THROUGH AMERICAN EYES.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 258, 29 October 1921, Page 17

THROUGH AMERICAN EYES.

A FAMOUS AMBASSADOR'S FRANK LETTERS. GEOBGE'S '• JOB. They arc the best lotto. I have ever read. They makc J' o " fecl tbe atm °" where of England, understand tbe people, and see into the motives of the .rreat actors/' Ex-President Wilson is said to ha\c made this comment when reading extracts at one of his Cabinet meetings irom the letters of the late Mr. Walter H. Page, then the United States Ambassador to Great- Britain. Wc now have an opportunity oi reading these letters, thanks to "World's Work" (which Mr. Pago, a famous journalist, founded before he became ambassador). A long first instalment appears in the current issue. A STATE BANQUET. was a kindly and sympathetic critic "ven when our old-world traditions' clashed with his of the newer world. 'Thus he writes of a State banquet at Buckingham Palace:— I don't know how other kings do, but I am willing to swear by King George for a job of this sort. The splendour of the thing is truly regal and the friendliness of it very real and human. . The dinner and the music and the plate and the decorations and the jewels and the uniforms—all these were regal; hut there is a human touch about it . that aeems alaset democratic. ...

Wife W'ole royal ganie Is mosi nu«r esting. JI. H. Asquith and Lloyd George and Juiin Morley were there, all in ■white '..nee-breeches of silk, and swords, and most gaudy coats—these that are the radicals of the Kingdom, in literature and iu action. Veterans of Indian and South African wars stood on either side of every door and of every stair-te-av, dressed a.3 Sir Walter Raleigh dressed, like so many statues, never blinking an eye. Every person in the company is printed, in all tne papers, with every title he bears.

Whether it's the court, or the honours and the orders and all the social and imperial spoils, that keep the illusion up, or whether it is the Old World inability to change anything, you can't ever quite decidc. In Defoe's time they put pots of herbs on the desks in the court rooms of every court in London to keep the plague off. The pots of herbs are yet put on every desk in every court room in London.

A century or so ago somebody tried to break into the Bank of England. A special detachment of the King's Guard was designated—a, little company of soldiers—to stand watch at night, bank has twice been moved, and is now housed in a building that would stand a siege; but that guard, in uniform, goes on duty every night. Nothing is ever abolished, nothing ever changed. On .the anniversary of King Charles' 'execution, his statue in Trafalgar Sqiiare is hung with the white roses of his line. OUR MOSS-GROWN' WAYS. .Tt would surely be 'difficult to better this picture of England before the war, as an American man oi letters saw it: — The two things that this island lias of eternal value arc its gardens and its men. Nature sprinkles it almost every day, and holds its moisture down so that every inch of it is for ever green; and somehow men thrive as the lawns do—the most excellent of all races for progenitors. You and I can never be thankful enough that our ancestors came of this stock and escaped in time to save us. Even those that have stayed have cut a wide swath, and they wield good scythes yet. But T have moods when I pity them—for their dependence, for instance, on a Xavy (two keels to one) for their very bread and meat. They frantically resent conveniences. . They seem to despise bathrooms; every gentleman must have his own tin. tub. They build their great law court building (the architecture ecclesiastical)! so as to provide an entrance hall of imposing proportions, which they use once a year; and to get this fine hall they Jiave to make their courtrooms, which they must use all the time, dark and small and inaccessible They think as much of that oncc-a-ycar ceremony of opening their courts as they think of the even justice that they dispense; somehow they fed that the justice depends on the ccrcmonv.

This moss that has grown all over their lives (some of it very pretty, and most of it. very comfortable—it*6 soft and warm) is of no great consequenceexcept that tliey think they'd die if it were removed. And this state of mind gives us a good key to their character and habits. AMERICAS' LEADERSHIP. In the.same letter, which was to Mr. Wilson, Mr. l'age took this curious glance into a future in which England and the Empire might bo American:— What are we going to do with this England and this Empire presently if ever economic forces transfer the leadership of the race from them to us? How can we lead it and use it for the highest purpose 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—gradually—our isolating fears and alternate boasting and bashfulness. "What do we most need to learn from you!" 1 asked a gentle and benign nobleman the other Sunday, in a country garden that invited eonlidenees. ''If 1 may speak without offence, modesty." MISTAKEN* POLITENESS. Mr. Page strongly criticised certain traits in his fellow-countrymen, and ascribed what he termed a British feeling of "something very like contempt lor the American Government" to "lack of manners in the past, and indiscretions of publicity about foreign affairs." "For example," lie writes: — When our Government sent notice to the British Government that our lleet was going to the Mediterranean, my letter of instructions contained a paragraph which asked that the British FJeet pay our fleet no undue attention, and that it was coming informally, or unofficially, etc. The Admiralty has already issued 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 oi uowder, and to have drunk a few bottles oi wine, to have pledged friendship and kinship and sworn by Nulson and Mahan. as good sailors do. I'm afraid ■tfe forget how rjuch they w-srn'd have Kjoycd it.

When we say, "We're coining, but pray don't trouble to make any fuss about ns," we mean to he polite, but it's the politeness of the countryman, not of the polished man of the Old World. The fact that the United States had 110 official London home for its Ambassador was a very sore point with Mr. Page, who wrote: — Everybody talks about it all the time: "'Will.you explain to me why it is that your great Government has 110 Embassy? 'It's very odd!" "What a frugal Government you have!" "It's a damned mean outfit, your American Government." The King keeps lecturing me. Mrs. Page collapses many an evening when she gets to her room. "If they'd only ' quit talking about it!" The other Am--1 bassadors, now that we re coming to know them fairly well, commiserate us. I It's a constant humiliation.

Of coursc, this aspcct of it doesn r worry me much—l've got hardened to it. But it is a good deal of a real handicap, and it adds that much dead weight that a man must overcome; and il greatly lessens the rcspcct in which our Government and its Ambassador aie held.

The present letters take us down to the earlv days of 1914. A later instalment will consist of letters written during 'the war, and of these "World's Work" says:— :

Mr. Page's description -if the outbreak of war will take its place in history. He describes Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, telling him. with tears in his eyes, of his unsuccessful attempt to prevent the war, and of King George, declaiming for an hour on German'iniquities, and despairingly asking the American Ambassador: My God! Mr. Page, what else can we do? 7 ' The. reader gets an unforgettable picture of the Austrian Ambassador to Great Britain wringing his bauds and behaving like a madman, and of the German Ambassador. Prince Lichnowsky, so unnerved that he conies into his drawingroom, clad in his pyjamas, to recene distinguished callers.

Pace's description of England under the stress of war-the fortitude of Englishmen, the sublime courage and selfsacriliee of Englishwomen—will be for ever cherished by the British public. "1 thank God," he says, "that 1 am oi their race aiid blood."