MR PAGE’S TETTERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18453, 14 January 1922, Page 14

MR PAGE’S TETTERS

ENGLAND’S STOICISM. A STRIKING TRIBUTE. The chapter from “ The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page,” which figures in the December number of The World’s Work, deals with England under the stress of war. Mr Page had one typically American characteristic—an inordinate capacity for work. During the mouths immediately following the outbreak of hostilities, the Embassies of the enemy countries were handed over, to the American Ambassador. The extra work entailed upon him may be readily imagined, yet Mr Page found time to send home his impressions and convictions. There is striking proof of his far-sighted wisdom in the views put forward by him in a letter to Colonel House, written as far back as September, 1914, when the war was not yet two months old. When the day of settlement oomes, the settlement must make sure that the day of militarism is done and can come no more. If sheer brute force is to rule the world, it will not be worth living in. If German bureaucratic brute force . could conquer Europe, presently it would try to conquer the United States, and we should all go back to the era of war as man’s chief industry, and back to the domination of kings by divine right. It ’ seems to me, therefore, that the Hohenzollern idea must perish—be utterly strangled in the making of peace. Just how to do this it is not yet easy to say. If the German defeat be emphatic enough and dramatic enough, the question may answer itself—how s the best ■way to be rid of the danger of the iccuiffonce of a military bureaucracy? But in any event this thing must be killed for ever—somehow. RECRUITS’ ENTHUSIASM. Mir Page writes with an abounding sympathy for England and her harassed people in tliose early days, and of his long and intimate talks with Sir Edward Grey, whom he saw almost ever day. There is something intensely human in his references to the British Foreign Minister, so bowed with care and responsibility. He dwells with pride on the success of volunteer and temporary aids, and points with admiration to the unstinted, personal service given day and night. At that time he did not think there would bo need for conscription, and gives incidents in support of that view. I met the Dowager Countess of Dudley yesterday—a woman cf 65, as tall as I, as erect, herself, as a soldier, who might be taken for a woman of 40, prematurely grey. “ I had five sons in the Boer. war. 1 have three in this war. I do not know where any one of them is.” Mrs Page’s maid is talking of leaving her. “My two brothers have gone to the war, and perhaps I.ought to help their wives and children." The Countess and the maid are of the same blood, each alike unconquerable. Mr Page did not» think with Lord Kitchener that the war would last for several veers, but he admired the thoroughness of the English methods. ' The English were slow in getting into full action," he writes, “ but now they never miss a trick.” Or again; The British are now going about the business of war as if they knew they would continue it indefinitely. The grim efficiency of: their work, even in small details. Was illustrated to day by the Government’s informing us that a German handy man whom the German Ambassador left in his embassy, with the English Government's consent, is a spy—that he sends verbal messages to Germany by women who are permitted to go homo, and that they have found letters written by him sewed in some of these women’s under-garments. This man has been at work there every day under the two very good men whom I have put in charge there, and who have never suspected him. How on earth they found this’ out simply passes my understanding. Proceeding to give further instances of attention to every phase of activity, Mr Page continues: , The Germans have far more than their match in resources and in shrewdness and —in character. As the bloody drama unfolds itself, the hollow pretence and essential barbarity of Prussian militarism become plainer and plainer; there is no doubt of that. And so does the invincibility of this race. EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION. Despite his strength and endurance, those days of strain were not without effect on the American Ambassador:— In fact, the strain on one’s ©motions, day in and day out, makes on© wonder if the world is real—or is this a vast dream? From sheer emotional exhaustion I slept almost all day last Sunday, although I had not for several days lost sleep at all. Many persons tell mo of their similar experiences. The universe seems muffled. There is a ghostly silence in London (so it seems), and only dim street' lights are lighted at night. No experience seems normal. With a wide generosity indicative of Mr Page’s fine character, he refers 1 ' in eulogistic terms to our efforts on behalf of Belgian refugees, to the work of Hoover, in London, of Whitlock in Brussels, or Herrick in Paris, and of “ another fellow, somewhere in Germany—a consul—of whom I never heard till the other day.” In all he detects a quality “ that is invincible. ‘ When folk like these come down the road, I respectfully do obeisance to them. And —its this kind of folk that the Germans have run up against. I thank Heaven I’m of their race and blood. In a letter to his son Mr Page gives a fine picture of the social life of London as it became in September, 1914. It is replete with sympathy and admiration. “This, is the reason they are going to win.’,’ ;be writes. To the President of the United States he imparts his views of English character in simple, direct terms; Old ladies and gentlemen of the great world now begin by driving to my house almost every morning while I am at breakfast. With many apologies for calling so soon and with the fear that they interrupt me, they ask if I can make an inquiry in Germany for ‘‘my eon" or ‘‘my nephew ” —“ he’s among the missing.” They never weep; their voices do not falter; they are bravo and proud and selfrestrained. It seems a sort of matter of course to them. Sometimes when they get homo they write mo polite notes thanking me for receiving them. This morning the first man was Sir Dighton Prebyn, of Queen Alexandra’s household—so dignified and courteous that you’d hardly have guessed his errand. And at intervals they come all day. Not a tear have I seen yet. They take it as a part of the price of greatness and of Empire. You guess at their grief only by their reticence. They use as few words as possible and then courteously take themselves away. It isn’t an accident that these people own a fifth of the world. Utterly unwarlike, they outlast anybody else when war comes. You don’t get a sense of fighting here—only of endurance and of high resolve. Fighting is a sort of incident in the struggle to keep their world from German domination. INSURING GERMAN EMBASSY. There is a distinct touch of humour in one of ■ his letters to Colonel House when ho writes that everybody is asking whether they should insure against Zeppelins. I told the (Spanish Ambassador yesterday that I am going to ask the German Government for instructions abcut insuring their embassy here! That the war told on Mb Page during the first three months is clearly seen from the letters written to his eldest and youngest sons. To the former: As for the Continent of Europe—forget it. We have paid far too much attention to it. It has ceased to be worth it. And now it’s of fax less value to us—and will be for the rest of your life—than it has ever been before. An ancient home of man, the home, too, of beautiful things—builflings, pictures, old places, old traditions, dead civilisations —the place where man rose from barbarism to civilisation —it is now bankrupt, its best young men dead, its system of politics and of government a failure, its social structure enslaving and tyrannical—it has little help for us. And to the latter: The world has all got itself so jumbled up that the bays are all promontories, the ■mountains are all valleys, and earthquakes are necessary for our happiness. Wo have disasters for breakfast, mined ships for luncheon, burned cities for dinner, trenches in our dreams, and bombarded towns for our small talk. With almost prophetic instinct Mr Page, even in October, 1911, pronounced the world's ultimate judgment upon Germany’s action in Belgium: The devastation of Belgium defeats the Germans—l don’t mean in battle, but I mean in the after-judgment of mankind. They cannot recover from that half as soon as they may recover from the economic losses cf the war. The reducing of these people to starvation—'that will stick to damn them in history, whatever they win or whatever they lose.