This was merely a way of phrasing a great historic truth—­that overwhelmingly the largest element in the American population is British in origin[51]; that such vital things as its speech and its literature are English; and that our political institutions, our liberty, our law, our conceptions of morality and of life are similarly derived from the British Isles.  Page applied the word “English” to Americans in the same sense in which that word is used by John Richard Green, when he traces the history of the English race from a German forest to the Mississippi Valley and the wilds of Australia.  But the anti-British elements on this side of the water, taking “English-led and English-ruled” out of its context, misinterpreted the phrase as meaning that the American Ambassador had approvingly called attention to the fact that the United States was at present under the political control of Great Britain!  Senator Chamberlain of Oregon presented a petition from the Staatsverband Deutschsprechender Vereine von Oregon, demanding the Ambassador’s removal, while the Irish-American press and politicians became extremely vocal.

Animated as was this outburst, it was mild compared with the excitement caused by a speech that Page made while the Panama debate was raging in Congress.  At a dinner of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, in early March, the Ambassador made a few impromptu remarks.  The occasion was one of good fellowship and good humour, and Page, under the inspiration of the occasion, indulged in a few half-serious, half-jocular references to the Panama Canal and British-American good-feeling, which, when inaccurately reported, caused a great disturbance in the England-baiting press.  “I would not say that we constructed the Panama Canal even for you,” he said, “for I am speaking with great frankness and not with diplomatic indirection.  We built it for reasons of our own.  But I will say that it adds to the pleasure of that great work that you will profit by it.  You will profit most by it, for you have the greatest carrying trade.”  A few paragraphs on the Monroe Doctrine, which practically repeated President Wilson’s Mobile speech on that subject, but in which Mr. Page used the expression, “we prefer that European Powers shall acquire no more territory on this continent,” alarmed those precisians in language, who pretended to believe that the Ambassador had used the word “prefer” in its literal sense, and interpreted the sentence to mean that, while the United States would “prefer” that Europe should not overrun North and South America, it would really raise no serious objection if Europe did so.

Senator Chamberlain of Oregon, who by this time had apparently become the Senatorial leader of the anti-Page propaganda, introduced a resolution demanding that the Ambassador furnish the Senate a complete copy of this highly pro-British outgiving.  The copy was furnished forthwith—­and with that the tempest subsided.