impeded, by the almost studied neglect with which Washington treated its diplomatic service.  The fact that the American Government provided no official residence for its Ambassador, and no adequate financial allowance for maintaining the office, had made his position almost an intolerable one.  All Page’s predecessors for twenty-five years had been rich men who could advance the cost of the Embassy from their own private purses; to meet these expenses, however, Page had been obliged to encroach on the savings of a lifetime, and such liberality on his part necessarily had its limitations.

     To Edward M. House

     London, England,
     February 13, 1914.

     MY DEAR HOUSE: 

. . .  Of course I am open to the criticism of having taken the place at all.  But I was both uninformed and misinformed about the cost as well as about the frightful handicap of having no Embassy.  It’s a kind of scandal in London and it has its serious effect.  Everybody talks about it all the time:  “Will you explain to me why it is that your great Government has no Embassy:  it’s very odd!” “What a frugal Government you have!” “It’s a damned mean outfit, your American Government.”  Mrs. Page collapses many an evening when she gets to her room.  “If they’d only quit talking about it!” The other Ambassadors, now that we’re coming to know them fairly well, commiserate us.  It’s a constant humiliation.  Of course this aspect of it doesn’t worry me much—­I’ve got hardened to it.  But it is a good deal of a real handicap, and it adds that much dead weight that a man must overcome; and it greatly lessens the respect in which our Government and its Ambassador are held.  If I had known this fully in advance, I should not have had the courage to come here.  Now, of course, I’ve got used to it, have discounted it, and can “bull” it through—­could “bull” it through if I could afford to pay the bill.  But I shouldn’t advise any friend of mine to come here and face this humiliation without realizing precisely what it means—­wholly apart, of course, from the cost of it. . . .

My dear House, on the present basis much of the diplomatic business is sheer humbug.  It will always be so till we have our own Embassies and an established position in consequence.  Without a home or a house or a fixed background, every man has to establish his own position for himself; and unless he be unusual, this throws him clean out of the way of giving emphasis to the right things. . . .

As for our position, I think I don’t fool myself.  The job at the Foreign Office is easy because there is no real trouble between us, and because Sir Edward Grey is pretty nearly an ideal man to get on with.  I think he likes me, too, because, of course, I’m straightforward and frank with him, and he likes the things we stand for.  Outside this official part of the job, of course, we’re commonplace—­a successful commonplace, I hope.  But that’s