“For God’s sake, get your men over!” they urged General Slocum.  “You have got to finish it.”

Page was writing urgently to President Wilson to the same purpose.  Send the men and send them at once.  “I pray God,” were his solemn words to Mr. Wilson, “that you will not be too late!”

One propitious event had taken place at the same time as the opening of the great German offensive.  Mr. Newton D. Baker, the American Secretary of War, had left quietly for France in late February, 1918, and had reached the Western Front in time to obtain a first-hand sight of the great March drive.  No visit in history has ever been better timed, and no event could have better played into Page’s hands.  He had been urging Washington to send all available forces to France at the earliest possible date; he knew, as probably few other men knew, the extent to which the Allies were depending upon American troops to give the final blow to Germany; and the arrival of Secretary Baker at the scene of action gave him the opportunity to make a personal appeal.  Page immediately communicated with the Secretary and persuaded him to come at once to London for a consultation with British military and political leaders.  The Secretary spent only three days in London, but the visit, brief as it was, had historic consequences.  He had many consultations with the British military men; he entered into their plans with enthusiasm; he himself received many ideas that afterward took shape in action, and the British Government obtained from him first-hand information as to the progress of the American Army and the American determination to cooperate to the last man and the last dollar.  “Baker went straight back to France,” Page wrote to his son Arthur, “and our whole cooeperation began.”

Page gave a dinner to Mr. Baker at the Embassy on March 23rd—­two days after the great March drive had begun.  This occasion gave the visitor a memorable glimpse of the British temperament.  Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Balfour, Lord Derby, the War Secretary, General Biddle, of the United States Army, and Admiral Sims were the Ambassador’s guests.  Though the mighty issues then overhanging the world were not ignored in the conversation the atmosphere hardly suggested that the existence of the British Empire, indeed that of civilization itself, was that very night hanging in the balance.  Possibly it was the general sombreness of events that caused these British statesmen to find a certain relief in jocular small talk and reminiscence.  For the larger part of the evening not a word was said about the progress of the German armies in France.  Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Balfour, seated on opposite sides of the table, apparently found relaxation in reviewing their political careers and especially their old-time political battles.  They would laughingly recall occasions when, in American parlance, they had put each other “in a hole”; the exigencies of war had now made these two men colleagues