and this Empire presently when economic forces unmistakably put the leadership of the race in our hands? How can we lead it and use it for the highest purposes of the world and of democracy? We can do what we like if we go about it heartily and with good manners (any man prefers to yield to a gentleman rather than to a rustic) and throw away graduallyour isolating fears and alternate boasting and bashfulness. "What do we most need to learn from you?" I asked a gentle and bejeweled nobleman the other Sunday, in a country garden that invited confidences. "If I may speak without offence, modesty." A commoner in the company, who has seen the Rocky Mountains, laughed, and said: "No; see your chance and take it: that's what we did in the years when we made the world's history."

Ambassador Page to

President Wilson American Embassy, London, October 25, 1913.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

These English are spending their capital, and it is their capital that continues to give them their vast power. Now what are we going to do with the leadership of the world presently

when it clearly falls into our hands? And how can we use the English for the highest uses of democracy?

You see their fear of an on-sweeping democracy in their social treatment of party opponents. A Tory lady told me with tears that she could no longer invite her Liberal friends to her house:

"I have lost themthey are robbing us, you know." I made

the mistake to say a word in praise of Sir Edward Grey to a duke. "Yes, yes, no doubt an able man; but you must understand, sir, that I don't train with that gang." A bishop explained to me at elaborate length why the very monarchy is doomed unless something befalls Lloyd George and his programme. Every dinner party is made up with strict reference to the party politics of the guests. Sometimes you imagine you see something like civil war; and money is flowing out of the Kingdom into Canada in the greatest volume ever known, and I am told that a number of old families are investing their fortunes in African lands.

I am moved once in a while to write you privately, not about any specific piece of public business, but only, if I can, to transmit something of the atmosphere of the work here. And, since this is meant quite as much for your amusement as for any information it may carry, don't read it "in office hours."

The future of the world belongs to us. A man needs to live here, with two economic eyes in his head, a very little time to become very sure of this. Everybody will see it presently.

These and such things are, of course, mere chips which show the direction the slow stream

The great economic tide of the century flows our way. We shall have the big world questions to decide presently. Then we shall need world policies; and it will be these old

time world leaders that we shall then have to work with, more closely than now.

The English make a sharp distinction between the American people and the American Government a distinction that they are conscious of and that they themselves talk about. They do not think of our people as foreigners. I have a club book on my table wherein the members are classified as British, Colonial, American, and Foreign-quite unconsciously. But they do think of our Government as foreign, and as a frontier sort of thing without good manners or good faith. This distinction presents the big task of implanting here a real respect for our Government. People often think to compliment the American Ambassador by assuming that he is better than his Government and must at times be ashamed of it. Of course the Government never does this-never-but persons in unofficial life; and I have sometimes hit some hard blows under this condescending provocation. This is the one experience that I have found irritating. They commiserate me on having a Government that will not provide an Ambassador's residence-from the King to my servants. They talk about American lynch

ings. Even the Spectator, in an early editorial about you, said that we should now see what stuff there is in the new President by watching whether you would stop lynchings. They forever quote Bryce on the badness of our municipal government. They pretend to think that the impeachment of governors is common and ought to be commoner. One delicious M. P. asked me: "Now, since the Governor of New York is impeached, who becomes VicePresident?"* Ignorance, unfathomable ignorance, is at the bottom of much of it: if the Town Treasurer of Yuba Dam gets a $100 "rake off" on a paving contract, our city government is a failure.

I am about to conclude that our yellow press does us more harm abroad than at home, and many of the American correspondents of the

*William Sulzer, Governor of New York, was impeached and removed from office by the Senate of New York State, October 18, 1913. Just what this critical Briton had in mind, in thinking that the removal of a New York Governor created a vacancy in the Vice-Presidency, is not clear. Possibly, however, he had a cloudy recollection of the fact that Theodore Roosevelt, after serving as Governor of New York State, became Vice-President, and may have concluded from this that the two offices were held by the

same man.

English papers send exactly the wrong news. The whole governing class of England has a possibly exaggerated admiration for the American people and something very like contempt for the American Government.

If I make it out right two causes (in addition to their ignorance) of their dislike of our Government are (1) its lack of manners in the past, and (2) its indiscretions of publicity about foreign affairs. We ostentatiously stand aloof from their polite ways and courteous manners in many of the every-day, ordinary, unimportant dealings with them-aloof from the common amenities of long-organized political life. For example:

When our Government sent notice to the British Government that our fleet was going to the Mediterranean, my letter of instructions contained a paragraph which asked that the British fleet pay our fleet no undue attention, and that it was coming informally, or unofficially, etc. The Admiralty has already issued

OFF TO HIS LONDON POST

orders for the British fleet to move on the day before ours will arrive. But they would like to have stayed and fired off a few hundred pounds of powder, and to have drunk a few dozen bottles of wine, to have pledged friendship and kinship and sworn by Nelson and Mahan, as good sailors do. I'm afraid we forget how much they would have enjoyed it. When we say, "We're coming, but pray don't trouble to make any fuss about us,' we mean to be polite, but it's the politeness of the countryman, not of the polished man of the Old World. They wish to salute us. They wish to drink our health. They spend half their time doing these polite acts to one another, and they wish to be as polite to us as they are to one another.

When the Australian cruiser was at Vancouver the other month, the people of San Francisco sent a hearty invitation to her to

touch there and taste their hospitality-too late: for orders had already been given for the rest of the voyage. You invite a man to dinner here a month beforehand and a man-of-war three months ahead.

Not one of these things is worth mentioning or remembering. But generations of them have caused our Government to be regarded as thoughtless of the fine little acts of life-as rude. The more I find out about diplomatic customs and the more I hear of the little-big troubles of others, the more need I find to be careful about details of courtesy.

Thus we are making as brave a show as becomes us. I no longer dismiss a princess after supper or keep the whole diplomatic corps waiting while I talk to an interesting man till the Master of Ceremonies comes up and whispers: "Your Excellency, I think they are waiting for

you to move." But I am both young and green, and even these folk forgive much to green youth, if it show a willingness to learn.

But our Government, though green, isn't young enough to plead its youth. It is time that it, too, were learning Old World manners in dealing with Old World peoples. I do not know whether we need a Bureau, or a MajorDomo, or a Master of Ceremonies at Washington, but we need somebody to prompt us to act as polite as we really are, somebody to think of those gentler touches that we naturally forget. Some other governments have such officers-perhaps all. The Japanese, for instance, are newcomers in world politics. But this Japanese Ambassador and his wife here never miss a trick; and they come across the square and ask us how to do it! All the other governments, too, play the game of small courtesies to perfection-the French, of course, and the Spanish and-even the old Turk.

Another reason for the English distrust of our Government is its indiscretions in the past of this sort: one of our Ministers to Germany,

These

you will recall, was obliged to resign because the Government at Washington inadvertently published one of his confidential despatches; Griscom saved his neck only by the skin, when he was in Japan, for a similar reason. things travel all round the world from one chancery to another and all governments know them. Yesterday somebody in Washington talked about my despatch summarizing my talk with Sir Edward Grey about Mexico, and it appeared in the papers here this morning that Sir Edward had told me that the big business interests were pushing him hard. This I sent as only my inference. I had at once to disclaim it. This leaves in his mind a doubt about our care for secrecy. They have monstrous big doors and silent men in Downing Street; and, I am told, a stenographer*sits behind a big

*For years this idea of the stenographer back of a screen in the Foreign Office has been abroad, but it is entirely unfounded. Several years ago a Foreign Secretary, perhaps Lord Salisbury, put a screen back of his desk to keep off the draughts and from this precaution the myth arose that it shielded a stenographer who took a complete record of ambassadorial conversations.