ent did not have the first
requisite of a properly organized foreign office, for it could not be
trusted with confidential information. The Department did not tell Page
what it was doing, but it apparently told the whole world what Page was
doing. It is an astonishing fact that Page could not write and cable the
most important details, for he was afraid that they would promptly be
given to the reporters.

* * * * *

"I shall not send another confidential message to the State Department,"
Page wrote to Colonel House, September 15, 1914; "it's too dangerous.
Time and time again now the Department has leaked. Last week, I sent a
dispatch and I said in the body of it, '_this is confidential and under
no condition to be given out or made public, but to be regarded as
inviolably secret_.' The very next morning it was telegraphed from
Washington to the London newspapers. Bryan telegraphed me that he was
sure it didn't get out from the Department and that he now had so fixed
it that there could be no leak. He's said that at least four times
before. The Department swarms with newspaper men, I hear. But whether it
does or not the leak continues. I have to go with my tail between my
legs and apologize to Sir Edward Grey and to do myself that shame and to
do my very best to keep his confidence--against these unnecessary odds.
The only way to be safe is to do the job perfunctorily, to answer the
questions the Department sends and to do nothing on your own account.
That's the reason so many of our men do their jobs in that way--or _one_
reason and a strong one. We can never have an alert and energetic and
powerful service until men can trust the Department and until they can
get necessary information from it. I wrote the President that of course
I'd go on till the war ended and all the questions growing out of it
were settled, and that then he must excuse me, if I must continue to be
exposed to this danger and humiliation. In the meantime, I shall send
all my confidential matter in private letters to him."

* * * * *

Page did not regard Mr. Bryan's opinions and attitudes as a joke: to him
they were a serious matter and, in his eyes, Bryan was most interesting
as a national menace. He regarded the Secretary as the extreme
expression of an irrational sentimentalism that was in danger of
undermining the American character, especially as the kind of thought
he represented