Write and send some news.  I saw an American to-day who says he’s
     going home to-morrow.  “Cable me,” said I, “if you find the
     continent where it used to be.”

     Faithfully yours,

     WALTER H. PAGE.

P.S.  It is strange how little we know what you know on your side and just what you think, what relative value you put on this and what on that.  There’s a new sort of loneliness sprung up because of the universal absorption in the war.

And I hear all sorts of contradictory rumours about the effect of the German crusade in the United States.  Oh well, the world has got to choose whether it will have English or German domination in Europe; that’s the single big question at issue.  For my part I’ll risk the English and then make a fresh start ourselves to outstrip them in the spread of well-being; in the elevation of mankind of all classes; in the broadening of democracy and democratic rule (which is the sheet-anchor of all men’s hopes just as bureaucracy and militarism are the destruction of all men’s hopes); in the spread of humane feeling and action; in the growth of human kindness; in the tender treatment of women and children and the old; in literature, in art; in the abatement of suffering; in great changes in economic conditions which discourage poverty; and in science which gives us new leases on life and new tools and wider visions.  These are our world tasks, with England as our friendly rival and helper.  God bless us.

     W.H.P.

     To Arthur W. Page
     London, November 6, 1914.

     DEAR ARTHUR: 

Those excellent photographs, those excellent apples, those excellent cigars—­thanks.  I’m thinking of sending Kitty[80] over again.  They all spell and smell and taste of home—­of the U.S.A.  Even the messenger herself seems Unitedstatesy, and that’s a good quality, I assure you.  She’s told us less news than you’d think she might for so long a journey and so long a visit; but that’s the way with us all.  And, I dare say, if it were all put together it would make a pretty big news-budget.  And luckily for us (I often think we are among the luckiest families in the world) all she says is quite cheerful.  It’s a wonderful report she makes of County Line[81]—­the country, the place, the house, and its inhabitants.  Maybe, praise God, I’ll see it myself some day—­it and them.

But—­but—­I don’t know when and can’t guess out of this vast fog of war and doom.  The worst of it is nobody knows just what is happening.  I have, for an example, known for a week of the blowing up of a British dreadnaught[82]—­thousands of people know it privately—­and yet it isn’t published!  Such secrecy makes you fear there may be other and even worse secrets.  But I don’t really believe there are.  What I am trying to say is, so far as news (and many