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| <head> | | [[Main Page | WWI Document Archive]] > [[Diaries, Memorials, Personal Reminiscences]] > [[The_Life_and_Letters_of_Walter_H._Page|Walter H. Page]] > '''Chapter X''' |
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| <TITLE>Burton J. Hendrick. The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page. 1922. Chapters 10-11.</TITLE>
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| <P ALIGN=CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2"><IMG SRC="images/sig.gif" WIDTH="288" | | <CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">CHAPTER X</FONT></center><br><br> |
| HEIGHT="126" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ></FONT>
| |
|
| |
|
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">CHAPTER X</FONT> | | <CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">THE GRAND SMASH</FONT></center> |
| | |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">THE GRAND SMASH</FONT>
| |
|
| |
|
| <br><br>IN THE latter part of July the Pages took a small house at | | <br><br>IN THE latter part of July the Pages took a small house at |
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| Luxemburg and France. | | Luxemburg and France. |
| <br><br>Troops were marching through London at one o'clock this morning. | | <br><br>Troops were marching through London at one o'clock this morning. |
| Colonel Squier(<A NAME="n61"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#61">61</A>) | | Colonel Squier<ref>At this time American military attaché.</ref> |
| came out to luncheon. He sees no way for England to keep out | | came out to luncheon. He sees no way for England to keep out |
| of it. There is no way. If she keep out, Germany will take Belgium | | of it. There is no way. If she keep out, Germany will take Belgium |
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| <br><br>. | | <br><br>. |
|
| |
|
| <BLOCKQUOTE>
| | |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">To the President</FONT></I>
| | <CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">To the President</FONT></I></center> |
| <br><br>London, Sunday, August 9, 1914.
| | <BLOCKQUOTE><br><br>London, Sunday, August 9, 1914. |
| <br><br>DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: | | <br><br>DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: |
| <br><br>God save us! What a week it has been! Last Sunday I was down | | <br><br>God save us! What a week it has been! Last Sunday I was down |
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| <br><br>I am having a card catalogue, each containing a sort of who's | | <br><br>I am having a card catalogue, each containing a sort of who's |
| who, of all Americans in Europe of whom we hear. This will be | | who, of all Americans in Europe of whom we hear. This will be |
| ready by the time the <I>Tennessee</I>(<A NAME="n62"></A><A | | ready by the time the <I>Tennessee</I><ref>The American Government, on the outbreak of war, sent the U. S. S. Tennessee to Europe, with large supplies of gold for the relief of stranded Americans.</ref><I> </I>comes. Fifty or more stranded |
| HREF="Pagenotes.htm#62">62</A>)<I> </I>comes. Fifty or more stranded
| |
| Americans---men and women---are doing this work free. | | Americans---men and women---are doing this work free. |
| <br><br>I have a member of Congress(<A NAME="n63"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#63">63</A>) | | <br><br>I have a member of Congress<ref>The late Augustus P. Gardner, of Massachusetts.</ref> |
| in the general reception room of the Embassy answering people's | | in the general reception room of the Embassy answering people's |
| questions---three other volunteers as well. | | questions---three other volunteers as well. |
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| kinspeople in Germany. I have not had a bath for three days: | | kinspeople in Germany. I have not had a bath for three days: |
| as soon as I got in the tub, the telephone rang an "urgent" | | as soon as I got in the tub, the telephone rang an "urgent" |
| call! | | call!</BLOCKQUOTE> |
| <br><br><CENTER><TABLE WIDTH="296" BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="2"
| | |
| CELLPADDING="0">
| | |
| <TR>
| | <BLOCKQUOTE> |
| <TD WIDTH="47%">
| | <br><br>Upon my word, if one could forget the awful tragedy, all this |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><A HREF="images/Page12.jpg"><IMG SRC="thumbnails/Page12tn.jpg"
| | experience would be worth a lifetime of commonplace. One surprise |
| WIDTH="114" HEIGHT="144" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="1" ></A></TD>
| | follows another so rapidly that one loses all sense of time: |
| <TD WIDTH="53%">
| | it seems an age since last Sunday. |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><A HREF="images/Page13.jpg"><IMG SRC="thumbnails/Page13tn.jpg"
| | <br><br>I shall never forget Sir Edward Grey's telling me of the ultimatum---while |
| WIDTH="97" HEIGHT="144" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="1" ></A></TD>
| | he wept; nor the poor German Ambassador who has lost in his high |
| </TR>
| | game---almost a demented man; nor the King as he declaimed at |
| <TR>
| | me for half-an-hour and threw up his hands and said, "My |
| <TD WIDTH="47%">
| | God, Mr. Page, what else could we do?" Nor the Austrian |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER> <B><FONT COLOR="#0000ff">Fig. 12.</FONT></B><FONT
| | Ambassador's wringing his hands and weeping and crying out, "My |
| COLOR="#0000ff"> No. 6 Grosvenor Square, the American Embassy
| | dear Colleague, my dear Colleague." |
| under Mr. Page</FONT></TD>
| | <br><br>Along with all this tragedy come two reverend American peace |
| <TD WIDTH="53%">
| | delegates who got out of Germany by the skin of their teeth and |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER> <B><FONT COLOR="#0000ff">Fig 13.</FONT></B><FONT
| | complain that, they lost all the clothes they had except what |
| COLOR="#0000ff"> Irwin Laughlin, Secretary of the American Embassy
| | they had on. "Don't complain," said I, "but thank |
| at London, 1912-1917, Counsellor 1916-1919</FONT></TD>
| | God you saved your skins." Everybody has forgotten what |
| </TR>
| | war means---forgotten that folks get hurt. But they are coming |
| </TABLE></CENTER>
| | around to it now. A United States Senator telegraphs me: "Send |
| <br><br>Upon my word, if one could forget the awful tragedy, all this
| | my wife and daughter home on the first ship." Ladies and |
| experience would be worth a lifetime of commonplace. One surprise
| | gentlemen filled the steerage of that ship---not a bunk left; |
| follows another so rapidly that one loses all sense of time:
| | and his wife and daughter are found three days later sitting |
| it seems an age since last Sunday.
| | in a swell hotel waiting for me to bring them stateroom tickets |
| <br><br>I shall never forget Sir Edward Grey's telling me of the ultimatum---while
| | on a silver tray! One of my young fellows in the Embassy rushes |
| he wept; nor the poor German Ambassador who has lost in his high
| | into my office saying that a man from Boston, with letters of |
| game---almost a demented man; nor the King as he declaimed at
| | introduction from Senators and Governors and Secretaries, et |
| me for half-an-hour and threw up his hands and said, "My
| | al., was demanding tickets of admission to a picture gallery, |
| God, Mr. Page, what else could we do?" Nor the Austrian
| | and a secretary to escort him there. |
| Ambassador's wringing his hands and weeping and crying out, "My
| | <br><br>"What shall I do with him?" |
| dear Colleague, my dear Colleague."
| | <br><br>"Put his proposal to a vote of the 200 Americans in the |
| <br><br>Along with all this tragedy come two reverend American peace
| | room and see them draw and quarter him." |
| delegates who got out of Germany by the skin of their teeth and
| | <br><br>I have not yet heard what happened. A woman writes me four |
| complain that, they lost all the clothes they had except what
| | pages to prove how dearly she loves my sister and invites me |
| they had on. "Don't complain," said I, "but thank
| | to her hotel---five miles away---"please to tell her about |
| God you saved your skins." Everybody has forgotten what
| | the sailing of the steamships." Six American preachers pass |
| war means---forgotten that folks get hurt. But they are coming
| | a resolution unanimously "urging our Ambassador to telegraph |
| around to it now. A United States Senator telegraphs me: "Send
| | our beloved, peace-loving President to stop this awful war"; |
| my wife and daughter home on the first ship." Ladies and
| | and they come with simple solemnity to present their resolution. |
| gentlemen filled the steerage of that ship---not a bunk left;
| | Lord save us, what a world! |
| and his wife and daughter are found three days later sitting
| | <br><br>And this awful tragedy moves on to---what? We do not know |
| in a swell hotel waiting for me to bring them stateroom tickets
| | what is really happening, so strict is the censorship. But it |
| on a silver tray! One of my young fellows in the Embassy rushes
| | seems inevitable to me that Germany will be beaten, that the |
| into my office saying that a man from Boston, with letters of
| | horrid period of alliances and armaments will not come again, |
| introduction from Senators and Governors and Secretaries, et
| | that England will gain even more of the earth's surface, that |
| al., was demanding tickets of admission to a picture gallery,
| | Russia may next play the menace; that all Europe (as much as |
| and a secretary to escort him there.
| | survives) will be bankrupt; that relatively we shall be immensely |
| <br><br>"What shall I do with him?"
| | stronger financially and politically---there must surely come |
| <br><br>"Put his proposal to a vote of the 200 Americans in the
| | many great changes---very many, yet undreamed of. Be ready; for |
| room and see them draw and quarter him."
| | you will be called on to compose this huge quarrel. I thank Heaven |
| <br><br>I have not yet heard what happened. A woman writes me four
| | for many things---first, the Atlantic Ocean; second, that you |
| pages to prove how dearly she loves my sister and invites me
| | refrained from war in Mexico; third, that we kept our treaty---the |
| to her hotel---five miles away---"please to tell her about
| | canal tolls victory, I mean. Now, when all this half of the world |
| the sailing of the steamships." Six American preachers pass
| | will suffer the unspeakable brutalization of war, we shall preserve our moral strength, our political powers, and our ideals.</BLOCKQUOTE> |
| a resolution unanimously "urging our Ambassador to telegraph
| | |
| our beloved, peace-loving President to stop this awful war";
| | <BLOCKQUOTE> |
| and they come with simple solemnity to present their resolution.
| | <br><br>God save us! |
| Lord save us, what a world!
| | <br><br>W. H. P.</BLOCKQUOTE> |
| <br><br>And this awful tragedy moves on to---what? We do not know
| |
| what is really happening, so strict is the censorship. But it
| |
| seems inevitable to me that Germany will be beaten, that the
| |
| horrid period of alliances and armaments will not come again,
| |
| that England will gain even more of the earth's surface, that
| |
| Russia may next play the menace; that all Europe (as much as
| |
| survives) will be bankrupt; that relatively we shall be immensely
| |
| stronger financially and politically---there must surely come
| |
| many great changes---very many, yet undreamed of. Be ready; for
| |
| you will be called on to compose this huge quarrel. I thank Heaven
| |
| for many things---first, the Atlantic Ocean; second, that you
| |
| refrained from war in Mexico; third, that we kept our treaty---the
| |
| canal tolls victory, I mean. Now, when all this half of the world
| |
| will suffer the unspeakable brutalization of war, we shall preserve
| |
| our moral strength, our political powers, and our ideals.
| |
| <BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| <br><br>God save us!
| |
| <br><br>W. H. P.</BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| </BLOCKQUOTE> | |
|
| |
|
| <br><br>. | | <br><br>. |
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|
| |
|
| <br><br>"I came away," the Ambassador afterward said, "with | | <br><br>"I came away," the Ambassador afterward said, "with |
| a sort of stunned sense of the impending ruin of half the world."(<A | | a sort of stunned sense of the impending ruin of half the world."<ref>The materials on which this account is based are a memorandum of the interview made by Sir Edward Grey, now in the archives of the British Foreign Office, a similar memorandum made by Page, and a detailed description given verbally by Page to the writer</ref> |
| NAME="n64"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#64">64</A>)
| |
|
| |
|
| <br><br>The significant fact in this interview is that the British | | <br><br>The significant fact in this interview is that the British |
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| <br><br>. | | <br><br>. |
|
| |
|
| <BLOCKQUOTE>
| | |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">Edward M. House to the President</FONT></I>
| | <CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">Edward M. House to the President</FONT></I></center> |
| <br><br>Pride's Crossing (Mass.),<BR>
| | <BLOCKQUOTE><br><br>Pride's Crossing (Mass.),<BR> |
| August 3, 1914. [Monday.] | | August 3, 1914. [Monday.] |
| <br><br>THE PRESIDENT,<BR> | | <br><br>THE PRESIDENT,<BR> |
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| <br><br>The more terrible the war becomes, the greater credit it will | | <br><br>The more terrible the war becomes, the greater credit it will |
| be that you saw the trend of events long before it was seen by | | be that you saw the trend of events long before it was seen by |
| other statesmen of the world. | | other statesmen of the world.</BLOCKQUOTE> |
| <BLOCKQUOTE>
| | |
| <br><br>Your very faithfully,
| | <BLOCKQUOTE> |
| <br><br>E. M. HOUSE.</BLOCKQUOTE>
| | <br><br>Your very faithfully, |
| <br><br>P. S. The question might be asked why negotiations were only
| | <br><br>E. M. HOUSE.</BLOCKQUOTE> |
| with Germany and England and not with France and Russia. This,
| | <br><br>P. S. The question might be asked why negotiations were only |
| of course, was because it was thought that Germany would act
| | with Germany and England and not with France and Russia. This, |
| for the Triple Alliance and England for the Triple Entente.(<A
| | of course, was because it was thought that Germany would act |
| NAME="n65"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#65">65</A>)
| | for the Triple Alliance and England for the Triple Entente.<ref>Colonel House, of course, is again referring to his experience in Berlin and London, described in the preceding chapter.</ref> |
| <br><br>.
| | <br><br>. |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">The President to Edward M.
| | |
| House</FONT></I>
| | <CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">The President to Edward M. House</FONT></I></center> |
| <br><br>The White House,<BR>
| | <BLOCKQUOTE><br><br>The White House,<BR> |
| Washington, D. C.<BR> | | Washington, D. C.<BR> |
| August 4th, 1914. [Tuesday.] | | August 4th, 1914. [Tuesday.] |
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| Pride's Crossing, Mass. | | Pride's Crossing, Mass. |
| <br><br>Letter of third received. Do you think I could and should | | <br><br>Letter of third received. Do you think I could and should |
| act now and if so how? | | act now and if so how?</BLOCKQUOTE> |
| <BLOCKQUOTE>
| | |
| <br><br>WOODROW WILSON.</BLOCKQUOTE>
| | <BLOCKQUOTE> |
| <br><br>.
| | <br><br>WOODROW WILSON.</BLOCKQUOTE> |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">Edward M. House to the President</FONT></I> | | <br><br>. |
| <br><br>[Telegram]
| | |
| | <CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">Edward M. House to the President</FONT></I></center> |
| | <BLOCKQUOTE><br><br>[Telegram] |
| <br><br>Pride's Crossing, Mass.<BR> | | <br><br>Pride's Crossing, Mass.<BR> |
| August 5th, 1914. [Wednesday.] | | August 5th, 1914. [Wednesday.] |
| <br><br>THE PRESIDENT,<BR> | | <br><br>THE PRESIDENT,<BR> |
| The White House, Washington, D. C. | | The White House, Washington, D. C. |
| <br><br>Olney(<A NAME="n66"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#66">66</A>) | | <br><br>Olney<ref>Richard Olney, Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President Cleveland, who was a neighbour of Colonel House at his summer home, and with whom the latter apparently consulted.</ref> |
| and I agree that in response to the Senate resolution it would | | and I agree that in response to the Senate resolution it would |
| be unwise to tender your good offices at this time. We believe | | be unwise to tender your good offices at this time. We believe |
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| you stand ready to tender your good offices whenever such an | | you stand ready to tender your good offices whenever such an |
| offer is desired. | | offer is desired. |
| <br><br>Olney agrees with me that the shipping bill(<A NAME="n67"></A><A | | <br><br>Olney agrees with me that the shipping bill<ref>This is the bill passed soon after the outbreak of war admitting foreign built ships to American registry. Subsequent events showed that it was "full of lurking dangers."</ref> is full of lurking dangers.</BLOCKQUOTE> |
| HREF="Pagenotes.htm#67">67</A>) is full of lurking dangers.
| | |
| <BLOCKQUOTE>
| | <BLOCKQUOTE> |
| <br><br>E. M. HOUSE.</BLOCKQUOTE>
| | <br><br>E. M. HOUSE.</BLOCKQUOTE> |
| </BLOCKQUOTE> | |
|
| |
|
| <br><br>. | | <br><br>. |
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| <br><br>. | | <br><br>. |
|
| |
|
| <BLOCKQUOTE>
| | |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">From the President of the
| | <CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">From the President of the United Slates to His Majesty the King</FONT></I></center> |
| United Slates to His Majesty the King</FONT></I>
| | <BLOCKQUOTE><br><br><FONT SIZE="+1">SIR:</FONT> |
| <br><br><FONT SIZE="+1">SIR:</FONT>
| |
| <br><br>As official head of one of the Powers signatory to the Hague | | <br><br>As official head of one of the Powers signatory to the Hague |
| Convention, I feel it to be my privilege and my duty under Article | | Convention, I feel it to be my privilege and my duty under Article |
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| might be thought more suitable as an occasion, to serve your | | might be thought more suitable as an occasion, to serve your |
| Majesty and all concerned in a way that would afford me lasting | | Majesty and all concerned in a way that would afford me lasting |
| cause for gratitude and happiness. | | cause for gratitude and happiness.</BLOCKQUOTE> |
| <BLOCKQUOTE>
| | |
| <br><br>WOODROW WILSON.</BLOCKQUOTE>
| | <BLOCKQUOTE> |
| </BLOCKQUOTE>
| | <br><br>WOODROW WILSON.</BLOCKQUOTE> |
| | |
|
| |
|
| <br><br>. | | <br><br>. |
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| <br><br>. | | <br><br>. |
|
| |
|
| <BLOCKQUOTE>
| | |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">Confidential to the President</FONT></I>
| | <CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">Confidential to the President</FONT></I></center> |
| <br><br>September 11, 3 A. M. <BR>
| | <BLOCKQUOTE><br><br>September 11, 3 A. M. <BR> |
| No. 645. | | No. 645. |
| <br><br>Accounts of atrocities are so inevitably a part of every war | | <br><br>Accounts of atrocities are so inevitably a part of every war |
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| whom they may strike, have take to heart Bernhardi's doctrine | | whom they may strike, have take to heart Bernhardi's doctrine |
| that war is a glorious occupation. Can any one longer disbelieve | | that war is a glorious occupation. Can any one longer disbelieve |
| the completely barbarous behaviour of the Prussians? | | the completely barbarous behaviour of the Prussians?</BLOCKQUOTE> |
| <BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| <br><br>PAGE.</BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| </BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| | |
| <br><br>.
| |
| | |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><FONT COLOR="#0000ff"></FONT><A NAME="ch11"></A><FONT
| |
| SIZE="+2">CHAPTER XI</FONT>
| |
| | |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">ENGLAND UNDER THE STRESS OF WAR</FONT>
| |
| | |
| <br><br>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:
| |
| | |
| <br><br>.
| |
| | |
| <BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">To Edward M. House</FONT></I>
| |
| <br><br>September 22nd, 1914.
| |
| <br><br>MY DEAR HOUSE:
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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,
| |
| <br><br>"How much do you get out now?"
| |
| <br><br>"Only for an automobile drive Sunday afternoon."
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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.(<A NAME="n68"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#68">68</A>) 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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>These are the saying 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.(<A NAME="n69"></A><A
| |
| HREF="Pagenotes.htm#69">69</A>) 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.
| |
| <br><br>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(<A NAME="n70"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#70">70</A>)
| |
| and Münsterberg(<A NAME="n71"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#71">71</A>)
| |
| playing the part once played by Irish agitators!
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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
| |
| <BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| <br><br>Your humble servant,
| |
| <br><br>W. H. R</BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| <br><br>but he'll be all right in the morning.
| |
| <br><br>.
| |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">To Arthur W. Page</FONT></I>
| |
| <br><br>[Undated](<A NAME="n72"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#72">72</A>)
| |
| <br><br>DEAR ARTHUR:
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>"Did it ever ring? I asked.
| |
| <br><br>"No; but it will."
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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(<A NAME="n73"></A><A
| |
| HREF="Pagenotes.htm#73">73</A>) 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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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(<A NAME="n74"></A><A
| |
| HREF="Pagenotes.htm#74">74</A>) 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.
| |
| <br><br>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(<A NAME="n75"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#75">75</A>)
| |
| 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(<A NAME="n76"></A><A
| |
| HREF="Pagenotes.htm#76">76</A>) 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(<A NAME="n77"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#77">77</A>)
| |
| 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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>.
| |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">To the President</FONT></I>
| |
| <br><br>[Undated.]
| |
| <br><br>DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:
| |
| <br><br>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 strengthened 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."
| |
| <br><br>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. .
| |
| . .
| |
| <br><br>.
| |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">To Edward M. House</FONT></I>
| |
| <br><br>October 11, 1914.
| |
| <br><br>DEAR HOUSE:
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>Now and then the subject of its settlement is mentioned---Belgium
| |
| and Serbia, of course, to be saved and far as possible indemnified;
| |
| Russia to have the Slay-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.
| |
| <br><br>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!);(<A NAME="n78"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#78">78</A>)
| |
| 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.
| |
| <br><br>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!
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>We have taken a house for the Chancery(<A NAME="n79"></A><A
| |
| HREF="Pagenotes.htm#79">79</A>)--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 he 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!
| |
| <br><br>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."
| |
| <BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| <br><br>Faithfully yours,
| |
| <br><br>WALTER H. PAGE.</BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| <br><br>W. H. P.</BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| <br><br>.
| |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">To Arthur W. Page</FONT></I>
| |
| <br><br>London, November 6, 1914.
| |
| <br><br>DEAR ARTHUR:
| |
| <br><br>Those excellent photographs, those excellent apples, those
| |
| excellent cigars-thanks. I'm thinking of sending Kitty(<A NAME="n80"></A><A
| |
| HREF="Pagenotes.htm#80">80</A>) 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(<A
| |
| NAME="n81"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#81">81</A>)---the country,
| |
| the place, the house, and its inhabitants. Maybe, praise God,
| |
| I'll see it myself some day---it and them.
| |
| <br><br>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(<A NAME="n82"></A><A
| |
| HREF="Pagenotes.htm#82">82</A>)---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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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(<A
| |
| NAME="n83"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#83">83</A>) 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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| <br><br>Affectionately,
| |
| <br><br>W. H. P.</BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| </BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| | |
| <br><br>.
| |
| | |
| <br><br>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:
| |
|
| |
|
| <BLOCKQUOTE> | | <BLOCKQUOTE> |
| <br><br>It is very difficult to write, more difficult to believe that
| | <br><br>PAGE.</BLOCKQUOTE> |
| what I write will succeed in reaching you. My husband insists
| | <hr> |
| 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.(<A NAME="n84"></A><A
| |
| HREF="Pagenotes.htm#84">84</A>)
| |
| <br><br>Well, I have of course a divided mind. I think of those old
| |
| days in Liverpool and Devonshire---how far off they seem I 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 <I>deed. </I>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 <I>Guardian, </I>which
| |
| we used to read in years gone by, will always quote with pride
| |
| how they "guaranteed" the neutrality of Belgium.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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 <I>nation </I>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.
| |
| <br><br>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, <I>gnädige Frau, </I>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;(<A
| |
| NAME="n85"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#85">85</A>) 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."
| |
| <BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| <br><br>Bremen, September 25, 1914.</BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| <br><br>.
| |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">To Ralph W. Page</FONT></I>(<A
| |
| NAME="n86"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#86">86</A>)
| |
| <br><br>London, Sunday, November 15, 1914.
| |
| <br><br>DEAR RALPH:
| |
| <br><br>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!
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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?(<A
| |
| NAME="n87"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#87">87</A>) 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!
| |
| <BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| <br><br>Affectionately,
| |
| <br><br>W. H. P.</BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| <br><br>.
| |
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">To Frank C. Page</FONT></I>(<A
| |
| NAME="n88"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#88">88</A>)
| |
| <br><br>Sunday, December 20th, 1914.
| |
| <br><br>DEAR OLD MAN:
| |
| <br><br>I envy both you and your mother(<A NAME="n89"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#89">89</A>)
| |
| 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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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 <I>knows
| |
| </I>the Zeppelins are coming tonight. 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.
| |
| <br><br>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.
| |
| <br><br>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 fife. 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.
| |
| <br><br>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 !
| |
| <BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| <br><br>Affectionately,
| |
| <br><br>W. H. P.</BLOCKQUOTE>
| |
| </BLOCKQUOTE>
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|
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|
| <P ALIGN=CENTER><HR> | | <references/> |
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| <BLOCKQUOTE>
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| <br><br><FONT SIZE="+1"><IMG SRC="thumbnails/2b.gif" WIDTH="25" HEIGHT="24"
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| ALIGN="MIDDLE" BORDER="0" ><A HREF="Page07.htm">Chapter
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| Twelve</A></FONT>
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| <br><br><FONT SIZE="+1"><IMG SRC="thumbnails/2b.gif" WIDTH="25" HEIGHT="24"
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| ALIGN="MIDDLE" BORDER="0" ><A HREF="PageTC.htm#TC">Table
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| of Contents</A></FONT>
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| </BLOCKQUOTE>
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| </BODY> | | <hr> |
| </HTML> | | <p align="right"> |
| | [[Main Page | WWI Document Archive]] > [[Diaries, Memorials, Personal Reminiscences]] > [[The_Life_and_Letters_of_Walter_H._Page|Walter H. Page]] > '''Chapter X''' |
| | </p> |
WWI Document Archive > Diaries, Memorials, Personal Reminiscences > Walter H. Page > Chapter X
CHAPTER X
THE GRAND SMASH
IN THE latter part of July the Pages took a small house at
Ockham, in Surrey, and here they spent the fateful week that preceded
the outbreak of war. The Ambassador's emotions on this event are
reflected in a memorandum written on Sunday, August 2nd---a day
that was full of negotiations, ultimatums, and other precursors
of the approaching struggle.
.
Bachelor's Farm, Ockham, Surrey.
Sunday, August 2, 1914.
The Grand Smash is come. Last night the German Ambassador
at St. Petersburg handed the Russian Government a declaration
of war. To-day the German Government asked the United States
to take its diplomatic and consular business in Russia in hand.
Herrick, our Ambassador in Paris, has already taken the German
interests there.
It is reported in London to-day that the Germans have invaded
Luxemburg and France.
Troops were marching through London at one o'clock this morning.
Colonel Squier[1]
came out to luncheon. He sees no way for England to keep out
of it. There is no way. If she keep out, Germany will take Belgium
and Holland, France would be betrayed, and England would be accused
of forsaking her friends.
People came to the Embassy all day to-day (Sunday), to learn
how they can get to the United States---a rather hard question
to answer. I thought several times of going in, but Greene and
Squier said there was no need of it. People merely hoped we might
tell them what we can't tell them.
Returned travellers from Paris report indescribable confusion---people
unable to obtain beds and fighting for seats in railway carriages.
It's been a hard day here. I have a lot (not a big lot either)
of routine work on my desk which I meant to do. But it has been
impossible to get my mind off this Great Smash. It holds one
in spite of one's self. I revolve it and revolve it---of course
getting nowhere.
It will revive our shipping. In a jiffy, under stress of a
general European war, the United States Senate passed a bill
permitting American registry to ships built abroad. Thus a real
emergency knocked the old Protectionists out, who had held on
for fifty years! Correspondingly the political parties here have
agreed to suspend their Home Rule quarrel till this war is ended.
Artificial structures fall when a real wind blows.
The United States is the only great Power wholly out of it.
The United States, most likely, therefore, will be able to play
a helpful and historic part at its end. It will give President
Wilson, no doubt, a great opportunity. It will probably help
us politically and it will surely help us economically.
The possible consequences stagger the imagination. Germany
has staked everything on her ability to win primacy. England
and France (to say nothing of Russia) really ought to give her
a drubbing. If they do not, this side of the world will henceforth
be German. If they do flog Germany, Germany will for a long time
be in discredit.
I walked out in the night a while ago. The stars are bright,
the night is silent, the country quiet---as quiet as peace itself.
Millions of men are in camp and on warships. Will they all have
to fight and many of them die---to untangle this network of treaties
and alliances and to blow off huge debts with gunpowder so that
the world may start again?
.
A hurried picture of the events of the next seven days is given
m the following letter to the President:
.
To the President
London, Sunday, August 9, 1914.
DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:
God save us! What a week it has been! Last Sunday I was down
here at the cottage I have taken for the summer---an hour out
of London---uneasy because of the apparent danger and of what
Sir Edward Grey had told me. During the day people began to go
to the Embassy, but not in great numbers---merely to ask what
they should do in case of war. The Secretary whom I had left
in charge on Sunday telephoned me every few hours and laughingly
told funny experiences with nervous women who came in and asked
absurd questions. Of course, we all knew the grave danger that
war might come but nobody could by the wildest imagination guess
at what awaited us. On Monday I was at the Embassy earlier than
I think I had ever been there before and every member of the
staff was already on duty. Before breakfast time the place was
filled---packed like sardines. This was two days before war was
declared. There was no chance to talk to individuals, such was
the jam. I got on a chair and explained that I had already telegraphed
to Washington---on Saturday---suggesting the sending of money
and ships, and asking them to be patient. I made a speech to
them several times during the day, and kept the Secretaries doing
so at intervals. More than 2,000 Americans crowded into those
offices (which are not large) that day. We were kept there till
two o'clock in the morning. The Embassy has not been closed since.
Mr. Kent of the Bankers Trust Company in New York volunteered
to form an American Citizens' Relief Committee. He and other
men of experience and influence organized themselves at the Savoy
Hotel. The hotel gave the use of nearly a whole floor. They organized
themselves quickly and admirably and got information about steamships
and currency, etc. We began to send callers at the Embassy to
this Committee for such information. The banks were all closed
for four days. These men got money enough---put it up themselves
and used their English banking friends for help---to relieve
all cases of actual want of cash that came to them. Tuesday the
crowd at the Embassy was still great but smaller. The big space
at the Savoy Hotel gave them room to talk to one another and
to get relief for immediate needs. By that time I had accepted
the volunteer services of five or six men to help us explain
to the people---and they have all worked manfully day and night.
We now have an orderly organization at four places: The Embassy,
the Consul-General's Office, the Savoy, and the American Society
in London, and everything is going well. Those two first days,
there was, of course, great confusion. Crazy men and weeping
women were imploring and cursing and demanding---God knows it
was bedlam turned loose. I have been called a man of the greatest
genius for an emergency by some, by others a damned fool, by
others every epithet between these extremes. Men shook English
banknotes in my face and demanded United States money and swore
our Government and its agents ought all to be shot. Women expected
me to hand them steamship tickets home. When some found out that
they could not get tickets on the transports (which they assumed
would sail the next day) they accused me of favouritism. These
absurd experiences will give you a hint of the panic. But now
it has worked out all right, thanks to the Savoy Committee and
other helpers.
Meantime, of course, our telegrams and mail increased almost
as much as our callers. I have filled the place with stenographers,
I have got the Savoy people to answer certain classes of letters,
and we have caught up. My own time and the time of two of the
secretaries has been almost wholly taken with governmental problems;
hundreds of questions have come in from every quarter that were
never asked before. But even with them we have now practically
caught up---it has been a wonderful week!
Then the Austrian Ambassador came to give up his Embassy---to
have me take over his business. Every detail was arranged. The
next morning I called on him to assume charge and to say good-bye,
when he told me that he was not yet going! That was a stroke
of genius by Sir Edward Grey, who informed him that Austria had
not given England cause for war. That may work out, or it may
not. Pray Heaven it may! Poor Mensdorff, the Austrian Ambassador,
does not know where he is. He is practically shut up in his guarded
Embassy, weeping and waiting the decree of fate.
Then came the declaration of war, most dramatically.
Tuesday night, five minutes after the ultimatum had expired,
the Admiralty telegraphed to the fleet "Go." In a few
minutes the answer came back "Off." Soldiers began
to march through the city going to the railway stations. An indescribable
crowd so blocked the streets about the Admiralty, the War Office,
and the Foreign Office, that at one o'clock in the morning I
had to drive in my car by other streets to get home.
The next day the German Embassy was turned over to me. I went
to see the German Ambassador at three o'clock in the afternoon.
He came down in his pajamas, a crazy man. I feared he might literally
go mad. He is of the anti-war party and he had done his best
and utterly failed. This interview was one of the most pathetic
experiences of my life. The poor man had not slept for several
nights. Then came the crowds of frightened Germans, afraid that
they would be arrested. They besieged the German Embassy and
our Embassy. I put one of our naval officers in the German Embassy,
put the United States seal on the door to protect it, and we
began business there, too. Our naval officer has moved in---sleeps
there. He has an assistant, a stenographer, a messenger: and
I gave him the German automobile and chauffeur and two English
servants that were left there. He has the job well in hand now,
under my and Laughlin's supervision. But this has brought still
another new lot of diplomatic and governmental problems---a lot
of them. Three enormous German banks in London have, of course,
been closed. Their managers pray for my aid. Howling women come
and say their innocent German husbands have been arrested as
spies. English, Germans, Americans---everybody has daughters
and wives and invalid grandmothers alone in Germany. In God's
name, they ask, what can I do for them? Here come stacks of letters
sent under the impression that I can send them to Germany. But
the German business is already well in hand and I think that
that will take little of my own time and will give little trouble.
I shall send a report about it in detail to the Department the
very first day I can find time to write it. In spite of the effort
of the English Government to remain at peace with Austria, I
fear I shall yet have the Austrian Embassy too. But I can attend
to it.
Now, however, comes the financial job of wisely using the
$300,000 which I shall have to-morrow. I am using Mr. Chandler
Anderson as counsel, of course. I have appointed a Committee---Skinner,
the Consul-General, Lieut.-Commander McCrary of our Navy, Kent
of the Bankers Trust Company, New York, and one other man yet
to be chosen---to advise, after investigation, about every proposed
expenditure. Anderson has been at work all day to-day drawing
up proper forms, etc., to fit the Department's very excellent
instructions. I have the feeling that more of that money may
be wisely spent in helping to get people off the continent (except
in France, where they seem admirably to be managing it, under
Herrick) than is immediately needed in England. All this merely
to show you the diversity and multiplicity of the job.
I am having a card catalogue, each containing a sort of who's
who, of all Americans in Europe of whom we hear. This will be
ready by the time the Tennessee[2] comes. Fifty or more stranded
Americans---men and women---are doing this work free.
I have a member of Congress[3]
in the general reception room of the Embassy answering people's
questions---three other volunteers as well.
We had a world of confusion for two or three days. But all
this work is now well organized and it can be continued without
confusion or cross purposes. I meet committees and lay plans
and read and write telegrams from the time I wake till I go to
bed. But, since it is now all in order, it is easy. Of course
I am running up the expenses of the Embassy---there is no help
for that; but the bill will be really exceedingly small because
of the volunteer work---for awhile. I have not and shall not
consider the expense of whatever it seems absolutely necessary
to do---of other things I shall always consider the expense most
critically. Everybody is working with everybody else in the finest
possible spirit. I have made out a sort of military order to
the Embassy staff, detailing one man with clerks for each night
and forbidding the others to stay there till midnight. None of
us slept more than a few hours last week. It was not the work
that kept them after the first night or two, but the sheer excitement
of this awful cataclysm. All London has been awake for a week.
Soldiers are marching day and night; immense throngs block the
streets about the government offices. But they are all very orderly.
Every day Germans are arrested on suspicion; and several of them
have committed suicide. Yesterday one poor American woman yielded
to the excitement and cut her throat. I find it hard to get about
much. People stop me on the street, follow me to luncheon, grab
me as I come out of any committee meeting---to know my opinion
of this or that---how can they get home? Will such-and-such a
boat fly the American flag? Why did I take the German Embassy?
I have to fight my way about and rush to an automobile. I have
had to buy me a second one to keep up the racket. Buy?---no---only
bargain for it, for I have not any money. But everybody is considerate,
and that makes no matter for the moment. This little cottage
in an out-of-the-way place, twenty-five miles from London, where
I am trying to write and sleep, has been found by people to-day,
who come in automobiles to know how they may reach their sick
kinspeople in Germany. I have not had a bath for three days:
as soon as I got in the tub, the telephone rang an "urgent"
call!
Upon my word, if one could forget the awful tragedy, all this
experience would be worth a lifetime of commonplace. One surprise
follows another so rapidly that one loses all sense of time:
it seems an age since last Sunday.
I shall never forget Sir Edward Grey's telling me of the ultimatum---while
he wept; nor the poor German Ambassador who has lost in his high
game---almost a demented man; nor the King as he declaimed at
me for half-an-hour and threw up his hands and said, "My
God, Mr. Page, what else could we do?" Nor the Austrian
Ambassador's wringing his hands and weeping and crying out, "My
dear Colleague, my dear Colleague."
Along with all this tragedy come two reverend American peace
delegates who got out of Germany by the skin of their teeth and
complain that, they lost all the clothes they had except what
they had on. "Don't complain," said I, "but thank
God you saved your skins." Everybody has forgotten what
war means---forgotten that folks get hurt. But they are coming
around to it now. A United States Senator telegraphs me: "Send
my wife and daughter home on the first ship." Ladies and
gentlemen filled the steerage of that ship---not a bunk left;
and his wife and daughter are found three days later sitting
in a swell hotel waiting for me to bring them stateroom tickets
on a silver tray! One of my young fellows in the Embassy rushes
into my office saying that a man from Boston, with letters of
introduction from Senators and Governors and Secretaries, et
al., was demanding tickets of admission to a picture gallery,
and a secretary to escort him there.
"What shall I do with him?"
"Put his proposal to a vote of the 200 Americans in the
room and see them draw and quarter him."
I have not yet heard what happened. A woman writes me four
pages to prove how dearly she loves my sister and invites me
to her hotel---five miles away---"please to tell her about
the sailing of the steamships." Six American preachers pass
a resolution unanimously "urging our Ambassador to telegraph
our beloved, peace-loving President to stop this awful war";
and they come with simple solemnity to present their resolution.
Lord save us, what a world!
And this awful tragedy moves on to---what? We do not know
what is really happening, so strict is the censorship. But it
seems inevitable to me that Germany will be beaten, that the
horrid period of alliances and armaments will not come again,
that England will gain even more of the earth's surface, that
Russia may next play the menace; that all Europe (as much as
survives) will be bankrupt; that relatively we shall be immensely
stronger financially and politically---there must surely come
many great changes---very many, yet undreamed of. Be ready; for
you will be called on to compose this huge quarrel. I thank Heaven
for many things---first, the Atlantic Ocean; second, that you
refrained from war in Mexico; third, that we kept our treaty---the
canal tolls victory, I mean. Now, when all this half of the world
will suffer the unspeakable brutalization of war, we shall preserve our moral strength, our political powers, and our ideals.
God save us!
W. H. P.
.
Vivid as is the above letter, it lacks several impressive details.
Probably the one event that afterward stood out most conspicuously
in Page's mind was his interview with Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign
Secretary. Sir Edward asked the American Ambassador to call Tuesday
afternoon; his purpose was to inform him that Great Britain had
sent an ultimatum to Germany. By this time Page and the Foreign
Secretary. had established not only cordial official relations
but a warm friendship. The two men had many things in common;
they had the same general outlook on world affairs, the same ideas
of justice and fair dealing, the same belief that other motives
than greed and aggrandizement should control the attitude of one
nation to another. The political tendencies of both men were idealistic;
both placed character above everything else as the first requisite
of a statesman; both hated war, and looked forward to the time
when more rational methods of conducting international relations
would prevail. Moreover, their purely personal qualities had drawn
Sir Edward and Page closely together. A common love of nature
and of out-of-door life had made them akin; both loved trees,
birds, flowers, and hedgerows; the same intellectual diversions
and similar tastes in reading had strengthened the tie. "I
could never mention a book I liked that Mr. Page had not read
and liked too," Sir Edward Grey once remarked to the present
writer, and the enthusiasm that both men felt for Wordsworth's
poetry in itself formed a strong bond of union. The part that
the American Ambassador had played in the repeal of the Panama
discrimination had also made a great impression upon this British
statesman ---a man to whom honour means more in international
dealings than any other consideration. "Mr. Page is one of
the finest illustrations I have ever known," Grey once said,
"of the value of character in a public man." In their
intercourse for the past year the two men had grown accustomed
to disregard all pretense of diplomatic technique; their discussions
had been straightforward man-to-man talks; there had been nothing
suggestive of pose or finesse, and no attempts at cleverness ---merely
an effort to get to the bottom of things and to discover a common
meeting ground. The Ambassador, moreover, represented a nation
for which the Foreign Secretary had always entertained the highest
respect and even affection, and he and Page could find no happier
common meeting-ground than an effort to bring about the closest
cooperation between the two countries. Sir Edward, far-seeing
statesman that he was, had already appreciated, even amid the
exciting and engrossing experiences through which he was then
passing, the critical and almost determining part which the United
States was destined to play in the war, and he had now sent for
the American Ambassador because he believed that the President
was entitled to a complete explanation of the momentous decision
which Great Britain had just made.
The meeting took place at three o'clock on Tuesday afternoon,
August 4th---a fateful date in modern history. The time represented
the interval which elapsed between the transmission of the British
ultimatum to Germany and the hour set for the German reply. The
place was that same historic room in the Foreign Office where
so many interviews had already taken place and where so many were
to take place in the next four years. As Page came in, Sir Edward,
a tall and worn and rather pallid figure, was standing against
the mantelpiece; he greeted the Ambassador with a grave handshake
and the two men sat down. Overwrought the Foreign Secretary may
have been, after the racking week which had just passed, but there
was nothing flurried or excited in his manner; his whole bearing
was calm and dignified, his speech was quiet and restrained, he
uttered not one bitter word against Germany, but his measured
accents had a sureness, a conviction of the justice of his course,
that went home in almost deadly fashion. He sat in a characteristic
pose, his elbows resting on the sides of his chair, his hands
folded and placed beneath his chin, the whole body leaning forward
eagerly and his eyes searching those of his American friend. The
British Foreign Secretary was a handsome and an inspiring figure.
He was a man of large, but of well knit, robust, and slender frame,
wiry and even athletic; he had a large head, surmounted with dark
brown hair, slightly touched with gray; a finely cut, somewhat
rugged and bronzed face, suggestive of that out-of-door life in
which he had always found his greatest pleasure; light blue eyes
that shone with straightforwardness and that on this occasion
were somewhat pensive with anxiety; thin, ascetic lips that could
smile in the most confidential manner or close tightly with grimness
and fixed purpose. He was a man who was at the same time shy and
determined, elusive and definite, but if there was one note in
his bearing that predominated all others, it was a solemn and
quiet sincerity. He seemed utterly without guile and magnificently
simple.
Sir Edward at once referred to the German invasion of Belgium.
"The neutrality of Belgium," he said, and there was
the touch of finality in his voice, "is assured by treaty.
Germany is a signatory power to that treaty. It is upon such solemn
compacts as this that civilization rests. If we give them up,
or permit them to be violated, what becomes of civilization? Ordered
society differs from mere force only by such solemn agreements
or compacts. But Germany has violated the neutrality of Belgium.
That means bad faith. It means also the end of Belgium's independence.
And it will not end with Belgium. Next will come Holland, and,
after Holland, Denmark. This very morning the Swedish Minister
informed me that Germany had made overtures to Sweden to come
in on Germany's side. The whole plan is thus clear. This one great
military power means to annex Belgium, Holland, and the Scandinavian
states and to subjugate France."
Sir Edward energetically rose; he again stood near the mantelpiece,
his figure straightened, his eyes were fairly flashing---it was
a picture, Page once told me, that was afterward indelibly fixed
in his mind.
"England would be forever contemptible," Sir Edward
said, "if it should sit by and see this treaty violated.
Its position would be gone if Germany were thus permitted to dominate
Europe. I have therefore asked you to come to tell you that this
morning we sent an ultimatum to Germany. We have told Germany
that, if this assault on Belgium's neutrality is not reversed,
England will declare war."
"Do you expect Germany to accept it?" asked the Ambassador.
Sir Edward shook his head.
"No. Of course everybody knows that there will be war."
There was a moment's pause and then the Foreign Secretary spoke
again:
"Yet we must remember that there are two Germanys. There
is the Germany of men like ourselves---of men like Lichnowsky
and Jagow. Then there is the Germany of men of the war party.
The war party has got the upper hand."
At this point Sir Edward's eyes filled with tears.
"Thus the efforts of a lifetime go for nothing. I feel
like a man who has wasted his life."
"This scene was most affecting," Page said afterward.
"Sir Edward not only realized what the whole thing meant,
but he showed that he realized the awful responsibility for it."
Sir Edward then asked the Ambassador to explain the situation
to President Wilson; he expressed the hope that the United States
would take an attitude of neutrality and that Great Britain might
look for "the courtesies of neutrality" from this country.
Page tried to tell him of the sincere pain that such a war would
cause the President and the American people.
"I came away," the Ambassador afterward said, "with
a sort of stunned sense of the impending ruin of half the world."[4]
The significant fact in this interview is that the British
Foreign Secretary justified the attitude of his country exclusively
on the ground of the violation of a treaty. This is something
that is not yet completely understood in the United States. The
participation of Great Britain in this great continental struggle
is usually regarded as having been inevitable, irrespective of
the German invasion of Belgium; yet the fact is that, had Germany
not invaded Belgium, Great Britain would not have declared war,
at least at this critical time. Sir Edward came to Page after
a week's experience with a wavering cabinet. Upon the general
question of Britain's participation in a European war the Asquith
Ministry had been by no means unanimous. Probably Mr. Asquith
himself and Mr. Lloyd George would have voted against taking such
a step. It is quite unlikely that the cabinet could have carried
a majority of the House of Commons on this issue. But the violation
of the Belgian treaty changed the situation in a twinkling. The
House of Commons at once took its stand in favour of intervention.
All members of the cabinet, excepting John Morley and John Burns,
who resigned, immediately aligned themselves on the side of war.
In the minds of British statesmen the violation of this treaty
gave Britain no choice. Germany thus forced Great Britain into
the war, just as, two and a half years afterward, the Prussian
war lords compelled the United States to take up arms. Sir Edward
Grey's interview with the American Ambassador thus had great historic
importance, for it makes this point clear. The two men had recently
had many discussions on another subject in which the violation
of a treaty was the great consideration---that of Panama tolls---and
there was a certain appropriateness in this explanation of the
British Foreign Secretary that precisely the same point had determined
Great Britain's participation in the greatest struggle that has
ever devastated Europe.
Inevitably the question of American mediation had come to the
surface in this trying time. Several days before Page's interview
with Grey, the American Ambassador, acting in response to a cablegram
from Washington, had asked if the good offices of the United States
could be used in any way. "Sir Edward is very appreciative
of our mood and willingness," Page wrote in reference to
this visit. "But they don't want peace on the continent---the
ruling classes do not. But they will want it presently and then
our opportunity will come. Ours is the only great government in
the world that is not in some way entangled. Of course I'll keep
in daily touch with Sir Edward and with everybody who can and
will keep me informed."
This was written about July 27th; at that time Austria had
sent her ultimatum to Serbia but there was no certainty that Europe
would become involved in war. A demand for American mediation
soon became widespread in the United States; the Senate passed
a resolution requesting the President to proffer his good offices
to that end. On this subject the following communications were
exchanged between President Wilson and his chief adviser, then
sojourning at his summer home in Massachusetts. Like Mr. Tumulty,
the President's Secretary, Colonel House usually addressed the
President in terms reminiscent of the days when Mr. Wilson was
Governor of New Jersey. Especially interesting also are Colonel
House's references to his own trip to Berlin and the joint efforts
made by the President and himself in the preceding June to forestall
the war which had now broken out.
.
Edward M. House to the President
Pride's Crossing (Mass.),
August 3, 1914. [Monday.]
THE PRESIDENT,
The White House, Washington, D. C.
DEAR GOVERNOR:
Our people are deeply shocked at the enormity of this general
European war, and I see here and there regret that you did not
use your good offices in behalf of peace.
If this grows into criticism so as to become noticeable I
believe everyone would be pleased and proud that you had anticipated
this world-wide horror and had done all that was humanly possible
to avert it.
The more terrible the war becomes, the greater credit it will
be that you saw the trend of events long before it was seen by
other statesmen of the world.
Your very faithfully,
E. M. HOUSE.
P. S. The question might be asked why negotiations were only
with Germany and England and not with France and Russia. This,
of course, was because it was thought that Germany would act
for the Triple Alliance and England for the Triple Entente.[5]
.
The President to Edward M. House
The White House,
Washington, D. C.
August 4th, 1914. [Tuesday.]
EDWARD M. HOUSE,
Pride's Crossing, Mass.
Letter of third received. Do you think I could and should
act now and if so how?
WOODROW WILSON.
.
Edward M. House to the President
[Telegram]
Pride's Crossing, Mass.
August 5th, 1914. [Wednesday.]
THE PRESIDENT,
The White House, Washington, D. C.
Olney[6]
and I agree that in response to the Senate resolution it would
be unwise to tender your good offices at this time. We believe
it would lessen your influence when the proper moment arrives.
He thinks it advisable that you make a direct or indirect statement
to the effect that you have done what was humanly possible to
compose the situation before this crisis had been reached. He
thinks this would satisfy the Senate and the public in view of
your disinclination to act now upon the Senate resolution. The
story might be told to the correspondents at Washington and they
might use the expression "we have it from high authority."
He agrees to my suggestion that nothing further should be
done now than to instruct our different ambassadors to inform
the respective governments to whom they are accredited, that
you stand ready to tender your good offices whenever such an
offer is desired.
Olney agrees with me that the shipping bill[7] is full of lurking dangers.
E. M. HOUSE.
.
For some reason, however, the suggested statement was not made.
The fact that Colonel House had visited London, Paris, and Berlin
six weeks before the outbreak of war, in an effort to bring about
a plan for disarmament, was not permitted to reach the public
ear. Probably the real reason why this fact was concealed was
that its publication at that time would have reflected so seriously
upon Germany that it would have been regarded as "un-neutral."
Colonel House, as already described, had found Germany in a most
belligerent frame of mind, its army "ready," to use
the Kaiser's own word, for an immediate spring at France; on the
other hand he had found Great Britain in a most pacific frame
of mind, entirely unsuspicious of Germany, and confident that
the European situation was daily improving. It is interesting
now to speculate on the public sensation that would have been
caused had Colonel House's account of his visit to Berlin been
published at that exciting time.
Page's telegrams and letters show that any suggestion at mediation
would have been a waste of effort. The President seriously forebore,
but the desire to mediate was constantly in his mind for the next
few months, and he now interested himself in laying the foundations
of future action. Page was instructed to ask for an audience with
King George and to present the following document:
.
From the President of the United Slates to His Majesty the King
SIR:
As official head of one of the Powers signatory to the Hague
Convention, I feel it to be my privilege and my duty under Article
3 of that Convention to say to your Majesty, in a spirit of most
earnest friendship, that I should welcome an opportunity to act
in the interest of European peace either now or at any time that
might be thought more suitable as an occasion, to serve your
Majesty and all concerned in a way that would afford me lasting
cause for gratitude and happiness.
WOODROW WILSON.
.
This, of course, was not mediation, but a mere expression of
the President's willingness to mediate at any time that such a
tender from him, in the opinion of the warring Powers, would serve
the cause of peace. Identically the same message was sent to the
American Ambassadors at the capitals of all the belligerent Powers
for presentation to the heads of state. Page's letter of August
9th, printed above, refers to the earnestness and cordiality with
which King George received him and to the freedom with which His
Majesty discussed the situation.
In this exciting week Page was thrown into intimate contact
with the two most pathetic figures in the diplomatic circle of
London---the Austrian and the German Ambassadors. To both of these
men the war was more than a great personal sorrow: it was a tragedy.
Mensdorff, the Austrian Ambassador, had long enjoyed an intimacy
with the British royal family. Indeed he was a distant relative
of King George, for he was a member of the family of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,
a fact which was emphasized by his physical resemblance to Prince
Albert, the consort of Queen Victoria. Mensdorff was not a robust
man, physically or mentally, and he showed his consternation at
the impending war in most unrestrained and even unmanly fashion.
As his government directed him to turn the Austrian Embassy over
to the American Ambassador, it was necessary for Page to call
and arrange the details. The interview, as Page's letter indicates,
was little less than a paroxysm of grief on the Austrian's part.
He denounced Germany and the Kaiser; he paraded up and down the
room wringing his hands; he could be pacified only by suggestions
from the American that perhaps something might happen to keep
Austria out of the war. The whole atmosphere of the Austrian Embassy
radiated this same feeling. "Austria has no quarrel with
England," remarked one of Mensdorff's assistants to one of
the ladies of the American Embassy; and this sentiment was the
general one in Austrian diplomatic circles. The disinclination
of both Great Britain and Austria to war was so great that, as
Page relates, for several days there was no official declaration.
Even more tragical than the fate of the Austrian Ambassador
was that of his colleague, the representative of the German Emperor.
It was more tragical because Prince Lichnowsky represented the
power that was primarily responsible, and because he had himself
been an unwilling tool in bringing on the cataclysm. It was more
profound because Lichnowsky was a man of deeper feeling and greater
moral purpose than his Austrian colleague, and because for two
years he had been devoting his strongest energies to preventing
the very calamity which had now become a fact. As the war went
on Lichnowsky gradually emerged as one of its finest figures;
the pamphlet which he wrote, at a time when Germany's military
fortunes were still high, boldly placing the responsibility upon
his own country and his own Kaiser, was one of the bravest acts
which history records. Through all his brief Ambassadorship Lichnowsky
had shown these same friendly traits. The mere fact that he had
been selected as Ambassador at this time was little less than
a personal calamity. His appointment gives a fair measure of the
depths of duplicity to which the Prussian system could descend.
For more than fourteen years Lichnowsky had led the quiet life
of a Polish country gentleman; he had never enjoyed the favour
of the Kaiser; in his own mind and in that of his friends his
career had long since been finished; yet from this retirement
he had been suddenly called upon to represent the Fatherland at
the greatest of European capitals. The motive for this elevation,
which was unfathomable then, is evident enough now. Prince Lichnowsky
was known to be an Anglophile; everything English---English literature,
English country life, English public men---had for him an irresistible
charm; and his greatest ambition as a diplomat had been to maintain
the most cordial relations between his own country and Great Britain.
This was precisely the type of Ambassador that fitted into the
Imperial purpose at that crisis. Germany was preparing energetically
but quietly for war; it was highly essential that its most formidable
potential foe, Great Britain, should be deceived as to the Imperial
plans and lulled into a sense of security. The diabolical character
of Prince Lichnowsky's selection for this purpose was that, though
his mission was one of deception, he was not himself a party to
it and did not realize until it was too late that he had been
used merely as a tool. Prince Lichnowsky was not called upon to
assume a mask; all that was necessary was that he should simply
be himself. And he acquitted himself with great success. He soon
became a favourite in London society; the Foreign Office found
him always ready to cooperate in any plan that tended to improve
relations between the two countries. It will be remembered that,
when Colonel House returned to London from his interview with
the Kaiser in June, 1914, he found British statesmen incredulous
about any trouble with Germany. This attitude was the consequence
of Lichnowsky's work. The fact is that relations between the two
countries had not been so harmonious in twenty years. All causes
of possible friction had been adjusted. The treaty regulating
the future of the Bagdad Railroad, the only problem that clouded
the future, had been initialled by both the British and the German
Foreign Offices and was about to be signed at the moment when
the ultimatums began to fly through the air. Prince Lichnowsky
was thus entitled to look upon his ambassadorship as one of the
most successful in modern history, for it had removed all possible
cause of war.
And then suddenly came the stunning blow. For several days
Lichnowsky's behaviour was that of an irresponsible person. Those
who came into contact with him found his mind wandering and incoherent.
Page describes the German Ambassador as coming down and receiving
him in his pajamas; he was not the only one who had that experience,
for members of the British Foreign Office transacted business
with this most punctilious of diplomats in a similar condition
of personal disarray. And the dishabille extended to his mental
operations as well.
But Lichnowsky's and Mensdorff's behaviour merely portrayed
the general atmosphere that prevailed in London during that week.
This atmosphere was simply hysterical. Among all the intimate
participants, however, there was one man who kept his poise and
who saw things clearly. That was the American Ambassador. It was
certainly a strange trick which fortune had played upon Page.
He had come to London with no experience in diplomacy. Though
the possibility of such an outbreak as this war had been in every
man's consciousness for a generation, it had always been as something
certain yet remote; most men thought of it as most men think of
death---as a fatality which is inevitable, but which is so distant
that it never becomes a reality. Thus Page, when he arrived in
London, did not have the faintest idea of the experience that
awaited him. Most people would have thought that his quiet and
studious and unworldly life had hardly prepared him to become
the representative of the most powerful neutral power at the world's
capital during the greatest crisis of modern history. To what
an extent that impression was justified the happenings of the
next four years will disclose; it is enough to point out in this
place that in one respect at least the war found the American
Ambassador well prepared. From the instant hostilities began his
mind seized the significance of it all. "Mr. Page had one
fine qualification for his post," a great British statesman
once remarked to the present writer. "From the beginning
he saw that there was a right and a wrong to the matter. He did
not believe that Great Britain and Germany were equally to blame.
He believed that Great Britain was right and that Germany was
wrong. I regard it as one of the greatest blessings of modern
times that the United States had an ambassador in London in August,
1914, who had grasped this overwhelming fact. It seems almost
like a dispensation of Providence."
It is important to insist on this point now, for it explains
Page's entire course as Ambassador. The confidential telegram
which Page sent directly to President Wilson in early September,
1914, furnishes the standpoint from which his career as war Ambassador
can be understood:
.
Confidential to the President
September 11, 3 A. M.
No. 645.
Accounts of atrocities are so inevitably a part of every war
that for some time I did not believe the unbelievable reports
that were sent from Europe, and there are many that I find incredible
even now. But American and other neutral observers who have seen
these things in France and especially in Belgium now convince
me that the Germans have perpetrated some of the most barbarous
deeds in history. Apparently credible persons relate such things
without end.
Those who have violated the Belgian treaty, those who have
sown torpedoes in the open sea, those who have dropped bombs
on Antwerp and Paris indiscriminately with the idea of killing
whom they may strike, have take to heart Bernhardi's doctrine
that war is a glorious occupation. Can any one longer disbelieve
the completely barbarous behaviour of the Prussians?
PAGE.
- ↑ At this time American military attaché.
- ↑ The American Government, on the outbreak of war, sent the U. S. S. Tennessee to Europe, with large supplies of gold for the relief of stranded Americans.
- ↑ The late Augustus P. Gardner, of Massachusetts.
- ↑ The materials on which this account is based are a memorandum of the interview made by Sir Edward Grey, now in the archives of the British Foreign Office, a similar memorandum made by Page, and a detailed description given verbally by Page to the writer
- ↑ Colonel House, of course, is again referring to his experience in Berlin and London, described in the preceding chapter.
- ↑ Richard Olney, Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President Cleveland, who was a neighbour of Colonel House at his summer home, and with whom the latter apparently consulted.
- ↑ This is the bill passed soon after the outbreak of war admitting foreign built ships to American registry. Subsequent events showed that it was "full of lurking dangers."
WWI Document Archive > Diaries, Memorials, Personal Reminiscences > Walter H. Page > Chapter X