distressing time.”  “If it come when we are calmer, no matter; but now it cannot receive attention and many will feel that the United States has hit on a most unhappy moment—­almost a cruel moment—­to remind us of our sins.”—­That’s the substance of what they say.

Overwork, or perhaps mainly the indescribable strain on the nerves and vitality of men, caused by this experience, for which in fact men are not built, puts one of our staff after another in bed.  None has been seriously sick:  the malady takes some form of “grip.”  On the whole we’ve been pretty lucky in spite of this almost regular temporary breakdown of one man after another.  I’ve so far escaped.  But I am grieved to hear that Whitlock is abed—­“no physical ailment whatever—­just worn out,” his doctor says.  I have tried to induce him and his wife to come here and make me a visit; but one characteristic of this war-malady is the conviction of the victim that he is somehow necessary to hold the world together.  About twice a week I get to the golf links and take the risk of the world’s falling apart and thus escape both illness and its illusions.

“I cannot begin to express my deep anxiety and even uneasiness about the relations of these two great governments and peoples,” Page wrote about this time.  “The friendship of the United States and Great Britain is all that now holds the world together.  It is the greatest asset of civilization left.  All the cargoes of copper and oil in the world are not worth as much to the world.  Yet when a shipper’s cargo is held up he does not think of civilization and of the future of mankind and of free government; he thinks only of his cargo and of the indignity that he imagines has been done him; and what is the American Government for if not to protect his rights?  Of course he’s right; but there must be somebody somewhere who sees things in their right proportion.  The man with an injury rushes to the Department of State—­quite properly.  He is in a mood to bring England to book.  Now comes the critical stage in the journey of his complaint.  The State Department hurries it on to me—­very properly; every man’s right must be guarded and defended—­a right to get his cargo to market, a right to get on a steamer at Queenstown, a right to have his censored telegram returned, any kind of a right, if he have a right.  Then the Department, not wittingly, I know, but humanly, almost inevitably, in the great rush of overwork, sends his ‘demands’ to me, catching much of his tone and apparently insisting on the removal of his grievance as a right, without knowing all the facts in the case.  The telegrams that come to me are full of ‘protests’ and ’demands’—­protest and demand this, protest and demand that.  A man from Mars who should read my book of telegrams received during the last two months would find it difficult to explain how the two governments have kept at peace.  It is this serious treatment of trifling grievances which makes us feel here that the exactions and dislocations and necessary disturbances of this war are not understood at home.