The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I

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The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I

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Volume I, by Burton J. Hendrick This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I
Author: Burton J. Hendrick
Release Date: November 6, 2005 [EBook #17017]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration: Walter H. Page]

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE
BY BURTON J. HENDRICK
VOLUME I
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1922

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
_First Edition after the printing of 377 de luxe copies_

PREFATORY NOTE
_Among the many who have assisted in the preparation of this Biography especial acknowledgment is made to Mr. Irwin Laughlin, First Secretary and Counsellor of the London Embassy under Mr. Page. Mr. Page's papers show the high regard which he entertained for Mr. Laughlin's abilities and character, and the author similarly has found Mr. Laughlin's assistance indispensable. Mr. Laughlin has had the goodness to read the manuscript and make numerous suggestions, all for the purpose of re?nforcing the accuracy of the narrative. The author gratefully remembers many long conversations with Viscount Grey of Fallodon, in which Anglo-American relations from 1913 to 1916 were exhaustively canvassed and many side-lights thrown upon Mr. Page's conduct of his difficult and delicate duties. The British Foreign Office most courteously gave the writer permission to examine a large number of documents in its archives bearing upon Mr. Page's ambassadorship and consented to the publication of several of the most important._
B.J.H.

CONTENTS
VOLUME I
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A RECONSTRUCTION BOYHOOD 1 II. JOURNALISM 32 III. "THE FORGOTTEN MAN" 64 IV. THE WILSONIAN ERA BEGINS 102 V. ENGLAND BEFORE THE WAR 132 VI. "POLICY" AND "PRINCIPLE" IN MEXICO 175 VII. PERSONALITIES OF THE MEXICAN PROBLEM 215 VIII. HONOUR AND DISHONOUR IN PANAMA 232 IX. AMERICA TRIES TO PREVENT THE EUROPEAN WAR 270 X. THE GRAND SMASH 301 XI. ENGLAND UNDER THE STRESS OF WAR 327 XII. "WAGING NEUTRALITY" 357 XIII. GERMANY'S FIRST PEACE DRIVES 398

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Walter H. Page Frontispiece Allison Francis Page (1824-1899), father of Walter H. Page 20
Catherine Raboteau Page (1831-1897), mother of Walter H. Page 21
Walter H. Page in 1876, when he was a Fellow of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. 36
Basil L. Gildersleeve, Professor of Greek, Johns Hopkins University, 1876-1915 37
Walter H. Page (1899) from a photograph taken when he was editor of the Atlantic Monthly 100
Dr. Wallace Buttrick, President of the General Education Board 101
Charles D. McIver, of Greensboro, North Carolina, a leader in the cause of Southern Education 116
Woodrow Wilson in 1912 117
Walter H. Page, from a photograph taken a few years before he became American Ambassador to Great Britain 292
The British Foreign Office, Downing Street 293
No. 6 Grosvenor Square, the American Embassy under Mr. Page 308
Irwin Laughlin, Secretary of the American Embassy at London, 1912-1917, Counsellor 1916-1919 309

THE
LIFE AND LETTERS
OF
WALTER H. PAGE

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE
CHAPTER I
A RECONSTRUCTION BOYHOOD
I
The earliest recollections of any man have great biographical interest, and this is especially the case with Walter Page, for not the least dramatic aspect of his life was that it spanned the two greatest wars in history. Page spent his last weeks in England, at Sandwich, on the coast of Kent; every day and every night he could hear the pounding of the great guns in France, as the Germans were making their last desperate attempt to reach Paris or the Channel ports. His memories of his childhood days in America were similarly the sights and sounds of war. Page was a North Carolina boy; he has himself recorded the impression that the Civil War left upon his mind.
"One day," he writes, "when the cotton fields were white and the elm leaves were falling, in the soft autumn of the Southern climate wherein the sky is fathomlessly clear, the locomotive's whistle blew a much longer time than usual as the train approached Millworth. It did not stop at so small a station except when there was somebody to get off or to get on, and so long a blast meant that someone was coming. Sam and I ran down the avenue of elms to see who it was. Sam was my Negro companion, philosopher, and friend. I was ten years old and Sam said that he was fourteen. There was constant talk about the war. Many men of the