The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II | Page 4

Bryan's incumbency was guilty of diplomatic vices which were
peculiarly its own. The "leaks" in the State Department, to which Page
has already referred, were constantly taking place; the Ambassador
would send the most confidential cipher dispatches to his superior,
cautioning the Department that they must be held inviolably secret, and
then he would pick up the London newspapers the next morning and
find that everything had been cabled from Washington. To most readers,
the informal method of conducting foreign business, as it is disclosed in
these letters, probably comes as something of a shock. Page is here
discovered discussing state matters, not in correspondence with the
Secretary of State, but in private unofficial communications to the
President, and especially to Colonel House--the latter at that time not
an official person at all. All this, of course, was extremely irregular and,
in any properly organized State Department, it would have been even
reprehensible. But the point is that there was no properly organized
State Department at that time, and the impossibility of conducting
business through the regular channels compelled Page to adopt other

means. "There is only one way to reform the State Department," he
informed Colonel House at this time. "That is to raze the whole
building, with its archives and papers, to the ground, and begin all over
again."
This state of affairs in Washington explains the curious fact that the
real diplomatic history of the United States and Great Britain during
this great crisis is not to be found in the archives of the State
Department, for the official documents on file there consist of the most
routine telegrams, which are not particularly informing, but in the
Ambassador's personal correspondence with the President, Colonel
House, and a few other intimates. The State Department did not have
the first requisite of a properly organized foreign office, for it could not
be trusted with confidential information. The Department did not tell
Page what it was doing, but it apparently told the whole world what
Page was doing. It is an astonishing fact that Page could not write and
cable the most important details, for he was afraid that they would
promptly be given to the reporters.
* * * * *
"I shall not send another confidential message to the State Department,"
Page wrote to Colonel House, September 15, 1914; "it's too dangerous.
Time and time again now the Department has leaked. Last week, I sent
a dispatch and I said in the body of it, 'this is confidential and under no
condition to be given out or made public, but to be regarded as
inviolably secret.' The very next morning it was telegraphed from
Washington to the London newspapers. Bryan telegraphed me that he
was sure it didn't get out from the Department and that he now had so
fixed it that there could be no leak. He's said that at least four times
before. The Department swarms with newspaper men, I hear. But
whether it does or not the leak continues. I have to go with my tail
between my legs and apologize to Sir Edward Grey and to do myself
that shame and to do my very best to keep his confidence--against these
unnecessary odds. The only way to be safe is to do the job perfunctorily,
to answer the questions the Department sends and to do nothing on
your own account. That's the reason so many of our men do their jobs

in that way--or one reason and a strong one. We can never have an alert
and energetic and powerful service until men can trust the Department
and until they can get necessary information from it. I wrote the
President that of course I'd go on till the war ended and all the
questions growing out of it were settled, and that then he must excuse
me, if I must continue to be exposed to this danger and humiliation. In
the meantime, I shall send all my confidential matter in private letters
to him."
* * * * *
Page did not regard Mr. Bryan's opinions and attitudes as a joke: to him
they were a serious matter and, in his eyes, Bryan was most interesting
as a national menace. He regarded the Secretary as the extreme
expression of an irrational sentimentalism that was in danger of
undermining the American character, especially as the kind of thought
he represented was manifest in many phases of American life. In a
moment of exasperation, Page gave expression to this feeling in a letter
to his son:
To Arthur W. Page
London, June 6, 1915.
DEAR ARTHUR:
... We're in danger of being feminized and fad-ridden--grape juice (God
knows water's good enough: why grape juice?); pensions; Christian
Science; peace cranks; efficiency-correspondence schools;
aid-your-memory; women's clubs; co-this and co-t'other and