This geniality, this disposition not to take life too solemnly,
sometimes lightened up the sombre atmosphere of the Foreign Office
itself. "Mr. Balfour went on a sort of mild rampage yesterday," Page
records. "The British and American navies had come to an arrangement
whereby the Brazilian ships that are coming over to help us fight
should join the American unit, not the British, as was at first
proposed. Washington telegraphed me that the British Minister at Rio was
blocking the game by standing out for the first British idea--that the
Brazilian ships should join the British. It turned out in the
conversation that the British Minister had not been informed of the
British-American naval arrangement. Mr. Balfour sent for Lord Hardinge.
He called in one of the private secretaries. Was such a thing ever heard
of?

"Did you ever know,' said the indignant Mr. Balfour, turning to me, 'of
such a thing as a minister not even being informed of his Government's
decisions?' 'Yes,' I said, 'if I ransack my memory diligently, I think I
could find such cases.' The meeting went into laughter!"

Evidently the troubles which Page was having with his own State
Department were not unfamiliar to British officialdom.

Page's letters sufficiently reveal his fondness for Sir Edward Grey and
the splendid relations that existed between them. The sympathetic chords
which the two men struck upon their first meeting only grew stronger
with time. A single episode brings out the bonds that drew them
together. It took place at a time when the tension over the blockade was
especially threatening. One afternoon Page asked for a formal interview;
he had received another exceedingly disagreeable protest from
Washington, with instructions to push the matter to a decision; the
Ambassador left his Embassy with a grave expression upon his face; his
associates were especially worried over the outcome. So critical did the
situation seem that the most important secretaries gathered in the
Ambassador's room, awaiting his return, their nerves strung almost to
the breaking point. An hour went by and nothing was heard from Page;
another hour slowly passed and still the Ambassador did not return. The
faces of the assembled staff lengthened as the minutes went by; what was
the Ambassador doing at the Foreign Office? So protracted an interview
could portend only evil; already, in the minds of these nervous young
men, ultimatums were flying between the United States and Great Britain,
and even war might be hanging in the balance. Another hour drew out its
weary length; the room became dark, dinner time was approaching, and
still Page failed to make his appearance. At last, when his distracted
subordinates were almost prepared to go in search of their chief, the
Ambassador walked jauntily in, smiling and apparently carefree. What had
happened? What was to be done about the detained ships?

"What ships?" asked Page, and then suddenly he remembered. "Oh,
yes--those." That was all right; Sir Edward had at once promised to
release them; it had all been settled in a few minutes.

"Then why were you so long?"

The truth came out: Sir Edward and Page had quickly turned from
intercepted cargoes to the more congenial subject of Wordsworth,
Tennyson, and other favourite poets, and the rest of the afternoon had
been consumed in discussing this really important business.

Perhaps Page was not so great a story-teller as many Americans, but he
excelled in a type of yarn that especially delights Englishmen, for it
is the kind that is native to the American soil. He possessed an
inexhaustible stock of Negro anecdotes, and he had the gift of bringing
them out at precisely the right point. There was one which the
Archbishop of York never tired of repeating. Soon after America entered
the war, the Archbishop asked Page how long his country was "in for."
"I can best answer that by telling you a story," said Page. "There were
two Negroes who had just been sentenced to prison terms. As they were
being taken away in the carriage placed at their disposal by the United
States Government, one said to the other, 'Sam, how long is you in fo'?'
'I guess dat it's a yeah or two yeahs,' said Sam. 'How long is you in
fo'?' 'I guess it's from now on,' said the other darky." "From now on,"
remarked the Archbishop, telling this story. "What could more eloquently
have described America's attitude toward the war?"

The mention of the Archbishop suggests another of Page's talents--the
aptness of his letters of introduction. In the spring of 1918 the
Archbishop, at the earnest recommendation of Page and Mr. Balfour, came
to the United States. Page prepared the way by letters to several
distinguished Americans, of which this one, to Theodore Roosevelt, is a
fair sample:

_To Theodore Roosevelt_

London, January 16, 1918.

DEAR MR. ROOSEVELT:

The Archbishop of York goes to the United States to make some
observations of us and of our ways and to deliver addresses--on the
invitation of some one of our church organizations; a fortunate
event for us and, I have ventured to tell him, for him also.

During his brief stay in our country, I wish him to make your
acquaintance, and I have given him a card of introduction to you,
and thus I humbly serve you both.

The Archbishop is a man and a brother, a humble, learned, earnest,
companionable fellow, with most charming manners and an attractive
personality, a good friend of mine, which argues much for him and
(I think) implies also something in my behalf. You will enjoy him.

I am, dear Mr. Roosevelt,

Sincerely yours,

WALTER H. PAGE.

Greatly as Page loved England he never ceased to preach his Americanism.
That he preferred his own country to any other and that he believed that
it was its greatest destiny to teach its institutions to the rest of the
world, Page's letters show; yet this was with him no cheap
spread-eagleism; it was a definite philosophy which the Ambassador had
completely thought out. He never hesitated to express his democratic
opinions in any company, and only once or twice were there any signs
that these ideas jarred a little in certain strongholds of conservatism.
Even in the darkest period of American neutrality Page's faith in the
American people remained complete. After this country had entered the
war and the apparent slowness of the Washington Administration had
raised certain questionings, Page never doubted that the people
themselves, however irresolute and lukewarm their representatives might
be, would force the issue to its only logical end. Even so friendly a
man as Mr. Balfour once voiced a popular apprehension that the United
States might not get into the war with all its strength or might
withdraw prematurely. This was in the early period of our participation.
"Who is going to stop the American people and how?" Page quickly
replied. "I think that was a good answer," he said, as he looked back at
the episode in the summer of 1918, when hundreds of thousands of
Americans were landing in France every month. A scrap of his writing
records a discussion at a dinner party on this question: "If you could
have a month in any time and any country, what time and what country
would you choose?" The majority voted for England in the time of
Elizabeth, but Page's preference was for Athens in the days of Pericles.
Then came a far more interesting debate: "If you could spend a second
lifetime when and where would you choose to spend it?" On this Page had
not a moment's hesitation: "In the future and in the U.S.A.!" and he
upheld his point with such persuasiveness that he carried the whole
gathering with him. His love of anything suggesting America came out on
all occasions. One of his English hostesses once captivated him by
serving corn bread at a luncheon. "The American Ambassador and corn
bread!" he exclaimed with all the delight of a schoolboy. Again he was
invited, with another distinguished American, to serve as godfather at
the christening of the daughter of an American woman who had married an
Englishman. When the ceremony was finished he leaned over the font
toward his fellow godfather. "Born on July 4th," he exclaimed, "of an
American mother! And we two Yankee godfathers! We'll see that this child
is taught the Constitution of the United States!"

One day an American duchess came into Page's office.

"I am going home for a little visit and I want a passport," she said.

"But you don't get a passport here," Page replied. "You must go to the
Foreign Office."

His visitor was indignant.

"Not at all," she answered. "I am an American: you know that I am; you
knew my father. I want an American passport."

Page patiently explained the citizenship and naturalization laws and
finally convinced his caller that she was now a British subject and must
have a British passport. As this American duchess left the room he
shook at her a menacing forefinger.

"Don't tell me," was the Ambassador's parting shot, "that you thought
that you could have your Duke and Uncle Sam, too!"

The judgments which Page passed on men and things were quick and they
were not infrequently wise. One of these judgments had historic
consequences the end of which cannot even yet be foreseen. On the
outbreak of hostilities, as already related, an American Relief
Committee was organized in London to look out for the interests of
stranded Americans. Page kept a close eye on its operations, and soon
his attention was attracted by the noiseless efficiency of an American
engineer of whom he had already caught a few fleeting glimpses in the
period of peace. After he had finished his work with the American
Committee, Mr. Herbert C. Hoover began to make his arrangements to leave
for the United States. His private affairs had been disorganized; he had
already sent his family home, and his one ambition was to get on the
first ship sailing for the United States. The idea of Belgian relief, or
of feeding starving people anywhere, had never occurred to him. At this
moment an American, Mr. Millard K. Shaler, came from Brussels and gave
the most harrowing account of conditions in Belgium. Mr. Hoover took Mr.
Shaler to Page, who immediately became sympathetic. The Ambassador
arranged an interview between Mr. Hoover and Sir Edward Grey, who
likewise showed great interest and promised government support. Soon
afterward three Belgians arrived and described the situation as
immediately alarming: Brussels had only food enough to feed the people
for thirty-six hours; after that, unless help were forthcoming, the
greatest distress would set in. Five men--Page, the three Belgians, and
Mr. Hoover--at once got together at the American Embassy. Upon the
result of that meeting hung the fate of millions of people. Who before
had ever undertaken a scheme for feeding an entire nation for an
indefinite period? That there were great obstacles in the way all five
men knew; the British Admiralty in particular were strongly opposed;
there was a fear that the food, if it could be acquired and sent to
Belgium, would find its way to the German Army. Unless the British
Government could be persuaded that this could be prevented, the
enterprise would fail at the start. How could it be done?

"There is only one way," said Page. "Some government must give its
guarantee that this food will get to the Belgian people." "And, of
course," he added, "there is only one government that can do that. It
must be the American Government."

Mr. Hoover pointed out that any such guarantee involved the management
of transportation; only by controlling the railroads could the American
Government make sure that this food would reach its destination.

And that, added Page, involved a director--some one man who could take
charge of the whole enterprise. Who should it be?

Then Page turned quickly to the young American.

"Hoover, you're It!"

Mr. Hoover made no reply; he neither accepted nor rejected the proposal.
He merely glanced at the clock, then got up and silently left the room.
In a few minutes he returned and entered again into the discussion.

"Hoover, why did you get up and leave us so abruptly?" asked Page, a
little puzzled over this behaviour.

"I saw by the clock," came the answer--and it was a story that Page was
fond of telling, as illustrating the rapidity with which Mr. Hoover
worked--"that there was an hour left before the Exchange closed in New
York. So I went out and cabled, buying several millions of bushels of
wheat--for the Belgians, of course."

*       *       *       *       *

For what is usually known as "society" Page had little inclination. Yet
for social intercourse on a more genuine plane he had real gifts. Had he
enjoyed better health, week ends in the country would have afforded him
welcome entertainment. He also liked dinner parties but indulged in them
very moderately. He was a member of many London clubs but he seldom
visited any of them. There were a number of organizations, however,
which he regularly attended. The Society of Dilettanti, a company of
distinguished men interested in promoting the arts and improving the
public taste, which has been continuously in existence since 1736,
enrolling in each generation the greatest painters and writers of the
time, elected Page to membership. He greatly enjoyed its dinners in the
Banquet Hall of the Grafton Gallery. "Last night," he writes, describing
his initial appearance, "I attended my first Dilettanti dinner and was
inducted, much as a new Peer is inducted into the House of Lords. Lord
Mersey in the chair--in a red robe. These gay old dogs have had a fine
time of it for nearly 200 years--good wine, high food, fine
satisfaction. The oldest dining society in the Kingdom. The blue blood
old Briton has the art of enjoying himself reduced to a very fine point
indeed." Another gathering whose meetings he seldom missed was that of
the Kinsmen, an informal club of literary men who met occasionally for
food and converse in the Trocadero Restaurant. Here Page would meet such
congenial souls as Sir James Barrie and Sir Arthur Pinero, all of whom
retain lively memories of Page at these gatherings. "He was one of the
most lovable characters I have ever had the good fortune to encounter,"
says Sir Arthur Pinero, recalling these occasions. "In what special
quality or qualities lay the secret of his charm and influence? Surely
in his simplicity and transparent honesty, and in the possession of a
disposition which, without the smallest loss of dignity, was responsive
and affectionate. Distinguished American Ambassadors will come and go,
and will in their turn win esteem and admiration. But none, I venture to
say, will efface the recollection of Walter Page from the minds of those
who were privileged to gain his friendship."

One aspect of Page that remains fixed in the memory of his associates is
his unwearied industry with the pen. His official communications and his
ordinary correspondence Page dictated; but his personal letters he wrote
with his own hand. He himself deplored the stenographer as a deterrent
to good writing; the habit of dictating, he argued, led to wordiness and
general looseness of thought. Practically all the letters published in
these volumes were therefore the painstaking work of Page's own pen. His
handwriting was so beautiful and clear that, in his editorial days, the
printers much preferred it as "copy" to typewritten matter. This habit
is especially surprising in view of the Ambassador's enormous epistolary
output. It must be remembered that the letters included in the present
book are only a selection from the vast number that he wrote during his
five years in England; many of these letters fill twenty and thirty
pages of script; the labour involved in turning them out; day after day,
seems fairly astounding. Yet with Page this was a labour of love. All
through his Ambassadorship he seemed hardly contented unless he had a
pen in his hand. As his secretaries would glance into his room, there
they would see the Ambassador bending over his desk-writing, writing,
eternally writing; sometimes he would call them in, and read what he had
written, never hesitating to tear up the paper if their unfavourable
criticisms seemed to him well taken. The Ambassador kept a desk also in
his bedroom, and here his most important correspondence was attended to.
Page's all-night self-communings before his wood fire have already been
described, and he had another nocturnal occupation that was similarly
absorbing. Many a night, after returning late from his office or from
dinner, he would put on his dressing gown, sit at his bedroom desk, and
start pouring forth his inmost thoughts in letters to the President,
Colonel House, or some other correspondent. His pen flew over the paper
with the utmost rapidity and the Ambassador would sometimes keep at his
writing until two or three o'clock in the morning. There is a frequently
expressed fear that letter writing is an art of the past; that the
intervention of the stenographer has destroyed its spontaneity; yet it
is evident that in Page the present generation has a letter writer of
the old-fashioned kind, for he did all his writing with his own hand and
under circumstances that would assure the utmost freshness and vividness
to the result.

An occasional game of golf, which he played badly, a trip now and then
to rural England--these were Page's only relaxations from his duties.
Though he was not especially fond of leaving his own house, he was
always delighted when visitors came to him. And the American Embassy,
during the five years from 1913 to 1918, extended a hospitality which
was fittingly democratic in its quality but which gradually drew within
its doors all that was finest in the intellect and character of
England. Page himself attributed the popularity of his house to his
wife. Mrs. Page certainly embodied the traits most desirable in the
Ambassadress of a great Republic. A woman of cultivation, a tireless
reader, a close observer of people and events and a shrewd commentator
upon them, she also had an unobtrusive dignity, a penetrating sympathy,
and a capacity for human association, which, while more restrained and
more placid than that of her husband, made her a helpful companion for a
sorely burdened man. The American Embassy under Mr. and Mrs. Page was
not one of London's smart houses as that word is commonly understood in
this great capital. But No. 6 Grosvenor Square, in the spaciousness of
its rooms, the simple beauty of its furnishings, and especially in its
complete absence of ostentation, made it the worthy abiding place of an
American Ambassador. And the people who congregated there were precisely
the kind that appeal to the educated American. "I didn't know I was
getting into an assembly of immortals," exclaimed Mr. Hugh Wallace, when
he dropped in one Thursday afternoon for tea, and found himself
foregathered with Sir Edward Grey, Henry James, John Sargent, and other
men of the same type. It was this kind of person who most naturally
gravitated to the Page establishment, not the ultra-fashionable, the
merely rich, or the many titled. The formal functions which the position
demanded the Pages scrupulously gave; but the affairs which Page most
enjoyed and which have left the most lasting remembrances upon his
guests were the informal meetings with his chosen favourites, for the
most part literary men. Here Page's sheer brilliancy of conversation
showed at its best. Lord Bryce, Sir John Simon, John Morley, the
inevitable companions, Henry James and John Sargent--"What things have
I seen done at the Mermaid"; and certainly these gatherings of wits and
savants furnished as near an approach to its Elizabethan prototype as
London could then present.

Besides his official activities Page performed great services to the two
countries by his speeches. The demands of this kind on an American
Ambassador are always numerous, but Page's position was an exceptional
one; it was his fortune to represent America at a time when his own
country and Great Britain were allies in a great war. He could therefore
have spent practically all his time in speaking had he been so disposed.
Of the hundreds of invitations received he was able to accept only a
few, but most of these occasions became memorable ones. In any
spectacular sense Page was not an orator; he rather despised the grand
manner, with its flourishes and its tricks; the name of public speaker
probably best describes his talents on the platform. Here his style was
earnest and conversational: his speech flowed with the utmost readiness;
it was invariably quiet and restrained; he was never aiming at big
effects, but his words always went home. Of the series of speeches that
stand to his credit in England probably the one that will be longest
remembered is that delivered at Plymouth on August 4, 1917, the third
anniversary of the war. This not only reviewed the common history of the
two nations for three hundred years, and suggested a programme for
making the bonds tighter yet, but it brought the British public
practical assurances as to America's intentions in the conflict. Up to
that time there had been much vagueness and doubt; no official voice had
spoken the clear word for the United States; the British public did not
know what to expect from their kinsmen overseas. But after Page's
Plymouth speech the people of Great Britain looked forward with
complete confidence to the coöperation of the two countries and to the
inevitable triumph of this coöperation.

_To Arthur W. Page_

Knebworth House, Knebworth,
August 11, 1917.

Dear Arthur:

First of all, these three years have made me tired. I suppose
there's no doubt about that, if there were any scientific way of
measuring it. While of course the strain now is nothing like what
it was during the days of neutrality, there's yet some strain.

I went down to Plymouth to make a speech on the anniversary of the
beginning of the war--went to tell them in the west of England
something about relations with the United States and something
about what the United States is doing in the war. It turned out to
be a great success. The Mayor met me at the train; there was a
military company, the Star Spangled Banner and real American
applause. All the way through the town the streets were lined with
all the inhabitants and more--apparently millions of 'em. They made
the most of it for five solid days.

On the morning of August 4th the Mayor gave me an official
luncheon. Thence we went to the esplanade facing the sea, where
soldiers and sailors were lined up for half a mile. The American
Flag was flung loose, the Star Spangled Banner broke forth from the
band, and all the people in that part of the world were there
gathered to see the show. After all this salute the Mayor took me
to the stand and he and I made speeches, and the background was a
group of dozens of admirals and generals and many smaller fry. Then
I reviewed the troops; then they marched by me and in an hour or
two the show was over.

Then the bowling club--the same club and the same green as when
Drake left the game to sail out to meet the Armada.

Then a solemn service in the big church, where the prayers were
written and the hymns selected with reference to our part in the
war.

Then, of course, a dinner party. At eight o'clock at night, the
Guildhall, an enormous town hall, was packed with people and I made
my speech at 'em. A copy (somewhat less good than the version I
gave them) goes to you, along with a leader from the _Times_. They
were vociferously grateful for any assuring word about the United
States. It's strange how very little the provincial Englander knows
about what we have done and mean to do. They took the speech
finely, and I have had good letters about it from all sorts of
people in every part of the Kingdom.

Then followed five days of luncheons and dinners and garden
parties--and (what I set out to say) I got back to London last
night dead tired. To-day your mother and I came here--about
twenty-five miles from London--for a fortnight.

This is Bulwer-Lytton's house--a fine old English place hired this
year by Lady Strafford, whom your mother is visiting for a
fortnight or more, and they let me come along, too. They have given
me the big library, as good a room as I want--with as bad pens as
they can find in the Kingdom.

Your mother is tired, too. Since the American Red Cross was
organized here, she has added to her committee and hospitals. But
she keeps well and very vigorous. A fortnight here will set her up.
She enjoyed Plymouth very much in spite of the continual rush, and
it was a rush.

What the United States is doing looks good and large at this
distance. The gratitude here is unbounded; but I detect a feeling
here and there of wonder whether we are going to keep up this
activity to the end.

I sometimes feel that the German collapse _may_ come next winter.
Their internal troubles and the lack of sufficient food and raw
materials do increase. The breaking point may be reached before
another summer. I wish I could prove it or even certainly predict
it. But it is at least conceivable. Alas, no one can _prove_
anything about the war. The conditions have no precedents. The sum
of human misery and suffering is simply incalculable, as is the
loss of life; and the gradual and general brutalization goes on and
on and on far past any preceding horrors.

With all my love to you and Mollie and the trio,

W.H.P.

And so for five busy and devastating years Page did his work. The
stupidities of Washington might drive him to desperation, ill-health
might increase his periods of despondency, the misunderstandings that he
occasionally had with the British Government might add to his
discouragements, but a naturally optimistic and humorous temperament
overcame all obstacles, and did its part in bringing about that united
effort which ended in victory. And that it was a great part, the story
of his Ambassadorship abundantly proves. Page was not the soldier
working in the blood and slime of Flanders, nor the sea fighter spending
day and night around the foggy coast of Ireland, nor the statesman
bending parliaments to his will and manipulating nations and peoples in
the mighty game whose stake was civilization itself. But history will
indeed be ungrateful if it ever forget the gaunt and pensive figure,
clad in a dressing gown, sitting long into the morning before the
smouldering fire at 6 Grosvenor Square, seeking to find some way to
persuade a reluctant and hesitating President to lead his country in the
defense of liberty and determined that, so far as he could accomplish
it, the nation should play a part in the great assize that was in
keeping with its traditions and its instincts.




CHAPTER XXIV

A RESPITE AT ST. IVES


_To Edward M. House_

Knebworth House
Sunday, September,[sic] 1917.

Dear House:

... By far the most important peace plan or utterance is the
President's extraordinary answer to the Pope[64]. His flat and
convincing refusal to take the word of the present rulers of
Germany as of any value has had more effect here than any other
utterance and it is, so far, the best contribution we have made to
the war. The best evidence that I can get shows also that it has
had more effect in Germany than anything else that has been said by
anybody. That hit the bull's-eye with perfect accuracy; and it has
been accepted here as _the_ war aim and _the_ war condition. So far
as I can make out it is working in Germany toward peace with more
effect than any other deliverance made by anybody. And it steadied
the already unshakable resolution here amazingly.

I can get any information here of course without danger of the
slightest publicity--an important point, because even the mention
of peace now is dangerous. All the world, under this long strain,
is more or less off the normal, and all my work--even routine
work--is done with the profoundest secrecy: it has to be.

Our energetic war preparations call forth universal admiration and
gratitude here on all sides and nerve up the British and hearten
them more than I know how to explain. There is an eager and even
pathetic curiosity to hear all the details, to hear, in fact,
anything about the United States; and what the British do not know
about the United States would fill the British Museum. They do
know, however, that they would soon have been obliged to make an
unsatisfactory peace if we hadn't come in when we did and they
freely say so. The little feeling of jealousy that we should come
in and win the war at the end has, I think, been forgotten,
swallowed up in their genuine gratitude.

Sincerely yours,

WALTER H. PAGE.

_To Arthur W. Page_

American Embassy,
London, Sept. 3, 1917.

DEAR ARTHUR:

... The President has sent Admiral Mayo over to study the naval
situation. So far as I can learn the feeling at Washington is that
the British Navy has done nothing. Why, it hasn't attacked the
German naval bases and destroyed the German navy and ended the war!
Why not? I have a feeling that Mayo will supplement and support
Sims in his report. Then gradually the naval men at Washington may
begin to understand and they may get the important facts into the
President's head. Meantime the submarine work of the Germans
continues to win the war, although the government and the people
here and in the United States appear not to believe it. They are
still destroying seventy-five British ships a month besides an
additional (smaller) number of allied and neutral ships. And all
the world together is not turning out seventy-five ships a month;
nor are we all destroying submarines as fast as the Germans are
turning _them_ out. Yet all the politicians are putting on a
cheerful countenance about it because the Germans are not starving
England out and are not just now sinking passenger ships. They may
begin this again at any time. They have come within a few feet of
torpedoing two of our American liners. The submarine _is_ the war
yet, but nobody seems disposed to believe it. They'll probably wake
up with a great shock some day--or the war may possibly end before
the destruction of ships becomes positively fatal.

The President's letter to the Pope gives him the moral and actual
leadership now. The Hohenzollerns must go. Somehow the subjects and
governments of these Old World kingdoms have not hitherto laid
emphasis on this. There's still a divinity that doth hedge a king
in most European minds. To me this is the very queerest thing in
the whole world. What again if Germany, Austria, Spain should
follow Russia? Whether they do or not crowns will not henceforth be
so popular. There is an unbounded enthusiasm here for the
President's letter and for the President in general.

In spite of certain details which it seems impossible to make
understood on the Potomac, the whole American preparation and
enthusiasm seem from this distance to be very fine. The _people_
seem in earnest. When I read about tax bills, about the food
regulation and a thousand other such things, I am greatly
gratified. And it proves that we were right when we said that
during the days of neutrality the people were held back. It all
looks exceedingly good from this distance, and it makes me
homesick.

_To Frank N. Doubleday_

American Embassy.

[Undated, but written about October I, 1917]

DEAR EFFENDI:

... The enormous war work and war help that everybody seems to be
doing in the United States is heartily appreciated here--most
heartily. The English eat out of our hands. You can see American
uniforms every day in London. Every ship brings them. Everybody's
thrilled to see them. The Americans here have great houses opened
as officers' clubs, and scrumptious huts for men where countesses
and other high ladies hand out sandwiches and serve ice cream and
ginger beer. Our two admirals are most popular with all classes,
from royalty down. English soldiers salute our officers in the
street and old gentlemen take off their hats when they meet nurses
with the American Red Cross uniform. My Embassy now occupies four
buildings for offices, more than half of them military and naval.
And my own staff, proper, is the biggest in the world and keeps
growing. When I go, in a little while, to receive the Freedom of
the City of Edinburgh, I shall carry an Admiral or a General as my
aide!

That's the way we keep a stiff upper lip.

And Good Lord! it's tiresome. Peace? We'd all give our lives for
the right sort of peace, and never move an eyelid. But only the
wrong sort has yet come within reach. The other sort is coming,
however; for these present German contortions are the beginning of
the end. But the weariness of it, and the tragedy and the cost. No
human creature was ever as tired as I am. Yet I keep well and keep
going and keep working all my waking hours. When it ends, I shall
collapse and go home and have to rest a while. So at least I feel
now. And, if I outlive the work and the danger and the weariness,
I'll praise God for that. And it doesn't let up a single day. And
I'm no worse off than everybody else.

So this over-weary world goes, dear Effendi; but the longest day
shades at last down to twilight and rest; and so this will be. And
poor old Europe will then not be worth while for the rest of our
lives--a vast grave and ruin where unmated women will mourn and
starvation will remain for years to come.

God bless us.

Sincerely yours, with my love to all the boys,
W.H.P.

_To Frank N. Doubleday_

London, November 9, 1917.

DEAR EFFENDI:

... This infernal thing drags its slow length along so that we
cannot see even a day ahead, not to say a week, or a year. If any
man here allowed the horrors of it to dwell on his mind he would go
mad, so we have to skip over these things somewhat lightly and try
to keep the long, definite aim in our thoughts and to work away
distracted as little as possible by the butchery and by the
starvation that is making this side of the world a shambles and a
wilderness. There is hardly a country on the Continent where people
are not literally starving to death, and in many of them by
hundreds of thousands; and this state of things is going to
continue for a good many years after the war. God knows we (I mean
the American people) are doing everything we can to alleviate it
but there is so much more to be done than any group of forces can
possibly do, that I have a feeling that we have hardly touched the
borders of the great problem itself. Of course here in London we
are away from all that. In spite of the rations we get quite enough
to eat and it's as good as it is usually in England, but we have no
right to complain. Of course we are subject to air raids, and the
wise air people here think that early next spring we are going to
be bombarded with thousands of aeroplanes, and with new kinds of
bombs and gases in a well-organized effort to try actually to
destroy London. Possibly that will come; we must simply take our
chance, every man sticking to his job. Already the slate shingles
on my roof have been broken, and bricks have been knocked down my
chimney; the sky-light was hit and glass fell down all through the
halls, and the nose of a shrapnel shell, weighing eight pounds,
fell just in front of my doorway and rolled in my area. This is the
sort of thing we incidentally get, not of course from the enemy
directly, but from the British guns in London which shoot these
things at German aeroplanes. What goes up must come down. Between
our own defences and the enemy, God knows which will kill us first!

In spite of all this I put my innocent head on my pillow every
night and get a good night's sleep after the bombing is done, and I
thank Heaven that nothing interrupts my sleep. This, and a little
walking, which is all I get time to do in these foggy days,
constitute my life outdoors and precious little of it is outdoors.

Then on every block that I know of in London there is a hospital or
supply place and the ambulances are bringing the poor fellows in
all the time. We don't get any gasolene to ride so we have to walk.
We don't get any white bread so we have to eat stuff made of flour
and corn meal ground so fine that it isn't good. While everybody
gets a little thinner, the universal opinion is that they also get
a little better, and nobody is going to die here of hunger. We
feel a little more cheerful about the submarines than we did some
time ago. For some reason they are not getting so many ships. One
reason, I am glad to believe, is that they are getting caught
themselves. If I could remember all the stories that I hear of good
fighting with the submarines I could keep you up two nights when I
get home, but in these days one big thing after another crowds so
in men's minds that the Lord knows if, when I get home, I shall
remember anything.

Always heartily yours,

W.H.P.

_To the President_

London, December 3, 1917.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

... Some of the British military men in London are not hopeful of
an early end of the war nor even cheerful about the result. They
are afraid of the war-weariness that overcame Russia and gave Italy
a setback. They say the military task, though long and slow and
hard, can be done if everybody will pull together and keep at the
job without weariness--_be done by our help_. But they have fits of
fear of France. They are discouraged by the greater part of Lord
Lansdowne's letter[65]. I myself do not set great value on this
military feeling in London, for the British generals in France do
not share it. Lord French once said to me and General Robertson,
too, that when they feel despondent in London, they go to the front