The World's Work for September prints some profoundly interesting letters
written by its founder, the late Mr. Walter Hines Page, when he was Ambassador in London before the war.
Many American diplomatists, like John Hay and John and Henry Adams, have excelled in the art of letter-writing, but Mr. Page's private correspondence with Mr. Wilson and Colonel House shows that he was equal to the best of them. His impres- sions of ,English society are as noteworthy as his tactful efforts to arrange the differences about the Panama Canal tolls and his
complaints of the imperfect organization of the State Depart- ment. After a State dinner he was moved to discourse on our conservative ways, and then to doubt his own conclusions.
"A real democracy seems as far off as doomsday. So you argue, till you remember that it is those same people who killed kings and made human liberty possible—to a degree—and till you sit day after day and hoar them in the House of Commons, mercilessly pounding one another. Then you are puzzled. Do they keep all these outworn things because they are incapable of changing anything, or do these outworn burdens keop them from becoming able to change anything ? "
Mr. Page resented the " sharp distinction between the American people and the. American Government " which English people,
he thought, were inclined to make. But he noted with pleasure that " they do not think of our people as foreigners." Of Sir Edward Grey he said that " he'd make a good American with
the use of a very little sandpaper." We.shall look for a further instalment of these excellent letters.
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