age.

Then Colonel House explained himself. The night before, he said, he had
dined at the White House. In a pause of the conversation the President
had quietly remarked:

"I've about made up my mind to send Walter Page to England. What do you
think of that?"

Colonel House thought very well of it indeed and the result of his
conversation was this telephone call, in which he was authorized to
offer Page the Ambassadorship to Great Britain.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: Mr. David F. Houston, ex-President of the University of
Texas, and in 1912 Chancellor of the Washington University of St.
Louis.]

[Footnote 8: Charles R. Van Hise, President of the University of
Wisconsin.]

[Footnote 9: Clarence Poe, editor of _The Progressive Farmer_.]

[Footnote 10: The reference is to the meeting of the Southern and the
General Education Boards.]

CHAPTER V

ENGLAND BEFORE THE WAR

The London Embassy is the greatest diplomatic gift at the disposal of
the President, and, in the minds of the American people, it possesses a
glamour and an historic importance all its own. Page came to the
position, as his predecessors had come, with a sense of awe; the great
traditions of the office; the long line of distinguished men, from
Thomas Pinckney to Whitelaw Reid, who had filled it; the peculiar
delicacy of the problems that then existed between the two countries;
the reverent respect which Page had always entertained for English
history, English literature, and English public men--all these
considerations naturally quickened the new ambassador's imagination and,
at the same time, made his arrival in England a rather solemn event. Yet
his first days in London had their grotesque side as well. He himself
has recorded his impressions, and, since they contain an important
lesson for the citizens of the world's richest and most powerful
Republic, they should be preserved. When the ambassador of practically
any other country reaches London, he finds waiting for him a spacious
and beautiful embassy, filled with a large corps of secretaries and
servants--everything ready, to the minutest detail, for the beginning of
his labours. He simply enters these elaborate state-owned and
state-supported quarters and starts work. How differently the mighty
United States welcomes its ambassadors let Page's memorandum tell:

The boat touched at Queenstown, and a mass of Irish reporters came
aboard and wished to know what I thought of Ireland. S