The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page Volume II Part 7

[Footnote 14: Senator Hoke Smith, of Georgia, was at this time--and afterward--conducting bitter campaign against the British blockade and advocating an embargo as a retaliation.]

[Footnote 15: Torpedoed off Sardinia on Nov. 7, 1915, by the Austrians.

There was a large toss of life, including many Americans.]

CHAPTER XVI

DARK DAYS FOR THE ALLIES

_To Edward M. House_

June 30, 1915.

MY DEAR HOUSE:

There's a distinct wave of depression here--perhaps I'd better say a period of setbacks has come. So far as we can find out only the Germans are doing anything in the war on land. The position in France is essentially the same as it was in November, only the Germans are much more strongly entrenched. Their great plenty of machine guns enables them to use fewer men and to kill more than the Allies. The Russians also lack ammunition and are yielding more and more territory. The Allies--so you hear now--will do well if they get their little army away from the Dardanelles before the German-Turks eat 'em alive, and no Balkan state comes in to help the Allies. Italy makes progress-slowly, of course, over almost impa.s.sable mountains--etc., etc. Most of this doleful recital I think is true; and I find more and more men here who have lost hope of seeing an end of the war in less than two or three years, and more and more who fear that the Germans will never be forced out of Belgium. And the era of the giant aeroplane seems about to come--a machine that can carry several tons and several men and go great distances--two engines, two propellers, and the like. It isn't at all impossible, I am told, that these machines may be the things that will at last end the war--possibly, but I doubt it.

At any rate, it is true that a great wave of discouragement is come. All these events and more seem to prove to my mind the rather dismal failure the Liberal Government made--a failure really to grasp the problem. It was a dead failure. Of course they are waking up now, when they are faced with a certain dread lest many soldiers prefer frankly to die rather than spend another winter in practically the same trenches. You hear rumours, too, of great impending military scandals--G.o.d knows whether there be any truth in them or not.

In a word, while no Englishman gives up or will ever give up--that's all rot--the job he has in hand is not going well. He's got to spit on his hands and buckle up his belt two holes tighter yet. And I haven't seen a man for a month who dares hope for an end of the fight within any time that he can foresee.

I had a talk to-day with the Russian Amba.s.sador[16]. He wished to know how matters stood between the United States and Great Britain.

I said to him: "I'll give you a task if you have leisure. Set to and help me hurry up your distinguished Ally in dealing with our s.h.i.+pping troubles."

The old man laughed--that seemed a huge joke to him; he threw up his hands and exclaimed--"My G.o.d! He is slow about his own business--has always been slow--can't be anything else."

After more such banter, the n.i.g.g.e.r in his wood-pile poked his head out: "Is there any danger," he asked, "that munitions may be stopped?"

The Germans have been preparing northern France for German occupation. No French are left there, of course, except women and children and old men. They must be fed or starved or deported. The Germans put them on trains--a whole village at a time--and run them to the Swiss frontier. Of course the Swiss pa.s.s them on into France. The French have their own and--the Germans will have northern France without any French population, if this process goes on long enough.

The mere bang! bang! frightful era of the war is pa.s.sed. The Germans are settling down to permanent business with their great organizing machine. Of course they talk about the freedom of the seas and such mush-mush; of course they'd like to have Paris and rob it of enough money to pay what the war has cost them, and London, too. But what they really want for keeps is seacoast--Belgium and as much of the French coast as they can win.

That's really what they are out gunning for. Of course, somehow at some time they mean to get Holland, too, and Denmark, if they really need it. Then they'll have a very respectable seacoast--the thing that they chiefly lack now.

More and more people are getting their nerves knocked out. I went to a big hospital on Sunday, twenty-five miles out of London. They showed me an enormous, muscular Tommy sitting by himself in a chair under the trees. He had had a slight wound which quickly got well.

But his speech was gone. That came back, too, later. But then he wouldn't talk and he'd insist on going off by himself. He's just knocked out--you can't find out just how much gumption he has left.

That's what the war did for him: it stupefied him. Well, it's stupefied lots of folks who have never seen a trench. That's what's happened. Of all the men who started in with the game, I verily believe that Lloyd George is holding up best. He organized British finance. Now he's organizing British industry.

It's got hot in London--hotter than I've ever known it. It gets lonelier (more people going away) and sadder--more wounded coming back and more visible sorrow. We seem to be settling down to something that is more or less like Paris--so far less, but it may become more and more like it. And the confident note of an earlier period is accompanied by a dull undertone of much less cheerfulness. The end is--in the lap of the G.o.ds.

W.H.P.

_To Arthur W. Page_

American Emba.s.sy, London,

July 25, 1915.

DEAR ARTHUR:

... Many men here are very active in their thought about the future relations of the United States and Great Britain. Will the war bring or leave them closer together? If the German machine be completely smashed (and it may not be completely smashed) the j.a.panese danger will remain. I do not know how to estimate that danger accurately. But there is such a danger. And, if the German wild beast ever come to life again, there's an eternal chance of trouble with it. For defensive purposes it may become of the very first importance that the whole English-speaking world should stand together--not in entangling alliance, but with a much clearer understanding than we have ever yet had. I'll indicate to you some of my cogitations on this subject by trying to repeat what I told Philip Kerr[17] a fortnight ago--one Sunday in the country. I can write this to you without seeming to parade my own opinions.--Kerr is one of "The Round Table," perhaps the best group of men here for the real study and free discussion of large political subjects.

Their quarterly, _The Round Table_, is the best review, I dare say, in the world. Kerr is red hot for a close and perfect understanding between Great Britain and the United States. I told him that, since Great Britain had only about forty per cent. of the white English-speaking people and the United States had about sixty per cent., I hoped in his natural history that the tail didn't wag the dog. I went on:

"You now have the advantage of us in your aggregation of three centuries of acc.u.mulated wealth--the spoil of all the world--and in the talent that you have developed for conserving it and adding to it and in the inst.i.tutions you have built up to perpetuate it--your merchant s.h.i.+ps, your insurance, your world-wide banking, your mortgages on all new lands; but isn't this the only advantage you have? This advantage will pa.s.s. You are now shooting away millions and millions, and you will have a debt that is bound to burden industry. On our side, we have a more recently mixed race than yours; you've begun to inbreed. We have also (and therefore) more adaptability, a greater keenness of mind in our ma.s.ses; we are Old-World men set free--free of cla.s.ses and traditions and all that they connote. Your so-called democracy is far behind ours. Your aristocracy and your privileges necessarily bring a social and economic burden. Half your people look backward.

"Your leaders.h.i.+p rests on your wealth and on the power that you've built on your wealth."

When he asked me how we were to come closer together--"closer together, with your old-time distrust of us and with your remoteness?"--I stopped him at "remoteness."

"That's the reason," I said. "Your idea of our 'remoteness.'

'Remoteness' from what? From you? Are you not betraying the only real difficulty of a closer sympathy by a.s.suming that you are the centre of the world? When you bring yourself to think of the British Empire as a part of the American Union--mind you, I am not saying that you would be formally admitted--but when you are yourselves in close enough sympathy with us to wish to be admitted, the chief difficulty of a real union of thought will be gone. You recall Lord Rosebery's speech in which he pictured the capital of the British Empire being moved to Was.h.i.+ngton if the American Colonies had been retained under the Crown? Well, it was the Crown that was the trouble, and the capital of English-speaking folk has been so moved and you still remain 'remote.' Drop 'remote' from your vocabulary and your thought and we'll actually be closer together."

It's an enormous problem--just how to bring these countries closer together. Perhaps nothing can do it but some great common danger or some great common adventure. But this is one of the problems of your lifetime. England can't get itself clean loose from the continent nor from continental mediaevalism; and with that we can have nothing to do. Men like Kerr think that somehow a great push toward democracy here will be given by the war. I don't quite see how. So far the aristocracy have made perhaps the best showing in defence of English liberty. They are paying the bills of the war; they have sent their sons; these sons have died like men; and their parents never whimper. It's a fine breed for such great uses as these. There was a fine incident in the House of Lords the other day, which gave the lie to the talk that one used to hear here about "degeneracy." Somebody made a perfectly innocent proposal to complete a list of peers and peers' sons who had fallen in the war--a thing that will, of course, be done, just as a similar list will be compiled of the House of Commons, of Oxford and Cambridge Universities. But one peer after another objected vigorously lest such a list appear immodest. "We are but doing our duty. Let the matter rest there."

In a time like this the aristocracy proves its worth. In fact, all aristocracies grew chiefly out of wars, and perhaps they are better for wars than a real democracy. Here, you see, you run into one of those contradictions in life and history which make the world so hard to change....

You know there are some reasons why peace, whenever it may come, will bring problems as bad as the problems of the war itself. I can think of no worse task than the long conferences of the Allies with their conflicting interests and ambitions. Then must come their conferences with the enemy. Then there are sure to be other conferences to try to make peace secure. And, of course, many are going to be dissatisfied and disappointed, and perhaps out of these disappointments other wars may come. The world will not take up its knitting and sit quietly by the fire for many a year to come....

Affectionately,

W.H.P.

One happiness came to Mr. and Mrs. Page in the midst of all these war alarums. On August 4, 1915, their only daughter, Katharine, was married to Mr. Charles G. Loring, of Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts. The occasion gave the King an opportunity of showing the high regard in which Page and his family were held. It had been planned that the wedding should take place in Westminster Abbey, but the King very courteously offered Miss Page the Royal chapel in St. James's Palace. This was a distinguished compliment, as it was the first time that any marriage, in which both bride and bridegroom were foreigners, had ever been celebrated in this building, which for centuries has been the scene of royal weddings. The special place which his daughter had always held in the Amba.s.sador's affections is apparent in the many letters that now followed her to her new home in the United States. The unique use Page made of the initials of his daughter's name was characteristic.

_To Mrs. Charles G. Loring_

London, September 1, 1915.

MY DEAR K.A. P-TAIN:

Here's a joke on your mother and Frank: We three (and Smith) went up to Broadway in the car, to stay there a little while and then to go on into Wales, etc. The hotel is an old curiosity shop; you sit on Elizabethan chairs by a Queen Anne table, on a drunken floor, and look at the pewter platters on the wall or do your best to look at them, for the ancient windows admit hardly any light. "Oh!

lovely," cries Frank; and then he and your mother make out in the half-darkness a perfectly wonderful copper mug on the mantelpiece; and you go out and come in the ramshackle door (stooping every time) after you've felt all about for the rusty old iron latch, and then you step down two steps (or fall), presently to step up two more. Well, for dinner we had six kinds of meat and two meat pies and potatoes and currants! My dinner was a potato. I'm old and infirm and I have many ailments, but I'm not so bad off as to be able to live on a potato a day. And since we were having a vacation, I didn't see the point. So I came home where I have seven courses for dinner, all good; and Mrs. Leggett took my place in the car. That carnivorous company went on. They've got to eat six kinds of meat and two meat pies and--currants! I haven't. Your mother calls me up on the phone every morning--me, who am living here in luxury, seven courses at every dinner--and asks anxiously, "And how _are_ you, dear?" I answer: "Prime, and how are _you_?" We are all enjoying ourselves, you see, and I don't have to eat six kinds of meat and two meat pies and--currants! They do; and may Heaven save 'em and get 'em home safe!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Col. Edward M. House. From a painting by P.A.

Laszlo]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry Asquith, Prime Minister of Great Britain, 1908-1916]

It's lovely in London now--fine, s.h.i.+ning days and showers at night and Ranelagh beautiful, and few people here; but I don't deny its loneliness--somewhat. Yet sleep is good, and easy and long. I have neither an ocean voyage nor six kinds of meat and two meat pies and currants. I congratulate myself and write to you and mother.

You'll land to-morrow or next day--good; I congratulate you. Salute the good land for me and present my respectful compliments to vegetables that have taste and fruit that is not sour--to the suns.h.i.+ne, in fact, and to everything that ripens and sweetens in its glow.

And you're now (when this reaches you) fixing up your home--your _own_ home, dear Kitty. Bless your dear life, you left a home here--wasn't it a good and nice one?--left it very lonely for the man who has loved you twenty-four years and been made happy by your presence. But he'll love you twenty-five more and on and on--always. So you haven't lost that--nor can you. And it's very fit and right that you should build your own nest; that adds another happy home, you see. And I'm very sure it will be very happy always. Whatever I can do to make it so, now or ever, you have only to say. But--your mother took your photograph with her and got it out of the bag and put it on the bureau as soon as she went to her room--a photograph taken when you were a little girl.