FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 75:  Of Aberdeen, N.C., the Ambassador’s sister.]

[Footnote 76:  “Dramatic Moments in American Diplomacy,” by Ralph W. Page, 1918.]

[Footnote 77:  The reference is to a letter written in 1823 by Thomas Jefferson to President Monroe at the time when the Holy Alliance was threatening the independence of South America.  “With Great Britain,” Jefferson wrote, “we should most sedulously cherish a cordial friendship and nothing would tend more to knit our affections than to be fighting once more, side by side, in the same cause.”]

[Footnote 78:  See Vol.  II, page 307.]

CHAPTER XXVII

THE END

Page came home only to die.  In fact, at one time it seemed improbable that he would live to reach the United States.  The voyage of the Olympic, on which he sailed, was literally a race with death.  The great-hearted Captain, Sir Bertram Hayes, hearing of the Ambassador’s yearning to reach his North Carolina home, put the highest pressure upon his ship, which almost leaped through the waves.  But for a considerable part of the trip Page was too ill to have much consciousness of his surroundings.  At times he was delirious; once more he lived over the long period of “neutrality”; again he was discussing intercepted cargoes and “notes” with Sir Edward Grey; from this his mind would revert to his English literary friends, and then again he was a boy in North Carolina.  The Olympic reached New York more than a day ahead of schedule; Page was carried down the gangplank on a stretcher, propped up with pillows; and since he was too weak then to be taken to his Southern home, he was placed temporarily in St. Luke’s Hospital.  Page arrived on a beautiful sunshiny October day; Fifth Avenue had changed its name in honour of the new Liberty Loan and had become the “Avenue of the Allies”; each block, from Forty-second Street north, was decorated with the colours of one of the nations engaged in the battle against Germany; the street was full of Red Cross workers and other picturesquely clad enthusiasts selling Liberty Bonds; in its animated beauty and in its inspiring significance it formed an appropriate setting for Page’s homecoming.

The American air seemed to act like a tonic on Page; in a short time he showed such improvement that his recovery seemed not impossible.  So far as his spirits and his mind were concerned, he became his old familiar self.  He was able to see several of his old friends, he read the newspapers and discussed the international situation with his customary liveliness.  With the assistance of his daughter, Mrs. Loring, he even kept track of his correspondence.  Evidently the serious nature of his illness was not understood, for invitations to speak poured in from all quarters.  Most of these letters Mrs. Loring answered, but there