[Footnote 54:  Secretary of Agriculture in President Wilson’s Cabinet.]

[Footnote 55:  The quotation is from a memorandum of the conversation made by one of the secretaries of the American Embassy.]

[Footnote 56:  The British and French Commissions, headed by Mr. Balfour and M. Viviani.]

[Footnote 57:  American military attache in London.]

CHAPTER XXII

THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES

I

Page now took up a subject which had been near his heart for a long time.  He believed that one of the most serious causes of Anglo-American misunderstanding was the fact that the leading statesmen of the two countries had never had any personal contact with one another.  At one time, as this correspondence shows, the Ambassador had even hoped that President Wilson himself might cross the ocean and make the British people an official visit.  The proposal, however, was made before the European war broke out, the occasion which Page had in mind being the dedication of Sulgrave Manor, the old English home of the Washington family, as a perpetual memorial to the racial bonds and common ideals uniting the two countries.  The President found it impossible to act upon this suggestion and the outbreak of war made the likelihood of such a visit still more remote.  Page had made one unsuccessful attempt to bring the American State Department and the British Foreign Office into personal contact.  At the moment when American irritation had been most keen over the blockade and the blacklist, Page had persuaded the Foreign Office to invite to England Mr. Frank L. Polk, at that time Counsellor of the Department; the Ambassador believed that a few conversations between such an intelligent gentleman as Mr. Polk and the British statesmen would smooth out all the points which were then making things so difficult.  Unfortunately the pressure of work at Washington prevented Mr. Polk from accepting Sir Edward Grey’s invitation.

But now a greater necessity for close personal association had arisen.  The United States had entered the war, and this declaration had practically made this country an ally of Great Britain and France.  The British Government wished to send a distinguished commission to the United States, for two reasons:  first, to show its appreciation of the stand which America had taken, and secondly, to discuss plans for cooeperation in the common task.  Great Britain frankly admitted that it had made many mistakes in the preceding three years—­mistakes naval, military, political, and economic; it would welcome an opportunity to display these errors to Washington, which might naturally hope to profit from them.  As soon as his country was in the war, Page took up this suggestion with the Foreign Office.  There was of course one man who was preeminently fitted, by experience, position,