The big results of the war will, after all, be the freedom and the stimulation of men in these weary Old-World lands—­in Russia, Germany itself, and in England.  In five or ten years (or sooner, alas!) the dead will be forgotten.

If you wish to make a picture of the world as it will be when the war ends, you must conjure up such scenes as these—­human bones along the Russian highways where the great retreat took place and all that such a sight denotes; Poland literally starved; Serbia, blasted and burned and starved; Armenia butchered; the horrible tragedy of Gallipoli, where the best soldiers in the world were sacrificed to politicians’ policies; Austria and Germany starved and whipped but liberalized—­perhaps no king in either country; Belgium—­belgiumized; northern France the same and worse; more productive Frenchmen killed in proportion to the population perhaps than any other country will have lost; Great Britain—­most of her best men gone or maimed; colossal debts; several Teutonic countries bankrupt; every atrocity conceivable committed somewhere—­a hell-swept great continent having endured more suffering in three years than in the preceding three hundred.  Then, ten years later, most of this suffering a mere memory; governments reorganized and liberalized; men made more efficient by this strenuous three years’ work; the fields got back their bloom, and life going on much as it did before—­with this chief difference—­some kings have gone and many privileges have been abolished.  The lessons are two—­(1) that no government can successfully set out and conquer the world; and (2) that the hold that privilege holders acquire costs more to dislodge than any one could ever have guessed.  That’s the sum of it.  Kings and privilege mongers, of course, have held the parts of the world separate from one another.  They fatten on provincialism, which is mistaken for patriotism.  As they lose their grip, human sympathy has its natural play between nations, and civilization has a chance.  With any Emperor of Germany left the war will have been half in vain.

If we (the U.S.A.) cultivate the manly qualities and throw off our cranks and read our own history and be true to our traditions and blood and get some political vigour; then if we emancipate ourselves from the isolation theory and from the landlubber theory—­get into the world and build ships, ships, ships, ships, and run them to the ends of the seas, we can dominate the world in trade and in political thought.

You know I have moments when it occurs to me that perhaps I’d better give whatever working years I may have to telling this story—­the story of the larger meaning of the war.  There’s no bigger theme—­never was one so big.

     Affectionately,

     W.H.P.

On April 1st, the day before President Wilson made his great address before Congress requesting that body to declare the existence of a state of war with Germany, Page committed to paper a few paragraphs which summed up his final judgment of President Wilson’s foreign policy for the preceding two and a half years.