Volume I Part 13 (1/2)

Yours always faithfully, WALTER H. PAGE.

P.S. By Jove, I didn't know that I'd ever have to put the British Government through an elementary course in Democracy!

To the President.

Occasionally Page discussed with Sir Edward Grey an alternative American policy which was in the minds of most people at that time:

_To the President_

. . . The foregoing I wrote before this Mexican business took its present place. I can't get away from the feeling that the English simply do not and will not believe in any unselfish public action--further than the keeping of order. They have a mania for order, sheer order, order for the sake of order. They can't see how anything can come in any one's thought before order or how anything need come afterward. Even Sir Edward Grey jocularly ran me across our history with questions like this:

”Suppose you have to intervene, what then?”

”Make 'em vote and live by their decisions.”

”But suppose they will not so live?”

”We'll go in again and make 'em vote again.”

”And keep this up 200 years?” asked he.

”Yes,” said I. ”The United States will he here two hundred years and it can continue to shoot men for that little s.p.a.ce till they learn to vote and to rule themselves.”

I have never seen him laugh so heartily. Shooting men into self-government! Shooting them into orderliness--he comprehends that; and that's all right. But that's as far as his habit of mind goes. At Sheffield last night, when I had to make a speech, I explained ”idealism” (they always quote it) in Government. They listened attentively and even eagerly. Then they came up and asked if I really meant that Government should concern itself with idealistic things--beyond keeping order. Ought they to do so in India?--I a.s.sure you they don't think beyond order. A n.i.g.g.e.r lynched in Mississippi offends them more than a tyrant in Mexico.

_To Edward M. House_

London, November 2, 1913.

DEAR HOUSE:

I've been writing to the President that the Englishman has a mania for order, order for order's sake, and for--trade. He has reduced a large part of the world to order. He is the best policeman in creation; and--he has the policeman's ethics! Talk to him about character as a basis of government or about a moral basis of government in any outlying country, he'll think you daft. Bah! what matter who governs or how he governs or where he got his authority or how, so long as he keeps order. He won't see anything else. The lesson of our dealing with Cuba is lost on him. He doesn't believe _that_. We may bring this Government in line with us on Mexico. But in this case and in general, the moral uplift of government must be forced by us--I mean government in outlying countries.

Mexico is only part of Central America, and the only way we can ever forge a Central and South American policy that will endure is _this_ way, precisely, by saying that your momentarily successful adventurer can't count on us anywhere; the man that rules must govern for the governed. Then we have a policy; and n.o.body else has that policy. This Mexican business is worth worlds to us--to establish this.

We may have a diplomatic fight here; and I'm ready! Very ready on this, for its own sake and for reasons that follow, to wit:

Extraordinary and sincere and profound as is the respect of the English for the American people, they hold the American Government in contempt. It s.h.i.+fts and doesn't keep its treaty, etc., etc.--They are right, too. But they need to feel the hand that now has the helm.

But one or two things have first to be got out of the way. That Panama tolls is the worst. We are dead wrong in that, as we are dead right on the Mexican matter. If it were possible (I don't know that it is) for the President to say (quietly, not openly) that he agrees with us--if he do--then the field would be open for a fight on Mexico; and the reenforcement of our position would he incalculable.

Then we need in Was.h.i.+ngton some sort of Bureau or Master of Courtesies for the Government, to do and to permit us to do those little courtesies that the English spend half their time in doing--this in the course of our everyday life and intercourse. For example: When I was instructed to inform this Government that our fleet would go to the Mediterranean, I was instructed also to say that they mustn't trouble to welcome us--don't pay no 'tention to us! Well, that's what they live for in times of peace--ceremonies.

We come along and say, ”We're comin' but, h.e.l.l! don't kick up no fuss over us, we're from Missouri, we are!” And the Briton shrugs his shoulders and says, ”Boor!” These things are happening all the time. Of course no one nor a dozen nor a hundred count; but generations of 'em have counted badly. A Government without manners.

If I could outdo these folk at their game of courtesy, and could keep our treaty faith with 'em, then I could lick 'em into the next century on the moral aspects of the Mexican Government, and make 'em look up and salute every time the American Government is mentioned. See?--Is there any hope?--Such is the job exactly. And you know what it would lead to--even in our lifetime--_to the leaders.h.i.+p of the world_: and we should presently be considering how we may best use the British fleet, the British Empire, and the English race for the betterment of mankind.

Yours eagerly, W.H.P.

A word of caution is necessary to understand Page's references to the British democracy. That the parliamentary system is democratic in the sense that it is responsive to public opinion he would have been the first to admit. That Great Britain is a democracy in the sense that the suffrage is general is also apparent. But, in these reflections on the British commonwealth, the Amba.s.sador was thinking of his old familiar figure, the ”Forgotten Man”--the neglected man, woman, and child of the ma.s.ses. In an address delivered, in June, 1914, before the Royal Inst.i.tution of Great Britain, Page gave what he regarded as the definition of the American ideal. ”The fundamental article in the creed of the American democracy--you may call it the fundamental dogma if you like--is the unchanging and unchangeable resolve that every human being shall have his opportunity for his utmost development--his chance to become and to do the best that he can.” Democracy is not only a system of government--”it is a scheme of society.” Every citizen must have not only the suffrage, he must likewise enjoy the same advantages as his neighbour for education, for social opportunity, for good health, for success in agriculture, manufacture, finance, and business and professional life. The country that most successfully opened all these avenues to every boy or girl, exclusively on individual merit, was in Page's view the most democratic. He believed that the United States did this more completely than Great Britain or any other country; and therefore he believed that we were far more democratic. He had not found in other countries the splendid phenomenon presented by America's great agricultural region. ”The most striking single fact about the United States is, I think, this spectacle, which, so far as I know, is new in the world: On that great agricultural area are about seven million farms of an average size of about 140 acres, most of which are tilled by the owners themselves, a population that varies greatly, of course, in its thrift and efficiency, but most of which is well housed, in houses they themselves own, well clad, well fed, and a population that trains practically all its children in schools maintained by public taxation.”

It was some such vision as this that Page hoped to see realized ultimately in Mexico. And some such development as this would make Mexico a democracy. It was his difficulty in making the British see the Mexican problem in this light that persuaded him that, in this comprehensive meaning of the word, the democratic ideal had made an inappreciable progress in Europe--and even in Great Britain itself.