AN AMERICAN TRIBUTE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3147, 11 December 1922, Page 8

AN AMERICAN TRIBUTE.

Another remarkable instalment ol the “Life and Letters of Walter H. Page,” late American Ambassador in London, appears in the World’s Work. Mr Page’s shrewd estimates of tho value of the British statesmen and politicians with whom he was brought into contact are well worth quoting. Especially was he impressed by the qualities' of laird Balfour and Lord Grey. “I am afraid,” he. writes to President Wilson. “I’m afraid I’ve almost outgrown my living-hero worship. There isn’t worshipful material enough lying around in the world to keep a vigorous reverence in practice. But these two gentlemen by birth and culture have at least sometimes seemed of heroic size to me. It has meant much to know them well. I shall always be grateful to them, for in their quiet, forceful way they helped me much to establish right relations with these people—which, pray God, I hope to retain through whatever new trials we may yet encounter. For it will fall to us yet to loose and to free the British, and a, Briton set free is an American. That’s all you can do for a man or for a nation of men. These Foreign Secretaries are not only men of much greater cultivation, than These Foreign Secretaries are not only men of much greater cultivation than their Prime Ministers, lint of greater moral force. Mr Balfour is one of the most interesting men that I’ve ever had the hgnor to know intimately —he and Lord Grey. Dir Balfour is a Tory, of course; and in the general I don’t like Tories, yet Liberal he surely is—a sort ot hightoned Scotch democrat. I have studied! him with increasing charm and interest. Not infrequently, when I am in. his office just before Luncheon, he says, ‘Como, walk over and we'll have lunch with the family.’ He’s a bachelor. One sister lives with him. Another (Lady Rayleigh, the wife of the great chemist and Chancellor of Cambridge University) frequently visits him. Either of those ladies could rule this Empire. Then there are nieces and cousins always about—people of rare cultivation, every one of ’em. “We’ve been lucky, Mr President, in these days of immortal horrors and of difficulties between two Governments that did not know one another —uncommonly lucky, in the large chances that polities give tor grave errors, to have had two such men in the Foreign) Office here as Lord Grey and Mr Balfour.”

Later in the same letter. Mr Page confesses that “I’ve come to like Mr Llovd George very much. He’d never deliver a lecture on Dry den, and lie doesn’t even play a good game of golf ; hut he has what both Lord Grey and Mr Balfour lack—a. touch of genius—whatever that is—not the kind that takes infinite pains, but the kind that’ acts as an electric light flashed in the dark. Lloyd George will outlive the war as an active force, whatever happens to him in the meantime. He s 100 heavily charged with electricity to slop activity. Ihe war has ended a. good manv careers that seemed to have long promise. It is ending more every day. But there is only one Lloyd George, and whatever he lacks, he doesn't lack lile. ... The importance of oil in modern warfare has boon brought to the front again in Paris in discussions brought out by Iho situation in the Near East, when.! it is conceded that the question of oil supply has figured extensively in shaping the various national policies. Stnd’es by fbe French general staff indicate the enormous meaning of oil in war. Some of its conclusions are that (ho German offensive on the western front in 191 o was temporarily relaxed so that Germany might carry on a stronger offensive into Galicia and Bonmania for the “ail peace treaties,” as the Bucharest and Brest-Litovsk agreements are sometimes called. One of the most critical moments of the war, that of March. 1918, was partly duo to the shortage of oil among the Allies. One of the greatest services rendered to the Allies by America was that of having placed at the disposal of the Allies a hundred thousand tons in tank ships, which were taken from the Pacific. The French requirements in oil in times of peace are about 1,800,000 tons. Sixty of these are produced in Alsace Lorraine. The rest is imported. It is estimated that the oil in storage in France would ho exhausted in six weeks in time of war and some specialists affirm that a week’s blockade of the French ports would begin to maim the air and field transport services of the French army. A month would nearly ruin a, French offensive, the experts assert.