tal error. In the
economic and political readjustment of the world we shall be "out of the
game," in any event--unless we are yet forced into the war by Hughes's
election or by the renewal of the indiscriminate use of submarines by
the Germans.

There is a great lesson in this lamentable failure of the President
really to lead the Nation. The United States stands for democracy and
free opinion as it stands for nothing else and as no other nation stands
for it. Now when democracy and free opinion are at stake as they have
not before been, we take a "neutral" stand--we throw away our very
birthright. We may talk of "humanity" all we like: we have missed the
largest chance that ever came to help the large cause that brought us
into being as a Nation....

And the people, sitting on the comfortable seats of neutrality upon
which the President has pushed them back, are grateful for Peace, not
having taken the trouble to think out what Peace has cost us and cost
the world--except so many as have felt the uncomfortable stirrings of
the national conscience.

There is not a man in our State Department or in our Government who has
ever met any prominent statesmen in any European Government--except the
third Assistant Secretary of State, who has no authority in forming
policies; there is not a man who knows the atmosphere of Europe. Yet
when I proposed that one of the under Secretaries should go to England
on a visit of a few weeks for observation, the objection arose that
such a visit would not be "neutral."

III

The extraordinary feature of this experience was that Page had been
officially summoned home, presumably to discuss the European situation,
and that neither the President nor the State Department apparently had
the slightest interest in his visit.

"The President," Page wrote to Mr. Laughlin, "dominates the whole show
in a most extraordinary way. The men about him (and he sees them only on
'business') are very nearly all very, very small fry, or worse--the
narrowest twopenny lot I've ever come across. He has no real companions.
Nobody talks to him freely and frankly. I've never known quite such a
condition in American life." Perhaps the President had no desire to
discuss inconvenient matters with his Ambassador to Great Britain, but
Page was certainly determined to have an interview with the President.
"I'm not going back to London," he wrote Mr. Laughlin, "till the
President has said something to me or at leas