but as a merely impersonal explanation.
"Just how much power--perhaps 'influence' is a better word--the King
has, depends on his personality. The influence of the throne--and of him
on the throne, being a wholly thoughtful, industrious, and conscientious
man--is very great--greatest of all in keeping the vested interests of
the aristocratic social structure secure.

"Earlier than this visit to Windsor he sent for me to go to Buckingham
Palace very soon after we declared war. He went over the whole course of
events--and asked me many questions. After I had risen and said
'good-bye' and was about to bow myself out the door, he ran toward me
and waving his hand cried out, 'Ah--Ah!--we knew where _you_ stood all
the time.'

"When General Pershing came along on his way to France, the King
summoned us to luncheon. The luncheon was eaten (here, as everywhere,
strict war rations are observed) to a flow of general talk, with the
Queen, Princess Mary, and one of the young Princes. When they had gone
from the luncheon room, the King, General Pershing, and I stood smoking
by the window; and the King at once launched into talk about guns,
rifles, ammunition, and the American place in the battle line. Would our
place be with the British or with the French or between the two?

"General Pershing made a diplomatic reply. So far as he knew the
President hadn't yet made a final decision, but there was a feeling
that, since we were helping the British at sea, perhaps we ought to help
the French on land.

"Then the King expressed the earnest hope that our guns and ammunition
would match either the British or the French. Else if we happened to run
out of ammunition we could not borrow from anybody. He thought it most
unfortunate that the British and French guns and rifles were of
different calibres."

_To Arthur W. Page_

Brighton, England,

April 28, 1917.

DEAR ARTHUR:

... Well, the British have given us a very good welcome into the
war. They are not very skillful at such a task: they do not know
how to say "Welcome" very vociferously. But they have said it to
the very best of their ability. My speeches (which I send you, with
some comment) were very well received indeed. Simple and obvious as
they were, they meant a good deal of work.

I cannot conceal nor can I express my gratification that we are in
the war. I shall always wonder but never find out what influence I
had in driving the President over. All I know is that my letters
and telegrams for nearly two years--especially for the last twelve
months--have put before him every reason that anybody has expressed
why we should come in--in season and out of season. And there is no
new reason--only more reason of the same old sort--why we should
have come in now than there was why we should have come in a year
ago. I suspect that the pressure of the press and of public opinion
really became too strong for him. And, of course, the Peace-Dream
blew up--was torpedoed, mined, shot, captured, and killed. I trust,
too, much enlightenment will be furnished by the two Commissions
now in Washington[56]. Yet it's comical to think of the attitude of
the poor old Department last September and its attitude now. But
thank God for it! Every day now brings a confession of the blank
idiocy of its former course and its long argument! Never mind that,
so long as we are now right.

I have such a sense of relief that I almost feel that my job is now
done. Yet, I dare say, my most important work is still to come.

The more I try to reach some sort of rational judgment about the
war, the more I find myself at sea. It does look as if the very
crisis is near. And there can be no doubt now--not even, I hope, in
the United States--about the necessity of a clear and decisive
victory, nor about punishment. All the devastation of Northern
France, which outbarbarizes barbarism, all the ships sunk,
including hospital ships, must be paid for; that's all. There'll be
famine in Europe whenever it end. Not only must these destructions
be paid for, but the Hohenzollerns and all they stand for must go.
Trust your Frenchman for that, if nobody else!

If Europe had the food wasted in the United States, it would make
the difference between sustenance and famine. By the way, the
submarine has made every nation a danger zone except those few that
have self-feeding continents, such as ours. It can bring famine to
any other kind of a country.

You are now out in the country again--good. Give Mollie my love and
help her with the garden. I envy you the fresh green things to eat.
Little Mollie, kiss her for granddaddy. The Ambassador, I suppose,
waxes even sturdier, and I'm glad to hear that A.W.P., Jr., is
picking up. Get him fed right at all costs. If Frank stays at home
and Ralph and his family come up, you'll all have a fine summer.
We've the very first hint of summer we've had, and it's cheerful to
see the sky and to feel the sunshine.

Affectionately,

W.H.P.

_To Frank N. Doubleday_

American Embassy,

London, May 3, 1917.

DEAR EFFENDI:

I aim this at you. It may hit a German submarine. But we've got to
take our chances in these days of risk. Your letter from the
tropics--a letter from you from any place is as scarce as
peace!--gave me a pleasant thrill and reminder of a previous state
of existence, a long way back in the past. I wonder if, on your
side the ocean you are living at the rate of a century a year, as
we are here? Here in bountiful England we are living on rations. I
spent a night with the King a fortnight ago, and he gave us only so
much bread, one egg apiece, and--lemonade. We are to begin bread
tickets next week. All this is perfectly healthful and wholesome
and as much as I ever eat. But the hard part of it is that it's
necessary. We haven't more than six weeks' food supply and the
submarines sunk eighty-eight ships--237,000 tons--last week. These
English do not publish these harrowing facts, and nobody knows them
but a few official people. And they are destroying the submarines
at a most beggarly slow rate. They work far out at sea--100 to 200
miles--and it's as hard to find them as it would be to find whales.
The simple truth is we are in a dangerous plight. If they could
stop this submarine warfare, the war would pretty quickly be won,
for the Germans are in a far worse plight for food and materials
and they are getting much the worst of it on land. The war would be
won this summer or autumn if the submarine could be put out of
business. If it isn't, the Germans may use this success to keep
their spirits up and go on till next year.

We (the United States) have about 40 destroyers. We are sending
over 6! I'm doing my best to persuade the Government at Washington
to send every one we have. But, since the British conceal the facts
from their own press and the people and from all the world, the
full pressure of the situation is hard to exert on Washington. Our
Admiral (Sims) and I are trying our best, and we are spending
enough on cables to build a destroyer. All this, you must, of
course, regard as a dark secret; but it's a devilish black secret.

I don't mean that there's any danger of losing the war. Even if the
British armies have to have their food cut down and people here go
hungry, they'll win; but the winning may be a long time off.
Nothing but their continued success can keep the Germans going.
Their people are war-weary and hungry. Austria is knocked out and
is starving. Turkey is done up but can go on living on nothing,
but not fighting much more. When peace comes, there'll be a general
famine, on the continent at least, and no ships to haul food. This
side of the world will have to start life all over again--with
insufficient men to carry things on and innumerable maimed men
who'll have (more or less) to be cared for. The horror of the whole
thing nobody realizes. We've all got used to it here; and nobody
clearly remembers just what the world was like in peace times;
those times were so far away. All this I write not to fill you with
horrors but to prove that I speak the literal truth when I say that
it seems a hundred years since I had before heard from you.

Just how all this affects a man, no man can accurately tell. Of how
much use I'll be when I can get home, I don't know. Sometimes I
think that I shall be of vastly greater use than ever. Plans and
publishing ambitions pop up in my mind at times which look good and
promising. I see books and series of books. I see most useful
magazine stuff. Then, before I can think anything out to a clear
plan or conclusion, the ever-increasing official duties and
responsibilities here knock everything else out of my head, perhaps
for a whole month. It's a literal fact that many a month I do not
have an hour to do with as I please nor to think about what I
please, from the time I wake up till I go to bed. In spite of
twenty-four secretaries (the best fellows that ever were and the
best staff that any Embassy ever had in the world) more and more
work comes to me. I thank Heaven we no longer have the interests of
Germany, Austria, and Turkey to look after; but with our coming
into the war, work in general has increased enormously. I have to
spend very much more time with the different departments of the
British Government on war plans and such like things. They have
welcomed us in very handsomely; and one form of their welcome is
consulting with me about--navy plans, war plans, loans of billions,
ships, censorship, secret service--everything you ever heard of. At
first it seemed a little comical for the admirals and generals and
the Governor of the Bank of England to come and ask for advice. But
when I gave it and it worked out well, I went on and, after all,
the thing's easier than it looks. With a little practice you can
give these fellows several points in the game and play a pretty
good hand. They don't know half as much as you might suppose they'd
know. All these years of lecturing the State Department and the
President got my hand in! The whole game is far easier than any
small business. You always play with blue chips better than you
play with white ones.

This country and these people are not the country and the people
they were three years ago. They are very different. They are much
more democratic, far less cocksure, far less haughty, far humbler.
The man at the head of the army rose from the ranks. The Prime
Minister is a poor Welsh schoolteacher's son, without early
education. The man who controls all British shipping began life as
a shipping "clark," at ten shillings a week. Yet the Lords and
Ladies, too, have shown that they were made of the real stuff. This
experience is making England over again. There never was a more
interesting thing to watch and to be part of.

There are about twenty American organizations here--big, little,
rag-tag, and bobtail. When we declared war, every one of 'em
proceeded to prepare for some sort of celebration. There would have
been an epidemic of Fourth-of-July oratory all over the
town--before we'd done anything--Americans spouting over the edges
and killing Kruger with their mouths. I got representatives of 'em
all together and proposed that we hold our tongues till we'd won
the war--then we can take London. And to give one occasion when we
might all assemble and dedicate ourselves to this present grim
business, I arranged for an American Dedicatory Service at St.
Paul's Cathedral. The royal family came, the Government came, the
Allied diplomats came, my Lords and Ladies came, one hundred
wounded American (Canadian) soldiers came--the pick of the Kingdom;
my Navy and Army staff went in full uniform, the Stars and Stripes
hung before the altar, a double brass band played the Star Spangled
Banner and the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and an American bishop
(Brent) preached a red-hot American sermon, the Archbishop of
Canterbury delivered the benediction; and (for the first time in
English history) a foreign flag (the Stars and Stripes) flew over
the Houses of Parliament. It was the biggest occasion, so they say,
that St. Paul's ever had. And there's been no spilling of American
oratory since! If you had published a shilling edition of the words
and music of the Star Spangled Banner and the Battle Hymn you could
have sent a cargo of 'em here and sold them. There isn't paper
enough in this Kingdom to get out an edition here.

Give my love to all the Doubledays and to all the fellows in the
shop, and (I wonder if you will) try your hand at another letter.
You write very legibly these days!

Sincerely yours,
WALTER H. PAGE.

"Curiously enough," Page wrote about this time, "these most exciting
days of the war are among the most barren of exciting topics for private
correspondence. The 'atmosphere' here is unchanging--to us--and the
British are turning their best side to us continuously. They are
increasingly appreciative, and they see more and more clearly that our
coming into the war is all that saved them from a virtual defeat--I mean
the public sees this more and more clearly, for, of course, the
Government has known it from the beginning. I even find a sort of morbid
fear lest they do not sufficiently show their appreciation. The
Archbishop last night asked me in an apprehensive tone whether the
American Government and public felt that the British did not
sufficiently show their gratitude. I told him that we did not come into
the war to win compliments but to whip the enemy, and that we wanted all
the help the British can give: that's the main thing; and that
thereafter of course we liked appreciation, but that expressions of
appreciation had not been lacking. Mr. Balfour and Sir Edward Carson
also spoke to me yesterday much in the same tone as the Archbishop of
Canterbury.

"Try to think out any line of action that one will, or any future
sequence of events or any plan touching the war, one runs into the
question whether the British are doing the best that could be done or
are merely plugging away. They are, as a people, slow and unimaginative,
given to over-much self-criticism; but they eternally hold on to a task
or to a policy. Yet the question forever arises whether they show
imagination, to say nothing of genius, and whether the waste of a slow,
plodding policy is the necessary price of victory.

"Of course such a question is easy to ask and it is easy to give
dogmatic answers. But it isn't easy to give an answer based on facts.
Our General Lassiter[57], for instance--a man of sound judgment--has in
general been less hopeful of the military situation in France than most
of the British officers. But he is just now returned from the front,
much cheered and encouraged. 'Lassiter,' I asked, 'have the British in
France or has any man among them what we call genius, or even wide
vision; or are they merely plodding along at a mechanical task? His
answer was, 'We don't see genius till it has done its job. It is a
mechanical task--yes, that's the nature of the struggle--and they surely
do it with intelligence and spirit. There is waste. There is waste in
all wars. But I come back much more encouraged.'

"The same sort of questions and answers are asked and given continuously
about naval action. Every discussion of the possibility of attacking the
German naval bases ends without a plan. So also with preventing the
submarines from coming out. These subjects have been continuously under
discussion by a long series of men who have studied them; and the total
effect so far has been to leave them among the impossible tasks. So far
as I can ascertain all naval men among the Allies agree that these
things can't be done.

"Here again--Is this a merely routine professional opinion--a merely
traditional opinion--or is it a lack of imagination? The question will
not down. Yet it is impossible to get facts to combat it. What are the
limits of the practicable?

"Mr. Balfour told me yesterday his personal conviction about the German
colonies, which, he said, he had not discussed with his associates in
the Cabinet. His firm opinion is that they ought not to be returned to
the Germans, first for the sake of humanity. 'The natives--the Africans
especially--have been so barbarously treated and so immorally that it
would be inhuman to permit the Germans to rule and degrade them further.
But Heaven forbid that we should still further enlarge the British
Empire. As a practical matter I do not care to do that. Besides, we
should incur the criticism of fighting in order to get more territory,
and that was not and is not our aim. If the United States will help us,
my wish is that these German Colonies that we have taken, especially in
Africa, should be "internationalized." There are great difficulties in
such a plan, but they are not insuperable if the great Powers of the
Allies will agree upon it.' And much more to the same effect. The parts
of Asiatic Turkey that the British have taken, he thought, might be
treated in the same way."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 52: At this time the proposal of such a gift found much
popular favour. However, the plan was not carried through.]

[Footnote 53: At the meeting of Page and the President at Shadow Lawn,
September 22, 1916. See Chapter XIX.]

[Footnote 54: Secretary of Agriculture in President Wilson's Cabinet.]

[Footnote 55: The quotation is from a memorandum of the conversation
made by one of the secretaries of the American Embassy.]

[Footnote 56: The British and French Commissions, headed by Mr. Balfour
and M. Viviani.]

[Footnote 57: American military attaché in London.]




CHAPTER XXII

THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES


I

Page now took up a subject which had been near his heart for a long
time. He believed that one of the most serious causes of Anglo-American
misunderstanding was the fact that the leading statesmen of the two
countries had never had any personal contact with one another. At one
time, as this correspondence shows, the Ambassador had even hoped that
President Wilson himself might cross the ocean and make the British
people an official visit. The proposal, however, was made before the
European war broke out, the occasion which Page had in mind being the
dedication of Sulgrave Manor, the old English home of the Washington
family, as a perpetual memorial to the racial bonds and common ideals
uniting the two countries. The President found it impossible to act upon
this suggestion and the outbreak of war made the likelihood of such a
visit still more remote. Page had made one unsuccessful attempt to bring
the American State Department and the British Foreign Office into
personal contact. At the moment when American irritation had been most
keen over the blockade and the blacklist, Page had persuaded the Foreign
Office to invite to England Mr. Frank L. Polk, at that time Counsellor
of the Department; the Ambassador believed that a few conversations
between such an intelligent gentleman as Mr. Polk and the British
statesmen would smooth out all the points which were then making things
so difficult. Unfortunately the pressure of work at Washington prevented
Mr. Polk from accepting Sir Edward Grey's invitation.

But now a greater necessity for close personal association had arisen.
The United States had entered the war, and this declaration had
practically made this country an ally of Great Britain and France. The
British Government wished to send a distinguished commission to the
United States, for two reasons: first, to show its appreciation of the
stand which America had taken, and secondly, to discuss plans for
coöperation in the common task. Great Britain frankly admitted that it
had made many mistakes in the preceding three years--mistakes naval,
military, political, and economic; it would welcome an opportunity to
display these errors to Washington, which might naturally hope to profit
from them. As soon as his country was in the war, Page took up this
suggestion with the Foreign Office. There was of course one man who was
preëminently fitted, by experience, position, and personal qualities, to
head such a commission; on this point there was no discussion. Mr.
Balfour was now in his seventieth year; his activities in British
politics dated back to the times of Disraeli; his position in Great
Britain had become as near that of an "elder statesman" as is tolerable
under the Anglo-Saxon system. By this time Page had established the
friendliest possible relations with this distinguished man. Mr. Balfour
had become Foreign Secretary in December, 1916, in succession to Lord
Grey. Greatly as Page regretted the resignation of Grey, he was much
gratified that Mr. Balfour had been selected to succeed him. Mr.
Balfour's record for twenty-five years had been one of consistent
friendliness toward the United States. When President Cleveland's
Venezuelan message, in 1896, had precipitated a crisis in the relations
of the two countries, it was Mr. Balfour's influence which was
especially potent in causing Great Britain to modify its attitude and to
accept the American demand for arbitration. That action not only
amicably settled the Venezuelan question; it marked the beginning of a
better feeling between the English-speaking countries and laid the basis
for that policy of benevolent neutrality which Great Britain had
maintained toward the United States in the Spanish War. The excellent
spirit which Mr. Balfour had shown at this crisis he had manifested on
many occasions since. In the criticisms of the United States during the
_Lusitania_ troubles Mr. Balfour had never taken part. The era of
"neutrality" had not ruffled the confidence which he had always felt in
the United States. During all this time the most conspicuous dinner
tables of London had rung with criticisms of American policy; the fact
was well known, however, that Mr. Balfour had never sympathized with
these reproaches; even when he was not in office, no unfriendly word
concerning the United States had ever escaped his lips. His feeling
toward this country was well shown in a letter which he wrote Page, in
reply to one congratulating him on his seventieth birthday. "I have now
lived a long life," said Mr. Balfour, "and most of my energies have been
expended in political work, but if I have been fortunate enough to
contribute, even in the smallest degree, to drawing closer the bonds
that unite our two countries, I shall have done something compared with
which all else that I may have attempted counts in my eyes as nothing."

Page's letters and notes contain many references to Mr. Balfour's kindly
spirit. On the day following the dismissal of Bernstorff the American
Ambassador lunched with the Foreign Secretary at No. 4 Carlton Gardens.

"Mr. Balfour," Page reported to Washington, "gave expression to the
hearty admiration which he entertained for the President's handling of a
difficult task. He said that never for a moment had he doubted the
President's wisdom in the course he was pursuing. He had the profoundest
admiration for the manner in which he had promptly broken with Germany
after receiving Germany's latest note. Nor had he ever entertained the
slightest question of the American people's ready loyalty to their
Government or to their high ideals. One of his intellectual pleasures,
he added, had long been contemplation of the United States as it is and,
even more, as its influence in the world will broaden. 'The world,' said
Mr. Balfour, 'will more and more turn on the Great Republic as on a
pivot.'"

Occasionally Mr. Balfour's discussion of the United States would take a
more pensive turn. A memorandum which Page wrote a few weeks after the
above touches another point:

March 27, 1917.

I had a most interesting conversation with Mr. Balfour this
afternoon. "It's sad to me," said he, "that we are so unpopular, so
much more unpopular than the French, in your country. Why is it?
The old school books?"

I doubted the school-book influence.

"Certainly their influence is not the main cause. It is the
organized Irish. Then it's the effect of the very fact that the
Irish question is not settled. You've had that problem at your very
door for 300 years. What's the matter that you don't solve it?"

"Yes, yes,"--he saw it. But the plaintive tone of such a man asking
such a question was significant and interesting and--sad.

Then I told him the curious fact that a British Government made up
of twenty individuals, every one of whom is most friendly to the
United States, will, when they act together as a Government, do the
most offensive things. I mentioned the blacklist; I mentioned
certain complaints that I then held in my hand--of Americans here
who are told by the British Government that they must turn over to
the British Government's agent in New York their American
securities which they hold in America!

There's a sort of imperious, arrogant, Tory action that comes
natural to the English Government, even when not natural to the
individual Englishman.

*       *       *       *       *

On April 5th, the day before the United States formally declared war,
Page notified Washington that the British Government wished Mr. Balfour
to go to the United States as the head of a Commission to confer with
our Government. "Mr. Balfour is chosen for this mission," Page reported,
"not only because he is Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, but
because he is personally the most distinguished member of the
Government." Page tells the story in more detail in a letter to Mr.
Polk, at that time Counsellor of the State Department.

_To Frank L. Polk_

London, May 3, 1917.

DEAR MR. POLK:

... Mr. Balfour accurately represents British character, British
opinion, and the British attitude. Nobody who knows him and knows
British character and the British attitude ever doubted that. I
know his whole tribe, his home-life, his family connections, his
friends; and, of course, since he became Foreign Secretary, I've
come to know him intimately. When the question first came up here
of his going, of course I welcomed it enthusiastically. About that
time during a two-hour conversation he asked me why the British
were so unpopular in the United States. Among other reasons I told
him that our official people on both sides steadfastly refused to
visit one another and to become acquainted. Neither he nor Lord
Grey, nor Mr. Asquith, nor Mr. Lloyd George, had ever been to the
United States, nor any other important British statesman in recent
times, and not a single member of the Administration was personally
known to a single member of the British Government. "I'll go," said
he, "if you are perfectly sure my going will be agreeable to the
President." He himself recalled the fact, during one of our several
conversations just before he left, that you had not come when he
and Lord Grey had invited you. If you had come, by the way, this
era of a better understanding would have begun then, and half our
old troubles would then have been removed. Keeping away from one
another is the best of all methods of keeping all old
misunderstandings alive and of making new ones.

I have no doubt that Mr. Balfour's visit will cause visits of many
first-class British statesmen during the war or soon afterward.
That's all we need to bring about a perfect understanding.

You may remember how I tried to get an official report about the
behaviour of the _Benham_[58], and how, in the absence of that,
Lord Beresford made a disagreeable speech about our Navy in the
House of Lords, and how, when months later you sent me
Roosevelt's[59] letter, Lord Beresford expressed regret to me and
said that he would explain in another speech. I hadn't seen the old
fellow for a long time till a fortnight ago. He greeted me
cheerily, and I said, "I don't think I ought to shake hands with
you till you retract what you said about our navy." He insisted on
my dining with him. He invited Admiral Sims also, and those two
sailors had a jolly evening of it. Sims's coming has straightened
out all that naval misunderstanding and more. He is of immense help
to them and to us. But I'm going to make old Beresford's life a
burden till he gets up in the Lords and takes that speech
back--publicly. He's really all right; but it's just as well to
keep the records right. The proceedings of the House of Lords are
handsomely bound and go into every gentleman's library. I have seen
two centuries of them in many a house.

We can now begin a distinctly New Era in the world's history and in
its management if we rise to the occasion: there's not a shadow of
doubt about that. And the United States can play a part bigger than
we have yet dreamed of if we prove big enough to lead the British
and the French instead of listening to Irish and Germans. Neither
England nor France is a democracy--far from it. We can make them
both democracies and develop their whole people instead of about 10
per cent. of their people. We have simply to conduct our affairs by
a large national policy and not by the complaints of our really
non-American people. See how a declaration of war has cleared the
atmosphere!

We're happy yet, on rations. There are no potatoes. We have
meatless days. Good wheat meantime is sunk every day. The
submarine must be knocked out. Else the earth will be ruled by the
German bayonet and natural living will be _verboten_. We'll all
have to goose-step as the Crown Prince orders or--be shot. I see
they now propose that the United States shall pay the big war
indemnity in raw materials to the value of hundreds of billions of
dollars! Not just yet, I guess!

As we get reports of what you are doing, it's most cheerful. I
assure you, God has yet made nothing or nobody equal to the
American people; and I don't think He ever will or can.

Sincerely yours,
WALTER H. PAGE.

One of the curious developments of this Balfour Mission was a request
from President Wilson that Great Britain should take some decisive step
for the permanent settlement of the Irish question. "The President,"
this message ran, "wishes that, when you next meet the Prime Minister,
you would explain to him that only one circumstance now appears to stand
in the way of perfect coöperation with Great Britain. All Americans who
are not immediately connected with Germany by blood ties find their one
difficulty in the failure of Great Britain so far to establish a
satisfactory form of self-government in Ireland. In the recent debates
in Congress on the War Resolution, this sentiment was especially
manifest. It came out in the speeches of those enemies of the
Declaration who were not Irish themselves nor representatives of
sections in which Irish voters possessed great influence--notably
members from the Southern States.

"If the American people were once convinced that there was a likelihood
that the Irish question would soon be settled, great enthusiasm and
satisfaction would result and it would also strengthen the coöperation
which we are now about to organize between the United States and Great
Britain. Say this in unofficial terms to Mr. Lloyd George, but impress
upon him its very great significance. If the British Government should
act successfully on this matter, our American citizens of Irish descent
and to a great extent the German sympathizers who have made common cause
with the Irish, would join hands in the great common cause."

_To the President_
London, May 4, 1917.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

... It is a remarkable commentary on the insularity of the British
and on our studied isolation that till Mr. Balfour went over not a
member of this Government had ever met a member of our
Administration! Quite half our misunderstandings were due to this.
If I had the making of the laws of the two governments, I'd have a
statutory requirement that at least one visit a year by high
official persons should be made either way. We should never have
had a blacklist, etc., if that had been done. When I tried the
quite humble task of getting Polk to come and the excuse was made
that he couldn't be spared from his desk--Mr. President, I fear we
haven't half enough responsible official persons in our Government.
I should say that no man even of Polk's rank ought to have a desk:
just as well give him a mill-stone. Even I try not to have a desk:
else I'd never get anything of importance done; for I find that
talks and conferences in my office and in the government offices
and wherever else I can find out things take all my waking hours.
The Foreign Office here has about five high position men to every
one in the State Department. God sparing me, I'm going one of
these days to prepare a paper for our Foreign Affairs Committee on
the Waste of Having too Few High Grade Men in the Department of
State; a Plea for Five Assistant Secretaries for Every One Now
Existing and for Provision for International Visits by Them.

Here's an ancient and mouldy precedent that needs shattering--for
the coming of our country into its proper station and influence in
the world.

I am sure that Mr. Balfour's visit has turned out as well as I
hoped, and my hopes were high. He is one of the most interesting
men that I've ever had the honour to know intimately--he and Lord
Grey. Mr. Balfour is a Tory, of course; and in general I don't like
Tories, yet liberal he surely is--a sort of high-toned Scotch
democrat. I have studied him with increasing charm and interest.
Not infrequently when I am in his office just before luncheon he
says, "Come, walk over and we'll have lunch with the family." He's
a bachelor. One sister lives with him. Another (Lady Rayleigh, the
wife of the great chemist and Chancellor of Cambridge University)
frequently visits him. Either of those ladies could rule this
Empire. Then there are nieces and cousins always about--people of
rare cultivation, every one of 'em. One of those girls confirmed
the story that "Uncle Arthur" one day concluded that the niblick
was something more than a humble necessity of a bad golfer--that it
had positive virtues of its own and had suffered centuries of
neglect. He, therefore, proceeded to play with the niblick only,
till he proved his case and showed that it is a club entitled to
the highest respect.

A fierce old Liberal fighter in Parliamentary warfare, who entered
politics about the time Mr. Balfour did, told me this story the
other day. "I've watched Balfour for about forty years as a cat
watches a rat. I hate his party. I hated him till I learned better,
for I hated that whole Salisbury crowd. They wanted to Cecil
everything. But I'll tell you, Sir, apropos of his visit to your
country, that in all those years he has never spoken of the United
States except with high respect and often with deep affection. I
should have caught him, if he had."

I went with him to a college in London one afternoon where he
delivered a lecture on Dryden, to prove that poetry can carry a
certain cargo of argument but that argument can't raise the
smallest flight of poetry. Dry as it sounds, it was as good a
literary performance as I recall I ever heard.

At his "family" luncheon, I've found Lord Milner or Lord Lansdowne,
or some literary man who had come in to find out from Lady Rayleigh
how to conduct the Empire or to write a great book; and the modest
old chemical Lord sits silent most of the time and now and then
breaks loose to confound them all with a pat joke. This is a
vigorous family, these Balfours. There's one of them (a cousin of
some sort, I think, of the Foreign Secretary) who is a Lord of much
of Scotland, about as tall as Ben Nevis is high--a giant of a man.
One of his sons was killed early in the war and one was
missing--whether dead or not he did not know. Mrs. Page expressed
her hope one day to the old man that he had had news from his
missing son. "No, no," said he simply, "and me lady is awearying."

We've been lucky, Mr. President, in these days of immortal horrors
and of difficulties between two governments that did not know one
another--uncommonly lucky, in the large chances that politics gives
for grave errors, to have had two such men in the Foreign Office
here as Lord Grey and Mr. Balfour. There are men who were
mentioned for this post that would have driven us mad--or to war
with them. I'm afraid I've almost outgrown my living hero worship.
There isn't worshipful material enough lying around in the world to
keep a vigorous reverence in practice. But these two gentlemen by
birth and culture have at least sometimes seemed of heroic size to
me. It has meant much to know them well. I shall always be grateful
to them, for in their quiet, forceful way they helped me much to
establish right relations with these people--which, pray God, I
hope to retain through whatever new trials we may yet encounter.
For it will fall to us yet to loose and to free the British, and a
Briton set free is an American. That's all you can do for a man or
for a nation of men.

These Foreign Secretaries are not only men of much greater
cultivation than their Prime Ministers but of greater moral force.
But I've come to like Lloyd George very much. He'd never deliver a
lecture on Dryden, and he doesn't even play a good game of golf;
but he has what both Lord Grey and Mr. Balfour lack--a touch of
genius--whatever that is--not the kind that takes infinite pains,
but the kind that acts as an electric light flashed in the dark. He
said to me the other day that experts have nearly been the death of
him. "The Government has experts, experts, experts, everywhere. In
any department where things are not going well, I have found boards
and committees and boards of experts. But in one department at
least I've found a substitute for them. I let twenty experts go and
I put in one Man, and things began to move at once. Do you know any
real Men? When you hear of any, won't you let me know?"

A little while ago he dined with me, and, after dinner, I took him
to a corner of the drawing room and delivered your message to him
about Ireland. "God knows, I'm trying," he replied. "Tell the
President that. And tell him to talk to Balfour." Presently he
broke out--"Madmen, madmen--I never saw any such task," and he
pointed across the room to Sir Edward Carson, his First Lord of the
Admiralty--"Madmen." "But the President's right. We've got to
settle it and we've got to settle it now." Carson and Jellicoe came
across the room and sat down with us. "I've been telling the
Ambassador, Carson, that we've got to settle the Irish question
now--in spite of you.

"I'll tell you something else we've got to settle now," said
Carson. "Else it'll settle us. That's the submarines. The press and
public are working up a calculated and concerted attack on Jellicoe
and me, and, if they get us, they'll get you. It's an attack on the
Government made on the Admiralty. Prime Minister," said this Ulster
pirate whose civil war didn't come off only because the big war was
begun--"Prime Minister, it may be a fierce attack. Get ready for
it." Well, it has been developing ever since. But I can't for the
life of me guess at the possible results of an English
Parliamentary attack on a government. It's like a baseball man
watching a game of cricket. He can't see when the player is out or
why, or what caused it. Of course, the submarine may torpedo Lloyd
George and his Government. It looks very like it may overturn the