newspaper men, I hear.  But whether it does or not the leak continues.  I have to go with my tail between my legs and apologize to Sir Edward Grey and to do myself that shame and to do my very best to keep his confidence—­against these unnecessary odds.  The only way to be safe is to do the job perfunctorily, to answer the questions the Department sends and to do nothing on your own account.  That’s the reason so many of our men do their jobs in that way—­or one reason and a strong one.  We can never have an alert and energetic and powerful service until men can trust the Department and until they can get necessary information from it.  I wrote the President that of course I’d go on till the war ended and all the questions growing out of it were settled, and that then he must excuse me, if I must continue to be exposed to this danger and humiliation.  In the meantime, I shall send all my confidential matter in private letters to him.”

* * * * *

Page did not regard Mr. Bryan’s opinions and attitudes as a joke:  to him they were a serious matter and, in his eyes, Bryan was most interesting as a national menace.  He regarded the Secretary as the extreme expression of an irrational sentimentalism that was in danger of undermining the American character, especially as the kind of thought he represented was manifest in many phases of American life.  In a moment of exasperation, Page gave expression to this feeling in a letter to his son: 

     To Arthur W. Page

     London, June 6, 1915.

     DEAR ARTHUR: 

...  We’re in danger of being feminized and fad-ridden—­grape juice (God knows water’s good enough:  why grape juice?); pensions; Christian Science; peace cranks; efficiency-correspondence schools; aid-your-memory; women’s clubs; co-this and co-t’other and coddling in general; Billy Sunday; petticoats where breeches ought to be and breeches where petticoats ought to be; white livers and soft heads and milk-and-water;—­I don’t want war:  nobody knows its horrors or its degradations or its cost.  But to get rid of hyphenated degenerates perhaps it’s worth while, and to free us from ’isms and soft folk.  That’s the domestic view of it.  As for being kicked by a sauerkraut caste—­O Lord, give us backbone!

     Heartily yours,
     W.H.P.

In the bottom of this note, Page has cut a notch in the paper and against it he has written:  “This notch is the place to apply a match to this letter.”

* * * * *

“Again and ever I am reminded,” Page also wrote in reference to Bryan’s resignation, “of the danger of having to do with cranks.  A certain orderliness of mind and conduct seems essential for safety in this short life.  Spiritualists, bone-rubbers, anti-vivisectionists, all sort of anti’s in fact, those who have fads about education or fads against it, Perfectionists, Daughters of the Dove of Peace, Sons of the Roaring Torrent, itinerant peace-mongers—­all these may have a real genius among them once in forty years; but to look for an exception to the common run of yellow dogs and damfools among them is like opening oysters with the hope of finding pearls.  It’s the common man we want and the uncommon common man when we can find him—­never the crank.  This is the lesson of Bryan.”