nce to the Anglo-French loan for $500,000,000,
placed in the United States in the autumn of 1915.]

[Footnote 12: The Marquis Imperiali.]

[Footnote 13: Rustem Bey, the Turkish Ambassador to the United States,
was sent home early in the war, for publishing indiscreet newspaper and
magazine articles.]

CHAPTER XV

THE AMBASSADOR AND THE LAWYERS

References in the foregoing letters show that Page was still having his
troubles over the blockade. In the latter part of 1915, indeed, the
negotiations with Sir Edward Grey on this subject had reached their
second stage. The failure of Washington to force upon Great Britain an
entirely new code of naval warfare--the Declaration of London--has
already been described. This failure had left both the British Foreign
Office and the American State Department in an unsatisfactory frame of
mind. The Foreign Office regarded Washington with suspicion, for the
American attempt to compel Great Britain to adopt a code of naval
warfare which was exceedingly unfavourable to that country and
exceedingly favourable to Germany, was susceptible of a sinister
interpretation. The British rejection of these overtures, on the other
hand, had evidently irritated the international lawyers at Washington.
Mr. Lansing now abandoned his efforts to revolutionize maritime warfare
and confined himself to specific protests and complaints. His
communications to the London Embassy dealt chiefly with particular ships
and cargoes. Yet his persistence in regarding all these problems from a
strictly legalistic point of view Page regarded as indicating a
restricted sense of statesmanship.

_To Edward M. House_

London, August 4, 1915.

MY DEAR HOUSE:

... The lawyer-way in which the Department goes on in its dealings
with Great Britain is losing us the only great international
friendship that we have any chance of keeping or that is worth
having. Whatever real principle we have to uphold with Great
Britain--that's all right. I refer only to the continuous series of
nagging incidents--always criticism, criticism, criticism of small
points--points that we have to yield at last, and never anything
constructive. I'll illustrate what I mean by a few incidents that I
can recall from memory. If I looked up the record, I should find a
very, very much larger list.

(1) We insisted and insisted and insisted, not once but half a
doze