The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page Volume I Part 9

I've never understood the Scotch. I think they are, without doubt, the most capable race in the world--away from home. But how they came to be so and how they keep up their character and supremacy and keep breeding true needs explanation. As you come through the country, you see the most monotonous and dingy little houses and thousands of robust children, all dirtier than n.i.g.g.e.rs. In the fertile parts of the country, the fields are beautifully cultivated--for Lord This-and-T'Other who lives in London and comes up here in summer to collect his rents and to shoot. The country people seem desperately poor. But they don't lose their robustness.

In the solid cities--the solidest you ever saw, all being of granite--such as Edinburgh and Aberdeen, where you see the prosperous cla.s.s, they look the st.u.r.diest and most independent fellows you ever saw. As they grow old they all look like blue-bellied Presbyterian elders. Scotch to the marrow--everybody and everything seem--bare knees alike on the street and in the hotel with dress coats on, bagpipes--there's no sense in these things, yet being Scotch they live forever. The first men I saw early this morning on the street in front of the hotel were two weather-beaten old chaps, with gray beards under their chins.

"Guddddd Murrrrninggggg, Andy," said one. "Guddddd murrninggggg, Sandy," said the other; and they trudged on. They'd dethrone kings before they'd shave differently or drop their burrs and gutturals or cover their knees or cease lying about the bagpipe. And you can't get it out of the blood. Your mother[21] becomes provoked when I say these things, and I shouldn't wonder if you yourself resent them and break out quoting Burns. Now the Highlands can't support a population larger than the mountain counties of Kentucky.

Now your Kentucky feud is a mere disgrace to civilization. But your Highland feud is celebrated in song and story. Every clan keeps itself together to this day by its history and by its plaid. At a turn in the road in the mountains yesterday, there stood a statue of Rob Roy painted every stripe to life. We saw his sword and purse in Sir Walter's house at Abbotsford. The King himself wore the kilt and one of the plaids at the last court ball at Buckingham Palace, and there is a man who writes his name and is called "The Macintosh of Macintosh," and that's a prouder t.i.tle than the King's. A little handful of sheep-stealing bandits got themselves immortalized and heroized, and they are now all Presbyterian elders. They got _their_ church "established" in Scotland, and when the King comes to Scotland, by Jehoshaphat! he is obliged to become a Presbyterian. Yet your Kentucky feudist--poor devil--he comes too late. The Scotchman has pre-empted that particular field of glory.

And all such comparisons make your mother fighting mad. . . .

Affectionately, W.H.P.

_To the President_

American Emba.s.sy, London.

October 25, 1913.

Dear Mr. President:

I am moved once in a while to write you privately, not about any specific piece of public business, but only, if I can, to transmit something of the atmosphere of the work here. And, since this is meant quite as much for your amus.e.m.e.nt as for any information it may carry, don't read it "in office hours."

The future of the world belongs to us. A man needs to live here, with two economic eyes in his head, a very little time to become very sure of this. Everybody will see it presently. These English are spending their capital, and it is their capital that continues to give them their vast power. Now what are we going to do with the leadership of the world presently when it clearly falls into our hands[22]? And how can we use the English for the highest uses of democracy?

You see their fear of an on-sweeping democracy in their social treatment of party opponents. A Tory lady told me with tears that she could no longer invite her Liberal friends to her house: "I have lost them--they are robbing us, you know." I made the mistake of saying a word in praise of Sir Edward Grey to a duke. "Yes, yes, no doubt an able man; but you must understand, sir, that I don't train with that gang." A bishop explained to me at elaborate length why the very monarchy is doomed unless something befalls Lloyd George and his programme. Every dinner party is made up with strict reference to the party politics of the guests. Sometimes you imagine you see something like civil war; and money is flowing out of the Kingdom into Canada in the greatest volume ever known and I am told that a number of old families are investing their fortunes in African lands.

These and such things are, of course, mere chips which show the direction the slow stream runs. The great economic tide of the century flows our way. _We_ shall have the big world questions to decide presently. Then we shall need world policies; and it will be these old-time world leaders that we shall then have to work with, more closely than now.

The English make a sharp distinction between the American people and the American Government--a distinction that they are conscious of and that they themselves talk about. They do not think of our _people_ as foreigners. I have a club book on my table wherein the members are cla.s.sified as British, Colonial, American, and Foreign--quite unconsciously. But they do think of our Government as foreign, and as a frontier sort of thing without good manners or good faith. This distinction presents the big task of implanting here a real respect for our Government. People often think to compliment the American Amba.s.sador by a.s.suming that he is better than his Government and must at times be ashamed of it. Of course the Government never does this--never--but persons in unofficial life; and I have sometimes. .h.i.t some hard blows under this condescending provocation. This is the one experience that I have found irritating. They commiserate me on having a Government that will not provide an Amba.s.sador's residence--from the King to my servants. They talk about American lynchings. Even the _Spectator,_ in an early editorial about you, said that we should now see what stuff there is in the new President by watching whether you would stop lynchings. They forever quote Bryce on the badness of our munic.i.p.al government. They pretend to think that the impeachment of governors is common and ought to be commoner. One delicious M.P.

asked me: "Now, since the Governor of New York is impeached, who becomes Vice-President[23]?" Ignorance, unfathomable ignorance, is at the bottom of much of it; if the Town Treasurer of Yuba Dam gets a $100 "rake off" on a paving contract, our city government is a failure.

I am about to conclude that our yellow press does us more harm abroad than at home, and many of the American correspondents of the English papers send exactly the wrong news. The whole governing cla.s.s of England has a possibly exaggerated admiration for the American people and something very like contempt for the American Government.

If I make it out right two causes (in addition to their ignorance) of their dislike of our Government are (1) its lack of manners in the past, and (2) its indiscretions of publicity about foreign affairs. We ostentatiously stand aloof from their polite ways and courteous manners in many of the every-day, ordinary, unimportant dealings with them--aloof from the common amenities of long-organized political life. . . .

Not one of these things is worth mentioning or remembering. But generations of them have caused our Government to be regarded as thoughtless of the fine little acts of life--as rude. The more I find out about diplomatic customs and the more I hear of the little-big troubles of others, the more need I find to be careful about details of courtesy.

Thus we are making as brave a show as becomes us. I no longer dismiss a princess after supper or keep the whole diplomatic corps waiting while I talk to an interesting man till the Master of Ceremonies comes up and whispers: "Your Excellency, I think they are waiting for you to move." But I am both young and green, and even these folk forgive much to green youth, if it show a willingness to learn.

But our Government, though green, isn't young enough to plead its youth. It is time that it, too, were learning Old World manners in dealing with Old World peoples. I do not know whether we need a Bureau, or a Major-Domo, or a Master of Ceremonies at Washington, but we need somebody to prompt us to act as polite as we really are, somebody to think of those gentler touches that we naturally forget. Some other governments have such officers--perhaps all. The j.a.panese, for instance, are newcomers in world politics. But this j.a.panese Amba.s.sador and his wife here never miss a trick; and they come across the square and ask us how to do it! All the other governments, too, play the game of small courtesies to perfection--the French, of course, and the Spanish and--even the old Turk.

Another reason for the English distrust of our Government is its indiscretions in the past of this sort: one of our Ministers to Germany, you will recall, was obliged to resign because the Government at Washington inadvertently published one of his confidential despatches; Griscom saved his neck only by the skin, when he was in j.a.pan, for a similar reason. These things travel all round the world from one chancery to another and all governments know them. Yesterday somebody in Washington talked about my despatch summarizing my talk with Sir Edward Grey about Mexico, and it appeared in the papers here this morning that Sir Edward had told me that the big business interests were pushing him hard. This I sent as only _my_ inference. I had at once to disclaim it. This leaves in his mind a doubt about our care for secrecy. They have monstrous big doors and silent men in Downing Street; and, I am told, a stenographer sits behind a big screen in Sir Edward's room while an Amba.s.sador talks[24]! I wonder if my comments on certain poets, which I have poured forth there to provoke his, are preserved in the archives of the British Empire. The British Empire is surely very welcome to them. I have twice found it useful, by the way, to bring up Wordsworth when he has begun to talk about Panama tolls. Then your friend Canon Rawnsley[25] has, without suspecting it, done good service in diplomacy.

The newspaper men here, by the way, both English and American, are disposed to treat us fairly and to be helpful. The London _Times_, on most subjects, is very friendly, and I find its editors worth cultivating for their own sakes and because of their position. It is still the greatest English newspaper. Its general friendliness to the United States, by the way, has started a rumour that I hear once in a while--that it is really owned by Americans--nonsense yet awhile. To the fairness and helpfulness of the newspaper men there are one or two exceptions, for instance, a certain sneaking whelp who writes for several papers. He went to the Navy League dinner last night at which I made a little speech. When I sat down, he remarked to his neighbour, with a yawn, "Well, nothing in it for me. The Amba.s.sador, I am afraid, said nothing for which I can demand his recall." They, of course, don't care thrippence about me; it's you they hope to annoy.

Then after beating them at their own game of daily little courtesies, we want a fight with them--a good stiff fight about something wherein we are dead right, to remind them sharply that we have sand in our craw[26]. I pray every night for such a fight; for they like fighting men. Then they'll respect our Government as they already respect us--if we are dead right.

But I've little hope for a fight of the right kind with Sir Edward Grey. He is the very reverse of insolent--fair, frank, sympathetic, and he has so clear an understanding of our real character that he'd yield anything that his party and Parliament would permit. He'd make a good American with the use of very little sandpaper. Of course I know him better than I know any other member of the Cabinet, but he seems to me the best-balanced man of them all.

I can a.s.sure you emphatically that the tariff act[27] does command their respect and is already having an amazing influence on their opinion of our Government. Lord Mersey, a distinguished law lord and a fine old fellow of the very best type of Englishman, said to me last Sunday, "I wish to thank you for stopping half-way in reducing your tariff; that will only half ruin us." A lady of a political family (Liberal) next whom I sat at dinner the other night (and these women know their politics as no cla.s.s of women among us do) said: "Tell me something about your great President.

We hadn't heard much about him nor felt his hand till your tariff bill pa.s.sed. He seems to have real power in the Government. You know we do not always know who has power in your Government." Lord Grey, the one-time Governor-General of Canada, stopped looking at the royal wedding presents the other evening long enough to say: "The United States Government is waking up--waking up."

I sum up these atmospheric conditions--I do not presume to call them by so definite a name as recommendations:

We are in the international game--not in its Old World intrigues and burdens and sorrows and melancholy, but in the inevitable way to leadership and to cheerful mastery in the future; and everybody knows that we are in it but us. It is a sheer blind habit that causes us to continue to try to think of ourselves as aloof. They think in terms of races here, and we are of their race, and we shall become the strongest and the happiest branch of it.

While we play the game with them, we shall play it better by playing it under their long-wrought-out rules of courtesy in everyday affairs.

We shall play it better, too, if our Government play it quietly--except when the subject demands publicity. I have heard that in past years the foreign representatives of our Government have reported too few things and much too meagrely. I have heard since I have been here that these representatives become timid because Washington has for many a year conducted its foreign business too much in the newspapers; and the foreign governments themselves are always afraid of this.

Meantime I hardly need tell you of my appreciation of such a chance to make so interesting a study and to enjoy so greatly the most interesting experience, I really believe, in the whole world. I only hope that in time I may see how to shape the constant progression of incidents into a constructive course of events; for we are soon coming into a time of big changes.

Most heartily yours, WALTER H. PAGE.

_To David F. Houston_[28]

American Emba.s.sy, London [undated].

DEAR HOUSTON:

You're doing the bigger job: as the world now is, there is no other job so big as yours or so well worth doing; but I'm having more fun. I'm having more fun than anybody else anywhere. It's a large window you look through on the big world--here in London; and, while I am for the moment missing many of the things that I've most cared about hitherto (such as working for the countryman, guessing at American public opinion, coffee that's fit to drink, corn bread, sunshine, and old faces) big new things come on the horizon. Yet a man's personal experiences are nothing in comparison with the large job that our Government has to do in its Foreign Relations. I'm beginning to begin to see what it is. The American people are taken most seriously here. I'm sometimes almost afraid of the respect and even awe in which they hold us. But the American Government is a mere joke to them. They don't even believe that we ourselves believe in it. We've had no foreign policy, no continuity of plan, no matured scheme, no settled way of doing things and we seem afraid of Irishmen or Germans or some "element" when a chance for real action comes. I'm writing to the President about this and telling him stories to show how it works.

We needn't talk any longer about keeping aloof. If Cecil Spring Rice would tell you the complaints he has already presented and if you saw the work that goes on here--more than in all the other posts in Europe--you'd see that all the old talk about keeping aloof is Missouri buncombe. We're very much "in," but not frankly in.

I wish you'd keep your eye on these things in cabinet meetings. The English and the whole English world are ours, if we have the courtesy to take them--fleet and trade and all; and we go on pretending we are afraid of "entangling alliances." What about disentangling alliances?

We're in the game. There's no use in letting a few wild Irish or c.o.c.ky Germans scare us. We need courtesy and frankness, and the destinies of the world will be in our hands. They'll fall there anyhow after we are dead; but I wish to see them come, while my own eyes last. Don't you?

Heartily yours,

W.H.P.

_To Robert N. Page_[29]

London, December 22, 1913.

MY DEAR BOB:

. . . We have a splendid, big old house--not in any way pretentious--a commonplace house in fact for fashionable London and the least showy and costly of the Emba.s.sies. But it does very well--it's big and elegantly plain and dignified. We have fifteen servants in the house. They do just about what seven good ones would do in the United States, but they do it a great deal better.

They pretty nearly run themselves and the place. The servant question is admirably solved here. They divide the work according to a fixed and unchangeable system and they do it remarkably well--in their own slow English way. We simply let them alone, unless something important happens to go wrong. Katharine simply tells the butler that we'll have twenty-four people to dinner to-morrow night and gives him a list of them. As they come in, the men at the door address every one correctly--Your Lordship or Your Grace, or what not. When they are all in, the butler comes to the reception room and announces dinner. We do the rest. As every man goes out, the butler asks him if he'll have a gla.s.s of water or of grog or a cigar; he calls his car, puts him in it, and that's the end of it. Bully good plan. But in the United States that butler, whose wages are less than the ramshackle n.i.g.g.e.r I had at Garden City to keep the place neat, would have a business of his own. But here he is a sort of duke downstairs. He sits at the head of the servants' table and orders them around and that's worth more than money to an Old World servile mind.

The "season" doesn't begin till the King comes back and Parliament opens, in February. But every kind of club and patriotic and educational organization is giving its annual dinner now. I've been going to them and making after-dinner speeches to get acquainted and also to preach into them some little knowledge of American ways and ideals. They are very nice--very. You could not suggest or imagine any improvement in their kindness and courtesy. They do all these things in some ways better than we. They have more courtesy.

They make far shorter speeches. But they do them all too much alike. Still they do get much pleasure out of them and much instruction too.

Then we are invited to twice as many private dinners and luncheons as we can attend. At these, these people are at their best. But it is yet quite confusing. A sea of friendly faces greets you--you can't remember the names. n.o.body ever introduces anybody to anybody; and if by accident anybody ever tries, he simply says "Uh-o-oh-Lord Xzwwxkmpt." You couldn't understand it if you had to be hanged.

But we are untangling some of this confusion and coming to make very real and very charming friends.

About December 20, everybody who is anybody leaves London. They go to their country places for about a fortnight or they go to the continent. Almost everything stops. It has been the only dull time at the Emba.s.sy that I've had. Nothing is going on now. But up to two days ago, it kept a furious gait. I'm glad of a little rest.

Dealing with the Government doesn't present the difficulties that I feared. Sir Edward Grey is in the main responsible for the ease with which it is done. He is a frank and fair and truthful man. You will find him the day after to-morrow precisely where you left him the day before yesterday. We get along very well indeed. I think we should get along if we had harder tasks one with the other. And the English people are even more friendly than the Government. You have no idea of their respect for the American Nation. Of course there is much ignorance, sometimes of a surprising sort. Very many people, for instance, think that all the Americans are rich. A lady told me the other night how poor she is--she is worth only $1,250,000--"nothing like all you Americans." She was quite sincere. In fact the wealth of the world (and the poverty, too) is centred here in an amazing way. You can't easily take it in--how rich or how many rich English families there are. They have had wealth for generation after generation, and the surprising thing is, they take care of it. They spend enormously--seldom ostentatiously--but they are more than likely to add some of their income every year to their princ.i.p.al. They have better houses in town and in the country than I had imagined. They spend vast fortunes in making homes in which they expect to live forever--generation after generation.

To an American democrat the sad thing is the servile cla.s.s. Before the law the chimney sweep and the peer have exactly the same standing. They have worked that out with absolute justice. But there it stops. The serving cla.s.s is what we should call abject. It does not occur to them that they might ever become--or that their descendants might ever become--ladies and gentlemen.

The "courts" are a very fine sight. The diplomatic ladies sit on a row of seats on one side the throne room, the d.u.c.h.esses on a row opposite. The King and Queen sit on a raised platform with the royal family. The Amba.s.sadors come in first and bow and the King shakes hands with them. Then come the forty or more Ministers--no shake for them. In front of the King are a few officers in gaudy uniform, some Indians of high rank (from India) and the court officials are all round about, with pages who hold up the Queen's train. Whenever the Queen and King move, two court officials back before them, one carrying a gold stick and the other a silver stick.