The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page Volume II Part 31

Bless you and little Alice,

Affectionately,

W.H.P.

Page's oldest son was building a house and laying out a garden at Pinehurst, North Carolina, a fact which explains the horticultural and gastronomical suggestions contained in the following letter:

_To Ralph W. Page_

Tregenna Castle Hotel, St. Ives, Cornwall, England, March 4, 1918.

DEAR RALPH:

Asparagus Celery Tomatoes b.u.t.ter Beans Peas Sweet Corn Sweet Potatoes Squash--the sort you cook in the rind Cantaloupe Peanuts Egg Plant Figs Peaches Pecans Scuppernongs Peanut-bacon, in gla.s.s jars Razor-back hams, divinely cured Raspberries Strawberries etc. etc. etc. etc.

You see, having starved here for five years, my mind, as soon as it gets free, runs on these things and my mouth waters. All the foregoing things that grow can be put up in pretty gla.s.s jars, too.

Add cream, fresh b.u.t.ter, b.u.t.termilk, fresh eggs. Only one of all the things on page one grows with any flavour here at all--strawberries; and only one or two more grow at all. Darned if I don't have to confront Cabbage every day. I haven't yet surrendered, and I never shall unless the Germans get us. Cabbage and Germans belong together: G.o.d made 'em both the same stinking day.

Now get a bang-up gardener no matter what he costs. Get him started. Put it up to him to start toward the foregoing programme, to be reached in (say) three years--two if possible. He must learn to grow these things absolutely better than they are now grown anywhere on earth. He must get the best seed. He must get muck out of the swamp, manure from somewhere, etc. etc. He must have the supreme flavour in each thing. Let him take room enough for each--plenty of room. He doesn't want much room for any one thing, but good s.p.a.ces between.

This will be the making of the world. Talk about fairs? If he fails to get every prize he must pay a fine for every one that goes to anybody else.

How we'll live! I can live on these things and nothing else. But (just to match this home outfit) I'll order tea from j.a.pan, ripe olives from California, grape fruit and oranges from Florida. Then poor folks will hang around, hoping to be invited to dinner!

Plant a few fig trees now; and pecans? Any good?

The world is going to come pretty close to starvation not only during the war but for five or perhaps ten years afterward. An acre or two _done right_--divinely right--will save us. An acre or two on my land in Moore County--no king can live half so well if the ground be got ready this spring and such a start made as one natural-born gardener can make. The old Russian I had in Garden City was no slouch. Do you remember his little patch back of the house? That far, far, far excelled anything in all Europe. And you'll recall that we jarred 'em and had good things all winter.

This St. Ives is the finest spot in England that I've ever seen.

To-day has been as good as any March day you ever had in North Carolina--a fine air, clear suns.h.i.+ne, a beautiful sea--looking out toward the United States; and this country grows--the best golf links that I've ever seen in the world, and nothing else worth speaking of but--tin. Tin mines are all about here. Tin and golf are good crops in their way, but they don't feed the belly of man.

As matters stand the only people that have fit things to eat now in all Europe are the American troops in France, and their food comes out of tins chiefly. Ach! Heaven! In these islands man is amphibious and carnivorous. It rains every day and meat, meat, meat is the only human idea of food. G.o.d bless us, one acre of the Sandhills is worth a vast estate of tin mines and golf links to feed the innards of

Yours affectionately,

W.H.P.

P.S. And cornfield peas, of just the right rankness, cooked with just the right dryness.

When I become a citizen of the Sandhills I propose to induce some benevolent lover of good food to give substantial prizes to the best grower of each of these things and to the best cook of each and to the person who serves each of them most daintily.

We can can and gla.s.s jar these things and let none be put on the market without the approval of an expert employed by the community.

Then we can get a reputation for Sandhill Food and charge double price.

W.H.P.

_To Arthur W. Page_

St. Ives, Cornwall,

England, March 8, 1918.

DEAR ARTHUR:

Your letter, written from the University Club, is just come. It makes a very distinct impression on my mind which my own conclusions and fears have long confirmed. Let me put it at its worst and in very bald terms: The Great White Chief is at bottom pacifist, has always been so and is so now. Of course I do not mean a pacifist at any price, certainly not a cowardly pacifist. But (looked at theoretically) war is, of course, an absurd way of settling any quarrel, an irrational way. Men and nations are wasteful, cruel, pigheaded fools to indulge in it. Quite true. But war is also the only means of adding to a nation's territory the territory of other nations which they do not wish to sell or to give up--the robbers' only way to get more s.p.a.ce or to get booty.

This last explains this war. Every Hohenzollern (except the present Emperor's father, who reigned only a few months) since Frederick the Great has added to Prussian and German area of rule. Every one, therefore, as he comes to the throne, feels an obligation to make his addition to the Empire. For this the wars of Prussia with Austria, with Denmark, with France were brought on. They succeeded and won the additions that old William I made to the Empire. Now William II must make _his_ addition. He prepared for more than forty years; the nation prepared before he came to the throne and his whole reign has been given to making sure that he was ready.

It's a robber's raid. Of course, the German case has been put so as to direct attention from this bald fact.

Now the philosophical pacifists--I don't mean the cowardly, yellow-dog ones--have never quite seen the war in this aspect. They regard it as a dispute about something--about trade, about more seaboard, about this or that, whereas it is only a robber's adventure. They want other people's property. They want money, treasure, land, indemnities, minerals, raw materials; and they set out to take them.

Now confusing this character of the war with some sort of rational dispute about something, the pacifists try in every way to stop it, so that the "issue" may be reasoned out, debated, discussed, negotiated. Surely the President tried to reach peace--tried as hard and as long as the people would allow him. The Germans argued away time with him while they got their submarine fleet built. Then they carried out the programme they had always had in mind and had never thought of abandoning. Now they wish to gain more time, to slacken the efforts of the Allies, if possible to separate them by asking for "discussions"--peace by "negotiation." When you are about to kill the robber, he cries out, "For G.o.d's sake, let's discuss the question between us. We can come to terms."--Now here's where the danger comes from the philosophical pacifist--from any man who does not clearly understand the nature of the war and of the enemy. To discuss the difference between us is so very reasonable in sound--so very reasonable in fact if there were a discussable difference. It is a programme that would always be in order except with a burglar or a robber.

The yet imperfect understanding of the war and of the nature of the German in the United States, especially at Was.h.i.+ngton--more especially in the White House--herein lies the danger.

... This little rest down here is a success. The weather is a disappointment--windy and cold. But to be away from London and away from folks--that's much. Shoecraft is very good[66]. He sends us next to nothing. Almost all we've got is an invitation to lunch with Their Majesties and they've been good enough to put that off.

It's a far-off country, very fine, I'm sure in summer, and with most beautiful golf links. The hill is now so windy that no sane man can play there.

We're enjoying the mere quiet. And your mother is quite well again.

Affectionately,

W.H.P.

To Mrs. Charles G. Loring St. Ives, Cornwall, March 10, 1918.

DEAR KITTY:

A week here. No news. Shoecraft says we've missed nothing in London. What we came for we've got: your mother's quite well. She climbs these high hills quite spryly. We've had a remarkable week in this respect--we haven't carried on a conversation with any human being but ourselves. I don't think any such thing has ever happened before. I can stand a week, perhaps a fortnight of this now. But I don't care for it for any long period. At the bottom of this high and steep hill is the quaintest little town I ever saw.

There are some streets so narrow that when a donkey cart comes along the urchins all have to run to the next corner or into doors.

There is no sidewalk, of course; and the donkey cart takes the whole room between the houses. Artists take to the town, and they have funny little studios down by the water front in tiny houses built of stone in pieces big enough to construct a tidewater front.

Imagine stone walls made of stone, each weighing tons, built into little houses about as big as your little back garden! There's one fellow here (an artist) whom I used to know in New York, so small has the world become!

On another hill behind us is a triangular stone monument to John Knill. He was once mayor of the town. When he died in 1782, he left money to the town. If the town is to keep the money (as it has) the Mayor must once in every five years form a procession and march up to this monument. There ten girls, natives of the town, and two widows must dance around the monument to the playing of a fiddle and a drum, the girls dressed in white. This ceremony has gone on, once in five years, all this time and the town has old Knill's money!

Your mother and I--though we are neither girls nor widows--danced around it this morning, wondering what sort of curmudgeon old John Knill was.

Don't you see how easily we fall into an idle mood? Well, here's a photograph of little Alice looking up at me from the table where I write--a good, sweet face she has.

And you'll never get another letter from me in a time and from a place whereof there is so little to tell.

Affectionately, dear Kitty,

W.H.P.

To Ralph W. Page Tregenna Castle Hotel, St. Ives, Cornwall, March 12, 1918.