"for God's sake + find out if my son is dead or a prisoner"; rumours--they say that + two French generals were shot for not supporting French, and then + they say only one; and people come who have helped take the wounded + French from the field and they won't even talk, it is so horrible; + and a lady says that her own son (wounded) told her that when a man + raised up in the trench to fire, the stench was so awful that it + made him sick for an hour; and the poor Belgians come here by the + tens of thousands, and special trains bring the English wounded; + and the newspapers tell little or nothing--every day's reports like + the preceding days'; and yet nobody talks about anything else. + + Now and then the subject of its settlement is mentioned--Belgium + and Serbia, of course, to be saved and as far as possible + indemnified; Russia to have the Slav-Austrian States and + Constantinople; France to have Alsace-Lorraine, of course; and + Poland to go to Russia; Schleswig-Holstein and the Kiel Canal no + longer to be German; all the South-German States to become Austrian + and none of the German States to be under Prussian rule; the + Hohenzollerns to be eliminated; the German fleet, or what is left + of it, to become Great Britain's; and the German colonies to be + used to satisfy such of the Allies as clamour for more than they + get. + + Meantime this invincible race is doing this revolutionary task + marvellously--volunteering; trying to buy arms in the United + States (a Pittsburgh manufacturer is now here trying to close a + bargain with the War Office!)[78]; knitting socks and mufflers; + taking in all the poor Belgians; stopping all possible expenditure; + darkening London at night; doing every conceivable thing to win as + if they had been waging this war always and meant to do nothing + else for the rest of their lives-and not the slightest doubt about + the result and apparently indifferent how long it lasts or how much + it costs. + + Every aspect of it gets on your nerves. I can't keep from wondering + how the world will seem after it is over--Germany (that is, Prussia + and its system) cut out like a cancer; England owning still more of + the earth; Belgium--all the men dead; France bankrupt; Russia + admitted to the society of nations; the British Empire entering on + a new lease of life; no great navy but one; no great army but the + Russian; nearly all governments in Europe bankrupt; Germany gone + from the sea--in ten years it will be difficult to recall clearly + the Europe of the last ten years. And the future of the world more + than ever in our hands! + + We here don't know what you think or what you know at home; we + haven't yet any time to read United States newspapers, which come + very, very late; nobody writes us real letters (or the censor gets + 'em, perhaps!); and so the war, the war, the war is the one thing + that holds our minds. + + We have taken a house for the Chancery[79]--almost the size of my + house in Grosvenor Square--for the same sum as rent that the + landlord proposed hereafter to charge us for the old hole where + we've been for twenty-nine years. For the first time Uncle Sam has + a decent place in London. We've five times as much room and ten + times as much work. Now--just this last week or two--I get off + Sundays: that's doing well. And I don't now often go back at night. + So, you see, we've much to be thankful for.--Shall we insure + against Zeppelins? That's what everybody's asking. I told the + Spanish Ambassador yesterday that I am going to ask the German + Government for instructions about insuring their Embassy here! + + Write and send some news. I saw an American to-day who says he's + going home to-morrow. "Cable me," said I, "if you find the + continent where it used to be." + + Faithfully yours, + + WALTER H. PAGE. + + P.S. It is strange how little we know what you know on your side + and just what you think, what relative value you put on this and + what on that. There's a new sort of loneliness sprung up because of + the universal absorption in the war. + + And I hear all sorts of contradictory rumours about the effect of + the German crusade in the United States. Oh well, the world has got + to choose whether it will have English or German domination in + Europe; that's the single big question at issue. For my part I'll + risk the English and then make a fresh start ourselves to outstrip + them in the spread of well-being; in the elevation of mankind of + all classes; in the broadening of democracy and democratic rule + (which is the sheet-anchor of all men's hopes just as bureaucracy + and militarism are the destruction of all men's hopes); in the + spread of humane feeling and action; in the growth of human + kindness; in the tender treatment of women and children and the + old; in literature, in art; in the abatement of suffering; in great + changes in economic conditions which discourage poverty; and in + science which gives us new leases on life and new tools and wider + visions. These are _our_ world tasks, with England as our friendly + rival and helper. God bless us. + + W.H.P. + + _To Arthur W. Page_ + London, November 6, 1914. + + DEAR ARTHUR: + + Those excellent photographs, those excellent apples, those + excellent cigars--thanks. I'm thinking of sending Kitty[80] over + again. They all spell and smell and taste of home--of the U.S.A. + Even the messenger herself seems Unitedstatesy, and that's a good + quality, I assure you. She's told us less news than you'd think she + might for so long a journey and so long a visit; but that's the way + with us all. And, I dare say, if it were all put together it would + make a pretty big news-budget. And luckily for us (I often think we + are among the luckiest families in the world) all she says is quite + cheerful. It's a wonderful report she makes of County Line[81]--the + country, the place, the house, and its inhabitants. Maybe, praise + God, I'll see it myself some day--it and them. + + But--but--I don't know when and can't guess out of this vast fog of + war and doom. The worst of it is nobody knows just what is + happening. I have, for an example, known for a week of the blowing + up of a British dreadnaught[82]--thousands of people know it + privately--and yet it isn't published! Such secrecy makes you fear + there may be other and even worse secrets. But I don't really + believe there are. What I am trying to say is, so far as news (and + many other things) go, we are under a military rule. + + It's beginning to wear on us badly. It presses down, presses down, + presses down in an indescribable way. All the people you see have + lost sons or brothers; mourning becomes visible over a wider area + all the time; people talk of nothing else; all the books are about + the war; ordinary social life is suspended--people are visibly + growing older. And there are some aspects of it that are + incomprehensible. For instance, a group of American and English + military men and correspondents were talking with me yesterday--men + who have been on both sides--in Germany and Belgium and in + France--and they say that the Germans in France alone have had + 750,000 men killed. The Allies have lost 400,000 to 500,000. This + in France only. Take the other fighting lines and there must + already be a total of 2,000,000 killed. Nothing like that has ever + happened before in the history of the world. A flood or a fire or a + wreck which has killed 500 has often shocked all mankind. Yet we + know of this enormous slaughter and (in a way) are not greatly + moved. I don't know of a better measure of the brutalizing effect + of war--it's bringing us to take a new and more inhuman standard to + measure events by. + + As for any political or economic reckoning--that's beyond any man's + ability yet. I see strings of incomprehensible figures that some + economist or other now and then puts in the papers, summing up the + loss in pounds sterling. But that means nothing because we have no + proper measure of it. If a man lose $10 or $10,000 we can grasp + that. But when nations shoot away so many million pounds sterling + every day--that means nothing to me. I do know that there's going + to be no money on this side the world for a long time to buy + American securities. The whole world is going to be hard up in + consequence of the bankruptcy of these nations, the inestimable + destruction of property, and the loss of productive men. I fancy + that such a change will come in the economic and financial + readjustment of the world as nobody can yet guess at.--Are + Americans studying these things? It is not only South-American + trade; it is all sorts of manufacturers; it is financial + influence--if we can quit spending and wasting, and husband our + earnings. There's no telling the enormous advantages we shall gain + if we are wise. + + The extent to which the German people have permitted themselves to + be fooled is beyond belief. As a little instance of it, I enclose a + copy of a letter that Lord Bryce gave me, written by an English + woman who did good social work in her early life--a woman of + sense--and who married a German merchant and has spent her married + life in Germany. She is a wholly sincere person. This letter she + wrote to a friend in England and--she believes every word of it. If + she believes it, the great mass of the Germans believe similar + things. I have heard of a number of such letters--sincere, as this + one is. It gives a better insight into the average German mind than + a hundred speeches by the Emperor. + + This German and Austrian diplomatic business involves an enormous + amount of work. I've now sent one man to Vienna and another to + Berlin to straighten out almost hopeless tangles and lies about + prisoners and such things and to see if they won't agree to swap + more civilians detained in each country. On top of these, yesterday + came the Turkish Embassy! Alas, we shall never see old Tewfik[83] + again! This business begins briskly to-day with the detention of + every Turkish consul in the British Empire. Lord! I dread the + missionaries; and I know they're coming now. This makes four + embassies. We put up a sign, "The American Embassy," on every one + of them. Work? We're worked to death. Two nights ago I didn't get + time to read a letter or even a telegram that had come that day + till 11 o'clock at night. For on top of all these Embassies, I've + had to become Commissary-General to feed 6,000,000 starving people + in Belgium; and practically all the food must come from the United + States. You can't buy food for export in any country in Europe. The + devastation of Belgium defeats the Germans.--I don't mean in battle + but I mean in the after-judgment of mankind. They cannot recover + from that half as soon as they may recover from the economic losses + of the war. The reducing of those people to starvation--that will + stick to damn them in history, whatever they win or whatever they + lose. + + When's it going to end? Everybody who ought to know says at the + earliest next year--next summer. Many say in two years. As for me, + I don't know. I don't see how it can end soon. Neither can lick the + other to a frazzle and neither can afford to give up till it is + completely licked. This way of living in trenches and fighting a + month at a time in one place is a new thing in warfare. Many a man + shoots a cannon all day for a month without seeing a single enemy. + There are many wounded men back here who say they haven't seen a + single German. When the trenches become so full of dead men that + the living can't stay there longer, they move back to other + trenches. So it goes on. Each side has several more million men to + lose. What the end will be--I mean when it will come, I don't see + how to guess. The Allies are obliged to win; they have more food + and more money, and in the long run, more men. But the German + fighting machine is by far the best organization ever made--not the + best men, but the best organization; and the whole German people + believe what the woman writes whose letter I send you. It'll take a + long time to beat it. + + Affectionately, + W.H.P. + + * * * * * + +The letter that Page inclosed, and another copy of which was sent to the +President, purported to be written by the English wife of a German in +Bremen. It was as follows: + + * * * * * + +It is very difficult to write, more difficult to believe that what I +write will succeed in reaching you. My husband insists on my urging +you--it is not necessary I am sure--to destroy the letter and all +possible indications of its origin, should you think it worth +translating. The letter will go by a business friend of my husband's to +Holland, and be got off from there. For our business with Holland is now +exceedingly brisk as you may understand. Her neutrality is most precious +to us[84]. + +Well, I have of course a divided mind. I think of those old days in +Liverpool and Devonshire--how far off they seem! And yet I spent all +last year in England. It was in March last when I was with you and we +talked of the amazing treatment of your army--I cannot any longer call +it _our_ army--by ministers crying for the resignation of its officers +and eager to make their humiliation an election cry! How far off that +seems, too! Let me tell you that it was the conduct of your ministers, +Churchill especially, that made people here so confident that your +Government could not fight. It seemed impossible that Lloyd George and +his following could have the effrontery to pose as a "war" cabinet; +still more impossible that any sane people could trust them if they did! +Perhaps you may remember a talk we had also in March about Matthew +Arnold whom I was reading again during my convalescence at Sidmouth. You +said that "Friendship's Garland" and its Arminius could not be written +now. I disputed that and told you that it was still true that your +Government talked and "gassed" just as much as ever, and were wilfully +blind to the fact that your power of action was wholly unequal to your +words. As in 1870 so now. Nay, worse, your rulers have always known it +perfectly well, but refused to see it or to admit it, because they +wanted office and knew that to say the truth would bring the radical +vote in the cities upon their poor heads. It is the old hypocrisy, in +the sense in which Germans have always accused your nation: alas! and it +is half my nation too. You pride yourselves on "Keeping your word" to +Belgium. But you pride yourselves also, not so overtly just now, on +always refusing to prepare yourselves to keep that word in _deed_. In +the first days of August you knew, absolutely and beyond all doubt, that +you could do nothing to make good your word. You had not the moral +courage to say so, and, having said so, to act accordingly and to warn +Belgium that your promise was "a scrap of paper," and effectively +nothing more. It _is_ nothing more, and has proved to be nothing more, +but you do not see that your indelible disgrace lies just in this, that +you unctuously proclaim that you are keeping your word when all the time +you know, you have always known, that you refused utterly and completely +to take the needful steps to enable you to translate word into action. +Have you not torn up your "scrap of paper" just as effectively as +Germany has? As my husband puts it: England gave Belgium a check, a big +check, and gave it with much ostentation, but took care that there +should be no funds to meet it! Trusting to your check Belgium finds +herself bankrupt, sequestrated, blotted out as a nation. But I know +England well enough to foresee that English statesmen, with our old +friend, the Manchester _Guardian_, which we used to read in years gone +by, will always quote with pride how they "guaranteed" the neutrality of +Belgium. + +As to the future. You cannot win. A nation that has prided itself on +making no sacrifice for political power or even independence must pay +for its pride. Our house here in Bremen has lately been by way of a +centre for naval men, and to a less extent, for officers of the +neighbouring commands. They are absolutely confident that they will land +ten army corps in England before Christmas. It is terrible to know what +they mean to go for. They mean to destroy. Every town which remotely is +concerned with war material is to be annihilated. Birmingham, Bradford, +Leeds, Newcastle, Sheffield, Northampton are to be wiped out, and the +men killed, ruthlessly hunted down. The fact that Lancashire and +Yorkshire have held aloof from recruiting is not to save them. The fact +that Great Britain is to be a Reichsland will involve the destruction of +inhabitants, to enable German citizens to be planted in your country in +their place. German soldiers hope that your poor creatures will resist, +as patriots should, but they doubt it very much. For resistance will +facilitate the process of clearance. Ireland will be left independent, +and its harmlessness will be guaranteed by its inevitable civil war. + +You may wonder, as I do sometimes, whether this hatred of England is not +unworthy, or a form of mental disease. But you must know that it is at +bottom not hatred but contempt; fierce, unreasoning scorn for a country +that pursues money and ease, from aristocrat to trade-unionist labourer, +when it has a great inheritance to defend. I feel bitter, too, for I +spent half my life in your country and my dearest friends are all +English still; and yet I am deeply ashamed of the hypocrisy and +make-believe that has initiated your national policy and brought you +down. Now, one thing more. England is, after all, only a stepping stone. +From Liverpool, Queenstown, Glasgow, Belfast, we shall reach out across +the ocean. I firmly believe that within a year Germany will have seized +the new Canal and proclaimed its defiance of the great Monroe Doctrine. +We have six million Germans in the United States, and the +Irish-Americans behind them. The Americans, believe me, are _as a +nation_ a cowardly nation, and will never fight organized strength +except in defense of their own territories. With the Nova Scotian +peninsula and the Bermudas, with the West Indies and the Guianas we +shall be able to dominate the Americas. By our possession of the entire +Western European seaboard America can find no outlet for its products +except by our favour. Her finance is in German hands, her commercial +capitals, New York and Chicago, are in reality German cities. It is some +years since my father and I were in New York. But my opinion is not very +different from that of the forceful men who have planned this war--that +with Britain as a base the control of the American continent is under +existing conditions the task of a couple of months. + +I remember a conversation with Doctor Dohrn, the head of the great +biological station at Naples, some four or five years ago. He was +complaining of want of adequate subventions from Berlin. "Everything is +wanted for the Navy," he said. "And what really does Germany want with +such a navy?" I asked. "She is always saying that she certainly does not +regard it as a weapon against England." At that Doctor Dohrn raised his +eyebrows. "But you, _gnaedige Frau_, are a German?" "Of course." "Well, +then, you will understand me when I say with all the seriousness I can +command that this fleet of ours is intended to deal with smugglers on +the shores of the Island of Ruegen." I laughed. He became graver still. +"The ultimate enemy of our country is America[85]; and I pray that I may +see the day of an alliance between a beaten England and a victorious +Fatherland against the bully of the Americas." Well, Germany and Austria +were never friends until Sadowa had shown the way. Oh! if your country, +which in spite of all I love so much, would but "see things clearly and +see them whole." + +Bremen, September 25, 1914. + + _To Ralph W. Page_[86] + London, Sunday, November 15, 1914. + + DEAR RALPH: + + You were very good to sit down in Greensboro', or anywhere else, + and to write me a fine letter. Do that often. You say there's + nothing to do now in the Sandhills. Write us letters: that's a fair + job! + + God save us, we need 'em. We need anything from the sane part of + the world to enable us to keep our balance. One of the commonest + things you hear about now is the insanity of a good number of the + poor fellows who come back from the trenches as well as of a good + many Belgians. The sights and sounds they've experienced unhinge + their reason. If this war keep up long enough--and it isn't going + to end soon--people who have had no sight of it will go crazy, + too--the continuous thought of it, the inability to get away from + it by any device whatever--all this tells on us all. Letters, then, + plenty of them--let 'em come. + + You are in a peaceful land. The war is a long, long way off. You + suffer nothing worse than a little idleness and a little poverty. + They are nothing. I hope (and believe) that you get enough to eat. + Be content, then. Read the poets, improve a piece of land, play + with the baby, learn golf. That's the happy and philosophic and + fortunate life in these times of world-madness. + + As for the continent of Europe--forget it. We have paid far too + much attention to it. It has ceased to be worth it. And now it's of + far less value to us--and will be for the rest of your life--than + it has ever been before. An ancient home of man, the home, too, of + beautiful things--buildings, pictures, old places, old traditions, + dead civilizations--the place where man rose from barbarism to + civilization--it is now bankrupt, its best young men dead, its + system of politics and of government a failure, its social + structure enslaving and tyrannical--it has little help for us. The + American spirit, which is the spirit that concerns itself with + making life better for the whole mass of men--that's at home at its + best with us. The whole future of the race is in the new + countries--our country chiefly. This grows on one more and more and + more. The things that are best worth while are on our side of the + ocean. And we've got all the bigger job to do because of this + violent demonstration of the failure of continental Europe. It's + gone on living on a false basis till its elements got so mixed that + it has simply blown itself to pieces. It is a great convulsion of + nature, as an earthquake or a volcano is. Human life there isn't + worth what a yellow dog's life is worth in Moore County. Don't + bother yourself with the continent of Europe any more--except to + learn the value of a real democracy and the benefits it can confer + precisely in proportion to the extent to which men trust to it. Did + you ever read my Address delivered before the Royal Institution of + Great Britain[87]? I enclose a copy. Now that's my idea of the very + milk of the word. To come down to daily, deadly things--this + upheaval is simply infernal. Parliament opened the other day and + half the old lords that sat in their robes had lost their heirs and + a larger part of the members of the House wore khaki. To-morrow + they will vote $1,125,000,000 for war purposes. They had already + voted $500,000,000. They'll vote more, and more, and more, if + necessary. They are raising a new army of 2,000,000 men. Every man + and every dollar they have will go if necessary. That's what I call + an invincible people. The Kaiser woke up the wrong passenger. But + for fifty years the continent won't be worth living on. My heavens! + what bankruptcy will follow death! + + Affectionately, + W.H.P. + + _To Frank C. Page_[88] + Sunday, December 20th, 1914. + + DEAR OLD MAN: + + I envy both you and your mother[89] your chance to make plans for + the farm and the house and all the rest of it and to have one + another to talk to. And, most of all, you are where you can now and + then change the subject. You can guess somewhat at our plight when + Kitty and I confessed to one another last night that we were dead + tired and needed to go to bed early and to stay long. She's + sleeping yet, the dear kid, and I hope she'll sleep till lunch + time. There isn't anything the matter with us but the war; but + that's enough, Heaven knows. It's the worst ailment that has ever + struck me. Then, if you add to that this dark, wet, foggy, sooty, + cold, penetrating climate--you ought to thank your stars that + you are not in it. I'm glad your mother's out of it, as much as we + miss her; and miss her? Good gracious! there's no telling the hole + her absence makes in all our life. But Kitty is a trump, true blue + and dead game, and the very best company you can find in a day's + journey. And, much as we miss your mother, you mustn't weep for us; + we are having some fun and are planning more. I could have no end + of fun with her if I had any time. But to work all day and till + bedtime doesn't leave much time for sport. + + The farm--the farm--the farm--it's yours and Mother's to plan and + make and do with as you wish. I shall be happy whatever you do, + even if you put the roof in the cellar and the cellar on top of the + house. + + If you have room enough (16 X 10 plus a fire and a bath are enough + for me), I'll go down there and write a book. If you haven't it, + I'll go somewhere else and write a book. I don't propose to be made + unhappy by any house or by the lack of any house nor by anything + whatsoever. + + All the details of life go on here just the same. The war goes as + slowly as death because it _is_ death, death to millions of men. + We've all said all we know about it to one another a thousand + times; nobody knows anything else; nobody can guess when it will + end; nobody has any doubt about how it will end, unless some + totally improbable and unexpected thing happens, such as the + falling out of the Allies, which can't happen for none of them can + afford it; and we go around the same bloody circle all the time. + The papers never have any news; nobody ever talks about anything + else; everybody is tired to death; nobody is cheerful; when it + isn't sick Belgians, it's aeroplanes; and when it isn't aeroplanes, + it's bombarding the coast of England. When it isn't an American + ship held up, it's a fool American-German arrested as a spy; and + when it isn't a spy it's a liar who _knows_ the Zeppelins are + coming to-night. We don't know anything; we don't believe anybody; + we should be surprised at nothing; and at 3 o'clock I'm going to + the Abbey to a service in honour of the 100 years of peace! The + world has all got itself so jumbled up that the bays are all + promontories, the mountains are all valleys, and earthquakes are + necessary for our happiness. We have disasters for breakfast; mined + ships for luncheon; burned cities for dinner; trenches in our + dreams, and bombarded towns for small talk. + + Peaceful seems the sandy landscape where you are, glad the very + blackjacks, happy the curs, blessed the sheep, interesting the + chin-whiskered clodhopper, innocent the fool darkey, blessed the + mule, for it knows no war. And you have your mother--be happy, boy; + you don't know how much you have to be thankful for. + + Europe is ceasing to be interesting except as an example of + how-not-to-do-it. It has no lessons for us except as a warning. + When the whole continent has to go fighting--every blessed one of + them--once a century, and half of them half the time between and + all prepared even when they are not fighting, and when they shoot + away all their money as soon as they begin to get rich a little and + everybody else's money, too, and make the whole world poor, and + when they kill every third or fourth generation of the best men and + leave the worst to rear families, and have to start over afresh + every time with a worse stock--give me Uncle Sam and his big farm. + We don't need to catch any of this European life. We can do without + it all as well as we can do without the judges' wigs and the court + costumes. Besides, I like a land where the potatoes have some + flavour, where you can buy a cigar, and get your hair cut and have + warm bathrooms. + + Build the farm, therefore; and let me hear at every stage of that + happy game. May the New Year be the best that has ever come for + you! + + Affectionately, + + W.H.P. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 68: Evidently the battle of Heligoland Bight of August 28, +1914.] + +[Footnote 69: The reference in all probability is to Mr. Charles L. +Hoover, at that time American Consul at Carlsbad.] + +[Footnote 70: German Ambassador in Washington.] + +[Footnote 71: Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, whose +openly expressed pro-Germanism was making him exceedingly unpopular in +the United States.] + +[Footnote 72: Evidently written in the latter part of September, 1914.] + +[Footnote 73: Miss Katharine A. Page, the Ambassador's daughter.] + +[Footnote 74: The _Hague_, the _Cressy_, and the _Aboukir_ were +torpedoed by a German submarine September 22, 1914. This exploit first +showed the world the power of the submarine.] + +[Footnote 75: Princess Lichnowsky, wife of the German Ambassador to +Great Britain.] + +[Footnote 76: Private Secretary to Mrs. Page.] + +[Footnote 77: Mr. Harold Fowler, the Ambassador's Secretary.] + +[Footnote 78: Probably a reference to Mr. Charles M. Schwab, President +of the Bethlehem Steel Company, who was in London at this time on this +errand.] + +[Footnote 79: No. 4 Grosvenor Gardens.] + +[Footnote 80: Miss Katharine A. Page had just returned from a visit to +the United States.] + +[Footnote 81: Mr. Arthur W. Page's country home on Long Island.] + +[Footnote 82: Evidently the _Audacious_, sunk by mine off the North of +Ireland, October 27, 1914.] + +[Footnote 83: Tewfik Pasha, the very popular Turkish Ambassador to Great +Britain.] + +[Footnote 84: Germany was conducting her trade with the neutral world +largely through Dutch and Danish ports.] + +[Footnote 85: Mr. Irwin Laughlin, first secretary of the American +Embassy in London, furnishes this note: "This statement about America +was made to me more than once in Germany, between 1910 and 1912, by +German officers, military and naval."] + +[Footnote 86: Of Pinehurst, North Carolina, the Ambassador's oldest +son.] + +[Footnote 87: On June 12, 1914. The title of the address was "Some +Aspects of the American Democracy."] + +[Footnote 88: The Ambassador's youngest son.] + +[Footnote 89: Mrs. W.H. Page was at this time spending a few weeks in +the United States.] + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +"WAGING NEUTRALITY" + +I + + +The foregoing letters sufficiently portray Page's attitude toward the +war; they also show the extent to which he suffered from the daily +tragedy. The great burdens placed upon the Embassy in themselves would +have exhausted a physical frame that had never been particularly robust; +but more disintegrating than these was the mental distress--the constant +spectacle of a civilization apparently bent upon its own destruction. +Indeed there were probably few men in Europe upon whom the war had a +more depressing effect. In the first few weeks the Ambassador +perceptibly grew older; his face became more deeply lined, his hair +became grayer, his body thinner, his step lost something of its +quickness, his shoulders began to stoop, and his manner became more and +more abstracted. Page's kindness, geniality, and consideration had long +since endeared him to all the embassy staff, from his chief secretaries +to clerks and doormen; and all his associates now watched with +affectionate solicitude the extent to which the war was wearing upon +him. "In those first weeks," says Mr. Irwin Laughlin, Page's most +important assistant and the man upon whom the routine work of the +Embassy largely fell, "he acted like a man who was carrying on his +shoulders all the sins and burdens of the world. I know no man who +seemed to realize so poignantly the misery and sorrow of it all. The +sight of an England which he loved bleeding to death in defence of the +things in which he most believed was a grief that seemed to be sapping +his very life." + +Page's associates, however, noted a change for the better after the +Battle of the Marne. Except to his most intimate companions he said +little, for he represented a nation that was "neutral"; but the defeat +of the Germans added liveliness to his step, gave a keener sparkle to +his eye, and even brought back some of his old familiar gaiety of +spirit. One day the Ambassador was lunching with Mr. Laughlin and one or +two other friends. + +"We did pretty well in that Battle of the Marne, didn't we?" he said. + +"Isn't that remark slightly unneutral, Mr. Ambassador?" asked Mr. +Laughlin. + +At this a roar of laughter went up from the table that could be heard +for a considerable distance. + +About this same time Page's personal secretary, Mr. Harold Fowler, came +to ask the Ambassador's advice about enlisting in the British Army. To +advise a young man to take a step that might very likely result in his +death was a heavy responsibility, and the Ambassador refused to accept +it. It was a matter that the Secretary could settle only with his own +conscience. Mr. Fowler decided his problem by joining the British Army; +he had a distinguished career in its artillery and aviation service as +he had subsequently in the American Army. Mr. Fowler at once discovered +that his decision had been highly pleasing to his superior. + +"I couldn't advise you to do this, Harold," Page said, placing his hand +on the young man's shoulder, "but now that you've settled it yourself +I'll say this--if I were a young man like you and in your circumstances, +I should enlist myself." + +Yet greatly as Page abhorred the Prussians and greatly as his +sympathies from the first day of the war were enlisted on the side of +the Allies, there was no diplomat in the American service who was more +"neutral" in the technical sense. "Neutral!" Page once exclaimed. +"There's nothing in the world so neutral as this embassy. Neutrality +takes up all our time." When he made this remark he was, as he himself +used to say, "the German Ambassador to Great Britain." And he was +performing the duties of this post with the most conscientious fidelity. +These duties were onerous and disagreeable ones and were made still more +so by the unreasonableness of the German Government. Though the American +Embassy was caring for the more than 70,000 Germans who were then living +in England and was performing numerous other duties, the Imperial +Government never realized that Page and the Embassy staff were doing it +a service. With characteristic German tactlessness the German Foreign +Office attempted to be as dictatorial to Page as though he had been one +of its own junior secretaries. The business of the German Embassy in +London was conducted with great ability; the office work was kept in the +most shipshape condition; yet the methods were American methods and the +Germans seemed aggrieved because the routine of the Imperial bureaucracy +was not observed. With unparalleled insolence they objected to the +American system of accounting--not that it was unsound or did not give +an accurate picture of affairs--but simply that it was not German. Page +quietly but energetically informed the German Government that the +American diplomatic service was not a part of the German organization, +that its bookkeeping system was American, not German, that he was doing +this work not as an obligation but as a favour, and that, so long as he +continued to do it, he would perform the duty in his own way. At this +the Imperial Government subsided. Despite such annoyances Page refused +to let his own feelings interfere with the work. The mere fact that he +despised the Germans made him over-scrupulous in taking all precautions +that they obtained exact justice. But this was all that the German cause +in Great Britain did receive. His administration of the German Embassy +was faultless in its technique, but it did not err on the side of +over-enthusiasm. + +His behaviour throughout the three succeeding years was entirely +consistent with his conception of "neutrality." That conception, as is +apparent from the letters already printed, was not the Wilsonian +conception. Probably no American diplomat was more aggrieved at the +President's definition of neutrality than his Ambassador to Great +Britain. Page had no quarrel with the original neutrality proclamation; +that was purely a routine governmental affair, and at the time it was +issued it represented the proper American attitude. But the President's +famous emendations filled him with astonishment and dismay. "We must be +impartial in thought as well as in action," said the President on August +19th[90], "we must put a curb upon our sentiments as well as upon every +transaction that might be construed as a prejudice of one party to the +prejudice of another." Page was prepared to observe all the traditional +rules of neutrality, to insist on American rights with the British +Government, and to do full legal justice to the Germans, but he declined +to abrogate his conscience where his personal judgment of the rights and +wrongs of the conflict were concerned. "Neutrality," he said in a letter +to his brother, Mr. Henry A. Page, of Aberdeen, N.C., "is a quality of +government--an artificial unit. When a war comes a government must go in +it or stay out of it. It must make a declaration to the world of its +attitude. That's all that neutrality is. A government can be neutral, +but no _man_ can be." + +"The President and the Government," Page afterward wrote, "in their +insistence upon the moral quality of neutrality, missed the larger +meaning of the war. It is at bottom nothing but the effort of the Berlin +absolute monarch and his group to impose their will on as large a part +of the world as they can overrun. The President started out with the +idea that it was a war brought on by many obscure causes--economic and +the like; and he thus missed its whole meaning. We have ever since been +dealing with the chips which fly from the war machine and have missed +the larger meaning of the conflict. Thus we have failed to render help +to the side of Liberalism and Democracy, which are at stake in the +world." + +Nor did Page think it his duty, in his private communications to his +Government and his friends, to maintain that attitude of moral +detachment which Mr. Wilson's pronouncement had evidently enjoined upon +him. It was not his business to announce his opinions to the world, for +he was not the man who determined the policy of the United States; that +was the responsibility of the President and his advisers. But an +ambassador did have a certain role to perform. It was his duty to +collect information and impressions, to discover what important people +thought of the United States and of its policies, and to send forward +all such data to Washington. According to Page's theory of the +Ambassadorial office, he was a kind of listening post on the front of +diplomacy, and he would have grievously failed had he not done his best +to keep headquarters informed. He did not regard it as "loyalty" merely +to forward only that kind of material which Washington apparently +preferred to obtain; with a frankness which Mr. Wilson's friends +regarded as almost ruthless, Page reported what he believed to be the +truth. That this practice was displeasing to the powers of Washington +there is abundant evidence. In early December, 1914, Colonel House was +compelled to transmit a warning to the American Ambassador at London. +"The President wished me to ask you to please be more careful not to +express any unneutral feeling, either by word of mouth, or by letter and +not even to the State Department. He said that both Mr. Bryan and Mr. +Lansing had remarked upon your leaning in that direction and he thought +that it would materially lessen your influence. He feels very strongly +about this." + +Evidently Page did not regard his frank descriptions of England under +war as expressing unneutral feeling; at any rate, as the war went on, +his letters, even those which he wrote to President Wilson, became more +and more outspoken. Page's resignation was always at the President's +disposal; the time came, as will appear, when it was offered; so long as +he occupied his post, however, nothing could turn him from his +determination to make what he regarded as an accurate record of events. +This policy of maintaining an outward impartiality, and, at the same +time, of bringing pressure to bear on Washington in behalf of the +Allies, he called "waging neutrality." + +Such was the mood in which Page now prepared to play his part in what +was probably the greatest diplomatic drama in history. The materials +with which this drama concerned itself were such apparently lifeless +subjects as ships and cargoes, learned discourses on such abstract +matters as the doctrine of continuous voyage, effective blockade, and +conditional contraband; yet the struggle, which lasted for three years, +involved the greatest issue of modern times--nothing less than the +survival of those conceptions of liberty, government, and society which +make the basis of English-speaking civilization. To the newspaper reader +of war days, shipping difficulties signified little more than a +newspaper headline which he hastily read, or a long and involved +lawyer's note which he seldom read at all--or, if he did, practically +never understood. Yet these minute and neglected controversies presented +to the American Nation the greatest decision in its history. Once +before, a century ago, a European struggle had laid before the United +States practically the same problem. Great Britain fought Napoleon, just +as it had now been compelled to fight the Hohenzollern, by blockade; +such warfare, in the early nineteenth century, led to retaliations, just +as did the maritime warfare in the recent conflict, and the United +States suffered, in 1812, as in 1914, from what were regarded as the +depredations of both sides. In Napoleon's days France and Great Britain, +according to the international lawyers, attacked American commerce in +illegal ways; on strictly technical grounds this infant nation had an +adequate cause of war against both belligerents; but the ultimate +consequence of a very confused situation was a declaration of war +against Great Britain. Though an England which was ruled by a George III +or a Prince Regent--an England of rotten boroughs, of an ignorant and +oppressed peasantry, and of a social organization in which caste was +almost as definitely drawn as in an Oriental despotism--could hardly +appeal to the enthusiastic democrat as embodying all the ideals of his +system, yet the England of 1800 did represent modern progress when +compared with the mediaeval autocracy of Napoleon. If we take this broad +view, therefore, we must admit that, in 1812, we fought on the side of +darkness and injustice against the forces that were making for +enlightenment. The war of 1914 had not gone far when the thinking +American foresaw that it would present to the American people precisely +this same problem. What would the decision be? Would America repeat the +experience of 1812, or had the teachings of a century so dissipated +hatreds that it would be able to exert its influence in a way more +worthy of itself and more helpful to the progress of mankind? + +There was one great difference, however, between the position of the +United States in 1812 and its position in 1914. A century ago we were a +small and feeble nation, of undeveloped industries and resources and of +immature character; our entrance into the European conflict, on one side +or the other, could have little influence upon its results, and, in +fact, it influenced it scarcely at all; the side we fought against +emerged triumphant. In 1914, we had the greatest industrial organization +and the greatest wealth of any nation and the largest white population +of any country except Russia; the energy of our people and our national +talent for success had long been the marvel of foreign observers. It +mattered little in 1812 on which side the United States took its stand; +in 1914 such a decision Mould inevitably determine the issue. Of all +European statesmen there was one man who saw this point with a +definiteness which, in itself, gives him a clear title to fame. That was +Sir Edward Grey. The time came when a section of the British public was +prepared almost to stone the Foreign Secretary in the streets of London, +because they believed that his "subservience" to American trade +interests was losing the war for Great Britain; his tenure of office was +a constant struggle with British naval and military chiefs who asserted +that the Foreign Office, in its efforts to maintain harmonious relations +with America, was hamstringing the British fleet, was rendering almost +impotent its control of the sea, and was thus throwing away the greatest +advantage which Great Britain possessed in its life and death struggle. +"Some blight has been at work in our Foreign Office for years," said the +_Quarterly Review_, "steadily undermining our mastery of the sea." + +"The fleet is not allowed to act," cried Lord Charles Beresford in +Parliament; the Foreign Office was constantly interfering with its +operations. The word "traitor" was not infrequently heard; there were +hints that pro-Germanism was rampant and that officials in the Foreign +Office were drawing their pay from the Kaiser. It was constantly charged +that the navy was bringing in suspicious cargoes only to have the +Foreign Office order their release. "I fight Sir Edward about stopping +cargoes," Page wrote to Colonel House in December, 1914; "literally +fight. He yields and promises this or that. This or that doesn't happen +or only half happens. I know why. The military ministers balk him. I +inquire through the back door and hear that the Admiralty and the War +Office of course value American good-will, but they'll take their +chances of a quarrel with the United States rather than let copper get +to Germany. The cabinet has violent disagreements. But the military men +yield as little as possible. It was rumoured the other day that the +Prime Minister threatened to resign; and I know that Kitchener's sister +told her friends, with tears in her eyes, that the cabinet shamefully +hindered her brother." + +These criticisms unquestionably caused Sir Edward great unhappiness, but +this did not for a moment move him from his course. His vision was +fixed upon a much greater purpose. Parliamentary orators might rage +because the British fleet was not permitted to make indiscriminate +warfare on commerce, but the patient and far-seeing British Foreign +Secretary was the man who was really trying to win the war. He was one +of the few Englishmen who, in August, 1914, perceived the tremendous +extent of the struggle in which Great Britain had engaged. He saw that +the English people were facing the greatest crisis since William of +Normandy, in 1066, subjected their island to foreign rule. Was England +to become the "Reichsland" of a European monarch, and was the British +Empire to pass under the sway of Germany? Proud as Sir Edward Grey was +of his country, he was modest in the presence of facts; and one fact of +which he early became convinced was that Great Britain could not win +unless the United States was ranged upon its side. Here was the +country--so Sir Edward reasoned--that contained the largest effective +white population in the world; that could train armies larger than those +of any other nation; that could make the most munitions, build the +largest number of battleships and merchant vessels, and raise food in +quantities great enough to feed itself and Europe besides. This power, +the Foreign Secretary believed, could determine the issue of the war. If +Great Britain secured American sympathy and support, she would win; if +Great Britain lost this sympathy and support, she would lose. A foreign +policy that would estrange the United States and perhaps even throw its +support to Germany would not only lose the war to Great Britain, but it +would be perhaps the blackest crime in history, for it would mean the +collapse of that British-American cooeperation, and the destruction of +those British-American ideals and institutions which are the greatest +facts in the modern world. This conviction was the basis of Sir Edward's +policy from the day that Great Britain declared war. Whatever enemies he +might make in England, the Foreign Secretary was determined to shape his +course so that the support of the United States would be assured to his +country. A single illustration shows the skill and wisdom with which he +pursued this great purpose. + +Perhaps nothing in the early days of the war enraged the British +military chiefs more than the fact that cotton was permitted to go from +the United States to Germany. That Germany was using this cotton in the +manufacture of torpedoes to sink British ships and of projectiles to +kill British soldiers in trenches was well known; nor did many people +deny that Great Britain had the right to put cotton on the contraband +list. Yet Grey, in the pursuit of his larger end, refused to take this +step. He knew that the prosperity of the Southern States depended +exclusively upon the cotton crop. He also knew that the South had raised +the 1914 crop with no knowledge that a war was impending and that to +deny the Southern planters their usual access to the German markets +would all but ruin them. He believed that such a ruling would +immediately alienate the sympathy of a large section of the United +States and make our Southern Senators and Congressmen enemies of Great +Britain. Sir Edward was also completely informed of the extent to which +the German-Americans and the Irish-Americans were active and he was +familiar with the aims of American pacifists. He believed that declaring +cotton contraband at this time would bring together in Congress the +Southern Senators and Congressmen, the representatives of the Irish and +the German causes and the pacifists, and that this combination would +exercise an influence that would be disastrous to Great Britain. Two +dangers constantly haunted Sir Edward's mind at this time. One was that +the enemies of Great Britain would assemble enough votes in Congress to +place an embargo upon the shipment of munitions from this country. Such +an embargo might well be fatal to Great Britain, for at this time she +was importing munitions, especially shells, in enormous quantities from +the United States. The other was that such pressure might force the +Government to convoy American cargoes with American warships. Great +Britain then could stop the cargoes only by attacking our cruisers, and +to attack a cruiser is an act of war. Had Congress taken either one of +these steps the Allies would have lost the war in the spring of 1915. At +a cabinet meeting held to consider this question, Sir Edward Grey set +forth this view and strongly advised that cotton should not be made +contraband at that time[91]. The Cabinet supported him and events +justified the decision. Afterward, in Washington, several of the most +influential Senators informed Sir Edward that this action had averted a +great crisis. + +This was the motive, which, as will appear as the story of our relations +with Great Britain progresses, inspired the Foreign Secretary in all his +dealings with the United States. His purpose was to use the sea power of +Great Britain to keep war materials and foodstuffs out of Germany, but +never to go to the length of making an unbridgeable gulf between the +United States and Great Britain. The American Ambassador to Great +Britain completely sympathized with this programme. It was Page's +business to protect the rights of the United States, just as it was +Grey's to protect the rights of Great Britain. Both were vigilant in +protecting such rights, and animated differences between the two men on +this point were not infrequent. Great Britain did many absurd and +high-handed things in intercepting American cargoes, and Page was always +active in "protesting" when the basis for the protest actually existed. +But on the great overhanging issue the two men were at one. Like Grey, +Page believed that there were more important things involved than an +occasional cargo of copper or of oil cake. The American Ambassador +thought that the United States should protect its shipping interests, +but that it should realize that maritime law was not an exact science, +that its principles had been modified by every great conflict in which +the blockade had been an effective agency, and that the United States +itself, in the Civil War, had not hesitated to make such changes as the +changed methods of modern transportation had required. In other words he +believed that we could safeguard our rights in a way that would not +prevent Great Britain from keeping war materials and foodstuffs out of +Germany. And like Sir Edward Grey, Page was obliged to contend with +forces at home which maintained a contrary view. In this early period +Mr. Bryan was nominally Secretary of State, but the man who directed the +national policy in shipping matters was Robert Lansing, then counsellor +of the Department. It is somewhat difficult to appraise Mr. Lansing +justly, for in his conduct of his office there was not the slightest +taint of malice. His methods were tactless, the phrasing of his notes +lacked deftness and courtesy, his literary style was crude and +irritating; but Mr. Lansing was not anti-British, he was not pro-German; +he was nothing more nor less than a lawyer. The protection of American +rights at sea was to him simply a "case" in which he had been retained +as counsel for the plaintiff. As a good lawyer it was his business to +score as many points as possible for his client and the more weak joints +he found in the enemy's armour the better did he do his job. It was his +duty to scan the law books, to look up the precedents, to examine facts, +and to prepare briefs that would be unassailable from a technical +standpoint. To Mr. Lansing this European conflict was the opportunity of +a lifetime. He had spent thirty years studying the intricate problems +that now became his daily companions. His mind revelled in such minute +details as ultimate destination, the continuous voyage as applied to +conditional contraband, the searching of cargoes upon the high seas, +belligerent trading through neutral ports, war zones, orders in council, +and all the other jargon of maritime rights in time of war. These topics +engrossed him as completely as the extension of democracy and the +significance of British-American cooeperation engrossed all the thoughts +of Page and Grey. + +That Page took this larger view is evident from the communications which +he now began sending to the President. One that he wrote on October 15, +1915, is especially to the point. The date is extremely important; so +early had Page formulated the standards that should guide the United +States and so early had he begun his work of attempting to make +President Wilson understand the real nature of the conflict. The +position which Page now assumed was one from which he never departed. + + _To the President_ + + In this great argument about shipping I cannot help being alarmed + because we are getting into deep water uselessly. The Foreign + Office has yielded unquestioningly to all our requests and has + shown the sincerest wish to meet all our suggestions, so long as + it is not called upon to admit war materials into Germany. It will + not give way to us in that. We would not yield it if we were in + their place. Neither would the Germans. England will risk a serious + quarrel or even hostilities with us rather than yield. You may look + upon this as the final word. + + Since the last lists of contraband and conditional contraband were + published, such materials as rubber and copper and petroleum have + developed entirely new uses in war. The British simply will not let + Germany import them. Nothing that can be used for war purposes in + Germany now will be used for anything else. Representatives of + Spain, Holland, and all the Scandinavian states agree that they can + do nothing but acquiesce and file protests and claims, and they + admit that Great Britain has the right to revise the list of + contraband. This is not a war in the sense in which we have + hitherto used that word. It is a world-clash of systems of + government, a struggle to the extermination of English civilization + or of Prussian military autocracy. Precedents have gone to the + scrap heap. We have a new measure for military and diplomatic + action. Let us suppose that we press for a few rights to which the + shippers have a theoretical claim. The American people gain nothing + and the result is friction with this country; and that is what a + very small minority of the agitators in the United States would + like. Great Britain can any day close the Channel to all shipping + or can drive Holland to the enemy and blockade her ports. + + Let us take a little farther view into the future. If Germany win, + will it make any difference what position Great Britain took on the + Declaration of London? The Monroe Doctrine will be shot through. We + shall have to have a great army and a great navy. But suppose that + England win. We shall then have an ugly academic dispute with her + because of this controversy. Moreover, we shall not hold a good + position for helping to compose the quarrel or for any other + service. + + The present controversy seems here, where we are close to the + struggle, academic. It seems to us a petty matter when it is + compared with the grave danger we incur of shutting ourselves off + from a position to be of some service to civilization and to the + peace of mankind. + + In Washington you seem to be indulging in a more or less + theoretical discussion. As we see the issue here, it is a matter of + life and death for English-speaking civilization. It is not a happy + time to raise controversies that can be avoided or postponed. We + gain nothing, we lose every chance for useful cooeperation for + peace. In jeopardy also are our friendly relations with Great + Britain in the sorest need and the greatest crisis in her history. + I know that this is the correct view. I recommend most earnestly + that we shall substantially accept the new Order in Council or + acquiesce in it and reserve whatever rights we may have. I + recommend prompt information be sent to the British Government of + such action. I should like to inform Grey that this is our + decision. + + So far as our neutrality obligations are concerned, I do not + believe that they require us to demand that Great Britain should + adopt for our benefit the Declaration of London. Great Britain has + never ratified it, nor have any other nations except the United + States. In its application to the situation presented by this war + it is altogether to the advantage of Germany. + + I have delayed to write you this way too long. I have feared that I + might possibly seem to be influenced by sympathy with England and + by the atmosphere here. But I write of course solely with reference + to our own country's interest and its position after the + reorganization of Europe. + + Anderson[92] and Laughlin[93] agree with me emphatically. + + WALTER H. PAGE. + + +II + +The immediate cause of this protest was, as its context shows, the fact +that the State Department was insisting that Great Britain should adopt +the Declaration of London as a code of law for regulating its warfare on +German shipping. Hostilities had hardly started when Mr. Bryan made this +proposal; his telegram on this subject is dated August 7, 1914. "You +will further state," said Mr. Bryan, "that this Government believes that +the acceptance of these laws by the belligerents would prevent grave +misunderstandings which may arise as to the relations between +belligerents and neutrals. It therefore hopes that this inquiry may +receive favourable consideration." At the same time Germany and the +other belligerents were asked to adopt this Declaration. + +The communication was thus more than a suggestion; it was a +recommendation that was strongly urged. According to Page this telegram +was the first great mistake the American Government made in its +relations with Great Britain. In September, 1916, the Ambassador +submitted to President Wilson a memorandum which he called "Rough notes +toward an explanation of the British feeling toward the United States." +"Of recent years," he said, "and particularly during the first year of +the present Administration, the British feeling toward the United States +was most friendly and cordial. About the time of the repeal of the +tolls clause in the Panama Act, the admiration and friendliness of the +whole British public (governmental and private) reached the highest +point in our history. In considering the change that has taken place +since, it is well to bear this cordiality in mind as a starting point. +When the war came on there was at first nothing to change this attitude. +The hysterical hope of many persons that our Government might protest +against the German invasion of Belgium caused some feeling of +disappointment, but thinking men did not share it; and, if this had been +the sole cause of criticism of us, the criticism would have died out. +The unusually high regard in which the President--and hence our +Government--was then held was to a degree new. The British had for many +years held the people of the United States in high esteem: they had not, +as a rule, so favourably regarded the Government at Washington, +especially in its conduct of foreign relations. They had long regarded +our Government as ignorant of European affairs and amateurish in its +cockiness. When I first got to London I found evidence of this feeling, +even in the most friendly atmosphere that surrounded us. Mr. Bryan was +looked on as a joke. They forgot him--rather, they never took serious +notice of him. But, when the Panama tolls incident was closed, they +regarded the President as his own Foreign Secretary; and thus our +Government as well as our Nation came into this high measure of esteem. + +"The war began. We, of course, took a neutral attitude, wholly to their +satisfaction. But we at once interfered--or tried to interfere--by +insisting on the Declaration of London, which no Great Power but the +United States (I think) had ratified and which the British House of +Lords had distinctly rejected. That Declaration would probably have +given a victory to Germany if the Allies had adopted it. In spite of +our neutrality we insisted vigorously on its adoption and aroused a +distrust in our judgment. Thus we started in wrong, so far as the +British Government is concerned." + +The rules of maritime warfare which the American State Department so +disastrously insisted upon were the direct outcome of the Hague +Conference of 1907. That assembly of the nations recognized, what had +long been a palpable fact, that the utmost confusion existed in the +operations of warring powers upon the high seas. About the fundamental +principle that a belligerent had the right, if it had the power, to keep +certain materials of commerce from reaching its enemy, there was no +dispute. But as to the particular articles which it could legally +exclude there were as many different ideas as there were nations. That +the blockade, a term which means the complete exclusion of cargoes and +ships from an enemy's ports, was a legitimate means of warfare, was also +an accepted fact, but as to the precise means in which the blockade +could be enforced there was the widest difference of opinion. The Hague +Conference provided that an attempt should be made to codify these laws +into a fixed system, and the representatives of the nations met in +London in 1908, under the presidency of the Earl of Desart, for this +purpose. The outcome of their two months' deliberations was that +document of seven chapters and seventy articles which has ever since +been known as the Declaration of London. Here at last was the thing for +which the world had been waiting so long--a complete system of maritime +law for the regulation of belligerents and the protection of neutrals, +which would be definitely binding upon all nations because all nations +were expected to ratify it. + +But the work of all these learned gentlemen was thrown away. The United +States was the only party to the negotiations that put the stamp of +approval upon its labours. All other nations declined to commit +themselves. In Great Britain the Declaration had an especially +interesting course. In that country it became a football of party +politics. The Liberal Government was at first inclined to look upon it +favourably; the Liberal House of Commons actually ratified it. It soon +became apparent, however, that this vote did not represent the opinion +of the British public. In fact, few measures have ever aroused such +hostility as this Declaration, once its details became known. For more +than a year the hubbub against it filled the daily press, the magazines, +the two Houses of Parliament and the hustings; Rudyard Kipling even +wrote a poem denouncing it. The adoption of the Declaration, these +critics asserted, would destroy the usefulness of the British fleet. In +many quarters it was denounced as a German plot--as merely a part of the +preparations which Germany was making for world conquest. The fact is +that the Declaration could not successfully stand the analysis to which +it was now mercilessly submitted; the House of Lords rejected it, and +this action met with more approbation than had for years been accorded +the legislative pronouncements of that chamber. The Liberal House of +Commons was not in the least dissatisfied with this conclusion, for it +realized that it had made a mistake and it was only too happy to be +permitted to forget it. + +When the war broke out there was therefore no single aspect of maritime +law which was quite so odious as the Declaration of London. Great +Britain realized that she could never win unless her fleet were +permitted to keep contraband out of Germany and, if necessary, +completely to blockade that country. The two greatest conflicts of the +nineteenth century were the European struggle with Napoleon and the +American Civil War. In both the blockade had been the decisive element, +and that this great agency would similarly determine events in this even +greater struggle was apparent. What enraged the British public against +any suggestion of the Declaration was that it practically deprived Great +Britain of this indispensable means of weakening the enemy. In this +Declaration were drawn up lists of contraband, non-contraband, and +conditional contraband, and all of these, in English eyes, worked to the +advantage of Germany and against the advantage of Great Britain. How +absurd this classification was is evident from the fact that airplanes +were not listed as absolute contraband of war. Germany's difficulty in +getting copper was one of the causes of her collapse; yet the +Declaration put copper for ever on the non-contraband list; had this new +code been adopted, Germany could have imported enormous quantities from +this country, instead of being compelled to reinforce her scanty supply +by robbing housewives of their kitchen utensils, buildings of their +hardware, and church steeples of their bells. Germany's constant +scramble for rubber formed a diverting episode in the struggle; there +are indeed few things so indispensable in modern warfare; yet the +Declaration included rubber among the innocent articles and thus opened +up to Germany the world's supply. But the most serious matter was that +the Declaration would have prevented Great Britain from keeping +foodstuffs out of the Fatherland. + +When Mr. Bryan, therefore, blandly asked Great Britain to accept the +Declaration as its code of maritime warfare, he was asking that country +to accept a document which Great Britain, in peace time, had repudiated +and which would, in all probability, have caused that country to lose +the war. The substance of this request was bad enough, but the language +in which it was phrased made matters much worse. It appears that only +the intervention of Colonel House prevented the whole thing from +becoming a tragedy. + + _From Edward M. House_ + 115 East 53rd Street, + New York City. + October 3, 1914. + + HIS EXCELLENCY, + + The American Ambassador, London, England. + + DEAR PAGE: + + . . . I have just returned from Washington where I was with the + President for nearly four days. He is looking well and is well. + Sometimes his spirits droop, but then, again, he is his normal + self. + + I had the good fortune to be there at a time when the discussion of + the Declaration of London had reached a critical stage. Bryan was + away and Lansing, who had not mentioned the matter to Sir + Cecil[94], prepared a long communication to you which he sent to + the President for approval. The President and I went over it and I + strongly urged not sending it until I could have a conference with + Sir Cecil. I had this conference the next day without the knowledge + of any one excepting the President, and had another the day + following. Sir Cecil told me that if the dispatch had gone to you + as written and you had shown it to Sir Edward Grey, it would almost + have been a declaration of war; and that if, by any chance, the + newspapers had got hold of it as they so often get things from our + State Department, the greatest panic would have prevailed. He said + it would have been the Venezuela incident magnified by present + conditions. + + At the President's suggestion, Lansing then prepared a cablegram + to you. This, too, was objectionable and the President and I + together softened it down into the one you received. + + Faithfully yours, + E.M. HOUSE. + +In justice to Mr. Lansing, a passage in a later letter of Colonel House +must be quoted: "It seems that Lansing did not write the particular +dispatch to you that was objected to. Someone else prepared it and +Lansing rather too hastily submitted it to the President, with the +result you know." + +This suppressed communication is probably for ever lost, but its tenor +may perhaps be gathered from instructions which were actually sent to +the Ambassador about this time. After eighteen typewritten pages of not +too urbanely expressed discussion of the Declaration of London and the +general subject of contraband, Page was instructed to call the British +Government's attention to the consequences which followed shipping +troubles in previous times. It is hard to construe this in any other way +than as a threat to Great Britain of a repetition of 1812: + + _Confidential_. You will not fail to impress upon His + Excellency[95] the gravity of the issues which the enforcement of + the Order in Council seems to presage, and say to him in substance + as follows: + + It is a matter of grave concern to this Government that the + particular conditions of this unfortunate war should be considered + by His Britannic Majesty's Government to be such as to justify them + in advancing doctrines and advocating practices which in the past + aroused strong opposition on the part of the Government of the + United States, and bitter feeling among the American people. This + Government feels bound to express the fear, though it does so + reluctantly, that the publicity, which must be given to the rules + which His Majesty's Government announce that they intend to + enforce, will awaken memories of controversies, which it is the + earnest desire of the United States to forget or to pass over in + silence. . . . + +Germany, of course, promptly accepted the Declaration, for the +suggestion fitted in perfectly with her programme; but Great Britain was +not so acquiescent. Four times was Page instructed to ask the British +Government to accede unconditionally, and four times did the Foreign +Office refuse. Page was in despair. In the following letter he notified +Colonel House that if he were instructed again to move in this matter he +would resign his ambassadorship. + + _To Edward M. House_ + American Embassy, London, + October 22, 1914. + + DEAR HOUSE: + + This is about the United States and England. Lets get that settled + before we try our hands at making peace in Europe. + + One of our greatest assets is the friendship of Great Britain, and + our friendship is a still bigger asset for her, and she knows it + and values it. Now, if either country should be damfool enough to + throw this away because old Stone[96] roars in the Senate about + something that hasn't happened, then this crazy world would be + completely mad all round, and there would be no good-will left on + earth at all. + + The case is plain enough to me. England is going to keep + war-materials out of Germany as far as she can. We'd do it in her + place. Germany would do it. Any nation would do it. That's all she + has declared her intention of doing. And, if she be let alone, + she'll do it in a way to give us the very least annoyance possible; + for she'll go any length to keep our friendship and good will. And + _she has not confiscated a single one of our cargoes even of + unconditional contraband_. She has stopped some of them and bought + them herself, but confiscated not one. All right; what do we do? We + set out on a comprehensive plan to regulate the naval warfare of + the world and we up and ask 'em all, "Now, boys, all be good, damn + you, and agree to the Declaration of London." + + "Yah," says Germany, "if England will." + + Now Germany isn't engaged in naval warfare to count, and she never + even paid the slightest attention to the Declaration all these + years. But she saw that it would hinder England and help her now, + by forbidding England to stop certain very important war materials + from reaching Germany. "Yah," said Germany. But England said that + her Parliament had rejected the Declaration in times of peace and + that she could now hardly be expected to adopt it in the face of + this Parliamentary rejection. But, to please us, she agreed to + adopt it with only two changes. + + Then Lansing to the bat: + + "No, no," says Lansing, "you've got to adopt it all." + + Four times he's made me ask for its adoption, the last time coupled + with a proposition that if England would adopt it, she might issue + a subsequent proclamation saying that, since the Declaration is + contradictory, she will construe it her own way, and the United + States will raise no objection! + + Then he sends eighteen pages of fine-spun legal arguments (not all + sound by any means) against the sections of the English + proclamations that have been put forth, giving them a strained and + unfriendly interpretation. + + In a word, England has acted in a friendly way to us and will so + act, if we allow her. But Lansing, instead of trusting to her good + faith and reserving all our rights under international law and + usage, imagines that he can force her to agree to a code that the + Germans now agree to because, in Germany's present predicament, it + will be especially advantageous to Germany. Instead of trusting + her, he assumes that she means to do wrong and proceeds to try to + bind her in advance. He hauls her up and tries her in court--that's + his tone. + + Now the relations that I have established with Sir Edward Grey have + been built up on frankness, fairness and friendship. I can't have + relations of any other sort nor can England and the United States + have relations of any other sort. This is the place we've got to + now. Lansing seems to assume that the way to an amicable agreement + is through an angry controversy. + + Lansing's method is the trouble. He treats Great Britain, to start + with, as if she were a criminal and an opponent. That's the best + way I know to cause trouble to American shipping and to bring back + the good old days of mutual hatred and distrust for a generation or + two. If that isn't playing into the hands of the Germans, what + would be? And where's the "neutrality" of this kind of action? + + See here: If we let England go on, we can throw the whole + responsibility on her and reserve all our rights under + international law and usage and claim damages (and get 'em) for + every act of injury, if acts of injury occur; and we can keep her + friendship and good-will. Every other neutral nation is doing that. + Or we can insist on regulating all naval warfare and have a quarrel + and refer it to a Bryan-Peace-Treaty Commission and claim at most + the selfsame damages with a less chance to get 'em. We can get + damages without a quarrel; or we can have a quarrel and probably + get damages. Now, why, in God's name, should we provoke a quarrel? + + The curse of the world is little men who for an imagined small + temporary advantage throw away the long growth of good-will + nurtured by wise and patient men and who cannot see the lasting and + far greater future evil they do. Of all the years since 1776 this + great war-year is the worst to break the 100 years of our peace, or + even to ruffle it. I pray you, good friend, get us out of these + incompetent lawyer-hands. + + Now about the peace of Europe. Nothing can yet be done, perhaps + nothing now can ever be done by us. The Foreign Office doubts our + wisdom and prudence since Lansing came into action. The whole + atmosphere is changing. One more such move and they will conclude + that Dernburg and Bernstorff have seduced us--without our knowing + it, to be sure; but their confidence in our judgment will be gone. + God knows I have tried to keep this confidence intact and our good + friendship secure. But I have begun to get despondent over the + outlook since the President telegraphed me that Lansing's proposal + would settle the matter. I still believe he did not understand + it--he couldn't have done so. Else he could not have approved it. + But that tied my hands. If Lansing again brings up the Declaration + of London--after four flat and reasonable rejections--I shall + resign. I will not be the instrument of a perfectly gratuitous and + ineffective insult to this patient and fair and friendly + government and people who in my time have done us many kindnesses + and never an injury but Carden[97], and who sincerely try now to + meet our wishes. It would be too asinine an act ever to merit + forgiveness or ever to be forgotten. I should blame myself the rest + of my life. It would grieve Sir Edward more than anything except + this war. It would knock the management of foreign affairs by this + Administration into the region of sheer idiocy. I'm afraid any + peace talk from us, as it is, would merely be whistling down the + wind. If we break with England--not on any case or act of violence + to our shipping--but on a useless discussion, in advance, of + general principles of conduct during the war--just for a + discussion--we've needlessly thrown away our great chance to be of + some service to this world gone mad. If Lansing isn't stopped, + that's what he will do. Why doesn't the President see Spring Rice? + Why don't you take him to see him? + + Good night, my good friend. I still have hope that the President + himself will take this in hand. + + Yours always, + W.H.P. + +The letters and the cablegrams which Page was sending to Colonel House +and the State Department at this time evidently ended the matter. By the +middle of October the two nations were fairly deadlocked. Sir Edward +Grey's reply to the American proposal had been an acceptance of the +Declaration of London with certain modifications. For the list of +contraband in the Declaration he had submitted the list already adopted +by Great Britain in its Order in Council, and he had also rejected that +article which made it impossible for Great Britain to apply the +doctrine of "continuous voyage" to conditional contraband. The modified +acceptance, declared Mr. Lansing, was a practical rejection--as of +course it was, and as it was intended to be. So the situation remained +for several exciting weeks, the State Department insisting on the +Declaration in full, precisely as the legal luminaries had published it +five years before, the Foreign Office courteously but inflexibly +refusing to accede. Only the cordial personal relations which prevailed +between Grey and Page prevented the crisis from producing the most +disastrous results. Finally, on October 17th, Page proposed by cable an +arrangement which he hoped would settle the matter. This was that the +King should issue a proclamation accepting the Declaration with +practically the modifications suggested above, and that a new Order in +Council should be issued containing a new list of contraband. Sir Edward +Grey was not to ask the American Government to accept this proclamation; +all that he asked was that Washington should offer no objections to it. +It was proposed that the United States at the same time should publish a +note withdrawing its suggestion for the adoption of the Declaration, and +explaining that it proposed to rest the rights of its citizens upon the +existing rules of international law and the treaties of the United +States. This solution was accepted. It was a defeat for Mr. Lansing, of +course, but he had no alternative. The relief that Page felt is shown in +the following memorandum, written soon after the tension had ceased: + + * * * * * + +"That insistence on the Declaration entire came near to upsetting the +whole kettle of fish. It put on me the task of insisting on a general +code--at a time when the fiercest war in history was every day becoming +fiercer and more desperate--which would have prevented the British from +putting on their contraband list several of the most important war +materials--accompanied by a proposal that would have angered every +neutral nation through which supplies can possibly reach Germany and +prevented this Government from making friendly working arrangements with +them; and, after Sir Edward Grey had flatly declined for these reasons, +I had to continue to insist. I confess it did look as if we were +determined to dictate to him how he should conduct the war--and in a way +that distinctly favoured the Germans. + +"I presented every insistence; for I should, of course, not have been +excusable if I had failed in any case vigorously to carry out my +instructions. But every time I plainly saw matters getting worse and +worse; and I should have failed of my duty also if I had not so informed +the President and the Department. I can conceive of no more awkward +situation for an Ambassador or for any other man under Heaven. I turned +the whole thing over in my mind backward and forward a hundred times +every day. For the first time in this stress and strain, I lost my +appetite and digestion and did not know the day of the week nor what +month it was--seeing the two governments rushing toward a very serious +clash, which would have made my mission a failure and done the +Administration much hurt, and have sowed the seeds of bitterness for +generations to come. + +"One day I said to Anderson (whose assistance is in many ways +invaluable): 'Of course nobody is infallible--least of all we. Is it +possible that we are mistaken? You and Laughlin and I, who are close to +it all, are absolutely agreed. But may there not be some important +element in the problem that we do not see? Summon and nurse every doubt +that you can possibly muster up of the correctness of our view, put +yourself on the defensive, recall every mood you may have had of the +slightest hesitation, and tell me to-morrow of every possible weak place +there may be in our judgment and conclusions.' The next day Anderson +handed me seventeen reasons why it was unwise to persist in this demand +for the adoption of the Declaration of London. Laughlin gave a similar +opinion. I swear I spent the night in searching every nook and corner of +my mind and I was of the same opinion the next morning. There was +nothing to do then but the most unwelcome double duty: (1) Of continuing +to carry out instructions, at every step making a bad situation worse +and running the risk of a rupture (which would be the only great crime +that now remains uncommitted in the world); and (2) of trying to +persuade our own Government that this method was the wrong method to +pursue. I know it is not my business to make policies, but I conceive it +to be my business to report when they fail or succeed. Now if I were +commanded to look throughout the whole universe for the most unwelcome +task a man may have, I think I should select this. But, after all, a man +has nothing but his own best judgment to guide him; and, if he follow +that and fail--that's all he _can_ do. I do reverently thank God that we +gave up that contention. We may have trouble yet, doubtless we shall, +but it will not be trouble of our own making, as that was. + +"Tyrrell[98] came into the reception room at the Foreign Office the day +after our withdrawal, while I was waiting to see Sir Edward Grey, and he +said: 'I wish to tell you personally--just privately between you and +me--how infinite a relief it is to us all that your Government has +withdrawn that demand. We couldn't accept it; our refusal was not +stubborn nor pig-headed: it was a physical necessity in order to carry +on the war with any hope of success.' Then, as I was going out, he +volunteered this remark: 'I make this guess--that that programme was not +the work of the President but of some international prize court +enthusiast (I don't know who) who had failed to secure the adoption of +the Declaration when parliaments and governments could discuss it at +leisure and who hoped to jam it through under the pressure of war and +thus get his prize court international.' I made no answer for several +reasons, one of which is, I do not know whose programme it was. All that +I know is that I have here, on my desk at my house, a locked dispatch +book half full of telegrams and letters insisting on it, which I do not +wish (now at least) to put in the Embassy files, and the sight of which +brings the shuddering memory of the worst nightmare I have ever +suffered. + +"Now we can go on, without being a party to any general programme, but +in an independent position vigorously stand up for every right and +privilege under law and usage and treaties; and we have here a +government that we can deal with frankly and not (I hope) in a mood to +suspect us of wishing to put it at a disadvantage for the sake of a +general code or doctrine. A land and naval and air and submarine battle +(the greatest battle in the history of the belligerent race of man) +within 75 miles of the coast of England, which hasn't been invaded since +1066 and is now in its greatest danger since that time; and this is no +time I fear, to force a great body of doctrine on Great Britain. God +knows I'm afraid some American boat will run on a mine somewhere in the +Channel or the North Sea. There's war there as there is on land in +Germany. Nobody tries to get goods through on land on the continent, and +they make no complaints that commerce is stopped. Everybody tries to ply +the Channel and the North Sea as usual, both of which have German and +English mines and torpedo craft and submarines almost as thick as +batteries along the hostile camps on land. The British Government (which +now issues marine insurance) will not insure a British boat to carry +food to Holland en route to the starving Belgians; and I hear that no +government and no insurance company will write insurance for anything +going across the North Sea. I wonder if the extent and ferocity and +danger of this war are fully realized in the United States? + +"There is no chance yet effectively to talk of peace[99]. The British +believe that their civilization and their Empire are in grave danger. +They are drilling an army of a million men here for next spring; more +and more troops come from all the Colonies, where additional enlistments +are going on. They feel that to stop before a decisive result is reached +would simply be provoking another war, after a period of dread such as +they have lived through the last ten years; a large and increasing +proportion of the letters you see are on black-bordered paper and this +whole island is becoming a vast hospital and prisoners' camp--all which, +so far from bringing them to think of peace, urges them to renewed +effort; and all the while the bitterness grows. + +"The Straus incident' produced the impression here that it was a German +trick to try to shift the responsibility of continuing the war, to the +British shoulders. Mr. Sharp's bare mention of peace in Paris caused the +French censor to forbid the transmission of a harmless interview; and +our insistence on the Declaration left, for the time being at least, a +distinct distrust of our judgment and perhaps even of our good-will. It +was suspected--I am sure--that the German influence in Washington had +unwittingly got influence over the Department. The atmosphere (toward +me) is as different now from what it was a week ago as Arizona sunshine +is from a London fog, as much as to say, 'After all, perhaps, you don't +_mean_ to try to force us to play into the hands of our enemies!'" + + +III + +And so this crisis was passed; it was the first great service that Page +had rendered the cause of the Allies and his own country. Yet shipping +difficulties had their more agreeable aspects. Had it not been for the +fact that both Page and Grey had an understanding sense of humour, +neutrality would have proved a more difficult path than it actually was. +Even amid the tragic problems with which these two men were dealing +there was not lacking an occasional moment's relaxation into the lighter +aspect of things. One of the curious memorials preserved in the British +Foreign Office is the cancelled $15,000,000 check with which Great +Britain paid the _Alabama_ claims. That the British should frame this +memento of their great diplomatic defeat and hang it in the Foreign +Office is an evidence of the fact that in statesmanship, as in less +exalted matters, the English are excellent sports. The real +justification of the honour paid to this piece of paper, of course, is +that the settlement of the _Alabama_ claims by arbitration signalized a +great forward step in international relations and did much to heal a +century's troubles between the United States and Great Britain. Sir +Edward Grey used frequently to call Page's attention to this document. +It represented the amount of money, then considered large, which Great +Britain had paid the United States for the depredations on American +shipping for which she was responsible during the Civil War. + +One day the two men were discussing certain detentions of American +cargoes--high-handed acts which, in Page's opinion, were unwarranted. +Not infrequently, in the heat of discussion, Page would get up and pace +the floor. And on this occasion his body, as well as his mind, was in a +state of activity. Suddenly his eye was attracted by the framed Alabama +check. He leaned over, peered at it intensely, and then quickly turned +to the Foreign Secretary: + +"If you don't stop these seizures, Sir Edward, some day you'll have your +entire room papered with things like that!" + +Not long afterward Sir Edward in his turn scored on Page. The Ambassador +called to present one of the many State Department notes. The occasion +was an embarrassing one, for the communication was written in the +Department's worst literary style. It not infrequently happened that +these notes, in the form in which Page received them, could not be +presented to the British Government; they were so rasping and +undiplomatic that Page feared that he would suffer the humiliation of +having them returned, for there are certain things which no +self-respecting Foreign Office will accept. On such occasions it was the +practice of the London Embassy to smooth down the language before +handing the paper to the Foreign Secretary. The present note was one of +this kind; but Page, because of his friendly relations with Grey, +decided to transmit the communication in its original shape. + +Sir Edward glanced over the document, looked up, and remarked, with a +twinkle in his eye,-- + +"This reads as though they thought that they are still talking to George +the Third." + +The roar of laughter that followed was something quite unprecedented +amid the thick and dignified walls of the Foreign Office. + +One of Page's most delicious moments came, however, after the Ministry +of Blockade had been formed, with Lord Robert Cecil in charge. Lord +Robert was high minded and conciliatory, but his knowledge of American +history was evidently not without its lapses. One day, in discussing the +ill-feeling aroused in the United States by the seizure of American +cargoes, Page remarked banteringly: + +"You must not forget the Boston Tea Party, Lord Robert." + +The Englishman looked up, rather puzzled. + +"But you must remember, Mr. Page, that I have never been in Boston. I +have never attended a tea party there." + +It has been said that the tact and good sense of Page and Grey, working +sympathetically for the same end, avoided many an impending crisis. The +trouble caused early in 1915 by the ship _Dacia_ and the way in which +the difficulty was solved, perhaps illustrate the value of this +cooeperation at its best. In the early days of the War Congress passed a +bill admitting foreign ships to American registry. The wisdom and even +the "neutrality" of such an act were much questioned at the time. +Colonel House, in one of his early telegrams to the President, declared +that this bill "is full of lurking dangers." Colonel House was right. +The trouble was that many German merchant ships were interned in +American harbours, fearing to put to sea, where the watchful British +warships lay waiting for them. Any attempt to place these vessels under +the American flag, and to use them for trade between American and German +ports, would at once cause a crisis with the Allies, for such a paper +change in ownership would be altogether too transparent. Great Britain +viewed this legislation with disfavour, but did not think it politic to +protest such transfers generally; Spring Rice contented himself with +informing the State Department that his government would not object so +long as this changed status did not benefit Germany. If such German +ships, after being transferred to the American flag, engaged in commerce +between American ports and South American ports, or other places +remotely removed from the Fatherland, Great Britain would make no +difficulty. The _Dacia_, a merchantman of the Hamburg-America line, had +been lying at her wharf in Port Arthur, Texas, since the outbreak of the +war. In early January, 1915, she was purchased by Mr. E.N. Breitung, of +Marquette, Michigan. Mr. Breitung caused great excitement in the +newspapers when he announced that he had placed the _Dacia_ under +American registry, according to the terms of this new law, had put upon +her an American crew, and that he proposed to load her with cotton and +sail for Germany. The crisis had now arisen which the well-wishers of +Great Britain and the United States had so dreaded. Great Britain's +position was a difficult one. If it acquiesced, the way would be opened +for placing under American registry all the German and Austrian ships +that were then lying unoccupied in American ports and using them in +trade between the United States and the Central Powers. If Great Britain +seized the _Dacia_, then there was the likelihood that this would +embroil her with the American Government--and this would serve German +purposes quite as well. + +Sir Cecil Spring Rice, the British Ambassador at Washington, at once +notified Washington that the _Dacia_ would be seized if she sailed for a +German port. The cotton which she intended to carry was at that time not +contraband, but the vessel itself Was German and was thus subject to +apprehension as enemy property. The seriousness of this position was +that technically the _Dacia_ was now an American ship, for an American +citizen owned her, she carried an American crew, she bore on her +flagstaff the American flag, and she had been admitted to American +registry under a law recently passed by Congress. How could the United +States sit by quietly and permit this seizure to take place? When the +_Dacia_ sailed on January 23rd the excitement was keen; the voyage had +obtained a vast amount of newspaper advertising, and the eyes of the +world were fixed upon her. German sympathizers attributed the attitude +of the American Government in permitting the vessel to sail as a "dare" +to Great Britain, and the fact that Great Britain had announced her +intention of taking up this "dare" made the situation still more tense. + +When matters had reached this pass Page one day dropped into the Foreign +Office. + +"Have you ever heard of the British fleet, Sir Edward?" he asked. + +Grey admitted that he had, though the question obviously puzzled him. + +"Yes," Page went on musingly. "We've all heard of the British fleet. +Perhaps we have heard too much about it. Don't you think it's had too +much advertising?" + +The Foreign Secretary looked at Page with an expression that implied a +lack of confidence in his sanity. + +"But have you ever heard of the French fleet?" the American went on. +"France has a fleet too, I believe." + +Sir Edward granted that. + +"Don't you think that the French fleet ought to have a little +advertising?" + +"What on earth are you talking about?" + +"Well," said Page, "there's the _Dacia_. Why not let the French fleet +seize it and get some advertising?" + +A gleam of understanding immediately shot across Grey's face. The old +familiar twinkle came into his eye. + +"Yes," he said, "why not let the Belgian royal yacht seize it?" + +This suggestion from Page was one of the great inspirations of the war. +It amounted to little less than genius. By this time Washington was +pretty wearied of the _Dacia_, for mature consideration had convinced +the Department that Great Britain had the right on its side. Washington +would have been only too glad to find a way out of the difficult +position into which it had been forced, and this Page well understood. +But this government always finds itself in an awkward plight in any +controversy with Great Britain, because the hyphenates raise such a +noise that it has difficulty in deciding such disputes upon their +merits. To ignore the capture of this ship by the British would have +brought all this hullabaloo again about the ears of the Administration. +But the position of France is entirely different; the memories of +Lafayette and Rochambeau still exercise a profound spell on the American +mind; France does not suffer from the persecution of hyphenate +populations, and Americans will stand even outrages from France without +getting excited. Page knew that if the British seized the _Dacia_, the +cry would go up in certain quarters for immediate war, but that, if +France committed the same crime, the guns of the adversary would be +spiked. It was purely a case of sentiment and "psychology." And so the +event proved. His suggestion was at once acted on; a French cruiser went +out into the Channel, seized the offending ship, took it into port, +where a French prize court promptly condemned it. The proceeding did not +cause even a ripple of hostility. The _Dacia_ was sold to Frenchmen, +rechristened the _Yser_ and put to work in the Mediterranean trade. The +episode was closed in the latter part of 1915 when a German submarine +torpedoed the vessel and sent it to the bottom. + +Such was the spirit which Page and Sir Edward Grey brought to the +solution of the great shipping problems of 1914-1917. There is much more +to tell of this great task of "waging neutrality," and it will be told +in its proper place. But already it is apparent to what extent these two +men served the great cause of English-speaking civilization. Neither +would quibble or uphold an argument which he thought unjust, even though +his nation might gain in a material sense, and neither would pitch the +discussion in any other key than forbearance and mutual accommodation +and courtliness. For both men had the same end in view. They were both +thinking, not of the present, but of the coming centuries. The +cooeperation of the two nations in meeting the dangers of autocracy and +Prussian barbarism, in laying the foundations of a future in which +peace, democracy, and international justice should be the directing +ideas of human society--such was the ultimate purpose at which these two +statesmen aimed. And no men have ever been more splendidly justified by +events. The Anglo-American situation of 1914 contained dangers before +which all believers in real progress now shudder. Had Anglo-American +diplomacy been managed with less skill and consideration, the United +States and Great Britain would have become involved in a quarrel beside +which all their previous differences would have appeared insignificant. +Mutual hatreds and hostilities would have risen that would have +prevented the entrance of the United States into the war on the side of +the Allies. It is not inconceivable that the history of 1812 would have +been repeated, and that the men and resources of this country might have +been used to support purposes which have always been hateful to the +American conscience. That the world was saved from this calamity is +owing largely to the fact that Great Britain had in its Foreign Office a +man who was always solving temporary irritations with his eyes +constantly fixed upon a great goal, and that the United States had as +ambassador in London a man who had the most exalted view of the mission +of his country, who had dedicated his life to the world-wide spread of +the American ideal, and who believed that an indispensable part of this +work was the maintenance of a sympathetic and helpful cooeperation with +the English-speaking peoples. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 90: In a letter addressed to "My fellow Countrymen" and +presented to the Senate by Mr. Chilton.] + +[Footnote 91: This was in October, 1914. In August, 1915, when +conditions had changed, cotton was declared contraband.] + +[Footnote 92: Mr. Chandler P. Anderson, of New York, at this time +advising the American Embassy on questions of international law.] + +[Footnote 93: Mr. Irwin Laughlin, first secretary of the Embassy.] + +[Footnote 94: Sir Cecil Spring Rice, British Ambassador at Washington.] + +[Footnote 95: Sir Edward Grey.] + +[Footnote 96: Senator William J. Stone, perhaps the leading spokesman of +the pro-German cause in the United States Senate. Senator Stone +represented Missouri, a state with a large German-American element.] + +[Footnote 97: See Chapter VII.] + +[Footnote 98: Private secretary to Sir Edward Grey.] + +[Footnote 99: The reference is to an attempt by Germany to start peace +negotiations in September, 1914, after the Battle of the Marne. This is +described in the next chapter.] + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +GERMANY'S FIRST PEACE DRIVES + + +The Declaration of London was not the only problem that distracted Page +in these early months of the war. Washington's apparent determination to +make peace also added to his daily anxieties. That any attempt to end +hostilities should have distressed so peace-loving and humanitarian a +statesman as Page may seem surprising; it was, however, for the very +reason that he was a man of peace that these Washington endeavours +caused him endless worry. In Page's opinion they indicated that +President Wilson did not have an accurate understanding of the war. The +inspiring force back of them, as the Ambassador well understood, was a +panic-stricken Germany. The real purpose was not a peace, but a truce; +and the cause which was to be advanced was not democracy but Prussian +absolutism. Between the Battle of the Marne and the sinking of the +_Lusitania_ four attempts were made to end the war; all four were set +afoot by Germany. President Wilson was the man to whom the Germans +appealed to rescue them from their dilemma. It is no longer a secret +that the Germans at this time regarded their situation as a tragic one; +the success that they had anticipated for forty years had proved to be a +disaster. The attempt to repeat the great episodes of 1864, 1866, and +1870, when Prussia had overwhelmed Denmark, Austria, and France in three +brief campaigns, had ignominiously failed. Instead of beholding a +conquered Europe at her feet, Germany awoke from her illusion to find +herself encompassed by a ring of resolute and powerful foes. The fact +that the British Empire, with its immense resources, naval, military, +and economic, was now leading the alliance against them, convinced the +most intelligent Germans that the Fatherland was face to face with the +greatest crisis in its history. + +Peace now became the underground Germanic programme. Yet the Germans did +not have that inexorable respect for facts which would have persuaded +them to accept terms to which the Allies could consent. The military +oligarchy were thinking not so much of saving the Fatherland as of +saving themselves; a settlement which would have been satisfactory to +their enemies would have demanded concessions which the German people, +trained for forty years to expect an unparalleled victory, would have +regarded as a defeat. The collapse of the militarists and of +Hohenzollernism would have ensued. What the German oligarchy desired was +a peace which they could picture to their deluded people as a triumph, +one that would enable them to extricate themselves at the smallest +possible cost from what seemed a desperate position, to escape the +penalties of their crimes, to emerge from their failure with a Germany +still powerful, both in economic resources and in arms, and to set to +work again industriously preparing for a renewal of the struggle at a +more favourable time. If negotiations resulted in such a truce, the +German purpose would be splendidly served; even if they failed, however, +the gain for Germany would still be great. Germany could appear as the +belligerent which desired peace and the Entente could perhaps be +manoeuvred into the position of the side responsible for continuing the +war. The consideration which was chiefly at stake in these tortuous +proceedings was public opinion in the United States. Americans do not +yet understand the extent to which their country was regarded as the +determining power. Both the German and the British Foreign Offices +clearly understood, in August, 1914, that the United States, by throwing +its support, especially its economic support, to one side or the other, +could settle the result. Probably Germany grasped this point even more +clearly than did Great Britain, for, from the beginning, she constantly +nourished the hope that she could embroil the United States and Great +Britain--a calamity which would have given victory to the German arms. +In every German move there were thus several motives, and one of the +chief purposes of the subterranean campaigns which she now started for +peace was the desire of putting Britain in the false light of prolonging +the war for aggressive purposes, and thus turning to herself that public +opinion in this country which was so outspoken on the side of the +Allies. Such public opinion, if it could be brought to regard Germany in +a tolerant spirit, could easily be fanned into a flame by the disputes +over blockades and shipping, and the power of the United States might +thus be used for the advancement of the Fatherland. On the other hand, +if Germany could obtain a peace which would show a profit for her +tremendous effort, then the negotiations would have accomplished their +purpose. + +Conditions at Washington favoured operations of this kind. Secretary +Bryan was an ultra-pacifist; like men of one idea, he saw only the fact +of a hideous war, and he was prepared to welcome anything that would end +hostilities. The cessation of bloodshed was to him the great purpose to +be attained: in the mind of Secretary Bryan it was more important that +the war should be stopped than that the Allies should win. To President +Wilson the European disaster appeared to be merely a selfish struggle +for power, in which both sides were almost equally to blame. He never +accepted Page's obvious interpretation that the single cause was +Germany's determination to embark upon a war of world conquest. From the +beginning, therefore, Page saw that he would have great difficulty in +preventing intervention from Washington in the interest of Germany, yet +this was another great service to which he now unhesitatingly directed +his efforts. + +The Ambassador was especially apprehensive of these peace moves in the +early days of September, when the victorious German armies were marching +on Paris. In London, as in most parts of the world, the capture of the +French capital was then regarded as inevitable. September 3, 1914, was +one of the darkest days in modern times. The population of Paris was +fleeing southward; the Government had moved its headquarters to +Bordeaux; and the moment seemed to be at hand when the German Emperor +would make his long anticipated entry into the capital of France. It was +under these circumstances that the American Ambassador to Great Britain +sent the following message directly to the President: + + _To the President_ + American Embassy, London, + Sep. 3, 4 A.M. + + Everybody in this city confidently believes that the Germans, if + they capture Paris, will make a proposal for peace, and that the + German Emperor will send you a message declaring that he is + unwilling to shed another drop of blood. Any proposal that the + Kaiser makes will be simply the proposal of a conqueror. His real + purpose will be to preserve the Hohenzollern dynasty and the + imperial bureaucracy. The prevailing English judgment is that, if + Germany be permitted to stop hostilities, the war will have + accomplished nothing. There is a determination here to destroy + utterly the German bureaucracy, and Englishmen are prepared to + sacrifice themselves to any extent in men and money. The + preparations that are being made here are for a long war; as I read + the disposition and the character of Englishmen they will not stop + until they have accomplished their purpose. There is a general + expression of hope in this country that neither the American + Government nor the public opinion of our country will look upon any + suggestion for peace as a serious one which does not aim, first of + all, at the absolute destruction of the German bureaucracy. + + From such facts as I can obtain, it seems clear to me that the + opinion of Europe--excluding of course, Germany--is rapidly + solidifying into a severe condemnation of the German Empire. The + profoundest moral judgment of the world is taking the strongest + stand against Germany and German methods. Such incidents as the + burning of Louvain and other places, the slaughter of civilian + populations, the outrages against women and children--outrages of + such a nature that they cannot be printed, but which form a matter + of common conversation everywhere--have had the result of arousing + Great Britain to a mood of the grimmest determination. + + PAGE. + +This message had hardly reached Washington when the peace effort of +which it warned the President began to take practical form. In properly +estimating these manoeuvres it must be borne in mind that German +diplomacy always worked underground and that it approached its +negotiations in a way that would make the other side appear as taking +the initiative. This was a phase of German diplomatic technique with +which every European Foreign Office had long been familiar. Count +Bernstorff arrived in the United States from Germany in the latter part +of August, evidently with instructions from his government to secure the +intercession of the United States. There were two unofficial men in New +York who were ideally qualified to serve the part of intermediaries. Mr. +James Speyer had been born in New York; he had received his education at +Frankfort-on-the-Main, Germany, and had spent his apprenticeship also in +the family banking house in that city. As the head of an American +banking house with important German affiliations, his interests and +sympathies were strong on the side of the Fatherland; indeed, he made no +attempt to conceal his strong pro-Germanism. + +Mr. Oscar S. Straus had been born in Germany; his father had been a +German revolutionist of 'Forty-eight; like Carl Schurz, Abraham Jacobi, +and Franz Sigel, he had come to America to escape Prussian militarism +and the Prussian autocracy, and his children had been educated in a +detestation of the things for which the German Empire stood. Mr. Oscar +Straus was only two years old when he was brought to this country, and +he had given the best evidences of his Americanism in a distinguished +public career. Three times he had served the United States as Ambassador +to Turkey; he had filled the post of Secretary of Commerce and Labour in +President Roosevelt's cabinet, and had held other important public +commissions. Among his other activities, Mr. Straus had played an +important part in the peace movement of the preceding quarter of a +century and he had been a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration +at The Hague. Mr. Straus was on excellent terms with the German, the +British, and the French ambassadors at Washington. As far back as 1888, +when he was American Minister at Constantinople, Bernstorff, then a +youth, was an attache at the German Embassy; the young German was +frequently at the American Legation and used to remind Mr. Straus, +whenever he met him in later years, how pleasantly he remembered his +hospitality. With Sir Cecil Spring Rice, the British Ambassador, and M. +Jules Jusserand, the French Ambassador, Mr. Straus had also become +friendly in Constantinople and in Washington. This background, and Mr. +Straus's well-known pro-British sentiments, would have made him a +desirable man to act as a liaison agent between the Germans and the +Allies, but there were other reasons why this ex-ambassador would be +useful at this time. Mr. Straus had been in Europe at the outbreak of +the war; he had come into contact with the British statesmen in those +exciting early August days; in particular he had discussed all phases of +the conflict with Sir Edward Grey, and before leaving England, he had +given certain interviews which the British statesmen declared had +greatly helped their cause in the United States. Of course, the German +Government knew all about these activities. + +On September 4th, Mr. Straus arrived at New York on the _Mauretania_. He +had hardly reached this country when he was called upon the telephone by +Mr. Speyer, a friend of many years' standing. Count Bernstorff, the +German Ambassador, Mr. Speyer said, was a guest at his country home, +Waldheim, at Scarboro, on the Hudson; Mr. Speyer was giving a small, +informal dinner the next evening, Saturday, September 5th, and he asked +Mr. and Mrs. Straus to come. The other important guests were Mr. Frank +A. Vanderlip, president of the National City Bank, and Mrs. Vanderlip. +Mr. Straus accepted the invitation, mentally resolving that he would not +discuss the war himself, but merely listen. It would certainly have +been a difficult task for any man to avoid this subject on this +particular evening; the date was September 5th, the day when the German +Army suddenly stopped in its progress toward Paris, and began +retreating, the French and the British forces in pursuit. A few minutes +before Count Bernstorff sat down at Mr. Speyer's table, with Mr. Straus +opposite, he had learned that the magnificent enterprise which Germany +had planned for forty years had failed, and that his country was facing +a monstrous disaster. The Battle of the Marne was raging in all its fury +while this pacific conversation at Mr. Speyer's house was taking place. + +Of course the war became the immediate topic of discussion. Count +Bernstorff at once plunged into the usual German point of view--that +Germany did not want war in the first place, that the Entente had forced +the issue, and the like. + +"The Emperor and the German Government stood for peace," he said. + +Naturally, a man who had spent a considerable part of his life promoting +the peace cause pricked up his ears at this statement. + +"Does that sentiment still prevail in Germany?" asked Mr. Straus. + +"Yes," replied the German Ambassador. + +"Would your government entertain a proposal for mediation now?" asked +Mr. Straus. + +"Certainly," Bernstorff promptly replied. He hastened to add, however, +that he was speaking unofficially. He had had no telegraphic +communication from Berlin for five days, and therefore could not +definitely give the attitude of his government. But he was quite sure +that the Kaiser would be glad to have President Wilson take steps to end +the war. + +The possibility that he might play a part in bringing hostilities to a +close now occurred to Mr. Straus. He had come to the dinner determined +to avoid the subject altogether, but Count Bernstorff had precipitated +the issue in a way that left the American no option. Certainly Mr. +Straus would have been derelict if he had not reported this conversation +to the high quarters for which Count Bernstorff had evidently intended +it. + +"That is a very important statement you have made, Mr. Ambassador," said +Mr. Straus, measuring every word. "May I make use of it?" + +"Yes." + +"May I use it in any way I choose?" + +"You may," replied Bernstorff. + +Mr. Straus saw in this acquiescent mood a chance to appeal directly to +President Wilson. + +"Do you object to my laying this matter before our government?" + +"No, I do not." + +Mr. Straus glanced at his watch; it was 10:15 o'clock. + +"I think I shall go to Washington at once--this very night. I can get +the midnight train." + +Mr. Speyer, who has always maintained that this proceeding was casual +and in no way promoted by himself and Bernstorff, put in a word of +caution. + +"I would sleep on it," he suggested. + +But, in a few moments, Mr. Straus was speeding in his automobile through +Westchester County in the direction of the Pennsylvania Station. He +caught the express, and, the next morning, which was Sunday the sixth, +he was laying the whole matter before Secretary Bryan at the latter's +house. Naturally, Mr. Bryan was overjoyed at the news; he at once +summoned Bernstorff from New York to Washington, and went over the +suggestion personally. The German Ambassador repeated the statements +which he had made to Mr. Straus--always guardedly qualifying his remarks +by saying that the proposal had not come originally from him but from +his American friend. Meanwhile Mr. Bryan asked Mr. Straus to discuss the +matter with the British and French ambassadors. + +The meeting took place at the British Embassy. The two representatives +of the Entente, though only too glad to talk the matter over, were more +skeptical about the attitude of Bernstorff than Mr. Bryan had been. + +"Of course, Mr. Straus," said Sir Cecil Spring Rice, "you know that this +dinner was arranged purposely so that the German Ambassador could meet +you?" + +Mr. Straus demurred at this statement, but the Englishman smiled. + +"Do you suppose," Sir Cecil asked, "that any ambassador would make such +a statement as Bernstorff made to you without instructions from his +government?" + +"You and M. Jusserand," replied the American, "have devoted your whole +lives to diplomacy with distinguished ability and you can therefore +answer that question better than I." + +"I can assure you," replied M. Jusserand, "that no ambassador under the +German system would dare for a moment to make such a statement without +being authorized to do so." + +"The Germans," added Sir Cecil, "have a way of making such statements +unofficially and then denying that they have ever made them." + +Both the British and French ambassadors, however, thought that the +proposal should be seriously considered. + +"If it holds out one chance in a hundred of lessening the length of the +war, we should entertain it," said Ambassador Jusserand. + +"I certainly hope that you will entertain it cordially," said Mr. +Straus. + +"Not cordially--that is a little too strong." + +"Well, sympathetically?" + +"Yes, sympathetically," said M. Jusserand, with a smile. + +These facts were at once cabled to Page, who took the matter up with Sir +Edward Grey. A despatch from the latter to the British Ambassador in +Washington gives a splendid summary of the British attitude on such +approaches at this time. + + _Sir Edward Grey to Sir Cecil Spring Rice_ + Foreign Office, + September 9, 1914. + + SIR: + + The American Ambassador showed me to-day a communication that he + had from Mr. Bryan. It was to the effect that Mr. Straus and Mr. + Speyer had been talking with the German Ambassador, who had said + that, though he was without instructions, he thought that Germany + might be disposed to end the war by mediation. This had been + repeated to Mr. Bryan, who had spoken to the German Ambassador, and + had heard the same from him. Mr. Bryan had taken the matter up, and + was asking direct whether the German Emperor would accept mediation + if the other parties who were at war would do the same. + + The American Ambassador said to me that this information gave him a + little concern. He feared that, coming after the declaration that + we had signed last week with France and Russia about carrying on + the war in common[100], the peace parties in the United States + might be given the impression that Germany was in favour of peace, + and that the responsibility for continuing the war was on others. + + I said that the agreement that we had made with France and Russia + was an obvious one; when three countries were at war on the same + side, one of them could not honourably make special terms for + itself and leave the others in the lurch. As to mediation, I was + favourable to it in principle, but the real question was: On what + terms could the war be ended? If the United States could devise + anything that would bring this war to an end and prevent another + such war being forced on Europe I should welcome the proposal. + + The Ambassador said that before the war began I had made + suggestions for avoiding it, and that these suggestions had been + refused. + + I said that this was so, but since the war began there were two + further considerations to be borne in mind: We were fighting to + save the west of Europe from being dominated by Prussian + militarism; Germany had prepared to the day for this war, and we + could not again have a great military power in the middle of Europe + preparing war in this way and forcing it upon us; and the second + thing was that cruel wrong had been done to Belgium, for which + there should be some compensation. I had no indication whatever + that Germany was prepared to make any reparation to Belgium, and, + while repeating that in principle I was favourable to mediation, I + could see nothing to do but to wait for the reply of the German + Emperor to the question that Mr. Bryan had put to him and for the + United States to ascertain on what terms Germany would make peace + if the Emperor's reply was favourable to mediation. + + The Ambassador made it quite clear that he regarded what the German + Ambassador had said as a move in the game. He agreed with what I + had said respecting terms of peace, and that there seemed no + prospect at present of Germany being prepared to accept them. + + I am, &c., + E. GREY. + +A letter from Page to Colonel House gives Page's interpretation of this +negotiation: + + _To Edward M. House_ + London, September 10, 1914. + + MY DEAR HOUSE: + + A rather serious situation has arisen: The Germans of course + thought that they would take Paris. They were then going to propose + a conqueror's terms of peace, which they knew would not be + accepted. But they would use their so-called offer of peace purely + for publicity purposes. They would say, "See, men of the world, we + want peace; we offer peace; the continuance of this awful war is + not our doing." They are using Hearst for this purpose. I fear they + are trying to use so good a man as Oscar Straus. They are fooling + the Secretary. + + Every nation was willing to accept Sir Edward Grey's proposals but + Germany. She was bent on a war of conquest. Now she's likely to get + licked--lock, stock and barrel. She is carrying on a propaganda and + a publicity campaign all over the world. The Allies can't and won't + accept any peace except on the condition that German militarism be + uprooted. They are not going to live again under that awful shadow + and fear. They say truly that life on such terms is not worth + living. Moreover, if Germany should win the military control of + Europe, she would soon--that same war-party--attack the United + States. The war will not end until this condition can be + imposed--that there shall be no more militarism. + + But in the meantime, such men as Straus (a good fellow) may be able + to let (by helping) the Germans appear to the Peace people as + really desiring peace. Of course, what they want is to save their + mutton. + + And if we begin mediation talk now on that basis, we shall not be + wanted when a real chance for mediation comes. If we are so silly + as to play into the hands of the German-Hearst publicity bureau, + our chance for real usefulness will be thrown away. + + Put the President on his guard. + + W.H.P. + +In the latter part of the month came Germany's reply. One would never +suspect, when reading it, that Germany had played any part in +instigating the negotiation. The Kaiser repeated the old charges that +the Entente had forced the war on the Fatherland, that it was now +determined to annihilate the Central Powers and that consequently there +was no hope that the warring countries could agree upon acceptable terms +for ending the struggle. + +So ended Germany's first peace drive, and in the only possible way that +it could end. But the Washington administration continued to be most +friendly to mediation. A letter of Colonel House's, dated October 4, +1914, possesses great historical importance. It was written after a +detailed discussion with President Wilson, and it indicates not only the +President's desire to bring the struggle to a close, but it describes +in some detail the principles which the President then regarded as +essential to a permanent peace. It furnishes the central idea of the +presidential policy for the next four years; indeed, it contains the +first statement of that famous "Article X" of the Covenant of the League +of Nations which was Mr. Wilson's most important contribution to that +contentious document. This was the article which pledges the League "to +respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial +integrity and existing political independence" of all its members; it +was the article which, more than any other, made the League obnoxious to +Americans, who interpreted it as an attempt to involve them perpetually +in the quarrels of Europe; and it was the one section of the Treaty of +Versailles which was most responsible for the rejection of that document +by the United States Senate. There are other suggestions in Colonel +House's letter which apparently bore fruit in the League Covenant. It is +somewhat astonishing that a letter of Colonel House's, written as far +back as October 3, 1914, two months after the outbreak of the war, +should contain "Article X" as one of the essential terms of peace, as +well as other ideas afterward incorporated in that document, accompanied +by an injunction that Page should present the suggestion to Sir Edward +Grey: + + _From Edward M. House_ + 115 East 53rd Street, + New York City. + October 3rd, 1914. + + DEAR PAGE: + + Frank [the Ambassador's son] has just come in and has given me your + letter of September 22nd[101] which is of absorbing interest. You + have never done anything better than this letter, and some day, + when you give the word, it must be published. But in the meantime, + it will repose in the safe deposit box along with your others and + with those of our great President. + + I have just returned from Washington where I was with the President + for nearly four days. He is looking well and is well. Sometimes his + spirits droop, but then again, he is his normal self. + + Before I came from Prides[102] I was fearful lest Straus, + Bernstorff, and others would drive the President into doing + something unwise. I have always counselled him to remain quiet for + the moment and let matters unfold themselves further. In the + meantime, I have been conferring with Bernstorff, with Dumba[103], + and, of course, Spring Rice. The President now wants me to keep in + touch with the situation, and I do not think there is any danger of + any one on the outside injecting himself into it unless Mr. Bryan + does something on his own initiative. + + Both Bernstorff and Dumba say that their countries are ready for + peace talks, but the difficulty is with England. Sir Cecil says + their statements are made merely to place England in a false + position. + + The attitude, I think, for England to maintain is the one which she + so ably put forth to the world. That is, peace must come only upon + condition of disarmament and must be permanent. I have a feeling + that Germany will soon be willing to discuss terms. I do not agree + that Germany has to be completely crushed and that terms must be + made either in Berlin or London. It is manifestly against England's + interest and the interest of Europe generally for Russia to become + the dominating military force in Europe, just as Germany was. The + dislike which England has for Germany should not blind her to + actual conditions. If Germany is crushed, England cannot solely + write the terms of peace, but Russia's wishes must also largely + prevail. + + With Russia strong in militarism, there is no way by which she + could be reached. Her government is so constituted that friendly + conversations could not be had with her as they might be had even + with such a power as Germany, and the world would look forward to + another cataclysm and in the not too distant future. + + When peace conversations begin, at best, they will probably + continue many months before anything tangible comes from them. + England and the Allies could readily stand on the general + proposition that only enduring peace will satisfy them and I can + see no insuperable obstacle in the way. + + The Kaiser did not want war and was not responsible for it further + than his lack of foresight which led him to build up a formidable + engine of war which later dominated him. Peace cannot be made until + the war party in Germany find that their ambitions cannot be + realized, and this, I think, they are beginning to know. + + When the war is ended and the necessary territorial alignments + made, it seems to me, the best guaranty of peace could be brought + by every nation in Europe guaranteeing the territorial integrity of + every other nation[104]. By confining the manufacture of arms to + the governments themselves and by permitting representatives of all + nations to inspect, at any time, the works[105]. + + Then, too, all sources of national irritation should be removed so + what at first may be a sore spot cannot grow into a malignant + disease[106]. It will not be too difficult, I think, to bring about + an agreement that will insure permanent peace, provided all the + nations of Europe are honest in their desire for it. + + I am writing this to you with the President's knowledge and consent + and with the thought that it will be conveyed to Sir Edward. There + is a growing impatience in this country because of this war and + there is constant pressure upon the President to use his influence + to bring about normal conditions. He does not wish to do anything + to irritate or offend any one of the belligerent nations, but he + has an abiding faith in the efficacy of open and frank discussion + between those that are now at war. + + As far as I can see, no harm can be done by a dispassionate + discussion at this stage, even though nothing comes of it. In a + way, it is perhaps better that informal and unofficial + conversations are begun and later the principals can take it up + themselves. + + I am sure that Sir Edward is too great a man to let any prejudices + deter him from ending, as soon as possible, the infinite suffering + that each day of war entails. + + Faithfully yours, + E.M. HOUSE. + +It is apparent that the failure of this first attempt at mediation +discouraged neither Bernstorff nor the Washington administration. +Colonel House was constantly meeting the German and the British +Ambassadors; he was also, as his correspondence shows, in touch with +Zimmermann, the German Under Foreign Secretary. The German desire for +peace grew stronger in the autumn and winter of 1914-1915, as the fact +became more and more clear that Great Britain was summoning all her +resources for the greatest effort in her history, as the stalemate on +the Aisne more and more impressed upon the German chieftains the +impossibility of obtaining any decision against the French Army, and as +the Russians showed signs of great recuperation after the disaster of +Tannenberg. By December 4th Washington had evidently made up its mind to +move again. + + _From Edward M. House_ + 115 East 53rd Street, + New York City. + December 4th, 1914. + + DEAR PAGE: + + The President desires to start peace parleys at the very earliest + moment, but he does not wish to offend the sensibilities of either + side by making a proposal before the time is opportune. He is + counting upon being given a hint, possibly through me, in an + unofficial way, as to when a proffer from him will be acceptable. + + Pressure is being brought upon him to offer his services again, for + this country is suffering, like the rest of the neutral world, from + the effects of the war, and our people are becoming restless. + + Would you mind conveying this thought delicately to Sir Edward Grey + and letting me know what he thinks? + + Would the Allies consider parleys upon a basis of indemnity for + Belgium and a cessation of militarism? If so, then something may be + begun with the Dual Alliance. + + I have been told that negotiations between Russia and Japan were + carried on several months before they agreed to meet at Portsmouth. + The havoc that is being wrought in human lives and treasure is too + great to permit racial feeling or revenge to enter into the + thoughts of those who govern the nations at war. + + I stand ready to go to Germany at any moment in order to sound the + temper of that government, and I would then go to England as I did + last June. + + This nation would not look with favour upon a policy that held + nothing but the complete annihilation of the enemy. + + Something must be done sometime, by somebody, to initiate a peace + movement, and I can think of no way, at the moment, than the one + suggested. + + I will greatly appreciate your writing me fully and freely in + regard to this phase of the situation. + + Faithfully yours, + E.M. HOUSE. + +To this Page immediately replied: + + _To Edward M. House_ + December 12th, 1914. + + MY DEAR HOUSE: + + The English rulers have no feeling of vengeance. I have never seen + the slightest traces of that. But they are determined to secure + future safety. They will not have this experience repeated if they + can help it. They realize now that they have been living under a + sort of fear--or dread--for ten years: they sometimes felt that it + was bound to come some time and then at other times they could + hardly believe it. And they will spend all the men and all the + money they have rather than suffer that fear again or have that + danger. Now, if anybody could fix a basis for the complete + restoration of Belgium, so far as restoration is possible, and for + the elimination of militarism, I am sure the _English_ would talk + on that basis. But there are two difficulties-Russia wouldn't talk + till she has Constantinople, and I haven't found anybody who can + say exactly what you mean by the "elimination of militarism." + Disarmament? England will have her navy to protect her incoming + bread and meat. How, then, can she say to Germany, "You can't have + an army"? + + You say the Americans are becoming "restless." The plain fact is + that the English people, and especially the English military and + naval people, don't care a fig what the Americans think and feel. + They say, "We're fighting their battle, too--the battle of + democracy and freedom from bureaucracy--why don't they come and + help us in our life-and-death struggle?" I have a drawer full of + letters saying this, not one of which I have ever answered. The + official people never say that of course--nor the really + responsible people, but a vast multitude of the public do. This + feeling comes out even in the present military and naval rulers of + this Kingdom--comes indirectly to me. A part of the public, then, + and the military part of the Cabinet, don't longer care for + American opinion and they resent even such a reference to peace as + the President made in his Message to Congress[107]. But the civil + part of the Cabinet and the responsible and better part of the + public do care very much. The President's intimation about peace, + however, got no real response here. They think he doesn't + understand the meaning of the war. They don't want war; they are + not a warlike people. They don't hate the Germans. There is no + feeling of vengeance. They constantly say: "Why do the Germans + hate us? We don't hate them." But, since Germany set out to rule + the world and to conquer Great Britain, they say, "We'll all die + first." That's "all there is to it." And they will all die unless + they can so fix things that this war cannot be repeated. Lady + K----, as kindly an old lady as ever lived, said to me the other + day: "A great honour has come to us. Our son has been killed in + battle, fighting for the safety of England." + + Now, the question which nobody seems to be able to answer is this: + How can the military party and the military spirit of Germany be + prevented from continuing to prepare for the conquest of Great + Britain and from going to work to try it again? That implies a + change in the form, spirit, and control of the German Empire. If + they keep up a great army, they will keep it up with that end more + or less in view. If the military party keeps in power, they will + try it again in twenty-five or forty years. This is all that the + English care about or think about. + + They don't see how it is to be done themselves. All they see yet is + that they must show the Germans that they can't whip Great Britain. + If England wins decisively the English hope that somehow the + military party will be overthrown in Germany and that the Germans, + under peaceful leadership, will go about their + business--industrial, political, educational, etc.--and quit + dreaming of and planning for universal empire and quit maintaining + a great war-machine, which at some time, for some reason, must + attack somebody to justify its existence. This makes it difficult + for the English to make overtures to or to receive overtures from + this military war-party which now _is_ Germany. But, if it he + possible so completely to whip the war party that it will somehow + be thrown out of power at home--that's the only way they now see + out of it. To patch up a peace, leaving the German war party in + power, they think, would be only to invite another war. + + If you can get over this point, you can bring the English around in + ten minutes. But they are not going to take any chances on it. Read + English history and English literature about the Spanish Armada or + about Napoleon. They are acting those same scenes over again, + having the same emotions, the same purpose: nobody must invade or + threaten England. "If they do, we'll spend the last man and the + last shilling. We value," they say truly, "the good-will and the + friendship of the United States more than we value anything except + our own freedom, but we'll risk even that rather than admit copper + to Germany, because every pound of copper prolongs the war." + + There you are. I've blinked myself blind and talked myself hoarse + to men in authority--from Grey down--to see a way out--without + keeping this intolerable slaughter up to the end. But they stand + just where I tell you. + + And the horror of it no man knows. The news is suppressed. Even + those who see it and know it do not realize it. Four of the crack + regiments of this kingdom--regiments that contained the flower of + the land and to which it was a distinction to belong--have been + practically annihilated, one or two of them annihilated twice. Yet + their ranks are filled up and you never hear a murmur. Presently + it'll be true that hardly a title or an estate in England will go + to its natural heir--the heir has been killed. Yet, not a murmur; + for England is threatened with invasion. They'll all die first. It + will presently be true that more men will have been killed in this + war than were killed before in all the organized wars since the + Christian era began. The English are willing and eager to stop it + if things can be so fixed that there will be no military power in + Europe that wishes or prepares to attack and invade England. + + I've had many one-hour, two-hour, three-hour talks with Sir Edward + Grey. He sees nothing further than I have written. He says to me + often that if the United States could see its way to cease to + protest against stopping war materials from getting into Germany, + they could end the war more quickly--all this, of course, + informally; and I say to him that the United States will consider + any proposal you will make that does not infringe on a strict + neutrality. Violate a rigid neutrality we will not do. And, of + course, he does not ask that. I give him more trouble than all the + other neutral Powers combined; they all say this. And, on the other + side, his war-lord associates in the Cabinet make his way hard. + + So it goes--God bless us, it's awful. I never get away from + it--war, war, war every waking minute, and the worry of it; and I + see no near end of it. I've had only one thoroughly satisfactory + experience in a coon's age, and this was this: Two American ships + were stopped the other day at Falmouth. I telegraphed the captains + to come here to see me. I got the facts from them--all the facts. I + telephoned Sir Edward that I wished to see him at once. I had him + call in one of his ship-detaining committee. I put the facts on the + table. I said, "By what right, or theory of right, or on what + excuse, are those ships stopped? They are engaged in neutral + commerce. They fly the American flag." One of them was released + that night--no more questions asked. The other was allowed to go + after giving bond to return a lot of kerosene which was loaded at + the bottom of the ship. + + If I could get facts, I could do many things. The State Department + telegraphs me merely what the shipper says--a partial statement. + The British Government tells me (after infinite delay) another set + of facts. The British Government says, "We're sorry, but the Prize + Court must decide." Our Government wires a dissertation on + International Law--Protest, protest: (I've done nothing else since + the world began!) One hour with a sensible ship captain does more + than a month of cross-wrangling with Government Departments. + + I am trying my best, God knows, to keep the way as smooth as + possible; but neither government helps me. Our Government merely + sends the shipper's ex-parte statement. This Government uses the + Navy's excuse. . . . + + At present, I can't for the life of me see a way to peace, for the + one reason I have told you. The Germans wish to whip England, to + invade England. They started with their army toward England. Till + that happened England didn't have an army. But I see no human power + that can give the English now what they are determined to + have--safety for the future--till some radical change is made in + the German system so that they will no longer have a war-party any + more than England has a war-party. England surely has no wish to + make conquest of Germany. If Germany will show that she has no wish + to make conquest of England, the war would end to-morrow. + + What impresses me through it all is the backwardness of all the Old + World in realizing the true aims of government and the true + methods. I can't see why any man who has hope for the progress of + mankind should care to live anywhere in Europe. To me it is all + infinitely sad. This dreadful war is a logical outcome of their + condition, their thought, their backwardness. I think I shall never + care to see the continent again, which of course is committing + suicide and bankruptcy. When my natural term of service is done + here, I shall go home with more joy than you can imagine. That's + the only home for a man who wishes his horizon to continue to grow + wider. + + All this for you and me only--nobody else. + + Heartily yours, + WALTER H. PAGE. + +Probably Page thought that this statement of the case--and it was +certainly a masterly statement--would end any attempt to get what he +regarded as an unsatisfactory and dangerous peace. But President Wilson +could not be deterred from pressing the issue. His conviction was firm +that this winter of 1914-1915 represented the most opportune time to +bring the warring nations to terms, and it was a conviction from which +he never departed. After the sinking of the _Lusitania_ the +Administration gazed back regretfully at its frustrated attempts of the +preceding winter, and it was inclined to place the responsibility for +this failure upon Great Britain and France. "The President's judgment," +wrote Colonel House on August 4, 1915, three months after the +_Lusitania_ went down, "was that last autumn was the time to discuss +peace parleys, and we both saw present possibilities. War is a great +gamble at best, and there was too much at stake in this one to take +chances. I believe if one could have started peace parleys in November, +we could have forced the evacuation of both France and Belgium, and +finally forced a peace which would have eliminated militarism on land +and sea. The wishes of the Allies were heeded with the result that the +war has now fastened itself upon the vitals of Europe and what the end +may be is beyond the knowledge of man." + +This shows that the efforts which the Administration was making were not +casual or faint-hearted, but that they represented a most serious +determination to bring hostilities to an end. This letter and the +correspondence which now took place with Page also indicate the general +terms upon which the Wilson Administration believed that the mighty +differences could be composed. The ideas which Colonel House now set +forth were probably more the President's than his own; he was merely the +intermediary in their transmission. They emphasized Mr. Wilson's +conviction that a decisive victory on either side would be a misfortune +for mankind. As early as August, 1914, this was clearly the conviction +that underlay all others in the President's interpretation of events. +His other basic idea was that militarism should come to an end "on land +and sea"; this could mean nothing except that Germany was expected to +abandon its army and that Great Britain was to abandon its navy. + + _From Edward M. House_ + 115 East 53rd Street, + New York City. + January 4th, 1915. + + DEAR PAGE: + + I believe the Dual Alliance is thoroughly ready for peace and I + believe they would be willing to agree upon terms England would + accept provided Russia and France could be satisfied. + + They would, in my opinion, evacuate both Belgium and France and + indemnify the former, and they would, I think, be willing to begin + negotiations upon a basis looking to permanent peace. + + It would surprise me if the Germans did not come out in the open + soon and declare that they have always been for peace, that they + are for peace now, and that they are willing to enter into a + compact which would insure peace for all time; that they have been + misrepresented and maligned and that they leave the entire + responsibility for the continuation of the war with the Allies. + + If they should do this, it would create a profound impression, and + if it was not met with sympathy by the Allies, the neutral + sentiment, which is now almost wholly against the Germans, would + veer toward them. + + Will you not convey this thought to Sir Edward and let me know what + he says? + + The President is willing and anxious for me to go to England and + Germany as soon as there is anything tangible to go on, and + whenever my presence will be welcome. The Germans have already + indicated this feeling but I have not been able to get from Spring + Rice any expression from his Government. + + As I told you before, the President does not wish to offend the + sensibilities of any one by premature action, but he is, of course, + enormously interested in initiating at least tentative + conversations. + + Will you not advise me in regard to this? + + Faithfully yours, + E.M. HOUSE. + + _From Edward M. House_ + 115 East 53rd Street, + New York City. + January 18, 1915. + + DEAR PAGE: + + The President has sent me a copy of your confidential dispatch No. + 1474, January 15th. + + The reason you had no information in regard to what General French + mentioned was because no one knew of it outside of the President + and myself and there was no safe way to inform you. + + As a matter of fact, there has been no direct proposal made by + anybody. I have had repeated informal talks with the different + ambassadors and I have had direct communication with Zimmermann, + which has led the President and me to believe that peace + conversations may be now initiated in an unofficial way. + + This is the purpose of my going over on the _Lusitania_, January + 30th. When I reach London I will be guided by circumstances as to + whether I shall go next to France or Germany. + + The President and I find that we are going around in a circle in + dealing with the representatives in Washington, and he thinks it + advisable and necessary to reach the principals direct. When I + explain just what is in the President's mind, I believe they will + all feel that it was wise for me to come at this time. + + I shall not write more fully for the reason I am to see you so + soon. + + I am sending this through the kindness of Sir Horace Plunkett. + + Faithfully yours, + E.M. HOUSE. + + P.S. We shall probably say, for public consumption, that I am + coming to look into relief measures, and see what further can be + done. Of course, no one but you and Sir Edward must know the real + purpose of my visit. + +Why was Colonel House so confident that the Dual Alliance was prepared +at this time to discuss terms of peace? Colonel House, as his letter +shows, was in communication with Zimmermann, the German Under Foreign +Secretary. But a more important approach had just been made, though +information bearing on this had not been sent to Page. The Kaiser had +asked President Wilson to transmit to Great Britain a suggestion for +making peace on the basis of surrendering Belgium and of paying for its +restoration. It seems incredible that the Ambassador should not have +been told of this, but Page learned of the proposal from Field Marshal +French, then commanding the British armies in the field, and this +accounts for Colonel House's explanation that, "the reason you had no +information, in regard to what General French mentioned was because no +one knew of it outside of the President and myself and there was no safe +way to inform you." Page has left a memorandum which explains the whole +strange proceeding--a paper which is interesting not only for its +contents, but as an illustration of the unofficial way in which +diplomacy was conducted in Washington at this time: + + * * * * * + +Field Marshal Sir John French, secretly at home from his command of the +English forces in France, invited me to luncheon. There were his +especially confidential friend Moore, the American who lives with him, +and Sir John's private secretary. The military situation is this: a +trench stalemate in France. Neither army has made appreciable progress +in three months. Neither can advance without a great loss of men. +Neither is whipped. Neither can conquer. It would require a million more +men than the Allies can command and a very long time to drive the +Germans back across Belgium. Presently, if the Russians succeed in +driving the Germans back to German soil, there will be another trench +stalemate there. Thus the war wears a practically endless outlook so far +as military operations are concerned. Germany has plenty of men and +plenty of food for a long struggle yet; and, if she use all the copper +now in domestic use in the Empire, she will probably have also plenty of +ammunition for a long struggle. She is not nearly at the end of her rope +either in a military or an economic sense. + +What then? The Allies are still stronger--so long as they hold together +as one man. But is it reasonable to assume that they can? And, even if +they can, is it worth while to win a complete victory at such a cost as +the lives of practically all the able-bodied men in Europe? But can the +Allies hold together as one man for two or three or four years? Well, +what are we going to do? And here came the news of the lunch. General +French informed me that the President had sent to England, at the +request of the Kaiser, a proposal looking toward peace, Germany offering +to give up Belgium and to pay for its restoration. + +"This," said Sir John, "is their fourth proposal." + +"And," he went on, "if they will restore Belgium and give +Alsace-Lorraine to France and Constantinople will go to Russia, I can't +see how we can refuse it." + +He scouted the popular idea of "crushing out militarism" once for all. +It would be desirable, even if it were not necessary, to leave Germany +as a first-class power. We couldn't disarm her people forever. We've got +to leave her and the rest to do what they think they must do; and we +must arm ourselves the best we can against them. + +Now--did General French send for me and tell me this just for fun and +just because he likes me? He was very eager to know my opinion whether +this peace offer were genuine or whether it was a trick of the Germans +to--publish it later and thereby to throw the blame for continuing the +war on England? + +It occurs to me as possible that he was directed to tell me what he +told, trusting to me, in spite of his protestations of personal +confidence, etc., to get it to the President. Assuming that the +President sent the Kaiser's message to the King, this may be a suggested +informal answer--that if the offer be extended to give France and Russia +what they want, it will be considered, etc. This may or may not be +true. Alas! the fact that I know nothing about the offer has no meaning; +for the State Department never informs me of anything it takes up with +the British Ambassador in Washington. Well, I'll see. + + * * * * * + +These were therefore the reasons why Colonel House had decided to go to +Europe and enter into peace negotiations with the warring powers. +Colonel House was wise in taking all possible precautions to conceal the +purpose of this visit. His letter intimates that the German Government +was eager to have him cross the ocean on this particular mission; it +discloses, on the other hand, that the British Government regarded the +proposed negotiations with no enthusiasm. Sir Edward Grey and Mr. +Asquith would have been glad to end hostilities on terms that would +permanently establish peace and abolish the vices which were responsible +for the war, and they were ready to welcome courteously the President's +representative and discuss the situation with him in a fair-minded +spirit. But they did not believe that such an enterprise could serve a +useful purpose. Possibly the military authorities, as General French's +remarks to Page may indicate, did not believe that either side could win +a decisive victory, but this was not the belief of the British public +itself. The atmosphere in England at that time was one of confidence in +the success of British arms and of suspicion and distrust of the British +Government. A strong expectation prevailed in the popular mind, that the +three great Powers of the Entente would at an early date destroy the +menace which had enshrouded Europe for forty years, and there was no +intention of giving Germany a breathing spell during which she could +regenerate her forces to resume the onslaught. In the winter of 1915 +Great Britain was preparing for the naval attack on the Dardanelles, and +its success was regarded as inevitable. Page had an opportunity to +observe the state of optimism which prevailed in high British circles. +In March of 1915 he was visiting the Prime Minister at Walmer Castle; +one afternoon Mr. Asquith took him aside, informed him of the +Dardanelles preparations and declared that the Allies would have +possession of Constantinople in two weeks. The Prime Minister's attitude +was not one of hope; it was one of confidence. The capture of +Constantinople, of course, would have brought an early success to the +allied army on all fronts[108]. This was the mood that was spurring on +the British public to its utmost exertions, and, with such a +determination prevailing everywhere, a step in the direction of peace +was the last thing that the British desired; such a step could have been +interpreted only as an attempt to deprive the Allies of their victory +and as an effort to assist Germany in escaping the consequences of her +crimes. Combined with this stout popular resolve, however, there was a +lack of confidence in the Asquith ministry. An impression was broadcast +that it was pacifist, even "defeatist," in its thinking, and that it +harboured a weak humanitarianism which was disposed to look gently even +upon the behaviour of the Prussians. The masses suspected that the +ministry would welcome a peace with Germany which would mean little more +than a cessation of hostilities and which would leave the great problems +of the war unsolved. That this opinion was unjust, that, on the +contrary, the British Foreign Office was steadily resisting all attempts +to end the war on an unsatisfactory basis, Page's correspondence, +already quoted, abundantly proves, but this unreasoning belief did +prevail and it was an important factor in the situation. This is the +reason why the British Cabinet regarded Colonel House's visit at that +time with positive alarm. It feared that, should the purpose become +known, the British public and press would conclude that the Government +had invited a peace discussion. Had any such idea seized the popular +mind in February and March, 1915, a scandal would have developed which +would probably have caused the downfall of the Asquith Ministry. "Don't +fool yourself about peace," Page writes to his son Arthur, about this +time. "If any one should talk about peace, or doves, or ploughshares +here, they'd shoot him." + +Colonel House reached London early in February and was soon in close +consultation with the Prime Minister and Sir Edward Grey. He made a +great personal success; the British statesmen gained a high regard for +his disinterestedness and his general desire to serve the cause of +decency among nations; but he made little progress in his peace plans, +simply because the facts were so discouraging and so impregnable. Sir +Edward repeated to him what he had already said to Page many times: that +Great Britain was prepared to discuss a peace that would really +safeguard the future of Europe, but was not prepared to discuss one that +would merely reinstate the regime that had existed before 1914. The fact +that the Germans were not ready to accept such a peace made discussion +useless. Disappointed at this failure, Colonel House left for Berlin. +His letters to Page show that the British judgment of Germany was not +unjust and that the warnings which Page had sent to Washington were +based on facts: + + _From Edward M. House_ + Embassy of the United States of America, + Berlin, Germany, + March 20, 1915. + + DEAR PAGE: + + I arrived yesterday morning and I saw Zimmermann[109] almost + immediately. He was very cordial and talked to me frankly and + sensibly. + + I tried to bring about a better feeling toward England, and told + him how closely their interests touched at certain points. I also + told him of the broad way in which Sir Edward was looking at the + difficult problems that confronted Europe, and I expressed the hope + that this view would be reciprocated elsewhere, so that, when the + final settlement came, it could be made in a way that would be to + the advantage of mankind. + + The Chancellor is out of town for a few days and I shall see him + when he returns. I shall also see Ballin, Von Gwinner, and many + others. I had lunch yesterday with Baron von Wimpsch who is a very + close friend of the Emperor. + + Zimmermann said that it was impossible for them to make any peace + overtures, and he gave me to understand that, for the moment, even + what England would perhaps consent to now, could not be accepted by + Germany, to say nothing of what France had in mind. + + I shall hope to establish good relations here and then go somewhere + and await further developments. I even doubt whether more can be + done until some decisive military result is obtained by one or + other of the belligerents. + + I will write further if there is any change in the situation. I + shall probably be here until at least the 27th. + + Faithfully yours, + E.M. HOUSE. + + _From Edward M. House_ + Embassy of the United States of America, + Berlin, Germany. + March 26, 1915. + + DEAR PAGE: + + While I have accomplished here much that is of value, yet I leave + sadly disappointed that no direct move can be made toward peace. + + The Civil Government are ready, and upon terms that would at least + make an opening. There is also a large number in military and naval + circles that I believe would be glad to begin parleys, but the + trouble is mainly with the people. It is a very dangerous thing to + permit a people to be misled and their minds inflamed either by the + press, by speeches, or otherwise. + + In my opinion, no government could live here at this time if peace + was proposed upon terms that would have any chance of acceptance. + Those in civil authority that I have met are as reasonable and + fairminded as their counterparts in England or America, but, for + the moment, they are impotent. + + I hear on every side the old story that all Germany wants is a + permanent guaranty of peace, so that she may proceed upon her + industrial career undisturbed. + + I have talked of the second convention[110], and it has been + cordially received, and there is a sentiment here, as well as + elsewhere, to make settlement upon lines broad enough to prevent a + recurrence of present conditions. + + There is much to tell you verbally, which I prefer not to write. + + Faithfully yours, + E.M. HOUSE. + +Colonel House's next letter is most important, for it records the birth +of that new idea which afterward became a ruling thought with President +Wilson and the cause of almost endless difficulties in his dealings with +Great Britain. The "new phase of the situation" to which he refers is +"the Freedom of the Seas" and this brief note to Page, dated March 27, +1915, contains the first reference to this idea on record. Indeed, it is +evident from the letter itself that Colonel House made this notation the +very day the plan occurred to him. + + _From Edward M. House_ + Embassy of the United States of America, + Berlin, Germany. + March 27, 1915. + + DEAR PAGE: + + I have had a most satisfactory talk with the Chancellor. After + conferring with Stovall[111], Page[112], and Willard[113], I shall + return to Paris and then to London to discuss with Sir Edward a + phase of the situation which promises results. + + I did not think of it until to-day and have mentioned it to both + the Chancellor and Zimmermann, who have received it cordially, and + who join me in the belief that it may be the first thread to bridge + the chasm. + + I am writing hastily, for the pouch is waiting to be closed. + + Faithfully yours, + E.M. HOUSE. + +The "freedom of the seas" was merely a proposal to make all merchant +shipping, enemy and neutral, free from attack in time of war. It would +automatically have ended all blockades and all interference with +commerce. Germany would have been at liberty to send all her merchant +ships to sea for undisturbed trade with all parts of the world in war +time as in peace, and, in future, navies would be used simply for +fighting. Offensively, their purpose would be to bombard enemy +fortifications, to meet enemy ships in battle, and to convoy ships which +were transporting troops for the invasion of enemy soil; defensively, +their usefulness would consist in protecting the homeland from such +attacks and such invasions. Perhaps an argument can be made for this new +rule of warfare, but it is at once apparent that it is the most +startling proposal brought forth in modern times in the direction of +disarmament. It meant that Great Britain should abandon that agency of +warfare with which she had destroyed Napoleon, and with which she +expected to destroy Germany in the prevailing struggle--the blockade. +From a defensive standpoint, Colonel House's proposed reform would have +been a great advantage to Britain, for an honourable observance of the +rule would have insured the British people its food supply in wartime. +With Great Britain, however, the blockade has been historically an +offensive measure: it is the way in which England has always made war. +Just what reception this idea would have had with official London, in +April, 1915, had Colonel House been able to present it as his own +proposal, is not clear, but the Germans, with characteristic stupidity, +prevented the American from having a fair chance. The Berlin Foreign +Office at once cabled to Count Bernstorff and Bernhard Dernburg--the +latter a bovine publicity agent who was then promoting the German cause +in the American press--with instructions to start a "propaganda" in +behalf of the "freedom of the seas." By the time Colonel House reached +London, therefore, these four words had been adorned with the Germanic +label. British statesmen regarded the suggestion as coming from Germany +and not from America, and the reception was worse than cold. + +And another tragedy now roughly interrupted President Wilson's attempts +at mediation. Page's letters have disclosed that he possessed almost a +clairvoyant faculty of foreseeing approaching events. The letters of the +latter part of April and of early May contain many forebodings of +tragedy. "Peace? Lord knows when!" he writes to his son Arthur on May +2nd. "The blowing up of a liner with American passengers may be the +prelude. I almost expect such a thing." And again on the same date: "If +a British liner full of American passengers be blown up, what will Uncle +Sam do? That's what's going to happen." "We all have the feeling here," +the Ambassador writes on May 6th, "that more and more frightful things +are about to happen." + +The ink on those words was scarcely dry when a message from Queenstown +was handed to the American Ambassador. A German submarine had torpedoed +and sunk the _Lusitania_ off the Old head of Kinsale, and one hundred +and twenty-four American men, women, and children had been drowned. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 100: On September 5, 1914, Great Britain, France, and Russia +signed the Pact of London, an agreement which bound the three powers of +the Entente to make war and peace as a unit. Each power specifically +pledged itself not to make a separate peace.] + +[Footnote 101: Published in Chapter XI, page 327.] + +[Footnote 102: Colonel House's summer home in Massachusetts.] + +[Footnote 103: Ambassador from Austria-Hungary to the United States.] + +[Footnote 104: This, with certain modifications is Article 10 of the +Covenant of the League of Nations.] + +[Footnote 105: There is a suggestion of these provisions in Article 8 of +the League Covenant.] + +[Footnote 106: Article 11 of the League Covenant reflects the influence +of this idea.] + +[Footnote 107: From the President's second message to Congress, December +8, 1914: "It is our dearest present hope that this character and +reputation may presently, in God's providence, bring us an opportunity, +such as has seldom been vouchsafed any nation, to counsel and obtain +peace in the world and reconciliation and a healing settlement of many a +matter that has cooled and interrupted the friendship of nations."] + +[Footnote 108: The opening of the Dardanelles would have given Russian +agricultural products access to the markets of the world and thus have +preserved the Russian economic structure. It would also have enabled the +Entente to munition the Russian Army. With a completely equipped Russian +Army in the East and the Entente Army in the West, Germany could not +long have survived the pressure.] + +[Footnote 109: German Under Foreign Secretary.] + +[Footnote 110: It was the Wilson Administration's plan that there should +be two peace gatherings, one of the belligerents to settle the war, and +the other of belligerents and neutrals, to settle questions of general +importance growing out of the war. This latter is what Colonel House +means by "the second convention."] + +[Footnote 111: Mr. Pleasant A. Stovall, American Minister to +Switzerland.] + +[Footnote 112: Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, American Ambassador to Italy.] + +[Footnote 113: Mr. Joseph E. Willard. American Ambassador to Spain.] + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life and Letters of Walter H. +Page, Volume I, by Burton J. 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