Nearly the whole afternoon was spent with Mr. Balfour and Lord Robert Cecil.  Mr. Balfour had a long list of subjects.  Could we help in (1)—­(2)—­(3)?—­Every once in a while he stopped his enumeration of subjects long enough to tell me how the action of the United States had moved him.

To Lord Robert I said:  “I pray you, give the Black List a decent burial:  It’s dead now, but through no act of yours.  It insulted every American because you did not see that it was insulting:  that’s the discouraging fact to me.”  He thanked me earnestly.  He’ll think about that.

II

These jottings give only a faint impression of the change which the American action wrought in Page.  The strain which he had undergone for twenty-nine months had been intense; it had had the most unfortunate effect upon his health; and the sudden lifting might have produced that reaction for the worse which is not unusual after critical experiences of this kind.  But the gratification which Page felt in the fact that the American spirit had justified his confidence gave him almost a certain exuberance of contentment.  Londoners who saw him at that time describe him as acting like a man from whose shoulders a tremendous weight had suddenly been removed.  For more than two years Page had been compelled, officially at least, to assume a “neutrality” with which he had never had the slightest sympathy, but the necessity for this mask now no longer existed.  A well-known Englishman happened to meet Page leaving his house in Grosvenor Square the day after the Declaration of War.  He stopped and shook the Ambassador’s hand.

“Thank God,” the Englishman said, “that there is one hypocrite less in London to-day.”

“What do you mean?” asked Page.

“I mean you.  Pretending all this time that you were neutral!  That isn’t necessary any longer.”

“You are right!” the Ambassador answered as he walked on with a laugh and a wave of the hand.

A few days after the Washington Declaration, the American Luncheon Club held a feast in honour of the event.  This organization had a membership of representative American business men in London, but its behaviour during the war had not been based upon Mr. Wilson’s idea of neutrality.  Indeed its tables had so constantly rung with denunciations of the Lusitania notes that all members of the American Embassy, from Page down, had found it necessary to refrain from attending its proceedings.  When Page arose to address his compatriots on this occasion, therefore, he began with the significant words, “I am glad to be back with you again,” and the mingled laughter and cheers with which this remark was received indicated that his hearers had caught the point.