The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I | Page 3

the South is famous--we catch glimpses of the older
man battling with the logs in the Cape Fear River, or penetrating the
virgin pine forest, felling trees and converting its raw material to the
uses of a growing civilization. Like many of the Page breed, this Page
was a giant in size and in strength, as sound morally and physically as
the mighty forests in which a considerable part of his life was spent,
brave, determined, aggressive, domineering almost to the point of
intolerance, deeply religious and abstemious--a mixture of the
frontiersman and the Old Testament prophet. Walter Page dedicated
one of his books[2] to his father, in words that accurately sum up his
character and career. "To the honoured memory of my father, whose
work was work that built up the commonwealth." Indeed, Frank
Page--for this is the name by which he was generally known--spent his
whole life in these constructive labours. He founded two towns in
North Carolina, Cary and Aberdeen; in the City of Raleigh he
constructed hotels and other buildings; his enterprising and restless
spirit opened up Moore County--which includes the Pinehurst region;
he scattered his logging camps and his sawmills all over the face of the
earth; and he constructed a railroad through the pine woods that made
him a rich man.
Though he was not especially versed in the learning of the schools,
Walter Page's father had a mind that was keen and far-reaching. He was
a pioneer in politics as he was in the practical concerns of life. Though
he was the son of slave-holding progenitors and even owned slaves
himself, he was not a believer in slavery. The country that he primarily
loved was not Moore County or North Carolina, but the United States
of America. In politics he was a Whig, which meant that, in the years
preceding the Civil War, he was opposed to the extension of slavery
and did not regard the election of Abraham Lincoln as a sufficient

provocation for the secession of the Southern States. It is therefore not
surprising that Walter Page, in the midst of the London turmoil of 1916,
should have found his thoughts reverting to his father as he
remembered him in Civil War days. That gaunt figure of America's
time of agony proved an inspiration and hope in the anxieties that
assailed the Ambassador. "When our Civil War began," wrote Page to
Col. Edward M. House--the date was November 24, 1916, one of the
darkest days for the Allied cause--"every man who had a large and firm
grip on economic facts foresaw how it would end--not when but how.
Young as I was, I recall a conversation between my father and the most
distinguished judge of his day in North Carolina. They put down on
one side the number of men in the Confederate States, the number of
ships, the number of manufactures, as nearly as they knew, the number
of skilled workmen, the number of guns, the aggregate of wealth and of
possible production. On the other side they put down the best estimate
they could make of all these things in the Northern States. The
Northern States made two (or I shouldn't wonder if it were three) times
as good a showing in men and resources as the Confederacy had.
'Judge,' said my father, 'this is the most foolhardy enterprise that man
ever undertook.' But Yancey of Alabama was about that time making
five-hour speeches to thousands of people all over the South, declaring
that one Southerner could whip five Yankees, and the awful slaughter
began and darkened our childhood and put all our best men where they
would see the sun no more. Our people had at last to accept worse
terms than they could have got at the beginning. This World War, even
more than our Civil War, is an economic struggle. Put down on either
side the same items that my father and the judge put down and add the
items up. You will see the inevitable result."
If we are seeking an ancestral explanation for that moral ruggedness,
that quick perception of the difference between right and wrong, that
unobscured vision into men and events, and that deep devotion to
America and to democracy which formed the fibre of Walter Page's
being, we evidently need look no further than his father. But the son
had qualities which the older man did not possess--an enthusiasm for
literature and learning, a love of the beautiful in Nature and in art,
above all a gentleness of temperament and of manner. These qualities

he held in common with his mother. On his father's side Page was
undiluted English; on his mother's he was French and English. Her
father was John Samuel Raboteau, the descendant of Huguenot
refugees who had fled from France