gentlemen.  These thug reformers!—­Baker will be here in a day or two and if I can remember it I am going to suggest to him that he round them all up and put them in the trenches in France where those of them who have so far escaped the gallows ought to be put.

I am much obliged to have the illuminating statement about our crops.  I am going to show it to certain gentlemen here who will be much cheered by it.  By gracious, you ought to hear their appreciation of what we are doing!  We are not doing it for the sake of their appreciation, but if we were out to win it we could not do it better.  Down at bottom the Englishman is a good fellow.  He has his faults but he doesn’t get tired and he doesn’t suffer spasms of emotion.

     Give my love to Mrs. Houston, and do sit down and write me a
     good long letter—­a whole series of them, in fact.

     Believe me, always most heartily yours,

     WALTER HINES PAGE.

[Illustration:  From a painting by Irving R. Wiles Admiral William Sowden Sims, Commander of American naval forces operating in European waters during the Great War]

[Illustration:  A silver model of the Mayflower, the farewell gift of the Plymouth Council to Mr. Page]

     To Frank L. Polk

     London, March 22, 1918.

     DEAR MR. POLK: 

You are good enough to mention the fact that the Embassy has some sort of grievance against the Department.  Of course it has, and you are, possibly, the only man that can remove it.  It is this:  You don’t come here to see the war and this government and these people who are again saving the world as we are now saving them.  I thank Heaven and the Administration for Secretary Baker’s visit.  It is a dramatic moment in the history of the race, of democracy, and of the world.  The State Department has the duty to deal with foreign affairs—­the especial duty—­and yet no man in the State Department has been here since the war began.  This doesn’t look pretty and it won’t look pretty when the much over-worked “future historian” writes it down in a book.  Remove that grievance.

The most interesting thing going on in the world to-day—­a thing that in History will transcend the war and be reckoned its greatest gain—­is the high leadership of the President in formulating the struggle, in putting its aims high, and in taking the democratic lead in the world, a lead that will make the world over—­and in taking the democratic lead of the English-speaking folk.  Next most impressive to that is to watch the British response to that lead.  Already they have doubled the number of their voters, and even more important definite steps in Democracy will be taken.  My aim—­and it’s the only way to save the world—­is to lead the British in this direction.  They are the most easily teachable people in our way of thinking and of doing.  Of course everybody who works toward such