ENGLAND BEFORE THE WAR
The London Embassy is the greatest diplomatic gift at the disposal of
the President, and, in the minds of the American people, it possesses a
glamour and an historic importance all its own. Page came to the
position, as his predecessors had come, with a sense of awe; the great
traditions of the office; the long line of distinguished men, from
Thomas Pinckney to Whitelaw Reid, who had filled it; the peculiar
delicacy of the problems that then existed between the two countries;
the reverent respect which Page had always entertained for English
history, English literature, and English public men--all these
considerations naturally quickened the new ambassador's imagination and,
at the same time, made his arrival in England a rather solemn event. Yet
his first days in London had their grotesque side as well. He himself
has recorded his impressions, and, since they contain an important
lesson for the citizens of the world's richest and most powerful
Republic, they should be preserved. When the ambassador of practically
any other country reaches London, he finds waiting for him a spacious
and beautiful embassy, filled with a large corps of secretaries and
servants--everything ready, to the minutest detail, for the beginning of
his labours. He simply enters these elaborate state-owned and
state-supported quarters and starts work. How differently the mighty
United States welcomes its ambassadors let Page's memorandum tell:
The boat touched at Queenstown, and a mass of Irish reporters came
aboard and wished to know what I thought of Ireland. Some of them
printed the important announcement that I was quite friendly to Ireland!
At Liverpool was Mr. Laughlin[11], Chargé d'Affaires in London since Mr.
Reid's death, to meet me, and of course the consul, Mr. Washington. . . .
On our arrival in London, Laughlin explained that he had taken quarters
for me at the Coburg Hotel, whither we drove, after having fought my way
through a mob of reporters at the station. One fellow told me that since
I left New York the papers had published a declaration by me that I
meant to be very "democratic" and would under no conditions wear "knee
breeches"; and he asked me about that report. I was foolish enough to
reply that the existence of an ass in the United States ought not
necessarily to require the existence of a corresponding ass in London.
He printed that! I never knew the origin of this "knee breeches" story.
That residence at the Coburg Hotel for three months was a crowded and
uncomfortable nightmare. The indignity and inconvenience--even the
humiliation--of an ambassador beginning his career in an hotel,
especially during the Court season, and a green ambassador at that! I
hope I may not die before our Government does the conventional duty to
provide ambassadors' residences.
The next morning I went to the Chancery (123, Victoria Street) and my
heart sank. I had never in my life been in an American Embassy. I had
had no business with them in Paris or in London on my previous visits.
In fact I had never been in any embassy except the British Embassy at
Washington. But the moment I entered that dark and dingy hall at 123,
Victoria Street, between two cheap stores--the same entrance that the
dwellers in the cheap flats above used--I knew that Uncle Sam had no fit
dwelling there. And the Ambassador's room greatly depressed me--dingy
with twenty-nine years of dirt and darkness, and utterly undignified.
And the rooms for the secretaries and attachés were the little bedrooms,
kitchen, etc., of that cheap flat; that's all it was. For the place we
paid $1,500 a year. I did not understand then and I do not understand
yet how Lowell, Bayard, Phelps, Hay, Choate, and Reid endured that cheap
hole. Of course they stayed there only about an hour a day; but they
sometimes saw important people there. And, whether they ever saw anybody
there or not, the offices of the United States Government in London
ought at least to be as good as a common lawyer's office in a country
town in a rural state of our Union. Nobody asked for anything for an
embassy: nobody got anything for an embassy. I made up my mind in ten
minutes that I'd get out of this place[12].
At the Coburg Hotel, we were very well situated; but the hotel became
intolerably tiresome. Harold Fowler and Frank and I were there until
W.A.W.P.[13] and Kitty[14] came (and Frances Clark came with them). Then
we were just a little too big a hotel party. Every morning I drove down
to the old hole of a Chancery and remained about two hours. There wasn't
very much work to do; and my main business was to become acquainted with
the work and with people--to find myself with reference to this task,
with reference to official life and to London life in general.
Every afternoon people came to the hotel to see me--some to pay their
respects and to make life pleasant, some out of mere curiosity, and many
for ends of their own. I confess that on many days nightfall found me
completely worn out. But the evenings seldom brought a chance to rest.
The social season was going at its full gait; and the new ambassador
(any new ambassador) would have been invited to many functions. A very
few days after my arrival, the Duchess of X invited Frank and me to
dinner. The powdered footmen were the chief novelty of the occasion for
us. But I was much confused because nobody introduced anybody to anybody
else. If a juxtaposition, as at the dinner table, made an introduction
imperative, the name of the lady next you was so slurred that you
couldn't possibly understand it.
Party succeeded party. I went to them because they gave me a chance to
become acquainted with people.
But very early after my arrival, I was of course summoned by the King. I
had presented a copy of my credentials to the Foreign Secretary (Sir
Edward Grey) and the real credentials--the original in a sealed
envelope--I must present to His Majesty. One morning the King's Master
of the Ceremonies, Sir Arthur Walsh, came to the hotel with the royal
coaches, four or five of them, and the richly caparisoned grooms. The
whole staff of the Embassy must go with me. We drove to Buckingham
Palace, and, after waiting a few moments, I was ushered into the King's
presence. He stood in one of the drawing rooms on the ground floor
looking out on the garden. There stood with him in uniform Sir Edward
Grey. I entered and bowed. He shook my hand, and I spoke my little piece
of three or four sentences.
He replied, welcoming me and immediately proceeded to express his
surprise and regret that a great and rich country like the United States
had not provided a residence for its ambassadors. "It is not fair to an
ambassador," said he; and he spoke most earnestly.
I reminded him that, although the lack of a home was an inconvenience,
the trouble or discomfort that fell on an ambassador was not so bad as
the wrong impression which I feared was produced about the United States
and its Government, and I explained that we had had so many absorbing
domestic tasks and, in general, so few absorbing foreign relations, that
we had only begun to develop what might be called an international
consciousness.
Sir Edward was kind enough the next time I saw him to remark that I did
that very well and made a good impression on the King.
I could now begin my ambassadorial career proper--call on the other
ambassadors and accept invitations to dinners and the like.
I was told after I came from the King's presence that the Queen would
receive me in a few minutes. I was shown upstairs, the door opened, and
there in a small drawing room, stood the Queen alone--a pleasant woman,
very royal in appearance. The one thing that sticks in my memory out of
this first conversation with her Majesty was her remark that she had
seen only one man who had been President of the United States--Mr.
Roosevelt. She hoped he was well. I felt moved to remark that she was
not likely to see many former Presidents because the office was so hard
a task that most of them did not long survive.
"I'm hoping that office will not soon kill the King," she said.
In time Page obtained an entirely adequate and dignified house at 6
Grosvenor Square, and soon found that the American Ambassadorship had
compensations which were hardly suggested by his first glimpse of the
lugubrious Chancery. He brought to this new existence his plastic and
inquisitive mind, and his mighty gusto for the interesting and the
unusual; he immensely enjoyed his meetings with the most important
representatives of all types of British life. The period of his arrival
marked a crisis in British history; Mr. Lloyd George was supposed to be
taxing the aristocracy out of existence; Mr. Asquith was accused of
plotting the destruction of the House of Lords; the tide of liberalism,
even of radicalism, was running high, and, in the judgment of the
conservative forces, England was tottering to its fall; the gathering
mob was about to submerge everything that had made it great. And the
Irish question had reached another crisis with the passage of the Home
Rule Bill, which Sir Edward Carson was preparing to resist with his
Irish "volunteers."
All these matters formed the staple of talk at dinner tables, at country
houses and at the clubs; and Page found constant entertainment in the
variegated pageant. There were important American matters to discuss
with the Foreign Office--more important than any that had arisen in
recent years--particularly Mexico and the Panama Tolls. Before these
questions are considered, however, it may be profitable to print a
selection from the many letters which Page wrote during his first year,
giving his impressions of this England which he had always loved and
which a closer view made him love and admire still more. These letters
have the advantage of presenting a frank and yet sympathetic picture of
British society and British life as it was just before the war.
_To Frank N Doubleday_
The Coburg Hotel,
Carlos Place, Grosvenor Square,
London, W.
DEAR EFFENDI:[15]
You can't imagine the intensity of the party feeling here. I dined
to-night in an old Tory family. They had just had a "division" an
hour or two before in the House of Lords on the Home Rule Bill. Six
Lords were at the dinner and their wives. One was a Duke, two were
Bishops, and the other three were Earls. They expect a general
"bust-up." If the King does so and so, off with the King! That's
what they fear the Liberals will do. It sounds very silly to me;
but you can't exaggerate their fear. The Great Lady, who was our
hostess, told me, with tears in her voice, that she had suspended
all social relations with the Liberal leaders.
At lunch--just five or six hours before--we were at the Prime
Minister's, where the talk was precisely on the other side.
Gladstone's granddaughter was there and several members of the
Cabinet.
Somehow it reminds me of the tense days of the slavery controversy
just before the Civil War.
Yet in the everyday life of the people, you hear nothing about it.
It is impossible to believe that the ordinary man cares a fig!
Good-night. You don't care a fig for this. But I'll get time to
write you something interesting in a little while.
Yours,
W.H.P.
_To Herbert S. Houston_
American Embassy
London
Sunday, 24 Aug., 1913.
DEAR H.S.H.:
. . . You know there's been much discussion of the decadence of the
English people. I don't believe a word of it. They have an awful
slum, I hear, as everybody knows, and they have an idle class.
Worse, from an equal-opportunity point-of-view, they have a very
large servant-class, and a large class that depends on the nobility
and the rich. All these are economic and social drawbacks. But they
have always had all these--except that the slum has become larger
in modern years. And I don't see or find any reason to believe in
the theory of decadence. The world never saw a finer lot of men
than the best of their ruling class. You may search the world and
you may search history for finer men than Lord Morley, Sir Edward
Grey, Mr. Harcourt, and other members of the present Cabinet. And I
meet such men everywhere--gently bred, high-minded, physically fit,
intellectually cultivated, patriotic. If the devotion to old forms
and the inertia which makes any change almost impossible strike an
American as out-of-date, you must remember that in the grand old
times of England, they had all these things and had them worse than
they are now. I can't see that the race is breaking down or giving
out. Consider how their political morals have been pulled up since
the days of the rotten boroughs; consider how their court-life is
now high and decent, and think what it once was. British trade is
larger this year than it ever was, Englishmen are richer then they
ever were and more of them are rich. They write and speak and play
cricket, and govern, and fight as well as they have ever
done--excepting, of course, the writing of Shakespeare.
Another conclusion that is confirmed the more you see of English
life is their high art of living. When they make their money, they
stop money-making and cultivate their minds and their gardens and
entertain their friends and do all the high arts of living--to
perfection. Three days ago a retired soldier gave a garden-party in
my honour, twenty-five miles out of London. There was his historic
house, a part of it 500 years old; there were his ten acres of
garden, his lawn, his trees; and they walk with you over it all;
they sit out-of-doors; they serve tea; they take life rationally;
they talk pleasantly (not jocularly, nor story-telling); they abhor
the smart in talk or in conduct; they have gentleness, cultivation,
the best manners in the world; and they are genuine. The hostess
has me take a basket and go with her while she cuts it full of
flowers for us to bring home; and, as we walk, she tells the story
of the place. She is a tenant-for-life; it is entailed. Her husband
was wounded in South Africa. Her heir is her nephew. The home, of
course, will remain in the family forever. No, they don't go to
London much in recent years: why should they? But they travel a
month or more. They give three big tea-parties--one when the
rhododendrons bloom and the others at stated times. They have
friends to stay with them half the time, perhaps--sometimes parties
of a dozen. England never had a finer lot of folk than these. And
you see them everywhere. The art of living sanely they have
developed to as high a level, I think, as you will find at any time
in any land.
The present political battle is fiercer than you would ever guess.
The Lords feel that they are sure to be robbed: they see the end
of the ordered world. Chaos and confiscation lie before them. Yet
that, too, has nearly always been so. It was so in the Reform Bill
days. Lord Morley said to me the other day that when all the
abolitions had been done, there would be fewer things abolished
than anybody hopes or fears, and that there would be the same
problems in some form for many generations. I'm beginning to
believe that the Englishman has always been afraid of the
future--that's what's keeps him so alert. They say to me: "You have
frightful things happen in the United States--your Governor of New
York[16], your Thaw case, your corruption, etc., etc.; and yet you
seem sure and tell us that your countrymen feel sure of the safety
of your government." In the newspaper comments on my
Southampton[17] speech the other day, this same feeling cropped up;
the American Ambassador assures us that the note of hope is the
dominant note of the Republic--etc., etc. Yes, they are dull, _in a
way_--not dull, so much as steady; and yet they have more solid
sense than any other people.
It's an interesting study--the most interesting in the world. The
genuineness of the courtesy, the real kindness and the hospitality
of the English are beyond praise and without limit. In this they
show a strange contradiction to their dickering habits in trade and
their "unctuous rectitude" in stealing continents. I know a place
in the world now where they are steadily moving their boundary line
into other people's territory. I guess they really believe that the
earth belongs to them.
Sincerely,
W.H.P.
To Arthur W. Page[18]
Gordon Arms Hotel, Elgin, Scotland.
September 6, 1913.
Dear Arthur:
Your mother and Kitty[19] and I are on our way to see Andy[20]. Had
you any idea that to motor from London to Skibo means driving more
than eight hundred miles? Our speedometer now shows more than seven
hundred and we've another day to go--at least one hundred and
thirty miles. And we haven't even had a tire accident. We're having
a delightful journey--only this country yields neither vegetables
nor fruits, and I have to live on oatmeal. They spell it
p-o-r-r-i-d-g-e, and they call it puruge. But they beat all
creation as carnivorous folk. We stayed last night at a beautiful
mountain hotel at Braemar (the same town whereat Stevenson wrote
"Treasure Island") and they had nine kinds of meat for dinner and
eggs in three ways, and no vegetables but potatoes. But this
morning we struck the same thin oatbread that you ate at
Grandfather Mountain.
I've never understood the Scotch. I think they are, without doubt,
the most capable race in the world--away from home. But how they
came to be so and how they keep up their character and supremacy
and keep breeding true needs explanation. As you come through the
country, you see the most monotonous and dingy little houses and
thousands of robust children, all dirtier than niggers. In the
fertile parts of the country, the fields are beautifully
cultivated--for Lord This-and-T'Other who lives in London and comes
up here in summer to collect his rents and to shoot. The country
people seem desperately poor. But they don't lose their robustness.
In the solid cities--the solidest you ever saw, all being of
granite--such as Edinburgh and Aberdeen, where you see the
prosperous class, they look the sturdiest and most independent
fellows you ever saw. As they grow old they all look like
blue-bellied Presbyterian elders. Scotch to the marrow--everybody
and everything seem--bare knees alike on the street and in the
hotel with dress coats on, bagpipes--there's no sense in these
things, yet being Scotch they live forever. The first men I saw
early this morning on the street in front of the hotel were two
weather-beaten old chaps, with gray beards under their chins.
"Guddddd Murrrrninggggg, Andy," said one. "Guddddd murrninggggg,
Sandy," said the other; and they trudged on. They'd dethrone kings
before they'd shave differently or drop their burrs and gutturals
or cover their knees or cease lying about the bagpipe. And you
can't get it out of the blood. Your mother[21] becomes provoked
when I say these things, and I shouldn't wonder if you yourself
resent them and break out quoting Burns. Now the Highlands can't
support a population larger than the mountain counties of Kentucky.
Now your Kentucky feud is a mere disgrace to civilization. But your
Highland feud is celebrated in song and story. Every clan keeps
itself together to this day by its history and by its plaid. At a
turn in the road in the mountains yesterday, there stood a statue
of Rob Roy painted every stripe to life. We saw his sword and purse
in Sir Walter's house at Abbotsford. The King himself wore the kilt
and one of the plaids at the last court ball at Buckingham Palace,
and there is a man who writes his name and is called "The
Macintosh of Macintosh," and that's a prouder title than the
King's. A little handful of sheep-stealing bandits got themselves
immortalized and heroized, and they are now all Presbyterian
elders. They got _their_ church "established" in Scotland, and when
the King comes to Scotland, by Jehoshaphat! he is obliged to become
a Presbyterian. Yet your Kentucky feudist--poor devil--he comes too
late. The Scotchman has pre-empted that particular field of glory.
And all such comparisons make your mother fighting mad. . . .
Affectionately,
W.H.P.
_To the President_
American Embassy, London.
October 25, 1913.
Dear Mr. President:
I am moved once in a while to write you privately, not about any
specific piece of public business, but only, if I can, to transmit
something of the atmosphere of the work here. And, since this is
meant quite as much for your amusement as for any information it
may carry, don't read it "in office hours."
The future of the world belongs to us. A man needs to live here,
with two economic eyes in his head, a very little time to become
very sure of this. Everybody will see it presently. These English
are spending their capital, and it is their capital that continues
to give them their vast power. Now what are we going to do with the
leadership of the world presently when it clearly falls into our
hands[22]? And how can we use the English for the highest uses of
democracy?
You see their fear of an on-sweeping democracy in their social
treatment of party opponents. A Tory lady told me with tears that
she could no longer invite her Liberal friends to her house: "I
have lost them--they are robbing us, you know." I made the mistake
of saying a word in praise of Sir Edward Grey to a duke. "Yes, yes,
no doubt an able man; but you must understand, sir, that I don't
train with that gang." A bishop explained to me at elaborate length
why the very monarchy is doomed unless something befalls Lloyd
George and his programme. Every dinner party is made up with strict
reference to the party politics of the guests. Sometimes you
imagine you see something like civil war; and money is flowing out
of the Kingdom into Canada in the greatest volume ever known and I
am told that a number of old families are investing their fortunes
in African lands.
These and such things are, of course, mere chips which show the
direction the slow stream runs. The great economic tide of the
century flows our way. _We_ shall have the big world questions to
decide presently. Then we shall need world policies; and it will be
these old-time world leaders that we shall then have to work with,
more closely than now.
The English make a sharp distinction between the American people
and the American Government--a distinction that they are conscious
of and that they themselves talk about. They do not think of our
_people_ as foreigners. I have a club book on my table wherein the
members are classified as British, Colonial, American, and
Foreign--quite unconsciously. But they do think of our Government
as foreign, and as a frontier sort of thing without good manners or
good faith. This distinction presents the big task of implanting
here a real respect for our Government. People often think to
compliment the American Ambassador by assuming that he is better
than his Government and must at times be ashamed of it. Of course
the Government never does this--never--but persons in unofficial
life; and I have sometimes hit some hard blows under this
condescending provocation. This is the one experience that I have
found irritating. They commiserate me on having a Government that
will not provide an Ambassador's residence--from the King to my
servants. They talk about American lynchings. Even the _Spectator,_
in an early editorial about you, said that we should now see what
stuff there is in the new President by watching whether you would
stop lynchings. They forever quote Bryce on the badness of our
municipal government. They pretend to think that the impeachment of
governors is common and ought to be commoner. One delicious M.P.
asked me: "Now, since the Governor of New York is impeached, who
becomes Vice-President[23]?" Ignorance, unfathomable ignorance, is
at the bottom of much of it; if the Town Treasurer of Yuba Dam gets
a $100 "rake off" on a paving contract, our city government is a
failure.
I am about to conclude that our yellow press does us more harm
abroad than at home, and many of the American correspondents of the
English papers send exactly the wrong news. The whole governing
class of England has a possibly exaggerated admiration for the
American people and something very like contempt for the American
Government.
If I make it out right two causes (in addition to their ignorance)
of their dislike of our Government are (1) its lack of manners in
the past, and (2) its indiscretions of publicity about foreign
affairs. We ostentatiously stand aloof from their polite ways and
courteous manners in many of the every-day, ordinary, unimportant
dealings with them--aloof from the common amenities of
long-organized political life. . . .
Not one of these things is worth mentioning or remembering. But
generations of them have caused our Government to be regarded as
thoughtless of the fine little acts of life--as rude. The more I
find out about diplomatic customs and the more I hear of the
little-big troubles of others, the more need I find to be careful
about details of courtesy.
Thus we are making as brave a show as becomes us. I no longer
dismiss a princess after supper or keep the whole diplomatic corps
waiting while I talk to an interesting man till the Master of
Ceremonies comes up and whispers: "Your Excellency, I think they
are waiting for you to move." But I am both young and green, and
even these folk forgive much to green youth, if it show a
willingness to learn.
But our Government, though green, isn't young enough to plead its
youth. It is time that it, too, were learning Old World manners in
dealing with Old World peoples. I do not know whether we need a
Bureau, or a Major-Domo, or a Master of Ceremonies at Washington,
but we need somebody to prompt us to act as polite as we really
are, somebody to think of those gentler touches that we naturally
forget. Some other governments have such officers--perhaps all. The
Japanese, for instance, are newcomers in world politics. But this
Japanese Ambassador and his wife here never miss a trick; and they
come across the square and ask us how to do it! All the other
governments, too, play the game of small courtesies to
perfection--the French, of course, and the Spanish and--even the
old Turk.
Another reason for the English distrust of our Government is its
indiscretions in the past of this sort: one of our Ministers to
Germany, you will recall, was obliged to resign because the
Government at Washington inadvertently published one of his
confidential despatches; Griscom saved his neck only by the skin,
when he was in Japan, for a similar reason. These things travel all
round the world from one chancery to another and all governments
know them. Yesterday somebody in Washington talked about my
despatch summarizing my talk with Sir Edward Grey about Mexico, and
it appeared in the papers here this morning that Sir Edward had
told me that the big business interests were pushing him hard. This
I sent as only _my_ inference. I had at once to disclaim it. This
leaves in his mind a doubt about our care for secrecy. They have
monstrous big doors and silent men in Downing Street; and, I am
told, a stenographer sits behind a big screen in Sir Edward's room
while an Ambassador talks[24]! I wonder if my comments on certain
poets, which I have poured forth there to provoke his, are
preserved in the archives of the British Empire. The British Empire
is surely very welcome to them. I have twice found it useful, by
the way, to bring up Wordsworth when he has begun to talk about
Panama tolls. Then your friend Canon Rawnsley[25] has, without
suspecting it, done good service in diplomacy.
The newspaper men here, by the way, both English and American, are
disposed to treat us fairly and to be helpful. The London _Times_,
on most subjects, is very friendly, and I find its editors worth
cultivating for their own sakes and because of their position. It
is still the greatest English newspaper. Its general friendliness
to the United States, by the way, has started a rumour that I hear
once in a while--that it is really owned by Americans--nonsense yet
awhile. To the fairness and helpfulness of the newspaper men there
are one or two exceptions, for instance, a certain sneaking whelp
who writes for several papers. He went to the Navy League dinner
last night at which I made a little speech. When I sat down, he
remarked to his neighbour, with a yawn, "Well, nothing in it for
me. The Ambassador, I am afraid, said nothing for which I can
demand his recall." They, of course, don't care thrippence about
me; it's you they hope to annoy.
Then after beating them at their own game of daily little
courtesies, we want a fight with them--a good stiff fight about
something wherein we are dead right, to remind them sharply that we
have sand in our craw[26]. I pray every night for such a fight; for
they like fighting men. Then they'll respect our Government as they
already respect us--if we are dead right.
But I've little hope for a fight of the right kind with Sir Edward
Grey. He is the very reverse of insolent--fair, frank,
sympathetic, and he has so clear an understanding of our real
character that he'd yield anything that his party and Parliament
would permit. He'd make a good American with the use of very little
sandpaper. Of course I know him better than I know any other member
of the Cabinet, but he seems to me the best-balanced man of them
all.
I can assure you emphatically that the tariff act[27] does command
their respect and is already having an amazing influence on their
opinion of our Government. Lord Mersey, a distinguished law lord
and a fine old fellow of the very best type of Englishman, said to
me last Sunday, "I wish to thank you for stopping half-way in
reducing your tariff; that will only half ruin us." A lady of a
political family (Liberal) next whom I sat at dinner the other
night (and these women know their politics as no class of women
among us do) said: "Tell me something about your great President.
We hadn't heard much about him nor felt his hand till your tariff
bill passed. He seems to have real power in the Government. You
know we do not always know who has power in your Government." Lord
Grey, the one-time Governor-General of Canada, stopped looking at
the royal wedding presents the other evening long enough to say:
"The United States Government is waking up--waking up."
I sum up these atmospheric conditions--I do not presume to call
them by so definite a name as recommendations:
We are in the international game--not in its Old World intrigues
and burdens and sorrows and melancholy, but in the inevitable way
to leadership and to cheerful mastery in the future; and everybody
knows that we are in it but us. It is a sheer blind habit that
causes us to continue to try to think of ourselves as aloof. They
think in terms of races here, and we are of their race, and we
shall become the strongest and the happiest branch of it.
While we play the game with them, we shall play it better by
playing it under their long-wrought-out rules of courtesy in
everyday affairs.
We shall play it better, too, if our Government play it
quietly--except when the subject demands publicity. I have heard
that in past years the foreign representatives of our Government
have reported too few things and much too meagrely. I have heard
since I have been here that these representatives become timid
because Washington has for many a year conducted its foreign
business too much in the newspapers; and the foreign governments
themselves are always afraid of this.
Meantime I hardly need tell you of my appreciation of such a chance
to make so interesting a study and to enjoy so greatly the most
interesting experience, I really believe, in the whole world. I
only hope that in time I may see how to shape the constant
progression of incidents into a constructive course of events; for
we are soon coming into a time of big changes.
Most heartily yours,
WALTER H. PAGE.
_To David F. Houston_[28]
American Embassy, London [undated].
DEAR HOUSTON:
You're doing the bigger job: as the world now is, there is no other
job so big as yours or so well worth doing; but I'm having more
fun. I'm having more fun than anybody else anywhere. It's a large
window you look through on the big world--here in London; and,
while I am for the moment missing many of the things that I've most
cared about hitherto (such as working for the countryman, guessing
at American public opinion, coffee that's fit to drink, corn bread,
sunshine, and old faces) big new things come on the horizon. Yet a
man's personal experiences are nothing in comparison with the large
job that our Government has to do in its Foreign Relations. I'm
beginning to begin to see what it is. The American people are taken
most seriously here. I'm sometimes almost afraid of the respect and
even awe in which they hold us. But the American Government is a
mere joke to them. They don't even believe that we ourselves
believe in it. We've had no foreign policy, no continuity of plan,
no matured scheme, no settled way of doing things and we seem
afraid of Irishmen or Germans or some "element" when a chance for
real action comes. I'm writing to the President about this and
telling him stories to show how it works.
We needn't talk any longer about keeping aloof. If Cecil Spring
Rice would tell you the complaints he has already presented and if
you saw the work that goes on here--more than in all the other
posts in Europe--you'd see that all the old talk about keeping
aloof is Missouri buncombe. We're very much "in," but not frankly
in.
I wish you'd keep your eye on these things in cabinet meetings. The
English and the whole English world are ours, if we have the
courtesy to take them--fleet and trade and all; and we go on
pretending we are afraid of "entangling alliances." What about
disentangling alliances?
We're in the game. There's no use in letting a few wild Irish or
cocky Germans scare us. We need courtesy and frankness, and the
destinies of the world will be in our hands. They'll fall there
anyhow after we are dead; but I wish to see them come, while my own
eyes last. Don't you?
Heartily yours,
W.H.P.
_To Robert N. Page_[29]
London, December 22, 1913.
MY DEAR BOB:
. . . We have a splendid, big old house--not in any way
pretentious--a commonplace house in fact for fashionable London and
the least showy and costly of the Embassies. But it does very
well--it's big and elegantly plain and dignified. We have fifteen
servants in the house. They do just about what seven good ones
would do in the United States, but they do it a great deal better.
They pretty nearly run themselves and the place. The servant
question is admirably solved here. They divide the work according
to a fixed and unchangeable system and they do it remarkably
well--in their own slow English way. We simply let them alone,
unless something important happens to go wrong. Katharine simply
tells the butler that we'll have twenty-four people to dinner
to-morrow night and gives him a list of them. As they come in, the
men at the door address every one correctly--Your Lordship or Your
Grace, or what not. When they are all in, the butler comes to the
reception room and announces dinner. We do the rest. As every man
goes out, the butler asks him if he'll have a glass of water or of
grog or a cigar; he calls his car, puts him in it, and that's the
end of it. Bully good plan. But in the United States that butler,
whose wages are less than the ramshackle nigger I had at Garden
City to keep the place neat, would have a business of his own. But
here he is a sort of duke downstairs. He sits at the head of the
servants' table and orders them around and that's worth more than
money to an Old World servile mind.
The "season" doesn't begin till the King comes back and Parliament
opens, in February. But every kind of club and patriotic and
educational organization is giving its annual dinner now. I've been
going to them and making after-dinner speeches to get acquainted
and also to preach into them some little knowledge of American ways
and ideals. They are very nice--very. You could not suggest or
imagine any improvement in their kindness and courtesy. They do all
these things in some ways better than we. They have more courtesy.
They make far shorter speeches. But they do them all too much
alike. Still they do get much pleasure out of them and much
instruction too.
Then we are invited to twice as many private dinners and luncheons
as we can attend. At these, these people are at their best. But it
is yet quite confusing. A sea of friendly faces greets you--you
can't remember the names. Nobody ever introduces anybody to
anybody; and if by accident anybody ever tries, he simply says
"Uh-o-oh-Lord Xzwwxkmpt." You couldn't understand it if you had to
be hanged.
But we are untangling some of this confusion and coming to make
very real and very charming friends.
About December 20, everybody who is anybody leaves London. They go
to their country places for about a fortnight or they go to the
continent. Almost everything stops. It has been the only dull time
at the Embassy that I've had. Nothing is going on now. But up to
two days ago, it kept a furious gait. I'm glad of a little rest.
Dealing with the Government doesn't present the difficulties that
I feared. Sir Edward Grey is in the main responsible for the ease
with which it is done. He is a frank and fair and truthful man. You
will find him the day after to-morrow precisely where you left him
the day before yesterday. We get along very well indeed. I think we
should get along if we had harder tasks one with the other. And the
English people are even more friendly than the Government. You have
no idea of their respect for the American Nation. Of course there
is much ignorance, sometimes of a surprising sort. Very many
people, for instance, think that all the Americans are rich. A lady
told me the other night how poor she is--she is worth only
$1,250,000--"nothing like all you Americans." She was quite
sincere. In fact the wealth of the world (and the poverty, too) is
centred here in an amazing way. You can't easily take it in--how
rich or how many rich English families there are. They have had
wealth for generation after generation, and the surprising thing
is, they take care of it. They spend enormously--seldom
ostentatiously--but they are more than likely to add some of their
income every year to their principal. They have better houses in
town and in the country than I had imagined. They spend vast
fortunes in making homes in which they expect to live
forever--generation after generation.
To an American democrat the sad thing is the servile class. Before
the law the chimney sweep and the peer have exactly the same
standing. They have worked that out with absolute justice. But
there it stops. The serving class is what we should call abject. It
does not occur to them that they might ever become--or that their
descendants might ever become--ladies and gentlemen.
The "courts" are a very fine sight. The diplomatic ladies sit on a
row of seats on one side the throne room, the Duchesses on a row
opposite. The King and Queen sit on a raised platform with the
royal family. The Ambassadors come in first and bow and the King
shakes hands with them. Then come the forty or more Ministers--no
shake for them. In front of the King are a few officers in gaudy
uniform, some Indians of high rank (from India) and the court
officials are all round about, with pages who hold up the Queen's
train. Whenever the Queen and King move, two court officials back
before them, one carrying a gold stick and the other a silver
stick.
The ladies to be presented come along. They curtsy to the King,
then to the Queen, and disappear in the rooms farther on. The
Ambassadors (all in gaudy uniforms but me) stand near the
throne--stand through the whole performance. One night after an
hour or two of ladies coming along and curtsying and disappearing,
I whispered to the Spanish Ambassador, "There must be five hundred
of these ladies." "U-m," said he, as he shifted his weight to the
other foot, "I'm sure there are five thousand!" When they've all
been presented, the King and Queen go into a room where a stand-up
supper is served. The royalty and the diplomatic folks go into that
room, too; and their Majesties walk around and talk with whom they
please. Into another and bigger room everybody else goes and gets
supper. Then we all flock back to the throne room; and preceded by
the backing courtiers, their Majesties come out into the floor and
bow to the Ambassadors, then to the Duchesses, then to the general
diplomatic group and they go out. The show is ended. We come
downstairs and wait an hour for our car and come home about
midnight. The uniforms on the men and the jewels on the ladies (by
the ton) and their trains--all this makes a very brilliant
spectacle. The American Ambassador and his Secretaries and the
Swiss and the Portuguese are the only ones dressed in citizens'
clothes.
At a levee, the King receives only gentlemen. Here they come in all
kinds of uniforms. If you are not entitled to wear a uniform, you
have a dark suit, knee breeches, and a funny little tin sword. I'm
going to adopt the knee breeches part of it for good when I go
home--golf breeches in the day time and knee breeches at night.
You've no idea how nice and comfortable they are--though it is a
devil of a lot of trouble to put 'em on. Of course every sort of
man here but the Americans wears some sort of decorations around
his neck or on his stomach, at these functions. For my part, I like
it--here. The women sparkle with diamonds, the men strut; the King
is a fine man with a big bass voice and he talks very well and is
most agreeable; the Queen is very gracious; the royal ladies (Queen
Victoria's daughters, chiefly) are nice; you see all the big
Generals and all the big Admirals and the great folk of every
sort--fine show.
You've no idea how much time and money they spend on shooting. The
King has been shooting most of the time for three months. He's said
to be a very good shot. He has sent me, on different occasions,
grouse, a haunch of venison, and pheasants.
But except on these occasions, you never think about the King. The
people go about their business as if he didn't exist, of course.
They begin work much later than we do. You'll not find any of the
shops open till about ten o'clock. The sun doesn't shine except
once in a while and you don't know it's daylight till about ten.
You know the House of Commons has night sessions always. Nobody is
in the Government offices, except clerks and secretaries, till the
afternoon. We dine at eight, and, when we have a big dinner, at
eight thirty.
I like these people (most of 'em) immensely. They are very genuine
and frank, good fighters and folk of our own sort--after you come
to know them. At first they have no manners and don't know what to
do. But they warm up to you later. They have abundant wit, but much
less humour than we. And they know how to live.
Except that part of life which is ministered to in mechanical ways,
they resist conveniences. They don't really like bathrooms yet.
They prefer great tin tubs, and they use bowls and pitchers when a
bathroom is next door. The telephone--Lord deliver us!--I've given
it up. They know nothing about it. (It is a government concern, but
so is the telegraph and the post-office, and they are remarkably
good and swift.) You can't buy a newspaper on the street, except in
the afternoon. Cigar-stores are as scarce as hen's teeth.
Barber-shops are all "hairdressers"--dirty and wretched beyond
description. You can't get a decent pen; their newspapers are as
big as tablecloths. In this aquarium in which we live (it rains
every day) they have only three vegetables and two of them are
cabbages. They grow all kinds of fruit in hothouses, and (I can't
explain this) good land in admirable cultivation thirty miles from
London sells for about half what good corn land in Iowa brings.
Lloyd George has scared the land-owners to death.
Party politics runs so high that many Tories will not invite
Liberals to dinner. They are almost at the point of civil war. I
asked the Prime Minister the other day how he was going to prevent
war. He didn't give any clear answer. During this recess of
Parliament, though there's no election pending, all the Cabinet are
all the time going about making speeches on Ireland. They talk to
me about it.
"What would you do?"
"Send 'em all to the United States," say I.
"No, no."
They have had the Irish question three hundred years and they
wouldn't be happy without it. One old Tory talked me deaf abusing
the Liberal Government.
"You do this way in the United States--hate one another, don't
you?"
"No," said I, "we live like angels in perfect harmony except a few
weeks before election."
"The devil you do! You don't hate one another? What do you do for
enemies? I couldn't get along without enemies to swear at."
If you think it's all play, you fool yourself; I mean this job.
There's no end of the work. It consists of these parts: Receiving
people for two hours every day, some on some sort of business, some
merely "to pay respects," attending to a large (and exceedingly
miscellaneous) mail; going to the Foreign Office on all sorts of
errands; looking up the oddest assortment of information that you
ever heard of; making reports to Washington on all sorts of things;
then the so-called social duties--giving dinners, receptions, etc.,
and attending them. I hear the most important news I get at
so-called social functions. Then the court functions; and the
meetings and speeches! The American Ambassador must go all over
England and explain every American thing. You'd never recover from
the shock if you could hear me speaking about Education,
Agriculture, the observance of Christmas, the Navy, the
Anglo-Saxon, Mexico, the Monroe Doctrine, Co-education, Woman
Suffrage, Medicine, Law, Radio-Activity, Flying, the Supreme Court,
the President as a Man of letters, Hookworm, the Negro--just get
down the Encyclopædia and continue the list. I've done this every
week-night for a month, hand running, with a few afternoon
performances thrown in! I have missed only one engagement in these
seven months; and that was merely a private luncheon. I have been
late only once. I have the best chauffeur in the world--he deserves
credit for much of that. Of course, I don't get time to read a
book. In fact, I can't keep up with what goes on at home. To read a
newspaper eight or ten days old, when they come in bundles of three
or four--is impossible. What isn't telegraphed here, I miss; and
that means I miss most things.
I forgot, there are a dozen other kinds of activities, such as
American marriages, which they always want the Ambassador to
attend; getting them out of jail, when they are jugged (I have an
American woman on my hands now, whose four children come to see me
every day); looking after the American insane; helping Americans
move the bones of their ancestors; interpreting the income-tax law;
receiving medals for Americans; hearing American fiddlers,
pianists, players; sitting for American sculptors and
photographers; sending telegrams for property owners in Mexico;
reading letters from thousands of people who have shares in estates
here; writing letters of introduction; getting tickets to the House
Gallery; getting seats in the Abbey; going with people to this and
that and t'other; getting tickets to the races, the art-galleries,
the House of Lords; answering fool questions about the United
States put by Englishmen. With a military attaché, a naval attaché,
three secretaries, a private secretary, two automobiles, Alice's
private secretary, a veterinarian, an immigration agent, consuls
everywhere, a despatch agent, lawyers, doctors, messengers--they
keep us all busy. A woman turned up dying the other day. I sent
for a big doctor. She got well. As if that wasn't enough, both the
woman and the doctor had to come and thank me (fifteen minutes
each). Then each wrote a letter! Then there are people who are
going to have a Fair here; others who have a Fair coming on at San
Francisco; others at San Diego; secretaries and returning and
outgoing diplomats come and go (lunch for 'em all); niggers come up
from Liberia; Rhodes Scholars from Oxford; Presidential candidates
to succeed Huerta; people who present books; women who wish to go
to court; Jews who are excited about Rumania; passports, passports
to sign; peace committees about the hundred years of peace; opera
singers going to the United States; artists who have painted some
American's portrait--don't you see? I haven't said a word about
reporters and editors: the city's full of them.
A Happy New Year.
Affectionately,
WAT.
_To Ralph W. Page_[30]
London, December 23, 1913.
DEAR RALPH:
. . . The game is pretty much as it has been. I can't think of any
new kinds of things to write you. The old kinds simply multiply and
repeat themselves. But we are beginning now really to become
acquainted, and some life friendships will grow out of our
experience. And there's no doubt about its being instructive. I get
glimpses of the way in which great governments deal with one
another, in ways that our isolated, and, therefore, safe government
seldom has any experience of. For instance, one of the Lords of the
Admiralty told me the other night that he never gets out of
telephone reach of the office--not even half an hour. "The
Admiralty," said he, "never sleeps." He has a telephone by his bed
which he can hear at any moment in the night. I don't believe that
they really expect the German fleet to attack them any day or
night. But they would not be at all surprised if it did so
to-night. They talk all the time of the danger and of the
probability of war; they don't expect it; but most wars have come
without warning, and they are all the time prepared to begin a
fight in an hour.
They talk about how much Germany must do to strengthen her frontier
against Russia and her new frontier on the Balkan States. They now
have these problems in hand and therefore they are for the moment
not likely to provoke a fight. But they might.
It is all pitiful to see them thinking forever about danger and
defense. The controversy about training boys for the army never
ends. We don't know in the United States what we owe to the
Atlantic Ocean--safe separation from all these troubles. . . .
But I've often asked both Englishmen and Americans in a dining room
where there were many men of each country, whether they could look
over the company and say which were English and which were
Americans. Nobody can tell till--they begin to talk.
The ignorance of the two countries, each of the other, is beyond
all belief. A friend of Kitty's--an American--received a letter
from the United States yesterday. The maid noticed the stamp, which
had the head of George Washington on it. Every stamp in this
kingdom bears the image of King George. She asked if the American
stamp had on it the head of the American Ambassador! I've known far
wiser people to ask far more foolish questions.
Affectionately,
W.H.P.
_To Mrs. Ralph W. Page_
London, Christmas-is-coming, 1913.
MY DEAR LEILA:
. . . Her work [Mrs. Walter H. Page's] is all the work of going and
receiving and--of reading. She reads incessantly and enormously;
and, when she gets tired, she goes to bed. That's all there is
about it. Lord! I wish I could. But, when I get tired, I have to go
and make another speech. They think the American Ambassador has
omniscience for a foible and oratory as a pastime.
In some ways my duties are very instructive. We get different
points of view on many things, some better than we had before had,
some worse. For instance, life is pretty well laid out here in
water-tight compartments; and you can't let a stream in from one to
another without danger of sinking the ship. Four reporters have
been here to-day because Mr. and Mrs. Sayre[31] arrived this
morning. Every one of 'em asked the same question, "Who met them at
the station?" That's the chief thing they wished to know. When I
said "I did"--that fixed the whole thing on the highest peg of
dignity. They could classify the whole proceeding properly, and
they went off happy. Again: You've got to go in to dinner in the
exact order prescribed by the constitution; and, if you avoid that
or confuse that, you'll never be able to live it down. And so about
Government, Literature, Art--everything. Don't you forget your
water-tight compartments. If you do, you are gone! They have the
same toasts at every public dinner. One is to "the guests." Now you
needn't say a word about the guests when you respond. But they've
been having toasts to the guests since the time of James I and they
can't change it. They had me speak to "the guests" at a club last
night, when they wanted me to talk about Mexico! The winter has
come--the winter months at least. But they have had no cold
weather--not so cold as you have in Pinehurst. But the sun has gone
out to sea--clean gone. We never see it. A damp darkness
(semi-darkness at least) hangs over us all the time. But we manage
to feel our way about.
A poor photograph goes to you for Xmas--a poor thing enough surely.
But you get Uncle Bob[32] busy on the job of paying for an
Ambassador's house. Then we'll bring Christmas presents home for
you. What a game we are playing, we poor folks here, along with
Ambassadors whose governments pay them four times what ours pays.
But we don't give the game away, you bet! We throw the bluff with a
fine, straight poker face.
Affectionately,
W.H.P.
_To Frank N. Doubleday and Others_
London, Sunday, December 28, 1913.
MY DEAR COMRADES:
I was never one of those abnormal creatures who got Christmas all
ready by the Fourth of July. The true spirit of the celebration has
just now begun to work on me--three days late. In this respect the
spirit is very like Christmas plum-pudding. Moreover, we've just
got the patriotic fervour flowing at high tide this morning. This
is the President's birthday. We've put up the Stars and Stripes on
the roof; and half an hour ago the King's Master of Ceremonies
drove up in a huge motor car and, being shown into my presence in
the state drawing room, held his hat in his hand and (said he):
"Your Excellency: I am commanded by the King to express to you His
Majesty's congratulations on the birthday of the President, to wish
him a successful administration and good health and long life and
to convey His Majesty's greetings to Your Excellency: and His
Majesty commands me to express the hope that you will acquaint the
President with His Majesty's good wishes."
Whereto I made just as pretty a little speech as your 'umble
sarvant could. Then we sat down, I called in Mrs. Page and my
secretary and we talked like human beings.
Having worked like the devil, upon whom, I imagine, at this
bibulous season many heavy duties fall--having thus toiled for two
months--the international docket is clean, I've got done a round of
twenty-five speeches (O Lord!) I've slept three whole nights, I've
made my dinner-calls--you see I'm feeling pretty well, in this
first period of quiet life I've yet found in this Babylon. Praise
Heaven! they go off for Christmas. Everything's shut up tight. The
streets of London are as lonely and as quiet as the road to Oyster
Bay while the Oyster is in South America. It's about as mild here
as with you in October and as damp as Sheepshead's Bay in an autumn
storm. But such people as you meet complain of the c-o-l-d--the
c-o-l-d; and they run into their heatless houses and put on extra
waistcoats and furs and throw shawls over their knees and curse
Lloyd George and enjoy themselves. They are a great people--even
without mint juleps in summer or eggnog in winter; and I like them.
The old gouty Lords curse the Americans for the decline of
drinking. And you can't live among them without laughing yourself
to death and admiring them, too. It's a fine race to be sprung
from.
All this field of international relations--you fellows regard it as
a bore. So it used to be before my entrance into the game! But it's
everlastingly interesting. Just to give him a shock, I asked the
Foreign Secretary the other day what difference it would make if
the Foreign Offices were all to go out of business and all the
Ambassadors were to be hanged. He thought a minute and said:
"Suppose war kept on in the Balkans, the Russians killed all their
Jews, Germany took Holland and sent an air-fleet over London, the
Japanese landed in California, the English took all the oil-wells
in Central and South America and--"
"Good Lord!" said I, "do you and I prevent all these calamities? If
so, we don't get half the credit that is due us--do we?"
You could ask the same question about any group or profession of
men in the world; and on a scratch, I imagine that any of them
would be missed less than they think. But the realness and the
bigness of the job here in London is simply oppressive. We don't
even know what it is in the United States and, of course, we don't
go about doing it right. If we did, we shouldn't pick up a green
fellow on the plain of Long Island and send him here: we'd train
the most capable male babies we have from the cradle. But this
leads a long way.
As I look back over these six or seven months, from the pause that
has come this week, I'm bound to say (being frank, not to say vain)
that I had the good fortune to do one piece of work that was worth
the effort and worth coming to do--about that infernal Mexican
situation. An abler man would have done it better; but, as it was,
I did it; and I have a most appreciative letter about it from the
President.
By thunder, he's doing _his_ job, isn't he? Whether you like the
job or not, you've got to grant that. When I first came over here,
I found a mild curiosity about Wilson--only mild. But now they sit
up and listen and ask most eager questions. He has pressed his
personality most strongly on the governing class here.
Yours heartily,
W.H.P.
_To the President_
American Embassy, London
[May 11, 1914.]
DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:
The King of Denmark (I always think of Hamlet) having come to make
his royal kinsman of these Isles a visit, his royal kinsman
to-night gave a state dinner at the palace whereto the Ambassadors
of the eight Great Powers were, of course, invited. Now I don't
know how other kings do, but I'm willing to swear by King George
for a job of this sort. The splendour of the thing is truly regal
and the friendliness of it very real and human; and the company
most uncommon. Of course the Ambassadors and their wives were
there, the chief rulers of the Empire and men and women of
distinction and most of the royal family. The dinner and the music
and the plate and the decorations and the jewels and the
uniforms--all these were regal; but there is a human touch about it
that seems almost democratic.
All for His Majesty of Denmark, a country with fewer people and
less wealth than New Jersey. This whole royal game is most
interesting. Lloyd George and H.H. Asquith and John Morley were
there, all in white knee breeches of silk, and swords and most
gaudy coats--these that are the radicals of the Kingdom, in
literature and in action. Veterans of Indian and South African wars
stood on either side of every door and of every stairway, dressed
as Sir Walter Raleigh dressed, like so many statues, never blinking
an eye. Every person in the company is printed, in all the papers,
with every title he bears. Crowds lined the streets in front of the
palace to see the carriages go in and to guess who was in each.
To-morrow the Diplomatic Corps calls on King Christian and
to-morrow night King George commands us to attend the opera as his
guests.
Whether it's the court, or the honours and the orders and all the
social and imperial spoils, that keep the illusion up, or whether
it is the Old World inability to change anything, you can't ever
quite decide. In Defoe's time they put pots of herbs on the desks
of every court in London to keep the plague off. The pots of herbs
are yet put on every desk in every court room in London. Several
centuries ago somebody tried to break into the Bank of England. A
special guard was detached--a little company of soldiers--to stand
watch at night. The bank has twice been moved and is now housed in
a building that would stand a siege; but that guard, in the same
uniform goes on duty every night. Nothing is ever abolished,
nothing ever changed. On the anniversary of King Charles's
execution, his statue in Trafalgar Square is covered with flowers.
Every month, too, new books appear about the mistresses of old
kings--as if they, too, were of more than usual interest: I mean
serious, historical books. From the King's palace to the humblest
house I've been in, there are pictures of kings and queens. In
every house, too (to show how nothing ever changes), the towels are
folded in the same peculiar way. In every grate in the kingdom the
coal fire is laid in precisely the same way. There is not a
salesman in any shop on Piccadilly who does not, in the season,
wear a long-tail coat. Everywhere they say a second grace at
dinner--not at the end--but before the dessert, because two hundred
years ago they dared not wait longer lest the parson be under the
table: the grace is said to-day _before_ dessert! I tried three
months to persuade my "Boots" to leave off blacking the soles of my
shoes under the instep. He simply couldn't do it. Every "Boots" in
the Kingdom does it. A man of learning had an article in an
afternoon paper a few weeks ago which began thus: "It is now
universally conceded by the French and the Americans that the
decimal system is a failure," and he went on to concoct a scheme
for our money that would be more "rational" and "historical." In
this hot debate about Ulster a frequent phrase used is, "Let us see
if we can't find the right formula to solve the difficulty"; their
whole lives are formulas. Now may not all the honours and garters
and thistles and O.M.'s and K.C.B.'s and all manner of gaudy
sinecures be secure, only because they can't abolish anything? My
servants sit at table in a certain order, and Mrs. Page's maid
wouldn't yield her precedence to a mere housemaid for any mortal
consideration--any more than a royal person of a certain rank would
yield to one of a lower rank. A real democracy is as far off as
doomsday. So you argue, till you remember that it is these same
people who made human liberty possible--to a degree--and till you
sit day after day and hear them in the House of Commons,
mercilessly pounding one another. Then you are puzzled. Do they
keep all these outworn things because they are incapable of
changing anything, or do these outworn burdens keep them from
becoming able to change anything? I daresay it works both ways.
Every venerable ruin, every outworn custom, makes the King more
secure; and the King gives veneration to every ruin and keeps
respect for every outworn custom.
Praise God for the Atlantic Ocean! It is the geographical
foundation of our liberties. Yet, as I've often written, there are
men here, real men, ruling men, mighty men, and a vigorous stock.
A civilization, especially an old civilization, isn't an easy nut
to crack. But I notice that the men of vision keep their thought on
us. They never forget that we are 100 million strong and that we
dare do new things; and they dearly love to ask questions
about--Rockefeller! Our power, our adaptability, our potential
wealth they never forget. They'll hold fast to our favour for
reasons of prudence as well as for reasons of kinship. And,
whenever we choose to assume the leadership of the world, they'll
grant it--gradually--and follow loyally. They cannot become French,
and they dislike the Germans. They must keep in our boat for safety
as well as for comfort.
Yours heartily,
WALTER H. PAGE.
The following extracts are made from other letters written at this time:
* * * * *
. . . To-night I had a long talk with the Duchess of X, a kindly woman who
spends much time and money in the most helpful "uplift" work; that's the
kind of woman she is.
Now she and the Duke are invited to dine at the French Ambassador's
to-morrow night. "If the Duke went into any house where there was any
member of this Government," said she, "he'd turn and walk out again. We
thought we'd better find out who the French Ambassador's guests are. We
didn't wish to ask him nor to have correspondence about it. Therefore
the Duke sent his Secretary quietly to ask the Ambassador's
Secretary--before we accepted."
This is now a common occurrence. We had Sir Edward Grey to dinner a
little while ago and we had to make sure we had no Tory guests that
night.
This same Duchess of X sat in the Peeresses' gallery of the House of
Lords to-night till 7 o'clock. "I had to sit in plain sight of the wives
of two members of the Cabinet and of the wife and daughter of the Prime
Minister. I used to know them," she said, "and it was embarrassing."
Thus the revolution proceeds. For that's what it is.
* * * * *
. . . On the other hand the existing order is the most skilfully devised
machinery for perpetuating itself that has ever grown up among civilized
men. Did you ever see a London directory? It hasn't names
alphabetically; but one section is "Tradesmen," another "The City,"
etc., etc., and another "The Court." Any one who has ever been presented
at Court is in the "Court" section, and you must sometimes look in
several sections to find a man. Yet everybody so values these
distinctions that nobody complains of the inconvenience. When the
Liberal party makes Liberals Peers in order to have Liberals in the
House of Lords, lo! they soon turn Conservative after they get there.
The system perpetuates itself and stifles the natural desire for change
that most men in a state of nature instinctively desire in order to
assert their own personalities. . . .
* * * * *
. . . All this social life which engages us at this particular season,
sets a man to thinking. The mass of the people are very slow--almost
dull; and the privileged are most firmly entrenched. The really alert
people are the aristocracy. They see the drift of events. "What is the
pleasantest part of your country to live in?" Dowager Lady X asked me on
Sunday, more than half in earnest. "My husband's ancestors sat in the
House of Lords for six hundred years. My son sits there now--a dummy.
They have taken all power from the Lords; they are taxing us out of our
lands; they are saving the monarchy for destruction last. England is of
the past--all is going. God knows what is coming." . . .
* * * * *
. . . And presently the presentations come. Lord! how sensible American
women scramble for this privilege! It royally fits a few of them. Well,
I've made some rules about presentations myself, since it's really a
sort of personal perquisite of the Ambassador. One rule is, I don't
present any but handsome women. Pretty girls: that's what you want when
you are getting up a show. Far too many of ours come here and marry
Englishmen. I think I shall make another rule and exact a promise that
after presentation they shall go home. But the American women do enliven
London. . . .
* * * * *
That triumph with the tariff is historic. I wrote to the President:
"Score one!" And I have been telling the London writers on big subjects,
notably the editor of the _Economist_, that this event, so quiet and
undramatic, will mark a new epoch in the trade history of the world. . . .
This island is a good breeding place for men whose children find
themselves and develop into real men in freer lands. All that is needed
to show the whole world that the future is ours is just this sort of an
act of self-confidence. You know the old story of the Negro who saw a
ghost--"Git outen de way, Mr. Rabbit, and let somebody come who _kin_
run!" Score one! We're making History, and these people here know it.
The trade of the world, or as much of it as is profitable, we may take
as we will. The over-taxed, under-productive, army-burdened men of the
Old World--alas! I read a settled melancholy in much of their
statesmanship and in more of their literature. The most cheerful men in
official life here are the High Commissioners of Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and such fellows who know what the English race is doing and
can do freed from uniforms and heavy taxes and class feeling and such
like. . . .
* * * * *
. . . The two things that this island has of eternal value are its gardens
and its men. Nature sprinkles it almost every day and holds its moisture
down so that every inch of it is forever green; and somehow men thrive
as the lawns do--the most excellent of all races for progenitors. You
and I[33] can never be thankful enough that our ancestors came of this
stock. Even those that have stayed have cut a wide swath, and they wield
good scythes yet. But I have moods when I pity them--for their
dependence, for instance, on a navy (2 keels to 1) for their very bread
and meat. They frantically resent conveniences. They build their great
law court building (the architecture ecclesiastical) so as to provide an
entrance hall of imposing proportions which they use once a year; and to
get this fine hall they have to make their court rooms, which they must
use all the time, dark and small and inaccessible. They think as much of
that once-a-year ceremony of opening their courts as they think of the
even justice that they dispense; somehow they feel that the justice
depends on the ceremony.
This moss that has grown all over their lives (some of it very pretty
and most of it very comfortable--it's soft and warm) is of no great
consequence--except that they think they'd die if it were removed. And
this state of mind gives us a good key to their character and habits.
What are we going to do with this England and this Empire, presently,
when economic forces unmistakably put the leadership of the race in our
hands? How can we lead it and use it for the highest purposes of the
world and of democracy? We can do what we like if we go about it
heartily and with good manners (any man prefers to yield to a gentleman
rather than to a rustic) and throw away--gradually--our isolating fears
and alternate boasting and bashfulness. "What do we most need to learn
from you?" I asked a gentle and bejewelled nobleman the other Sunday, in
a country garden that invited confidences. "If I may speak without
offence, modesty." A commoner in the company, who had seen the Rocky
Mountains, laughed, and said: "No; see your chance and take it: that's
what we did in the years when we made the world's history." . . .
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 11: Mr. Irwin Laughlin, first secretary of the American
Embassy in London.]
[Footnote 12: In about a year Page moved the Chancery to the present
satisfactory quarters at No. 4 Grosvenor Gardens.]
[Footnote 13: Mrs. Walter H. Page.]
[Footnote 14: Miss Katharine A. Page, the Ambassador's daughter.]
[Footnote 15: "Effendi" is the name by which Mr. F.N. Doubleday, Page's
partner, is known to his intimates. It is obviously suggested by the
initials of his name.]
[Footnote 16: A reference to William Sulzer, Governor of New York, who
at this time was undergoing impeachment.]
[Footnote 17: See Chapter VIII, page 258.]
[Footnote 18: The Ambassador's son.]
[Footnote 19: Miss Katharine A. Page.]
[Footnote 20: Mr. Andrew Carnegie.]
[Footnote 21: Mrs. Walter H. Page is the daughter of a Scotchman from
Ayrshire.]
[Footnote 22: The astonishing thing about Page's comment on the
leadership of the United States--if it would only take this
leadership--is that these letters were written in 1913, a year before
the outbreak of the war, and eight years before the Washington
Disarmament Conference of 1921-22.]
[Footnote 23: Just what this critical Briton had in mind, in thinking
that the removal of a New York governor created a vacancy in the
Vice-Presidency, is not clear. Possibly, however, he had a cloudy
recollection of the fact that Theodore Roosevelt, after serving as
Governor of New York State, became Vice-President, and may have
concluded from this that the two offices were held by the same man.]
[Footnote 24: For years this idea of the stenographer back of a screen
in the Foreign Office has been abroad, but it is entirely unfounded.
Several years ago a Foreign Secretary, perhaps Lord Salisbury, put a
screen behind his desk to keep off the draughts and from this precaution
the myth arose that it shielded a stenographer who took a complete
record of ambassadorial conversations. After an ambassador leaves, the
Foreign Secretary, however, does write out the important points in the
conversation. Copies are made and printed, and sent to the King, the
Prime Minister, the British Ambassador in the country to which the
interview relates, and occasionally to others. All these records are, of
course, carefully preserved in the archives of the Foreign Office.]
[Footnote 25: The Rev. Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley, the well-known Vicar
of Crosthwaite, Keswick, poet and student of Wordsworth. President
Wilson, who used occasionally to spend his vacation in the Lake region,
was one of his friends.]
[Footnote 26: It is perhaps unnecessary to say that the Ambassador was
thinking only of a diplomatic "fight."]
[Footnote 27: The Underwood Bill revising the tariff "downward" became a
law October, 1913. It was one of the first important measures of the new
Wilson Administration.]
[Footnote 28: Secretary of Agriculture in President Wilson's Cabinet.]
[Footnote 29: Of Aberdeen, North Carolina, the Ambassador's brother.]
[Footnote 30: Of Pinehurst, North Carolina, the Ambassador's eldest
son.]
[Footnote 31: Mr. and Mrs. Francis B. Sayre, son-in-law and daughter of
President Wilson, at that time on their honeymoon trip in Europe.]
[Footnote 32: Mr. Robert N. Page, the Ambassador's brother, was at this
time a Congressman from North Carolina.]
[Footnote 33: This is from a letter to President Wilson.]