Volume II Part 30 (1/2)
Our energetic war preparations call forth universal admiration and grat.i.tude here on all sides and nerve up the British and hearten them more than I know how to explain. There is an eager and even pathetic curiosity to hear all the details, to hear, in fact, anything about the United States; and what the British do not know about the United States would fill the British Museum. They do know, however, that they would soon have been obliged to make an unsatisfactory peace if we hadn't come in when we did and they freely say so. The little feeling of jealousy that we should come in and win the war at the end has, I think, been forgotten, swallowed up in their genuine grat.i.tude.
Sincerely yours,
WALTER H. PAGE.
_To Arthur W. Page_
American Emba.s.sy, London, Sept. 3, 1917.
DEAR ARTHUR:
... The President has sent Admiral Mayo over to study the naval situation. So far as I can learn the feeling at Was.h.i.+ngton is that the British Navy has done nothing. Why, it hasn't attacked the German naval bases and destroyed the German navy and ended the war!
Why not? I have a feeling that Mayo will supplement and support Sims in his report. Then gradually the naval men at Was.h.i.+ngton may begin to understand and they may get the important facts into the President's head. Meantime the submarine work of the Germans continues to win the war, although the government and the people here and in the United States appear not to believe it. They are still destroying seventy-five British s.h.i.+ps a month besides an additional (smaller) number of allied and neutral s.h.i.+ps. And all the world together is not turning out seventy-five s.h.i.+ps a month; nor are we all destroying submarines as fast as the Germans are turning _them_ out. Yet all the politicians are putting on a cheerful countenance about it because the Germans are not starving England out and are not just now sinking pa.s.senger s.h.i.+ps. They may begin this again at any time. They have come within a few feet of torpedoing two of our American liners. The submarine _is_ the war yet, but n.o.body seems disposed to believe it. They'll probably wake up with a great shock some day--or the war may possibly end before the destruction of s.h.i.+ps becomes positively fatal.
The President's letter to the Pope gives him the moral and actual leaders.h.i.+p now. The Hohenzollerns must go. Somehow the subjects and governments of these Old World kingdoms have not hitherto laid emphasis on this. There's still a divinity that doth hedge a king in most European minds. To me this is the very queerest thing in the whole world. What again if Germany, Austria, Spain should follow Russia? Whether they do or not crowns will not henceforth be so popular. There is an unbounded enthusiasm here for the President's letter and for the President in general.
In spite of certain details which it seems impossible to make understood on the Potomac, the whole American preparation and enthusiasm seem from this distance to be very fine. The _people_ seem in earnest. When I read about tax bills, about the food regulation and a thousand other such things, I am greatly gratified. And it proves that we were right when we said that during the days of neutrality the people were held back. It all looks exceedingly good from this distance, and it makes me homesick.
_To Frank N. Doubleday_
American Emba.s.sy.
[Undated, but written about October I, 1917]
DEAR EFFENDI:
... The enormous war work and war help that everybody seems to be doing in the United States is heartily appreciated here--most heartily. The English eat out of our hands. You can see American uniforms every day in London. Every s.h.i.+p brings them. Everybody's thrilled to see them. The Americans here have great houses opened as officers' clubs, and scrumptious huts for men where countesses and other high ladies hand out sandwiches and serve ice cream and ginger beer. Our two admirals are most popular with all cla.s.ses, from royalty down. English soldiers salute our officers in the street and old gentlemen take off their hats when they meet nurses with the American Red Cross uniform. My Emba.s.sy now occupies four buildings for offices, more than half of them military and naval.
And my own staff, proper, is the biggest in the world and keeps growing. When I go, in a little while, to receive the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh, I shall carry an Admiral or a General as my aide!
That's the way we keep a stiff upper lip.
And Good Lord! it's tiresome. Peace? We'd all give our lives for the right sort of peace, and never move an eyelid. But only the wrong sort has yet come within reach. The other sort is coming, however; for these present German contortions are the beginning of the end. But the weariness of it, and the tragedy and the cost. No human creature was ever as tired as I am. Yet I keep well and keep going and keep working all my waking hours. When it ends, I shall collapse and go home and have to rest a while. So at least I feel now. And, if I outlive the work and the danger and the weariness, I'll praise G.o.d for that. And it doesn't let up a single day. And I'm no worse off than everybody else.
So this over-weary world goes, dear Effendi; but the longest day shades at last down to twilight and rest; and so this will be. And poor old Europe will then not be worth while for the rest of our lives--a vast grave and ruin where unmated women will mourn and starvation will remain for years to come.
G.o.d bless us.
Sincerely yours, with my love to all the boys, W.H.P.
_To Frank N. Doubleday_
London, November 9, 1917.
DEAR EFFENDI:
... This infernal thing drags its slow length along so that we cannot see even a day ahead, not to say a week, or a year. If any man here allowed the horrors of it to dwell on his mind he would go mad, so we have to skip over these things somewhat lightly and try to keep the long, definite aim in our thoughts and to work away distracted as little as possible by the butchery and by the starvation that is making this side of the world a shambles and a wilderness. There is hardly a country on the Continent where people are not literally starving to death, and in many of them by hundreds of thousands; and this state of things is going to continue for a good many years after the war. G.o.d knows we (I mean the American people) are doing everything we can to alleviate it but there is so much more to be done than any group of forces can possibly do, that I have a feeling that we have hardly touched the borders of the great problem itself. Of course here in London we are away from all that. In spite of the rations we get quite enough to eat and it's as good as it is usually in England, but we have no right to complain. Of course we are subject to air raids, and the wise air people here think that early next spring we are going to be bombarded with thousands of aeroplanes, and with new kinds of bombs and gases in a well-organized effort to try actually to destroy London. Possibly that will come; we must simply take our chance, every man sticking to his job. Already the slate s.h.i.+ngles on my roof have been broken, and bricks have been knocked down my chimney; the sky-light was. .h.i.t and gla.s.s fell down all through the halls, and the nose of a shrapnel sh.e.l.l, weighing eight pounds, fell just in front of my doorway and rolled in my area. This is the sort of thing we incidentally get, not of course from the enemy directly, but from the British guns in London which shoot these things at German aeroplanes. What goes up must come down. Between our own defences and the enemy, G.o.d knows which will kill us first!
In spite of all this I put my innocent head on my pillow every night and get a good night's sleep after the bombing is done, and I thank Heaven that nothing interrupts my sleep. This, and a little walking, which is all I get time to do in these foggy days, const.i.tute my life outdoors and precious little of it is outdoors.
Then on every block that I know of in London there is a hospital or supply place and the ambulances are bringing the poor fellows in all the time. We don't get any gasolene to ride so we have to walk.
We don't get any white bread so we have to eat stuff made of flour and corn meal ground so fine that it isn't good. While everybody gets a little thinner, the universal opinion is that they also get a little better, and n.o.body is going to die here of hunger. We feel a little more cheerful about the submarines than we did some time ago. For some reason they are not getting so many s.h.i.+ps. One reason, I am glad to believe, is that they are getting caught themselves. If I could remember all the stories that I hear of good fighting with the submarines I could keep you up two nights when I get home, but in these days one big thing after another crowds so in men's minds that the Lord knows if, when I get home, I shall remember anything.