A BOOK OF THE MOMENT

A FRIEND OF ENGLAND

The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page. By Burton J. Hendrick. Vol. III. (Heineznann. 21s. net.) NOTHING, perhaps, could increase the warmth of the affection- ate .gratitude in which the memory of Walter Page is held by the. British peoples ; but if it could be increased this volume would .surely help to do it. It is not merely that page rated the English character so highly (" British " is a word he used little: it has none too pleasant associations in Aineriean minds); though that should be a legitimate matter for pride in us, for the standards by -Which he judged men were high.: HiS liking for us as a people, indeed, was always mixed with a- certain angry, half-ainused contempt for " the admirable and stolid and eternally .baffling carnivorous and amphibious animal that inhabits this island " : " Just when yould like to hang them for their stupidity, you become aware of such noble stuff in them that you thank God they

were your ancestors.". _

More important - than this liking for the English was a belief in the ideals held -in common by the English-speaking peoples (" All that holds the world together is the friendship and kinship of our country and this ") and, above all, -in the justice of our cause in the Great War : " I sec no hope of the world's going on towards ends and ideals- -that we value- except on the hypothesis that- Prussian militarism be entirely: cut out, as .surgeons cut out a cancer." Had he been less passionate in _this belief _hadthe United States been repre- sented in England then by a lesser man or by one who reflected or was subservient to the polieieS And methods of the State Department • at Washington-I-it: is difficult; terrible thoUgh _ the - thought may he to see hoW war with America could hive been avoided the earlier stages of the great conflict. It is pitiable 'non- -to7read that in 1914 Page wrote his resignation because lie ton not means enough to- support his position in London ; and th:reafter; Worn out by the constant friction with the State Department, heart-sick at his growing a!ienation. front the President _lie. either resigned :or offered to resignmore than once. Whether Mr. Bryan, Mr: Lansing- or President Wilson hiniself:Saw in what direction their. course was leading it is as yet impossible to say. It may have been that they were blinded—Bryan by his pacifist infatnationi, Wilson by his pedantie insistence on " neutrality" -77-while the 'Government and people as a whole were being cleverly worked upon by German influences in the United_ States and by. 'Bernstorrs -cunning. -`.‘ Our Government is used by Bernstorff as a tool against -Great Britain;" says• Page ; " in the last analysis- this iii'beyeind all question." Whatever the motives or forces at work may have been, it was Page, and Page alone, who, by his tact and vigilance, and, above all, by the. implicit confidence which the British Government had learned to plabe in him, prevented the relationship so. often_ and so severely strained from reaching the point of actual rupture: It is doubtful if any other single individual in any country played .so substantial a part in the winning of the War or is so well entitled to the world's

gratitude. • •

Of his relatians .t6 the State -Department "we read much in- the two 'earlier volumes published three years ago. Here, less space is given to the subject,- but- what there is makes ugly -reading. In 191+ the Department was -pressing Great Britain to accept the Declaration of 'London in MO. Page knew it was hopeless; but three several times; as he received instruc- tions from Washington, he went, to Sir Edward Grey and formally argued the _matter again, the - British Foreign Secretary, of course, courteously but quite firmly declining. Then came a, despatch from Mr. Lansing telling the Ambas- sador to. make yet another effort • by proposing that Great Britain- should, first accept the Declaration in full and then. immediately-issue an Order in Connell, " of which the United States need not previously be advised," which ..would in effect " get around 7 '(as - Sir Edward Grey said) or nullify the acceptance. It was a disingenuous enough suggestion initself ; but Mr. Lan:sing coupled it with instructions that, in putting it forward, Page should " state very explicitly that it is your personal suggestion and not One for which your Government is responsible." : an obvious falsehood. The effect of such a suggestion on a man of Page's instinctive and imperious sense of honour can be imagined. " Of course I know," he writes to President Wilson, that Mr. Lansing did not mean that I should make a dishonourable proposal. .

I have surely misunderstood " . . . btit :--

" I can hardly believe that such a subterfuge or misrepresentation of the real fake is necessary between what I hope I may call large- minded and perfectly frank and truthful representatives of two groat and friendly - nations. My relations with Sir Edward Grey have not been built tip on this basis and.could not survive such a method of dealing----long."

' A threat of resignation if the proposal was repeated followed and the Declaration of Londdri incident was closed.

The irritation and weariness of the constant nagging of the State Department, however, were tolerable So long as pilge eould.aTite frankly inthe.fullness of his heart to President Wilson ; and the chief contribution to this new volume of Ile" Life and Letters is in the form of the Ambassador's letters. to _ the President which could not be published while Wilson lived. Of Wilson's letters to Page there is none—and there is no little pathos in that fact. In the whole course of the War," says Mr. Hendrick, - Page received only thirteen letters. from Mr. W ilson. Several are extremely brief,. intro- ducing friends ; others, also brief, concern merely routine matters. Only occasionally does the President make any reference to public questions, and not once does he discuss them in any detail." But week by week Page poured out, at first, his heart, and, later, his mind, to the President, increas- ingly depressed by the lack of response, still more distressed by consciousness of his growing lack. of sympathy with the. Wilsonian policy and by what seemed to him the humiliation Of the United States in the eyes of the world by the President's, dilatorineSS tinder German affronts. In the earlier ro volumes. We saw this pcess of .disillusionment and its culmination in the despairing cry : " He is not a leader 7 Here we can see it in clearer detail; a terrible and tragic thing, reaching. its climax in the coneluSion so reluctantly wrung from him : " It is the President who holds the people back."

Incidentally, in the course of the volume new light is thrown on a number of the events of those momentous- years.• The story of the faniouS Zimmermann telegram; -with its fatuous proposal to the President of Mexico of an alliance, to include Japan, against the, United States, is told in detail.- the message 'was sent by Zimmermann, then Foreign Minister, to the German representative in Mexico by four separate routes to make sure -of its arrival. The British secret service intercepted it on every one of the four ; and Page's admiration for Sir Reginald Hall -is unbounded. The incubation of the " House Memorandum " of February, 1916, in the cause of peace (which will be familiar to readers of Lord Grey) and President Wilson's characteristic emasculation of its text; French war finance (" The British, in spite of our help to France, still have France on their back and continue to give her money "); stories of Swedish help to Germany, which make unpleasant reading ; the Dada incident, with the in- formation that it was Page who suggested the device of having the Dada arrested by French warships to avoid Anglo-. American friction; the -secret visit of General Squier of the United States. Embassy to the British front soon after the First Battle of Ypres, when everybody else was rigidly kept away, and the story of the reports that lie wrote thereon; the acute crisis in British finances in June, 1917, and sub- marines and yet again submarines—these are only a few, of the matters treated, with absorbing interest, in this volume. There is a charming story of a dinner at the Athen- aeum with a party of old Peers (" old cocks," he calls them), of whom " every one is past seventy— several of them past eighty," during an air raid ; and another of John S. Sargent. Sargent, it seems, had a German medal which, in 1915, he thought he would like to return ; so, at his request, Page telegraphed to Washington asking whether he should send the medal there to be forwarded to Berlin through official channels or whether lie could send it direct to Ambassador Gerard. The reply came :— - " From the Secretary of State, Washington, June 23rd, 1915.

" Not matters with which Department or its officers abroad can have any connection. Sargent should reimburse Embassy for your telegram and pay for this reply, five dollars. Lansing."

But always one comes back to Page's attitude towards England and the English. His estimates of individuals, generally written in confidence to the President, are for the most part acute and just : Page, direct and impatient of anything like trickery as he was, judged men well. His affection for Sir Edward Grey (and how great a blessing to the world that affection was) is already known : he speaks of him here as " that Lincoln-like man " and the phrase has a happy appositeness. Of Lord Kitchener he wrote : " His directness and cheek are amazing. That man has a way of going after what he wants that takes your breath away. He is capable of forgetting that there is a Cabinet, a Parlia- ment, a declaration of neutrality : he is capable of forgetting everything except that there is an enemy." But when Kitchener died he recognized that " his work was done," and " many people knew that he was incapable of team- work, and was a constant and severe trial to his Cabinet associates." Lord Northcliffe was a " stimulating and con- tentions fellow. . . . He indulges in crusades rather than criticisms. . . . He is, perhaps, the most powerful man now living in Great Britain—how much by reason of and how much in spite of his methods, it would be hard to say." Among Englishmen still living of whom he gives character sketches which all show insight are Mr. Lloyd George, Lord Lansdowne, Lord Reading, the Archbishop of York, Lord Balfour and Sir Eric Geddes. As for the British character as a whole, if he never quite understood it, he came perhaps as near as any member of one people can come to understanding another.

Page was too impatient of ceremonial and Court trappings ever to give full credit to the democratic spirit of our monarchy. He never fully understood how Radical Toryism can be, nor could he entirely get over the inclination, to which all Americans are subject, to ascribe each manifestation of the individualistic spirit working in the British people to the direct influence of the United States. He speaks, if we came into posses- sion of Mexico, of our " Egyptising " that country as if it would be a calamity for Mexico. Misrepresentation of Britain's colonial policy is so constantly and malevolently active in the United States that even the best American usually has to go and see the policy at work somewhere before he understands. Mr. Hendrick gives frank expression to the notion that the administering of a dependency for " the benefit of the natives " was first invented by the United States in the Philippines !

These, however, are small matters compared with the generous admiration of the English character which the Ambassador acquired as he saw it under the strain of the War, an admiration always mitigated by sheer exasperation at some of the English qualities. " I've often told groups of them that they are good for nothing except to become ancestors of Americans and Colonials. . . . I could write a book in worship of them and another book damning them, both true, both concrete and both definitely proving my thesis." Yet " the British race is the best race yet mixed and developed on this globe " ; " good family stocks kept good through centuries—that's the trick that has made English history " ; and he was able to the last to thank God that he came of such a stock. " My own belief is that the only invincible thing in Europe arc these same English. If all Europe were against them instead of the Germans, still they'd win in the long run." And behind all was his intense Americanism ; for never was there a more earnest patriot than Walter Page. " The econo- mic and political future of the world so clearly belongs to us." "If Europe is to be made even reasonably safe (after the War) it is only through our help—and they know it."

Page was beyond question one of the great men of the generation : great chiefly by the translucent goodness of his nature. Intellect he had, and an extraordinary capacity for clear thinking and for lucid and vigorous expression. With these went as kindly a heart as was ever put into a man, and not merely a sense of humour but a love of it and a love of play ; but more than all, his life was a triumph of what we know as character.

For the Editor's part, Mr. Hendrick showed his competence in the earlier volumes, and if an English reader cannot always see eye to eye with him, he has done more than creditably a not too easy Up*.