Sir Cecil Spring Rice, the British Ambassador at Washington, at once notified Washington that the Dacia would be seized if she sailed for a German port.  The cotton which she intended to carry was at that time not contraband, but the vessel itself Was German and was thus subject to apprehension as enemy property.  The seriousness of this position was that technically the Dacia was now an American ship, for an American citizen owned her, she carried an American crew, she bore on her flagstaff the American flag, and she had been admitted to American registry under a law recently passed by Congress.  How could the United States sit by quietly and permit this seizure to take place?  When the Dacia sailed on January 23rd the excitement was keen; the voyage had obtained a vast amount of newspaper advertising, and the eyes of the world were fixed upon her.  German sympathizers attributed the attitude of the American Government in permitting the vessel to sail as a “dare” to Great Britain, and the fact that Great Britain had announced her intention of taking up this “dare” made the situation still more tense.

When matters had reached this pass Page one day dropped into the Foreign Office.

“Have you ever heard of the British fleet, Sir Edward?” he asked.

Grey admitted that he had, though the question obviously puzzled him.

“Yes,” Page went on musingly.  “We’ve all heard of the British fleet.  Perhaps we have heard too much about it.  Don’t you think it’s had too much advertising?”

The Foreign Secretary looked at Page with an expression that implied a lack of confidence in his sanity.

“But have you ever heard of the French fleet?” the American went on.  “France has a fleet too, I believe.”

Sir Edward granted that.

“Don’t you think that the French fleet ought to have a little advertising?”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Well,” said Page, “there’s the Dacia.  Why not let the French fleet seize it and get some advertising?”

A gleam of understanding immediately shot across Grey’s face.  The old familiar twinkle came into his eye.

“Yes,” he said, “why not let the Belgian royal yacht seize it?”

This suggestion from Page was one of the great inspirations of the war.  It amounted to little less than genius.  By this time Washington was pretty wearied of the Dacia, for mature consideration had convinced the Department that Great Britain had the right on its side.  Washington would have been only too glad to find a way out of the difficult position into which it had been forced, and this Page well understood.  But this government always finds itself in an awkward plight in any controversy with Great Britain, because the hyphenates raise such a noise that it has difficulty in deciding such disputes upon their merits.  To ignore the capture of this ship by the British would