The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page Volume II Part 6

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 a.s.set 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.

"I a.s.sure you (and there are plenty of facts to prove it) that this Government (both for unselfish and selfish reasons) puts a higher value on our friendship than on any similar thing in the world. They will go--they are going--the full length to keep it. But, in proportion to our tendency to nag them about little things will the value set on our friendship diminish and will their confidence in our sincerity decline."

The note which Lord Bryce and Lord Northcliffe so dreaded reached the London Emba.s.sy in October, 1915. The State Department had spent nearly six months in preparing it; it was the American answer to the so-called blockade established by the Order in Council of the preceding March.

Evidently its contents fulfilled the worst forebodings:

_To Edward M. House_

London, November 12, 1915.

DEAR HOUSE:

I have a great respect for the British Navy. Admiral Jellicoe now has under his command 3,000 ships of all sorts-far and away the biggest fleet, I think, that was ever a.s.sembled. For the first time since the ocean was poured out, one navy practically commands all the seas: nothing sails except by its grace. It is this fleet of course that will win the war. The beginning of the end--however far off yet the end may be--is already visible by reason of the economic pressure on Germany. But for this fleet, by the way, London would be in ruins, all its treasure looted; every French seacoast city and the Italian peninsula would be as Belgium and Poland are; and thousands of English women would be violated--just as dead French girls are found in many German trenches that have been taken in France. Hence I greatly respect the British fleet.

We have a good navy, too, for its size, and a naval personnel as good as any afloat. I hear--with much joy--that we are going to make our navy bigger--as much bigger (G.o.d save the mark!) as Bryan will permit.

Now, whatever the future bring, since any fighting enterprise that may ever be thrust on us will be just and justified, we must see to it that we win, as doubtless we shall and as. .h.i.therto we always have won. We must be dead sure of winning. Well, whatever fight may be thrust on us by anybody, anywhere, at any time, for any reason--if it only be generally understood beforehand that our fleet and the British fleet shoot the same language, there'll be no fight thrust upon us. The biggest bully in the world wouldn't dare kick the sorriest dog we have. Here, therefore, is a Peace Programme for you--the only basis for a permanent peace in the world. There's no further good in having venerable children build houses of sand at The Hague; there's no further good in peace organizations or protective leagues to enforce peace. We had as well get down to facts. So far as ensuring peace is concerned the biggest fact in the world is the British fleet. The next biggest fact is the American fleet, because of itself and still more because of the vast reserve power of the United States which it implies. If these two fleets perfectly understand one another about the undesirability of wars of aggression, there'll be no more big wars as long as this understanding continues. Such an understanding calls for no treaty--it calls only for courtesy.

And there is no other peace-basis worth talking about--by men who know how the world is governed.

Since I have lived here I have spent my days and nights, my poor brain, and my small fortune all most freely and gladly to get some understanding of the men who rule this Kingdom, and of the women and the customs and the traditions that rule these men--to get their trick of thought, the play of their ideals, the working of their imagination, the springs of their instincts. It is impossible for any man to know just how well he himself does such a difficult task--how accurately he is coming to understand the sources and character of a people's actions. Yet, at the worst, I do know something about the British: I know enough to make very sure of the soundness of my conclusion that they are necessary to us and we to them. Else G.o.d would have permitted the world to be peopled in some other way. And when we see that the world will be saved by such an artificial combination as England and Russia and France and j.a.pan and Serbia, it calls for no great wisdom to see the natural way whereby it must be saved in the future.

For this reason every day that I have lived here it has been my conscious aim to do what I could to bring about a condition that shall make sure of this--that, whenever we may have need of the British fleet to protect our sh.o.r.es or to prevent an aggressive war anywhere, it shall he ours by a natural impulse and necessity--even without the asking.

I have found out that the first step toward that end is courtesy; that the second step is courtesy, and the third step--such a fine and high courtesy (which includes courage) as the President showed in the Panama tolls controversy. We have--we and the British--common aims and character. Only a continuous and sincere courtesy--over periods of strain as well as of calm--is necessary for as complete an understanding as will be required for the automatic guidance of the world in peaceful ways.

Now, a difference is come between us--the sort of difference that handled as between friends would serve only to bind us together with a st.u.r.dier respect. We send a long lawyer's Note, not discourteous but wholly uncourteous, which is far worse. I am writing now only of the manner of the Note, not of its matter.

There is not a courteous word, nor a friendly phrase, nor a kindly turn in it, not an allusion even to an old acquaintance, to say nothing of an old friendship, not a word of thanks for courtesies or favours done us, not a hint of sympathy in the difficulties of the time. There is nothing in its tone to show that it came from an American to an Englishman: it might have been from a Hottentot to a Fiji-Islander.

I am almost sure--I'll say quite sure--that this uncourteous manner is far more important than its endless matter. It has greatly hurt our friends, the real men of the Kingdom. It has made the ma.s.ses angry--which is of far less importance than the severe sorrow that our discourtesy of manner has brought to our friends--I fear to all considerate and thoughtful Englishmen.

Let me ill.u.s.trate: When the Panama tolls controversy arose, Taft ceased to speak the language of the natural man and lapsed into lawyer's courthouse zigzagging mutterings. Knox wrote a letter to the British Government that would have made an enemy of the most affectionate twin brother--all mere legal twists and turns, as agreeable as a pocketful of screws. Then various bovine "international lawyers" wrote books about it. I read them and became more and more confused the further I went: you always do. It took me some time to recover from this word-drunk debauch and to find my own natural intelligence again, the common sense that I was born with. Then I saw that the whole thing went wrong from the place where that Knox legal note came in. Congressmen in the backwoods quoted cryptic pa.s.sages from it, thought they were saying something, and proceeded to make their audiences believe that somehow England had hit us with a club--or would have hit us but for Knox. That pure discourtesy kept us apart from English sympathy for something like two years.

Then the President took it up. He threw the legal twaddle into the gutter. He put the whole question in a ten-minutes' speech to Congress, full of clearness and fairness and high courtesy. It won even the rural Congressmen. It was read in every capital and the men who conduct every government looked up and said, "This is a real man, a brave man, a just man." You will recall what Sir Edward Grey said to me: "The President has taught us all a lesson and set us all a high example in the n.o.blest courtesy."

This one act brought these two nations closer together than they had ever been since we became an independent nation. It was an act of courtesy....

My dear House, suppose the postman some morning were to leave at your door a thing of thirty-five heads and three appendices, and you discovered that it came from an old friend whom you had long known and greatly valued--this vast ma.s.s of legal stuff, without a word or a turn of courtesy in it--what would you do? He had a grievance, your old friend had. Friends often have. But instead of explaining it to you, he had gone and had his lawyers send this many-headed, much-appendiced ton of stuff. It wasn't by that method that you found your way from Austin, Texas, to your present eminence and wisdom. Nor was that the way our friend found his way from a little law-office in Atlanta, where I first saw him, to the White House.

More and more I am struck with this--that governments are human.

They are not remote abstractions, nor impersonal inst.i.tutions. Men conduct them; and they do not cease to be men. A man is made up of six parts of human nature and four parts of facts and other things--a little reason, some prejudice, much provincialism, and of the particular fur or skin that suits his habitat. When you wish to win a man to do what _you_ want him to do, you take along a few well-established facts, some reasoning and such-like, but you take along also three or four or five parts of human nature--kindliness, courtesy, and such things--sympathy and a human touch.

If a man be six parts human and four parts of other things, a government, especially a democracy, is seven, or eight, or nine parts human nature. It's the most human thing I know. The best way to manage governments and nations--so long as they are disposed to be friendly--is the way we manage one another. I have a confirmation of this in the following comment which came to me to-day. It was made by a friendly member of Parliament.

"The President himself dealt with Germany. Even in his severity he paid the Germans the compliment of a most courteous tone in his Note. But in dealing with us he seems to have called in the lawyers of German importers and Chicago pork-packers. I miss the high Presidential courtesy that we had come to expect from Mr. Wilson."

An American banker here has told me of the experience of an American financial salesman in the city the day after our Note was published. His business is to make calls on bankers and other financial men, to sell them securities. He is a man of good address who is popular with his clients. The first man he called on, on that day, said: "I don't wish to be offensive to you. But I have only one way to show my feeling of indignation toward the United States, and that is, to have nothing more to do with Americans."

The next man said: "No, nothing to-day, I thank you. No--nor to-morrow either; nor the next day. Good morning."

After four or five such greetings, the fellow gave it up and is now doing nothing.

I don't attach much importance to such an incident as this, except as it gives a hint of the general feeling. These financial men probably haven't even read our Note. Few people have. But they have all read the short and sharp newspaper summary which preceded it in the English papers. But what such an incident does indicate is the prevalence of a state of public feeling which would prevent the Government from yielding any of our demands even if the Government so wished. It has now been nearly a week since the Note was published. I have seen most of the neutral ministers. Before the Note came they expressed great eagerness to see it: it would champion their cause. Since it came not one of them has mentioned it to me. The Secretary of one of them remarked, after being invited to express himself: "It is too--too--long!" And, although I have seen most of the Cabinet this week, not a man mentioned it to me. People seem studiously to avoid it, lest they give offense.

I have, however, got one little satisfaction. An American--a half-expatriated loafer who talks "art"--you know the intellectually affected and degenerate type--screwed his courage up and told me that he felt ashamed of his country. I remarked that I felt sure the feeling was mutual. That, I confess, made me feel better.

As nearly as I can make out, the highwater mark of English good-feeling toward us in all our history was after the President's Panama tolls courtesy. The low-water mark, since the Civil War, I am sure, is now. The Cleveland Venezuela message came at a time of no nervous strain and did, I think, produce no long-lasting effect. A part of the present feeling is due to the English conviction that we have been taken in by the Germans in the submarine controversy, but a large part is due to the lack of courtesy in this last Note--the manner in which it was written even more than its matter. As regards its matter, I have often been over what I conceive to be the main points with Sir Edward Grey--very frankly and without the least offense. He has said: "We may have to arbitrate these things," as he might say, "We had better take a cab because it is raining." It is easily possible--or it was--to discuss anything with this Government without offense. I have, in fact, stood up before Sir Edward's fire and accused him of stealing a large part of the earth's surface, and we were just as good friends afterward as before. But I never drew a lawyer's indictment of him as a land-thief: that's different.

I suppose no two peoples or governments ever quite understand one another. Perhaps they never will. That is too much to hope for. But when one government writes to another it ought to write (as men do) with some reference to the personality of the other and to their previous relations, since governments are more human than men. Of course I don't know who wrote the Note. Hence I can talk about it freely to you without implying criticism of anybody in particular.

But the man who wrote it never saw the British Government and wouldn't know it if he met it in the road. To him it is a mere legal ent.i.ty, a wicked, impersonal inst.i.tution against which he has the task of drawing an indictment--not the task of trying to persuade it to confess the propriety of a certain course of conduct. In his view, it is a wicked enemy to start with--like the Louisiana lottery of a previous generation or the Standard Oil Company of our time.

One would have thought, since we were six months in preparing it, that a draft of the Note would have been sent to the man on the ground whom our Government keeps in London to study the situation at first hand and to make the best judgment he can about the most effective methods of approach on delicate and difficult matters. If that had been done, I should have suggested a courteous short Note saying that we are obliged to set forth such and such views about marine law and the rights of neutrals, to His Majesty's Government; and that the contention of the United States Government was herewith sent--etc., etc.--Then this identical Note (with certain court-house, strong, shirt-sleeve adjectives left out) could have come without arousing any feeling whatsoever. Of course I have no personal vanity in saying this to you. I am sure I outgrew that foible many years ago. But such a use of an amba.s.sador--of any amba.s.sador--is obviously one of the best and most natural uses he could be put to; and all governments but ours do put their amba.s.sadors to such a use: that's what they have 'em for.

_Per contra_: a telegram has just come in saying that a certain Lichtenstein in New York had a lot of goods stopped by the British Government, which (by an arrangement made with their attorney here) agreed to buy them at a certain price: will I go and find out why the Government hasn't yet paid Lichtenstein and when he may expect his money? Is it an amba.s.sadorial duty to collect a private bill for Lichtenstein, in a bargain with which our Government has had nothing to do? I have telegraphed the Department, quite calmly, that I don't think it is. I venture to say no amba.s.sador ever had such a request as that before from his Government.

My dear House, I often wonder if my years of work here--the kind of high good work I've tried to do--have not been thrown away. I've tried to take and to busy myself with a long-range view of great subjects. The British Empire and the United States will be here long after we are dead, and their relations will continue to be one of the most important matters--perhaps the most important matter--in the world. Well, now think of Lichtenstein's bill!

To get back where I started--I fear, therefore, that, when I next meet the Admiral of the Grand Fleet (with whom I used to discuss everything quite freely before he sailed away to the war), he may forget to mention that we may have his 3,000 ships at our need.

Since this present difference is in danger of losing the healing influence of a kindly touch--has become an uncourteous monster of 35 heads and 3 appendices--I see no early end of it. The British Foreign Office has a lot of lawyers in its great back offices. They and our lawyers will now b.u.t.t and rebut as long as a goat of them is left alive on either side. The two governments--the two human, kindly groups--have retired: they don't touch, on this matter, now.

The lawyers will have the time of their lives, each smelling the blood of the other.

If more notes must come--as the English papers report over and over again every morning and every afternoon--the President might do much by writing a brief, human doc.u.ment to accompany the Appendices. If it be done courteously, we can accuse them of stealing sheep and of dyeing the skins to conceal the theft-without provoking the slightest bad feeling; and, in the end, they'll pay another _Alabama_ award without complaint and frame the check and show it to future amba.s.sadors as Sir Edward shows the _Alabama_ check to me sometimes.

And it'll be a lasting shame (and may bring other Great Wars) if lawyers are now permitted to tear the garments with which Peace ought to be clothed as soon as she can escape from her present rags and tatters.

Yours always heartily,

W.H.P.

P.S. My dear House: Since I have--in weeks and months past--both telegraphed and written the Department (and I presume the President has seen what I've sent) about the feeling here, I've written this letter to you and not to the President nor Lansing. I will not run the risk of seeming to complain--nor even of seeming to seem to complain. But if you think it wise to send or show this letter to the President, I'm willing you should. This job was botched: there's no doubt about that. We shall not recover for many a long, long year. The identical indictment could have been drawn with admirable temper and the way laid down for arbitration and for keeping our interpretation of the law and precedents intact--all done in a way that would have given no offense.

The feeling runs higher and higher every day--goes deeper and spreads wider.

Now on top of it comes the _Ancona_[15]. The English press, practically unanimously, makes sneering remarks about our Government. After six months it has got no results from the _Lusitania_ controversy, which Bernstorff is allowed to prolong in secret session while factories are blown up, ships supplied with bombs, and all manner of outrages go on (by Germans) in the United States. The English simply can't understand why Bernstorff is allowed to stay. They predict that nothing will come of the _Ancona_ case, nor of any other case. n.o.body wants us to get into the war--n.o.body who counts--but they are losing respect for us because we seem to them to submit to anything.

We've simply dropped out. No English person ever mentions our Government to me. But they talk to one another all the time about the political anaemia of the United States Government. They think that Bernstorff has the State Department afraid of him and that the Pacifists dominate opinion--the Pacifists-at-any-price. I no longer even have a chance to explain any of these things to anybody I know.

It isn't the old question we used to discuss of our having no friend in the world when the war ends. It's gone far further than that. It is now whether the United States Government need be respected by anybody.

W.H.P.

FOOTNOTES: