Extraordinary and sincere and profound as is the respect of the English for the American people, they hold the American Government in contempt.  It shifts and doesn’t keep its treaty, etc., etc.—­They are right, too.  But they need to feel the hand that now has the helm.

But one or two things have first to be got out of the way.  That Panama tolls is the worst.  We are dead wrong in that, as we are dead right on the Mexican matter.  If it were possible (I don’t know that it is) for the President to say (quietly, not openly) that he agrees with us—­if he do—­then the field would be open for a fight on Mexico; and the reenforcement of our position would he incalculable.

Then we need in Washington some sort of Bureau or Master of Courtesies for the Government, to do and to permit us to do those little courtesies that the English spend half their time in doing—­this in the course of our everyday life and intercourse.  For example:  When I was instructed to inform this Government that our fleet would go to the Mediterranean, I was instructed also to say that they mustn’t trouble to welcome us—­don’t pay no ’tention to us!  Well, that’s what they live for in times of peace—­ceremonies.  We come along and say, “We’re comin’ but, hell! don’t kick up no fuss over us, we’re from Missouri, we are!” And the Briton shrugs his shoulders and says, “Boor!” These things are happening all the time.  Of course no one nor a dozen nor a hundred count; but generations of ’em have counted badly.  A Government without manners.

If I could outdo these folk at their game of courtesy, and could keep our treaty faith with ’em, then I could lick ’em into the next century on the moral aspects of the Mexican Government, and make ’em look up and salute every time the American Government is mentioned.  See?—­Is there any hope?—­Such is the job exactly.  And you know what it would lead to—­even in our lifetime—­to the leadership of the world:  and we should presently be considering how we may best use the British fleet, the British Empire, and the English race for the betterment of mankind.

     Yours eagerly,
     W.H.P.

A word of caution is necessary to understand Page’s references to the British democracy.  That the parliamentary system is democratic in the sense that it is responsive to public opinion he would have been the first to admit.  That Great Britain is a democracy in the sense that the suffrage is general is also apparent.  But, in these reflections on the British commonwealth, the Ambassador was thinking of his old familiar figure, the “Forgotten Man”—­the neglected man, woman, and child of the masses.  In an address delivered, in June, 1914, before the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Page gave what he regarded as the definition of the American ideal.  “The fundamental article in the creed of the American democracy—­you may call it the fundamental