The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I

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The Life and Letters of Walter H.
Page, Volume I

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Page,
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Title: The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I
Author: Burton J. Hendrick
Release Date: November 6, 2005 [EBook #17017]
Language: English
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[Illustration: Walter H. Page]

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE
BY BURTON J. HENDRICK
VOLUME I
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1922

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE
PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
_First Edition after the printing of 377 de luxe copies_

PREFATORY NOTE
_Among the many who have assisted in the preparation of this
Biography especial acknowledgment is made to Mr. Irwin Laughlin,
First Secretary and Counsellor of the London Embassy under Mr. Page.
Mr. Page's papers show the high regard which he entertained for Mr.
Laughlin's abilities and character, and the author similarly has found
Mr. Laughlin's assistance indispensable. Mr. Laughlin has had the
goodness to read the manuscript and make numerous suggestions, all
for the purpose of reënforcing the accuracy of the narrative. The author
gratefully remembers many long conversations with Viscount Grey of
Fallodon, in which Anglo-American relations from 1913 to 1916 were
exhaustively canvassed and many side-lights thrown upon Mr. Page's
conduct of his difficult and delicate duties. The British Foreign Office
most courteously gave the writer permission to examine a large number
of documents in its archives bearing upon Mr. Page's ambassadorship
and consented to the publication of several of the most important._

B.J.H.

CONTENTS
VOLUME I
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A RECONSTRUCTION BOYHOOD 1 II. JOURNALISM 32 III.
"THE FORGOTTEN MAN" 64 IV. THE WILSONIAN ERA BEGINS
102 V. ENGLAND BEFORE THE WAR 132 VI. "POLICY" AND
"PRINCIPLE" IN MEXICO 175 VII. PERSONALITIES OF THE
MEXICAN PROBLEM 215 VIII. HONOUR AND DISHONOUR IN
PANAMA 232 IX. AMERICA TRIES TO PREVENT THE
EUROPEAN WAR 270 X. THE GRAND SMASH 301 XI.
ENGLAND UNDER THE STRESS OF WAR 327 XII. "WAGING
NEUTRALITY" 357 XIII. GERMANY'S FIRST PEACE DRIVES 398

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Walter H. Page Frontispiece Allison Francis Page (1824-1899), father
of Walter H. Page 20
Catherine Raboteau Page (1831-1897), mother of Walter H. Page 21
Walter H. Page in 1876, when he was a Fellow of Johns Hopkins
University, Baltimore, Md. 36
Basil L. Gildersleeve, Professor of Greek, Johns Hopkins University,
1876-1915 37
Walter H. Page (1899) from a photograph taken when he was editor of
the Atlantic Monthly 100
Dr. Wallace Buttrick, President of the General Education Board 101

Charles D. McIver, of Greensboro, North Carolina, a leader in the
cause of Southern Education 116
Woodrow Wilson in 1912 117
Walter H. Page, from a photograph taken a few years before he became
American Ambassador to Great Britain 292
The British Foreign Office, Downing Street 293
No. 6 Grosvenor Square, the American Embassy under Mr. Page 308
Irwin Laughlin, Secretary of the American Embassy at London,
1912-1917, Counsellor 1916-1919 309

THE
LIFE AND LETTERS
OF
WALTER H. PAGE

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE
CHAPTER I
A RECONSTRUCTION BOYHOOD
I
The earliest recollections of any man have great biographical interest,
and this is especially the case with Walter Page, for not the least
dramatic aspect of his life was that it spanned the two greatest wars in
history. Page spent his last weeks in England, at Sandwich, on the coast
of Kent; every day and every night he could hear the pounding of the

great guns in France, as the Germans were making their last desperate
attempt to reach Paris or the Channel ports. His memories of his
childhood days in America were similarly the sights and sounds of war.
Page was a North Carolina boy; he has himself recorded the impression
that the Civil War left upon his mind.
"One day," he writes, "when the cotton fields were white and the elm
leaves were falling, in the soft autumn of the Southern climate wherein
the sky is fathomlessly clear, the locomotive's whistle blew a much
longer time than usual as the train approached Millworth. It did not
stop at so small a station except when there was somebody to get off or
to get on, and so