It is important to insist on this point now, for it explains Page’s entire course as Ambassador.  The confidential telegram which Page sent directly to President Wilson in early September, 1914, furnishes the standpoint from which his career as war Ambassador can be understood: 

     Confidential to the President
     September 11, 3 A.M. 
     No. 645.

Accounts of atrocities are so inevitably a part of every war that for some time I did not believe the unbelievable reports that were sent from Europe, and there are many that I find incredible even now.  But American and other neutral observers who have seen these things in France and especially in Belgium now convince me that the Germans have perpetrated some of the most barbarous deeds in history.  Apparently credible persons relate such things without end.

Those who have violated the Belgian treaty, those who have sown torpedoes in the open sea, those who have dropped bombs on Antwerp and Paris indiscriminately with the idea of killing whom they may strike, have taken to heart Bernhardi’s doctrine that war is a glorious occupation.  Can any one longer disbelieve the completely barbarous behaviour of the Prussians?

     PAGE.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 61:  At this time American military attache.]

[Footnote 62:  The American Government, on the outbreak of war, sent the U.S.S. Tennessee to Europe, with large supplies of gold for the relief of stranded Americans.]

[Footnote 63:  The late Augustus P. Gardner, of Massachusetts.]

[Footnote 64:  The materials on which this account is based are a memorandum of the interview made by Sir Edward Grey, now in the archives of the British Foreign Office, a similar memorandum made by Page, and a detailed description given verbally by Page to the writer.]

[Footnote 65:  Colonel House, of course, is again referring to his experience in Berlin and London, described in the preceding chapter.]

[Footnote 66:  Richard Olney, Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President Cleveland, who was a neighbour of Colonel House at his summer home, and with whom the latter apparently consulted.]

[Footnote 67:  This is the bill passed soon after the outbreak of war admitting foreign built ships to American registry.  Subsequent events showed that it was “full of lurking dangers.”]

CHAPTER XI

ENGLAND UNDER THE STRESS OF WAR