dominates the Government and paralyzes it.  They have now, I think, given up hope that we will ever take any action.  So deeply rooted (and, I fear, permanent) is this feeling that every occurrence is made to fit into and to strengthen this supposition.  When Dumba was dismissed, they said:  “Dumba, merely the abject tool of German intrigue.  Why not Bernstorff?” When the Anglo-French loan[11] was oversubscribed, they said:  “The people’s sympathy is most welcome, but their Government is paralyzed.”  Their respect has gone—­at least for the time being.

It is not that they expect us to go to war:  many, in fact, do not wish us to.  They expected that we would be as good as our word and hold the Germans to accountability.  Now I fear they think little of our word.  I shudder to think what our relations might be if Sir Edward Grey were to yield to another as Foreign Minister, as, of course, he must yield at some time.

The press has less to say than it had a few weeks ago. Punch, for instance, which ridiculed and pitied us in six cartoons and articles in each of two succeeding numbers, entirely forgets us this week.  But they’ve all said their say.  I am, in a sense, isolated—­lonely in a way that I have never before been.  I am not exactly avoided, I hope, but I surely am not sought.  They have a polite feeling that they do not wish to offend me and that to make sure of this the safest course is to let me alone.  There is no mistaking the great change in the attitude of men I know, both in official and private life.

It comes down and comes back to this—­that for five months after the sinking of the Lusitania the Germans are yet playing with us, that we have not sent Bernstorff home, and hence that we will submit to any rebuff or any indignity.  It is under these conditions—­under this judgment of us—­that we now work—­the English respect for our Government indefinitely lessened and instead of the old-time respect a sad pity.  I cannot write more.

     Heartily yours,
     WALTER H. PAGE.

“I have authoritatively heard,” Page writes to President Wilson in early September, “of a private conversation between a leading member of the Cabinet and a group of important officials all friendly to us in which all sorrowfully expressed the opinion that the United States will submit to any indignity and that no effect is now to be hoped for from its protests against unlawful submarine attacks or against anything else.  The inactivity of our Government, or its delay, which they assume is the same as inactivity, is attributed to domestic politics or to the lack of national, consciousness or unity.

“No explanation has appeared in the British press of our Government’s inactivity or of any regret or promise of reparation by Germany for the sinking of the Lusitania, the Falaba, the Gulflight, the Nebraskan, the Arabic, or the Hesperian, nor any explanation of a week’s silence about the Dumba letter; and the conclusion is drawn that, in the absence of action by us, all these acts have been practically condoned.