The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II | Page 3

almost two o'clock in
the morning that he rose, said to himself, "I've got it!" and then went
contentedly to bed. And during the anxious months that followed the
Lusitania, the Arabic, and those other outrages which have now taken
their place in history, he spent night after night turning the matter over
in his mind. But he found no way out of the humiliations presented by
the policy of Washington.
"Here we are swung loose in time," he wrote to his son Arthur, a few
days after the first Lusitania note had been sent to Germany, "nobody
knows the day or the week or the month or the year--and we are caught
on this island, with no chance of escape, while the vast slaughter goes
on and seems just beginning, and the degradation of war goes on week
by week; and we live in hope that the United States will come in, as the
only chance to give us standing and influence when the reorganization
of the world must begin. (Beware of betraying the word 'hope'!) It has
all passed far beyond anybody's power to describe. I simply go on day
by day into unknown experiences and emotions, seeing nothing before
me very clearly and remembering only dimly what lies behind. I can
see only one proper thing: that all the world should fall to and hunt this
wild beast down.
"Two photographs of little Mollie[1] on my mantelpiece recall persons

and scenes and hopes unconnected with the war: few other things can.
Bless the baby, she couldn't guess what a sweet purpose she serves."
* * * * *
The sensations of most Americans in London during this crisis are
almost indescribable. Washington's failure promptly to meet the
situation affected them with astonishment and humiliation. Colonel
House was confident that war was impending, and for this reason he
hurried his preparations to leave England; he wished to be in the United
States, at the President's side, when the declaration was made. With this
feeling about Mr. Wilson, Colonel House received a fearful shock a day
or two after the Lusitania had gone down: while walking in Piccadilly,
he caught a glimpse of one of the famous sandwich men, bearing a
poster of an afternoon newspaper. This glaring broadside bore the
following legend: "We are too proud to fight--Woodrow Wilson." The
sight of that placard was Colonel House's first intimation that the
President might not act vigorously. He made no attempt to conceal
from Page and other important men at the American Embassy the
shock which it had given him. Soon the whole of England was ringing
with these six words; the newspapers were filled with stinging
editorials and cartoons, and the music halls found in the Wilsonian
phrase materials for their choicest jibes. Even in more serious quarters
America was the subject of the most severe denunciation. No one felt
these strictures more poignantly than President Wilson's closest
confidant. A day or two before sailing home he came into the Embassy
greatly depressed at the prevailing revulsion against the United States.
"I feel," Colonel House said to Page, "as though I had been given a kick
at every lamp post coming down Constitution Hill." A day or two
afterward Colonel House sailed for America.
II
And now came the period of distress and of disillusionment. Three
Lusitania notes were sent and were evasively answered, and
Washington still seemed to be marking time. The one event in this
exciting period which gave Page satisfaction was Mr. Bryan's
resignation as Secretary of State. For Mr. Bryan personally Page had a

certain fondness, but as head of the State Department the Nebraska
orator had been a cause of endless vexation. Many of Page's letters,
already printed, bear evidence of the utter demoralization which existed
in this branch of the Administration and this demoralization became
especially glaring during the Lusitania crisis. No attempt was made
even at this momentous period to keep the London Embassy informed
as to what was taking place in Washington; Page's letters and
cablegrams were, for the most part, unacknowledged and unanswered,
and the American Ambassador was frequently obliged to obtain his
information about the state of feeling in Washington from Sir Edward
Grey. It must be said, in justice to Mr. Bryan, that this carelessness was
nothing particularly new, for it had worried many ambassadors before
Page. Readers of Charles Francis Adams's correspondence meet with
the same complaints during the Civil War; even at the time of the Trent
crisis, when for a fortnight Great Britain and the United States were
living on the brink of war, Adams was kept entirely in the dark about
the plans of Washington[2]. The letters of John Hay show a similar
condition during his brief ambassadorship to Great Britain in
1897-1898[3].
But Mr.