“Mr. Balfour,” Page reported to Washington, “gave expression to the hearty admiration which he entertained for the President’s handling of a difficult task.  He said that never for a moment had he doubted the President’s wisdom in the course he was pursuing.  He had the profoundest admiration for the manner in which he had promptly broken with Germany after receiving Germany’s latest note.  Nor had he ever entertained the slightest question of the American people’s ready loyalty to their Government or to their high ideals.  One of his intellectual pleasures, he added, had long been contemplation of the United States as it is and, even more, as its influence in the world will broaden.  ‘The world,’ said Mr. Balfour, ’will more and more turn on the Great Republic as on a pivot.’”

Occasionally Mr. Balfour’s discussion of the United States would take a more pensive turn.  A memorandum which Page wrote a few weeks after the above touches another point: 

     March 27, 1917.

I had a most interesting conversation with Mr. Balfour this afternoon.  “It’s sad to me,” said he, “that we are so unpopular, so much more unpopular than the French, in your country.  Why is it?  The old school books?”

     I doubted the school-book influence.

“Certainly their influence is not the main cause.  It is the organized Irish.  Then it’s the effect of the very fact that the Irish question is not settled.  You’ve had that problem at your very door for 300 years.  What’s the matter that you don’t solve it?”

     “Yes, yes,”—­he saw it.  But the plaintive tone of such a man asking
     such a question was significant and interesting and—­sad.

Then I told him the curious fact that a British Government made up of twenty individuals, every one of whom is most friendly to the United States, will, when they act together as a Government, do the most offensive things.  I mentioned the blacklist; I mentioned certain complaints that I then held in my hand—­of Americans here who are told by the British Government that they must turn over to the British Government’s agent in New York their American securities which they hold in America!

     There’s a sort of imperious, arrogant, Tory action that comes
     natural to the English Government, even when not natural to the
     individual Englishman.

* * * * *

On April 5th, the day before the United States formally declared war, Page notified Washington that the British Government wished Mr. Balfour to go to the United States as the head of a Commission to confer with our Government.  “Mr. Balfour is chosen for this mission,” Page reported, “not only because he is Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, but because he is personally the most distinguished member of the Government.”  Page tells the story in more detail in a letter to Mr. Polk, at that time Counsellor of the State Department.