SECRET WAR HISTORY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3130, 14 August 1922, Page 7

SECRET WAR HISTORY.

The latest instalment of “The Life and Letters of Wad ter H. Page,” contributed to “The World’s Work” by Mr Burton J. Hendrick, deals with events in the summer of 1914, and contains interesting revelations of the effects of President Wilson’s doctrine of personal neutrality on the attitude of the Washington Government and of generally towards the war Mud those engaged in it. It was dur<TOg this period, when the submarine Campaign was temporarily suspended as a result of the so-called “Sussex” pledge, that the President* was lending an ear to Germany’s tentative overtures for peace, and was endeavoring to pave the way for an attempt at mediation. When Mr Page arrived at Washington in response to a summons from the Government, ho was struck by the apparent lack of appreciation of the actual situation displayed by President AVilson and his advisers, they jvould not discuss the war, and showed “10 curiosity on the subect of America s relations with England. To appreciate properly the picture which Pago gives, writes Mr Hendrick, it must be remembered that the city and the officialdom which ho portrays are the same city and the same men who six months afterwards declined war on Germany. In his memorandum on ins visit to Washington m August, 1916, Mr Page wrote: “The President was very courteous 'to me iu his way. He invited me to luncheon the day after I arrived. Ihc conversation was general, and in the main, jocular. Not a word about Eg land not a word about a foreign pol or foreign relations Two weeks passed Another invitation to lunch Sharp, the Ambassador to France, had arrived. He, too, was invited. Not one word about foreign affairs. The same reticence was shown by seyeial members of the Cabinet. with whom Mi Paso and Mr Sharp had luncheon. _ “Not a question was asked eithei ol the Ambassador to France or the Ambassador to Great Britain about the war, nor about our foreign relations. The war wasn’t mentioned. Sharp and T might have come from Bungtown and Janesville, and not from. France and England. AVe were not encouraged to t a lk . The vice-president confessed to his neighbor at a Gridiron dinner that he had read none of the Ayhite Papers, or Orange Papers, etc., of the v belligerent Governments confessed this with pride lest he should form an opinion and cease to be neutral. “I can see it no other way but this: The President suppressed free thought and free speech when he insisted upon personal neutrality. He held hack the deliberate and spontaneous thought and speech of the people except the pro-Germans, who saw their chance and improved it! The mass of the American people found themselves forbidden to think or talk, and tins forbidding had a sufficient effect to make them take refuge in indifference. Bight here is the President’si vast failure. From it there is now no escape unless the Germans commit more submarine crimes. They have kept the United states for their own exploiting after the war. They have thus had a. real triumph of us. In fact, there is no real realisation of the war m AVasmngton. The extraordinary feature of this ■experience, comments Mr Hendrick, was that Page had been officially summoned home, presumably to discuss the European situation, and that neither the President nor the State Department apparently had thei slightest interest in his visit. One reason why he particularly wished to see the President alone was that in early August he had received important news from London concerning the move which Germany was making for peace and the attitude of Great Britain in this matter. The several plans which Germany had had under consideration had now taken the form of a definite determination to ask for an armistice before winter set in. Here again was -the same old German trick —merely another effort to obtain a respite in order to prepare tor another war —and it was a trick of which Great Britain was now heartily tired. A specific conversation which had taken place between A 7 on Bethmann-Hollvyeg, the German Chancellor, and the King of Bavaria, was not reassuring. Bcth-mann-Hollweg told the King on this occasion that, unless the Allies opened negotiations in October, Germany would have to do so. “How can Germany approach the Allies?” the King asked. “Through AVilson,” Bothiiuuiu-Holl-weg replied. AVord had been conveyed to Page that the President should be warned against any such armistice proposal, and that Great Britain would not consider it. In reference to any such Presidential.step, the word “snub” had actually been used. , , , Page waited live weeks before he succeeded in obtaining his interview with Mr AVilson. “Of this last meeting with his old friend Mr Page wrote: “The President said to me that when the war began he and all the men he met were in hearty sympathy with the Ames; hut that'now the sentiment toward England had greatly changed. He saw no one who was not voxod and iiiitatoci by the arbitrary English course. He described the war as a result of many causes, some of long origin. He spoke of England’s haying the earth and or Germany’s wanting it.” Mr Hendrick adds : “The experience was an exceedingly try in Mine for both men. The discussion showed 1 how far apart were the President and his Ambassador on practically every issue connected with the war. Naturally the President's reference to the oautses or the war—that there were many causes, some of them of long origin, and that Great Britain’s domination of the ‘earth’ was one of them—conflicted with the judgment of a man who attribated the origin of the struggle to German aggression. The President s htatom-ent that American sympathy for tire Allies had now changed to irritation. and the tolerant attitude toward Germanv which Mr Willson displayed, affected Page with the pi*ofo'undesfc d!iiScoiiragenient. The President’s intimation that he would advance Germany s request for an armistice, if it looked toward peace—this in reply to Page m message that Great Britain won!d not receive such a proposal in a kindly spirit—seemed to lay the haisis of further misunderstandings. Page dame away with no vexation or anger, but with a real feeling for a much-suffering and a much-perplexed statesman. The fact that the President’s life was so solitary, and that he seemed to be so completely out of touch with men and with the'living thoughts of the world, appealed strongly to Page’s .sympathies The two men never met again.”