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+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 Ćschylus 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 Encyclopćdia 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 anćmia, 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 Encyclopćdia 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
+     medićvalism--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 medićval 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. Hendrick
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