The London Embassy is the greatest diplomatic gift at the disposal of the President, and, in the minds of the American people, it possesses a glamour and an historic importance all its own.  Page came to the position, as his predecessors had come, with a sense of awe; the great traditions of the office; the long line of distinguished men, from Thomas Pinckney to Whitelaw Reid, who had filled it; the peculiar delicacy of the problems that then existed between the two countries; the reverent respect which Page had always entertained for English history, English literature, and English public men—­all these considerations naturally quickened the new ambassador’s imagination and, at the same time, made his arrival in England a rather solemn event.  Yet his first days in London had their grotesque side as well.  He himself has recorded his impressions, and, since they contain an important lesson for the citizens of the world’s richest and most powerful Republic, they should be preserved.  When the ambassador of practically any other country reaches London, he finds waiting for him a spacious and beautiful embassy, filled with a large corps of secretaries and servants—­everything ready, to the minutest detail, for the beginning of his labours.  He simply enters these elaborate state-owned and state-supported quarters and starts work.  How differently the mighty United States welcomes its ambassadors let Page’s memorandum tell: 

The boat touched at Queenstown, and a mass of Irish reporters came aboard and wished to know what I thought of Ireland.  Some of them printed the important announcement that I was quite friendly to Ireland!  At Liverpool was Mr. Laughlin[11], Charge d’Affaires in London since Mr. Reid’s death, to meet me, and of course the consul, Mr. Washington. . . .  On our arrival in London, Laughlin explained that he had taken quarters for me at the Coburg Hotel, whither we drove, after having fought my way through a mob of reporters at the station.  One fellow told me that since I left New York the papers had published a declaration by me that I meant to be very “democratic” and would under no conditions wear “knee breeches”; and he asked me about that report.  I was foolish enough to reply that the existence of an ass in the United States ought not necessarily to require the existence of a corresponding ass in London.  He printed that!  I never knew the origin of this “knee breeches” story.

That residence at the Coburg Hotel for three months was a crowded and uncomfortable nightmare.  The indignity and inconvenience—­even the humiliation—­of an ambassador beginning his career in an hotel, especially during the Court season, and a green ambassador at that!  I hope I may not die before our Government does the conventional duty to provide ambassadors’ residences.