the particular problem that was uppermost in
his thoughts. He never rose until he had solved it or at least until he
had decided upon a course of action. He would then get up abruptly, go
to bed, and sleep like a child. The one thing that made it possible for
a man of his delicate frame, racked as it was by anxiety and over work,
to keep steadily at his task, was the wonderful gift which he possessed
of sleeping.

Page had thought out many problems in this way. The tension caused by
the sailing of the _Dacia_, in January, 1915, and the deftness with
which the issue had been avoided by substituting a French for a British
cruiser, has already been described. Page discovered this solution on
one of these all-night self-communings. It was almost two o'clock in the
morning that he rose, said to himself, "I've got it!" and then went
contentedly to bed. And during the anxious months that followed the
_Lusitania_, the _Arabic_, and those other outrages which have now
taken their place in history, he spent night after night turning the
matter over in his mind. But he found no way out of the humiliations
presented by the policy of Washington.

"Here we are swung loose in time," he wrote to his son Arthur, a few
days after the first _Lusitania_ note had been sent to Germany, "nobody
knows the day or the week or the month or the year--and we are caught on
this island, with no chance of escape, while the vast slaughter goes on
and seems just beginning, and the degradation of war goes on week by
week; and we live in hope that the United States will come in, as the
only chance to give us standing and influence when the reorganization of
the world must begin. (Beware of betraying the word 'hope'!) It has all
passed far beyond anybody's power to describe. I simply go on day by day
into unknown experiences and emotions, seeing nothing before me very
clearly and remembering only dimly what lies behind. I can see only one
proper thing: that all the world should fall to and hunt this wild beast
down.

"Two photographs of little Mollie[1] on my mantelpiece recall persons
and scenes and hopes unconnected with the war: few other things can.
Bless the baby, she couldn't guess what a sweet purpose she serves."

* * * * *

The sensations of most Americans in London during this crisis are almost
indescribable. Washington's failure promptly to meet the situation
affected them with astonishment and humiliation. Co