cleaning up the tropics under our leadership and under our code of
ethics--that everything must be done for the good of the tropical
peoples and that nobody may annex a foot of land. They want a job.
Then they'd quit sitting on their haunches, growling at one
another.

I wonder if we couldn't serve notice that the land-stealing game is
forever ended and that the cleaning up of backward lands is now in
order--for the people that live there; and then invite Europe's
help to make the tropics as healthful as the Panama Zone?

There's no future in Europe's vision--no long look ahead. They give
all their thought to the immediate danger. Consider this Balkan
War; all European energy was spent merely to keep the Great Powers
at peace. The two wars in the Balkans have simply impoverished the
people--left the world that much worse than it was before. Nobody
has considered the well-being or the future of those peoples nor of
their land. The Great Powers are mere threats to one another,
content to check, one the other! There can come no help to the
progress of the world from this sort of action--no step forward.

Work on a world-plan. Nothing but blue chips, you know. Is it not
possible that Mexico may give an entering wedge for this kind of
thing?

Heartily yours,
WALTER H. PAGE.

In a memorandum, written about the same time, Mr. Page explains his
idea in more detail:

Was there ever greater need than there is now of a first-class mind
unselfishly working on world problems? The ablest ruling minds are
engaged on domestic tasks. There is no world-girdling intelligence
at work in government. On the continent of Europe, the Kaiser is
probably the foremost man. Yet he cannot think far beyond the
provincial views of the Germans. In England, Sir Edward Grey is the
largest-visioned statesman. All the Europeans are spending their
thought and money in watching and checkmating one another and in
maintaining their armed and balanced _status quo_.

A way must be found out of this stagnant watching. Else a way will
have to be fought out of it; and a great European war would set the
Old World, perhaps the whole world, back a long way; and
thereafter, the present armed watching would recur; we should have
gained nothing. It seems impossible to talk the Great