of doctrine on Great Britain.  God knows I’m afraid some American boat will run on a mine somewhere in the Channel or the North Sea.  There’s war there as there is on land in Germany.  Nobody tries to get goods through on land on the continent, and they make no complaints that commerce is stopped.  Everybody tries to ply the Channel and the North Sea as usual, both of which have German and English mines and torpedo craft and submarines almost as thick as batteries along the hostile camps on land.  The British Government (which now issues marine insurance) will not insure a British boat to carry food to Holland en route to the starving Belgians; and I hear that no government and no insurance company will write insurance for anything going across the North Sea.  I wonder if the extent and ferocity and danger of this war are fully realized in the United States?

“There is no chance yet effectively to talk of peace[99].  The British believe that their civilization and their Empire are in grave danger.  They are drilling an army of a million men here for next spring; more and more troops come from all the Colonies, where additional enlistments are going on.  They feel that to stop before a decisive result is reached would simply be provoking another war, after a period of dread such as they have lived through the last ten years; a large and increasing proportion of the letters you see are on black-bordered paper and this whole island is becoming a vast hospital and prisoners’ camp—­all which, so far from bringing them to think of peace, urges them to renewed effort; and all the while the bitterness grows.

“The Straus incident’ produced the impression here that it was a German trick to try to shift the responsibility of continuing the war, to the British shoulders.  Mr. Sharp’s bare mention of peace in Paris caused the French censor to forbid the transmission of a harmless interview; and our insistence on the Declaration left, for the time being at least, a distinct distrust of our judgment and perhaps even of our good-will.  It was suspected—­I am sure—­that the German influence in Washington had unwittingly got influence over the Department.  The atmosphere (toward me) is as different now from what it was a week ago as Arizona sunshine is from a London fog, as much as to say, ’After all, perhaps, you don’t mean to try to force us to play into the hands of our enemies!’”

III

And so this crisis was passed; it was the first great service that Page had rendered the cause of the Allies and his own country.  Yet shipping difficulties had their more agreeable aspects.  Had it not been for the fact that both Page and Grey had an understanding sense of humour, neutrality would have proved a more difficult path than it actually was.  Even amid the tragic problems with which these two men were dealing there was not lacking an occasional moment’s relaxation into the lighter aspect of things.