The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page Volume II Part 39

APPENDIX

Sc.r.a.pS FROM UNFINISHED DIARIES

Page was not methodical in keeping diaries. His doc.u.ments, however, reveal that he took many praiseworthy resolutions in this direction.

They include a large number of bulky books, each labelled "Diary" and inscribed with the year whose events were to be recorded. The outlook is a promising one; but when the books are opened they reveal only fragmentary good intentions. Entries are kept up for a few days, and then the work comes to an end. These volumes contain many sc.r.a.ps of interesting writing, however, which are worth preserving; some of them are herewith presented in haphazard fashion, with no attempt at order in subject matter.

1913

PETHERICK

Petherick: may he be immortal; for he is a man who has made of a humble task a high calling; and without knowing it he has caused a man of a high calling to degrade it to a mean level. Now Petherick is a humble Englishman, whose father many years ago enjoyed the distinction of carrying the mail pouch to and from the post office for the American Emba.s.sy in London. As father, so son. Petherick succeeded Petherick. In this remote period (_the_ Petherick must now be 60) Governments had "despatch agents," men who distributed mail and whatnot, sent it on from capital to capital--were a sort of general "forwarding" factotums.

The office is really out of date now. Telegraph companies, express companies, railway companies, the excellent mail service and the like out-despatch any conceivable agent--except Petherick. Petherick has qualities that defy change, such as an unfailing courtesy, a genuine joy in serving his fellows, the very genius of helpfulness. Well, since a governmental office once established acquires qualities of perpetuity, three United States despatch agents have survived the development of modern communication, one in London, one in New York, and the third (I think) in San Francisco. At any rate, the London agent remains.

Now in the beginning the London despatch agent was a mail messenger (as I understand) for the Emba.s.sy. He still takes the pouch to the post office, and brings it back. In ordinary times, that's all he does for the Emba.s.sy, for which his salary of about ---- is paid by the State Department--too high a salary for the labour done, but none too high for the trustworthy qualities required. If this had been all that Petherick did, he would probably have long ago gone to the sc.r.a.p heap. It is one mark of a man of genius that he always makes his job. So Petherick. The American Navy came into being and parts of it come to this side of the world. Naval officers need help when they come ash.o.r.e. Petherick was always on hand with despatches and mail for them, and Petherick was a handy man. Did the Captain want a cab? Petherick had one waiting. Did the Captain want rooms? Such-and-such a hotel was the proper one for him. Rooms were engaged. Did the Captain's wife need a maid? Petherick had thought of that, too. Then a Secretary from some continental legation wished to know a good London tailor. He sought Petherick. An American Amba.s.sador from the continent came to London. London yielded Petherick for his guidance and his wants. Petherick became omni-present, universally useful--an American inst.i.tution in fact. A naval officer who had been in Asiatic waters was steaming westward to the Mediterranean.

His wife and three babies came to London, where she was to meet her husband, who was to spend several weeks here. A telegram to Petherick: they needed to do nothing else. When the lady arrived a furnished flat, a maid and a nurse and a cook and toys awaited her. When her husband arrived, a pair of boots awaited him from the same last that his last pair had been made on, in London, five years before. At some thoughtful moment $1,000 was added to Petherick's salary by the Navy Department; and a few years ago a handsome present was made to Petherick by the United States Naval Officers all over the world.

But Petherick, with all his virtues, is merely an Englishman, and it is not usual for an Englishman to hold a $3,000 office under appointment from the United States Government. The office of despatch agent, therefore, has been nominally held by an American citizen in London.

This American citizen for a good many years has been Mr. Crane, a barrister, who simply turns over the salary to Petherick; and all the world, except the Secretary of State, knows that Petherick is Petherick and there is none other but him.

Now comes the story: Mr. Bryan, looking around the world for offices for his henchmen, finds that one Crane has been despatch agent in London for many years, and he writes me a personal and confidential letter, asking if this be not a good office for some Democrat!

I tell the story to the Naval Attache! He becomes riotous. He'll have to employ half a dozen clerks to do for the Navy ill what Petherick does well with ease, if he's removed. Life would not be worth living anyhow.

I uncover Petherick to the Secretary and show him in his glory. It must be said to the Secretary's credit that he has said nothing more about it. Petherick, let us hope, will live forever. The Secretary's petty-spoils mind now works on grand plans for Peace, holy Peace, having unsuccessfully attacked poor Petherick. And Petherick knows nothing about it and never dreams of an enemy in all the world, and in all naval and diplomatic life he has only fast friends. If Mr. Bryan had removed him, he might have made a temporary friend of one Democrat from Oklahoma, and lasting enemies of all that Democrat's rivals and of the whole naval and diplomatic service.

_November, 1914._

We have to get away from it--or try to--a minute at a time; and the comic G.o.ds sometimes help us. Squier[79] has a junior officer here to hold his desk down when he's gone. He's a West Point Lieutenant with a German name. His study is ordnance. A new kind of bomb gives him the same sort of joy that a new species would have given Darwin. He was over in France--where the armies had pa.s.sed to and from Paris--and one day he found an unexploded German bomb of a new sort. The thing weighed half a ton or thereabouts, and it was loaded. Somehow he got it to London--I never did hear how. He wrapped it in blankets and put it under his bed.

He went out of town to study some other infernal contraption and the police found this thing under his bed. The War Office took it and began to look for him--to shoot him, the bomb-harbouring German! They soon discovered, of course, that he was one of our men and an officer in the United States Army. Then I heard of it for the first time. Here came a profuse letter of apology from the Government; they had not known the owner was one of my attaches. Pardon, pardon--a thousand apologies. But while this letter was being delivered to me one of the under-secretaries of the Government was asking one of our secretaries, "In Heaven's name, what's the Amba.s.sador going to do about it? We have no right to molest the property of one of your attaches, but this man's room is less than 100 yards from Westminster Abbey: it might blow up half of London. We can't give the thing back to him!" They had taken it to the Duck Pond, wherever that is. About that time the Lieutenant came back. His pet bomb gone--what was I going to do about it?

The fellow actually wanted to bring it to his office in the Emba.s.sy!

"Look here, Lieutenant, besides the possibility of blow-up this building and killing every mother's son of us, consider the scandal of the American Emba.s.sy in London blown up by a German bomb. That would go down in the school histories of the United States. Don't you see?" No, he didn't see instantly--he does so love a bomb! I had to threaten to disown him and let him be shot before he was content to go and tell them to unload it--he _would_ have it, unloaded, if not loaded.

Well, I had to write half a dozen letters before the thing was done for.

He thinks me a chicken-livered old coward and I know much more about him than I knew before; and we are at peace. The newspapers never got the story, but his friends about town still laugh at him for trying first to blow up Westminster Abbey and then his own Amba.s.sador. He was at my house at dinner the other night and one of the ladies asked him: "Lieutenant, have you any darling little pet lyddite cartridges in your pocket?" Think of a young fellow who just loves bombs! Has loaded bombs for pets! How I misspent my youth!

_February, 1915._

This is among the day's stories: The British took a ship that had a cargo of 100,000 busts of Von Hindenburg--filled with copper.

Another: When Frederick Watts was painting Lord Minto he found it hard to make the portrait please him. When he was told that Lord Minto liked it and Lady Minto didn't and that So-and-So praised it, he exclaimed: "I don't care a d--n what anyone thinks about it--except a fellow named Sargent."

And the King said (about the wedding[80]): "I have the regulation of the dress to be worn at all functions in the Chapel Royal. I, therefore, declare that the American Amba.s.sador may have any dress worn that he pleases!"

E.M. House went to Paris this morning, having no peace message from this Kingdom whatever. This kind of talk here now was spoken of by the Prime Minister the other day "as the twittering of a sparrow in a tumult that shakes the world."

Lady P. remarked to me to-day, as many persons do, that I am very fortunate to be Amba.s.sador here at this particular time. Perhaps; but it isn't easy to point out precisely wherein the good fortune consists.

This much is certain: it is surely a hazardous occupation now. Henry James remarked, too, that n.o.body could afford to miss the experience of being here--n.o.body who could be here. Perhaps true, again; but I confess to enough shock and horror to keep me from being so very sure of that.

Yet no other phenomenon is more noticeable than the wish of every sort of an American to be here. I sometimes wonder whether the really well-balanced American does. Most of them are of the overwrought and excitable kinds.

A conservative lady, quite conscientious, was taken down to dinner by Winston Churchill. Said she, to be quite frank and fair: "Mr. Churchill, I must tell you that I don't like your politics. Yet we must get on together. You may say, if you like, that this is merely a matter of personal taste with me, as I might not like your--well, your moustache."

"I see no reason, Madam, why you should come in contact with either."

My talk with Bonar Law: He was disposed to believe that if England had declared at once that she would go to war with Germany if France was attacked, there would have been no war. Well, would English opinion, before Belgium was attacked, have supported a government which made such a declaration?

Mr. Bonar Law thinks that President Wilson ought to have protested about Belgium.

He didn't agree with me that much good human material goes to waste in this Kingdom for lack of opportunity. (That's the Conservative in him.)

_Friday, April 30, 1915._

Sir Edward Grey came to tea to talk with Mr. House and me--little talk of the main subject (peace), which is not yet ripe by a great deal. Sir Edward said the Germans had poisoned wells in South Africa. They have lately used deadly gases in France. The key to their mind says Sir Edward, is this--they attribute to other folk what they are thinking of doing themselves.

While Sir Edward was here John Sargent came in and brought Katharine the charcoal portrait of her that he had made--his present to her for her and Chud to give to W.A.W.P.[81] and me. A very graceful and beautiful thing for him to do.

_April 30, 1915._

Concerning Peace: The German civil authorities want peace and so does one faction of the military party. But how can they save their face?

They have made their people believe that they are at once the persecuted and the victorious. If they stop, how can they explain their stopping?

The people might rend them. The ingenious loophole discovered by House is--mere moonshine, viz., the freedom of the seas in war. That is a one-sided proposition unless they couple with it the freedom of the land in war also, which is nonsense. Nothing can be done, then, until some unfavourable military event brings a new mind to the Germans. Peace talk, therefore, is yet mere moonshine. House has been to Berlin, from London, thence to Paris, then back to London again--from Nowhere (as far as peace is concerned) to Nowhere again.

_May 3, 1915._

Why doesn't the President make himself more accessible? Dismiss X and get a bigger man? Take his cabinet members really into his confidence?

Everybody who comes here makes these complaints of him!

We dined to-night at Y's. Professor M. was there, etc. He says we've got to have polygamy in Europe after the war to keep the race up.

_Friday, May 21, 1915._

Last night the Italian Parliament voted to give the Government war-powers; and this means immediate war on the side of the Allies.

There are now eight nations fighting against Germany, Austria, and Turkey; viz., Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, j.a.pan, Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro. And it looks much as if the United States will be forced in by Germany.

The British Government is wrestling with a very grave internal disruption--to make a Coalition Government. The only portfolios that seem absolutely secure are the Prime Minister's and the Foreign Secretary's (Sir Edward Grey's)--for which latter, many thanks. The two-fold trouble is--(1) a difference between Churchill (First Lord of the Admiralty) and Lord Fisher--about the Dardanelles campaign and (I dare say) other things, and (2) Lord Kitchener's failure to secure ammunition--"to organize the industries of the Kingdom." Some even declare K. of K. (they now say Kitchener of Kaos) is a general colossal failure. But the prevailing opinion is that his raising of the new army has been good work but that he has failed with the task of procuring munitions. As for Churchill, he's too restless and erratic and dictatorial and fussy and he runs about too much. I talked with him at dinner last night at his mother's. He slips far down in his chair and swears and be-dams and by-G.o.ds his a.s.sertions. But his energy does interest one. An impromptu meeting in the Stock Exchange to-day voted confidence in K. of K. and burned up a copy of the _Daily Mail_, which this morning had a severe editorial about him.

Washington, having sent a severe note to Germany, is now upbraided for not sending another to England, to match and pair it. That's largely German influence, but also the Chicago packers and the cotton men. These latter have easy grievances, like the Irish. The delays of the British Government are exasperating, but they are really not so bad now as they have been. Still, the President can be influenced by the criticism that he must hit one side every time he hits the other, else he's not neutral! I am working by every device to help the situation and to prevent another note. I proposed to-day to Sir Edward Grey that his Government make an immediate advance payment on the cotton that it proposes to buy.

Unless Joffre be a man of genius--of which there are some indications--and unless French also possibly have some claim to this distinction and _perhaps_ the Grand Duke Nikolas, there doesn't yet seem to be a great man brought forth by the war. In civil life, Sir Edward Grey comes to a high measure. As we yet see it from this English corner of the world, no other statesman now ranks with him.

_March 20, 1916._