and night around the foggy coast of Ireland, nor the statesman bending parliaments to his will and manipulating nations and peoples in the mighty game whose stake was civilization itself.  But history will indeed be ungrateful if it ever forget the gaunt and pensive figure, clad in a dressing gown, sitting long into the morning before the smouldering fire at 6 Grosvenor Square, seeking to find some way to persuade a reluctant and hesitating President to lead his country in the defense of liberty and determined that, so far as he could accomplish it, the nation should play a part in the great assize that was in keeping with its traditions and its instincts.

CHAPTER XXIV

A RESPITE AT ST. IVES

     To Edward M. House

     Knebworth House
     Sunday, September,[sic] 1917.

     Dear House: 

...  By far the most important peace plan or utterance is the President’s extraordinary answer to the Pope[64].  His flat and convincing refusal to take the word of the present rulers of Germany as of any value has had more effect here than any other utterance and it is, so far, the best contribution we have made to the war.  The best evidence that I can get shows also that it has had more effect in Germany than anything else that has been said by anybody.  That hit the bull’s-eye with perfect accuracy; and it has been accepted here as the war aim and the war condition.  So far as I can make out it is working in Germany toward peace with more effect than any other deliverance made by anybody.  And it steadied the already unshakable resolution here amazingly.

I can get any information here of course without danger of the slightest publicity—­an important point, because even the mention of peace now is dangerous.  All the world, under this long strain, is more or less off the normal, and all my work—­even routine work—­is done with the profoundest secrecy:  it has to be.

Our energetic war preparations call forth universal admiration and gratitude here on all sides and nerve up the British and hearten them more than I know how to explain.  There is an eager and even pathetic curiosity to hear all the details, to hear, in fact, anything about the United States; and what the British do not know about the United States would fill the British Museum.  They do know, however, that they would soon have been obliged to make an unsatisfactory peace if we hadn’t come in when we did and they freely say so.  The little feeling of jealousy that we should come in and win the war at the end has, I think, been forgotten, swallowed up in their genuine gratitude.

     Sincerely yours,

     WALTER H. PAGE.

     To Arthur W. Page

     American Embassy,
       London, Sept. 3, 1917.

     DEAR ARTHUR: