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.]