it.  But that tied my hands.  If Lansing again brings up the Declaration of London—­after four flat and reasonable rejections—­I shall resign.  I will not be the instrument of a perfectly gratuitous and ineffective insult to this patient and fair and friendly government and people who in my time have done us many kindnesses and never an injury but Carden[97], and who sincerely try now to meet our wishes.  It would be too asinine an act ever to merit forgiveness or ever to be forgotten.  I should blame myself the rest of my life.  It would grieve Sir Edward more than anything except this war.  It would knock the management of foreign affairs by this Administration into the region of sheer idiocy.  I’m afraid any peace talk from us, as it is, would merely be whistling down the wind.  If we break with England—­not on any case or act of violence to our shipping—­but on a useless discussion, in advance, of general principles of conduct during the war—­just for a discussion—­we’ve needlessly thrown away our great chance to be of some service to this world gone mad.  If Lansing isn’t stopped, that’s what he will do.  Why doesn’t the President see Spring Rice?  Why don’t you take him to see him?

     Good night, my good friend.  I still have hope that the President
     himself will take this in hand.

     Yours always,
     W.H.P.

The letters and the cablegrams which Page was sending to Colonel House and the State Department at this time evidently ended the matter.  By the middle of October the two nations were fairly deadlocked.  Sir Edward Grey’s reply to the American proposal had been an acceptance of the Declaration of London with certain modifications.  For the list of contraband in the Declaration he had submitted the list already adopted by Great Britain in its Order in Council, and he had also rejected that article which made it impossible for Great Britain to apply the doctrine of “continuous voyage” to conditional contraband.  The modified acceptance, declared Mr. Lansing, was a practical rejection—­as of course it was, and as it was intended to be.  So the situation remained for several exciting weeks, the State Department insisting on the Declaration in full, precisely as the legal luminaries had published it five years before, the Foreign Office courteously but inflexibly refusing to accede.  Only the cordial personal relations which prevailed between Grey and Page prevented the crisis from producing the most disastrous results.  Finally, on October 17th, Page proposed by cable an arrangement which he hoped would settle the matter.  This was that the King should issue a proclamation accepting the Declaration with practically the modifications suggested above, and that a new Order in Council should be issued containing a new list of contraband.  Sir Edward Grey was not to ask the American Government to accept this proclamation; all that he asked was that Washington should offer no objections to it.