[Footnote 8:  The italics are Page’s.]

[Footnote 9:  Viscount Bryce, author of “The American Commonwealth” and British Ambassador to the United States, 1907-1913.]

[Footnote 10:  In a communication sent February 10, 1915, President Wilson warned the German Government that he would hold it to a “strict accountability” for the loss of American lives by illegal submarine attack.]

[Footnote 11:  A reference to the Anglo-French loan for $500,000,000, placed in the United States in the autumn of 1915.]

[Footnote 12:  The Marquis Imperiali.]

[Footnote 13:  Rustem Bey, the Turkish Ambassador to the United States, was sent home early in the war, for publishing indiscreet newspaper and magazine articles.]

CHAPTER XV

THE AMBASSADOR AND THE LAWYERS

References in the foregoing letters show that Page was still having his troubles over the blockade.  In the latter part of 1915, indeed, the negotiations with Sir Edward Grey on this subject had reached their second stage.  The failure of Washington to force upon Great Britain an entirely new code of naval warfare—­the Declaration of London—­has already been described.  This failure had left both the British Foreign Office and the American State Department in an unsatisfactory frame of mind.  The Foreign Office regarded Washington with suspicion, for the American attempt to compel Great Britain to adopt a code of naval warfare which was exceedingly unfavourable to that country and exceedingly favourable to Germany, was susceptible of a sinister interpretation.  The British rejection of these overtures, on the other hand, had evidently irritated the international lawyers at Washington.  Mr. Lansing now abandoned his efforts to revolutionize maritime warfare and confined himself to specific protests and complaints.  His communications to the London Embassy dealt chiefly with particular ships and cargoes.  Yet his persistence in regarding all these problems from a strictly legalistic point of view Page regarded as indicating a restricted sense of statesmanship.

     To Edward M. House

     London, August 4, 1915.

     MY DEAR HOUSE: 

...  The lawyer-way in which the Department goes on in its dealings with Great Britain is losing us the only great international friendship that we have any chance of keeping or that is worth having.  Whatever real principle we have to uphold with Great Britain—­that’s all right.  I refer only to the continuous series of nagging incidents—­always criticism, criticism, criticism of small points—­points that we have to yield at last, and never anything constructive.  I’ll illustrate what I mean by a few incidents that I can recall from memory.  If I looked up the record, I should find a very, very much larger list.

(1) We insisted and insisted and insisted,