Then, of course, a dinner party.  At eight o’clock at night, the Guildhall, an enormous town hall, was packed with people and I made my speech at ’em.  A copy (somewhat less good than the version I gave them) goes to you, along with a leader from the Times.  They were vociferously grateful for any assuring word about the United States.  It’s strange how very little the provincial Englander knows about what we have done and mean to do.  They took the speech finely, and I have had good letters about it from all sorts of people in every part of the Kingdom.

Then followed five days of luncheons and dinners and garden parties—­and (what I set out to say) I got back to London last night dead tired.  To-day your mother and I came here—­about twenty-five miles from London—­for a fortnight.

This is Bulwer-Lytton’s house—­a fine old English place hired this year by Lady Strafford, whom your mother is visiting for a fortnight or more, and they let me come along, too.  They have given me the big library, as good a room as I want—­with as bad pens as they can find in the Kingdom.

Your mother is tired, too.  Since the American Red Cross was organized here, she has added to her committee and hospitals.  But she keeps well and very vigorous.  A fortnight here will set her up.  She enjoyed Plymouth very much in spite of the continual rush, and it was a rush.

What the United States is doing looks good and large at this distance.  The gratitude here is unbounded; but I detect a feeling here and there of wonder whether we are going to keep up this activity to the end.

I sometimes feel that the German collapse may come next winter.  Their internal troubles and the lack of sufficient food and raw materials do increase.  The breaking point may be reached before another summer.  I wish I could prove it or even certainly predict it.  But it is at least conceivable.  Alas, no one can prove anything about the war.  The conditions have no precedents.  The sum of human misery and suffering is simply incalculable, as is the loss of life; and the gradual and general brutalization goes on and on and on far past any preceding horrors.

     With all my love to you and Mollie and the trio,

     W.H.P.

And so for five busy and devastating years Page did his work.  The stupidities of Washington might drive him to desperation, ill-health might increase his periods of despondency, the misunderstandings that he occasionally had with the British Government might add to his discouragements, but a naturally optimistic and humorous temperament overcame all obstacles, and did its part in bringing about that united effort which ended in victory.  And that it was a great part, the story of his Ambassadorship abundantly proves.  Page was not the soldier working in the blood and slime of Flanders, nor the sea fighter spending day