home on the first ship.”  Ladies and gentlemen filled the steerage of that ship—­not a bunk left; and his wife and daughter are found three days later sitting in a swell hotel waiting for me to bring them stateroom tickets on a silver tray!  One of my young fellows in the Embassy rushes into my office saying that a man from Boston, with letters of introduction from Senators and Governors and Secretaries, et al., was demanding tickets of admission to a picture gallery, and a secretary to escort him there.

     “What shall I do with him?”

     “Put his proposal to a vote of the 200 Americans in the room and
     see them draw and quarter him.”

I have not yet heard what happened.  A woman writes me four pages to prove how dearly she loves my sister and invites me to her hotel—­five miles away—­“please to tell her about the sailing of the steamships.”  Six American preachers pass a resolution unanimously “urging our Ambassador to telegraph our beloved, peace-loving President to stop this awful war”; and they come with simple solemnity to present their resolution.  Lord save us, what a world!

And this awful tragedy moves on to—­what?  We do not know what is really happening, so strict is the censorship.  But it seems inevitable to me that Germany will be beaten, that the horrid period of alliances and armaments will not come again, that England will gain even more of the earth’s surface, that Russia may next play the menace; that all Europe (as much as survives) will be bankrupt; that relatively we shall be immensely stronger financially and politically—­there must surely come many great changes—­very many, yet undreamed of.  Be ready; for you will be called on to compose this huge quarrel.  I thank Heaven for many things—­first, the Atlantic Ocean; second, that you refrained from war in Mexico; third, that we kept our treaty—­the canal tolls victory, I mean.  Now, when all this half of the world will suffer the unspeakable brutalization of war, we shall preserve our moral strength, our political powers, and our ideals.

     God save us!

     W.H.P.

Vivid as is the above letter, it lacks several impressive details.  Probably the one event that afterward stood out most conspicuously in Page’s mind was his interview with Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary.  Sir Edward asked the American Ambassador to call Tuesday afternoon; his purpose was to inform him that Great Britain had sent an ultimatum to Germany.  By this time Page and the Foreign Secretary had established not only cordial official relations but a warm friendship.  The two men had many things in common; they had the same general outlook on world affairs, the same ideas of justice and fair dealing, the same belief that other motives than greed and aggrandizement should control the attitude of one nation to another.  The political tendencies of both men were idealistic;