The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page Volume I Part 20

WALTER H. PAGE.

From Edward M. House

145 East 35th Street,

New York City.

January 24, 1914.

DEAR PAGE:

I was with the President for twenty-four hours and we went over everything thoroughly.

He decided to call the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to the White House on Monday and tell them of his intentions regarding Panama tolls. We discussed whether it would be better to see some of them individually, or to take them collectively. It was agreed that the latter course was better. It was decided, however, to have Senator Jones poll the Senate in order to find just how it stood before getting the Committee together. The reason for this quick action was in response to your letter urging that something be done before the 10th of February. . . .

Faithfully yours,

E.M. HOUSE.

On March 5th the President made good his promise by going before Congress and asking the two houses to repeal that clause in the Panama legislation which granted preferential treatment to American coastwise shipping. The President's address was very brief and did not discuss the matter in the slightest detail. Mr. Wilson made the question one simply of national honour. The exemption, he said, clearly violated the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty and there was nothing left to do but to set the matter right. The part of the President's address that aroused the greatest interest was the conclusion:

"I ask this of you in support of the foreign policy of the Administration. I shall not know how to deal with other matters of even greater delicacy and nearer consequence, if you do not grant it to me in ungrudging measure."

The impression that this speech made upon the statesman who then presided over the British Foreign office is evident from the following letter that he wrote to the Amba.s.sador in Washington.

_Sir Edward Grey to Sir C. Spring Rice_ Foreign Office,

March 13, 1914.

SIR:

In the course of a conversation with the American Amba.s.sador to-day, I took the opportunity of saying how much I had been struck by President Wilson's Message to Congress about the Panama Ca.n.a.l tolls. When I read it, it struck me that, whether it succeeded or failed in accomplishing the President's object, it was something to the good of public life, for it helped to lift public life to a higher plane and to strengthen its morale.

I am, &c.,

E. GREY.

Two days after his appearance before Congress the President wrote to his Amba.s.sador:

_From the President_ The White House, Washington,

March 7, 1914.

MY DEAR PAGE:

I have your letters of the twenty-second and twenty-fourth of February and I thank you for them most warmly. Happily, things are clearing up a little in the matters which have embarra.s.sed our relations with Great Britain, and I hope that the temper of public opinion is in fact changing there, as it seems to us from this distance to be changing.

Your letters are a lamp to my feet. I feel as I read that their a.n.a.lysis is searching and true.

Things over here go on a tolerably even keel. The prospect at this moment for the repeal of the tolls exemption is very good indeed. I am beginning to feel a considerable degree of confidence that the repeal will go through, and the Press of the country is certainly standing by me in great shape.

My thoughts turn to you very often with grat.i.tude and affectionate regard. If there is ever at any time anything specific you want to learn, pray do not hesitate to ask it of me directly, if you think best.

Carden was here the other day and I spent an hour with him, but I got not even a glimpse of his mind. I showed him all of mine that he cared to see.

With warmest regards from us all,

Faithfully yours,

WOODROW WILSON.

The debate which now took place in Congress proved to be one of the stormiest in the history of that body. The proceeding did not prove to be the easy victory that the Administration had evidently expected. The struggle was protracted for three months; and it signalized Mr. Wilson's first serious conflict with the Senate--that same Senate which was destined to play such a vexatious and destructive role in his career. At this time, however, Mr. Wilson had reached the zenith of his control over the law-making bodies. It was early in his Presidential term, and in these early days Senators are likely to be careful about quarrelling with the White House--especially the Senators who are members of the President's political party. In this struggle, moreover, Mr. Wilson had the intelligence and the character of the Senate largely on his side, though, strangely enough, his strongest supporters were Republicans and his bitterest opponents were Democrats. Senator Root, Senator Burton, Senator Lodge, Senator Kenyon, Senator Mcc.u.mber, all Republicans, day after day and week after week upheld the national honour; while Senators O'Gorman, Chamberlain, Vardaman, and Reed, all members of the President's party, just as persistently led the fight for the baser cause. The debate inspired an outburst of Anglophobia which was most distressing to the best friends of the United States and Great Britain.

The American press, as a whole, honoured itself by championing the President, but certain newspapers made the debate an occasion for unrestrained abuse of Great Britain, and of any one who believed that the United States should treat that nation honestly. The Hearst organs, in cartoon and editorial page, shrieked against the ancient enemy. All the well-known episodes and characters in American history--Lexington, Bunker Hill, John Paul Jones, Washington, and Franklin--were paraded as arguments against the repeal of an illegal discrimination. Pet.i.tions from the Ancient Order of Hibernians and other Irish societies were showered upon Congress--in almost unending procession they clogged the pages of the Congressional Record; public meetings were held in New York and elsewhere where denouncing an administration that disgraced the country by "truckling" to Great Britain. The President was accused of seeking an Anglo-American Alliance and of sacrificing American shipping to the glory of British trade, while the history of our diplomatic relations was surveyed in detail for the purpose of proving that Great Britain had broken every treaty she had ever made. In the midst of this deafening hubbub the quiet voice of Senator Mcc.u.mber--"we are too big in national power to be too little in national integrity"--and that of Senator Root, demolishing one after another the pettifogging arguments of the exemptionists, demonstrated that, after all, the spirit and the eloquence that had given the Senate its great fame were still influential forces in that body.

In all this excitement, Page himself came in for his share of hard knocks. Irish meetings "resolved" against the Amba.s.sador as a statesman who "looks on English claims as superior to American rights," and demanded that President Wilson recall him. It has been the fate of practically every American amba.s.sador to Great Britain to be accused of Anglomania. Lowell, John Hay, and Joseph H. Choate fell under the ban of those elements in American life who seem to think that the main duty of an American diplomat in Great Britain is to insult the country of which he has become the guest. In 1895 the house of Representatives solemnly pa.s.sed a resolution censuring Amba.s.sador Thomas F. Bayard for a few sentiments friendly to Great Britain which he had uttered at a public banquet. That Page was no undiscriminating idolater of Great Britain these letters have abundantly revealed. That he had the profoundest respect for the British character and British inst.i.tutions has been made just as clear. With Page this was no sudden enthusiasm; the conviction that British conceptions of liberty and government and British ideals of life represented the fine flower of human progress was one that he felt deeply. The fact that these fundamentals had had the opportunity of even freer development in America he regarded as most fortunate both for the United States and for the world. He had never concealed his belief that the destinies of mankind depended more upon the friendly cooperation of the United States and Great Britain than upon any other single influence. He had preached this in public addresses, and in his writings for twenty-five years preceding his mission to Great Britain. But the mere fact that he should hold such convictions and presume to express them as American Amba.s.sador apparently outraged those same elements in this country who railed against Great Britain in this Panama Tolls debate.

On August 16, 1913, the City of Southampton, England, dedicated a monument in honour of the _Mayflower_ Pilgrims--Southampton having been their original point of departure for Ma.s.sachusetts. Quite appropriately the city invited the American Amba.s.sador to deliver an address on this occasion; and quite appropriately the Amba.s.sador acknowledged the debt that Americans of to-day owed to the England that had sent these adventurers to lay the foundations of new communities on foreign soil.

Yet certain historic truths embodied in this very beautiful and eloquent address aroused considerable anger in certain parts of the United States. "Blood," said the Amba.s.sador, "carries with it that particular trick of thought which makes us all English in the last resort. . . . And Puritan and Pilgrim and Cavalier, different yet, are yet one in that they are English still. And thus, despite the fusion of races and of the great contributions of other nations to her 100 millions of people and to her incalculable wealth, the United States is yet English-led and English-ruled." This was merely a way of phrasing a great historic truth--that overwhelmingly the largest element in the American population is British in origin[51]; that such vital things as its speech and its literature are English; and that our political inst.i.tutions, our liberty, our law, our conceptions of morality and of life are similarly derived from the British Isles. Page applied the word "English" to Americans in the same sense in which that word is used by John Richard Green, when he traces the history of the English race from a German forest to the Mississippi Valley and the wilds of Australia.

But the anti-British elements on this side of the water, taking "English-led and English-ruled" out of its context, misinterpreted the phrase as meaning that the American Amba.s.sador had approvingly called attention to the fact that the United States was at present under the political control of Great Britain! Senator Chamberlain of Oregon presented a pet.i.tion from the _Staatsverband Deutschsprechender Vereine von Oregon_, demanding the Amba.s.sador's removal, while the Irish-American press and politicians became extremely vocal.

Animated as was this outburst, it was mild compared with the excitement caused by a speech that Page made while the Panama debate was raging in Congress. At a dinner of the a.s.sociated Chambers of Commerce, in early March, the Amba.s.sador made a few impromptu remarks. The occasion was one of good fellowship and good humour, and Page, under the inspiration of the occasion, indulged in a few half-serious, half-jocular references to the Panama Ca.n.a.l and British-American good-feeling, which, when inaccurately reported, caused a great disturbance in the England-baiting press. "I would not say that we constructed the Panama Ca.n.a.l even for you," he said, "for I am speaking with great frankness and not with diplomatic indirection. We built it for reasons of our own. But I will say that it adds to the pleasure of that great work that you will profit by it. You will profit most by it, for you have the greatest carrying trade." A few paragraphs on the Monroe Doctrine, which practically repeated President Wilson's Mobile speech on that subject, but in which Mr. Page used the expression, "we prefer that European Powers shall acquire no more territory on this continent," alarmed those precisians in language, who pretended to believe that the Amba.s.sador had used the word "prefer" in its literal sense, and interpreted the sentence to mean that, while the United States would "prefer" that Europe should not overrun North and South America, it would really raise no serious objection if Europe did so.

Senator Chamberlain of Oregon, who by this time had apparently become the Senatorial leader of the anti-Page propaganda, introduced a resolution demanding that the Amba.s.sador furnish the Senate a complete copy of this highly pro-British outgiving. The copy was furnished forthwith--and with that the tempest subsided.

_To the President_

American Emba.s.sy, London, March 18, 1914.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

About this infernal racket in the Senate over my poor speech, I have telegraphed you all there is to say. Of course, it was a harmless courtesy--no bowing low to the British or any such thing--as it was spoken and heard. Of course, too, nothing would have been said about it but for the controversy over the Ca.n.a.l tolls. That was my mistake--in being betrayed by the friendly dinner and the high compliments paid to us into mentioning a subject under controversy.

I am greatly distressed lest possibly it may embarra.s.s you. I do hope not.

I think I have now learned _that_ lesson pretty thoroughly. These Anglophobiacs--Irish and Panama--hound me wherever I go. I think I told you of one of their correspondents, who one night got up and yawned at a public dinner as soon as I had spoken and said to his neighbours: "Well, I'll go, the Amba.s.sador didn't say anything that I can get him into trouble about."

I shall, hereafter, write out my speeches and have them gone over carefully by my little Cabinet of Secretaries. Yet something (perhaps not much) will be lost. For these people are infinitely kind and friendly and courteous.

They cannot be driven by anybody to do anything, but they can be led by us to do anything--by the use of spontaneous courtesy. It is by spontaneous courtesy that I have achieved whatever I have achieved, and it is for this that those like me who do like me. Of course, what some of the American newspapers have said is true--that I am too free and too untrained to be a great Amba.s.sador. But the conventional type of Amba.s.sador would not be worth his salt to represent the United States here now, when they are eager to work with us for the peace of the world, if they are convinced of our honour and right-mindedness and the genuineness of our friendship.

I talked this over with Sir Edward Grey the other day, and after telling me that I need fear no trouble at this end of the line, he told me how severely he is now criticized by a "certain element"

for "bowing too low to the Americans." We then each bowed low to the other. The yellow press and Chamberlain would give a year's growth for a photograph of us in that posture!

I am infinitely obliged to you for your kind understanding and your toleration of my errors.

Yours always heartily, WALTER H. PAGE.

To the President.