In all this excitement, Page himself came in for his share of hard knocks.  Irish meetings “resolved” against the Ambassador as a statesman who “looks on English claims as superior to American rights,” and demanded that President Wilson recall him.  It has been the fate of practically every American ambassador to Great Britain to be accused of Anglomania.  Lowell, John Hay, and Joseph H. Choate fell under the ban of those elements in American life who seem to think that the main duty of an American diplomat in Great Britain is to insult the country of which he has become the guest.  In 1895 the house of Representatives solemnly passed a resolution censuring Ambassador Thomas F. Bayard for a few sentiments friendly to Great Britain which he had uttered at a public banquet.  That Page was no undiscriminating idolater of Great Britain these letters have abundantly revealed.  That he had the profoundest respect for the British character and British institutions has been made just as clear.  With Page this was no sudden enthusiasm; the conviction that British conceptions of liberty and government and British ideals of life represented the fine flower of human progress was one that he felt deeply.  The fact that these fundamentals had had the opportunity of even freer development in America he regarded as most fortunate both for the United States and for the world.  He had never concealed his belief that the destinies of mankind depended more upon the friendly cooeperation of the United States and Great Britain than upon any other single influence.  He had preached this in public addresses, and in his writings for twenty-five years preceding his mission to Great Britain.  But the mere fact that he should hold such convictions and presume to express them as American Ambassador apparently outraged those same elements in this country who railed against Great Britain in this Panama Tolls debate.

On August 16, 1913, the City of Southampton, England, dedicated a monument in honour of the Mayflower Pilgrims—­Southampton having been their original point of departure for Massachusetts.  Quite appropriately the city invited the American Ambassador to deliver an address on this occasion; and quite appropriately the Ambassador acknowledged the debt that Americans of to-day owed to the England that had sent these adventurers to lay the foundations of new communities on foreign soil.  Yet certain historic truths embodied in this very beautiful and eloquent address aroused considerable anger in certain parts of the United States.  “Blood,” said the Ambassador, “carries with it that particular trick of thought which makes us all English in the last resort. . . .  And Puritan and Pilgrim and Cavalier, different yet, are yet one in that they are English still.  And thus, despite the fusion of races and of the great contributions of other nations to her 100 millions of people and to her incalculable wealth, the United States is yet English-led and English-ruled.”