age.

"Mr. Ambassador, there was just one thing wrong with that service."

"What was that?"

"We wanted to yell, and we couldn't."

"Then why don't you yell now?"

The boy jumped on a chair and began waving his napkin. "The Ambassador
says we may yell," he cried. "Let's yell!"

"And so," said Page, telling the story, "they yelled for five minutes
and I yelled with them. We all felt better in consequence."

This geniality, this disposition not to take life too solemnly,
sometimes lightened up the sombre atmosphere of the Foreign Office
itself. "Mr. Balfour went on a sort of mild rampage yesterday," Page
records. "The British and American navies had come to an arrangement
whereby the Brazilian ships that are coming over to help us fight
should join the American unit, not the British, as was at first
proposed. Washington telegraphed me that the British Minister at Rio was
blocking the game by standing out for the first British idea--that the
Brazilian ships should join the British. It turned out in the
conversation that the British Minister had not been informed of the
British-American naval arrangement. Mr. Balfour sent for Lord Hardinge.
He called in one of the private secretaries. Was such a thing ever heard
of?

"Did you ever know,' said the indignant Mr. Balfour, turning to me, 'of
such a thing as a minister not even being informed of his Government's
decisions?' 'Yes,' I said, 'if I ransack my memory diligently, I think I
could find such cases.' The meeting went into laughter!"

Evidently the troubles which Page was having with his own State
Department were not unfamiliar to British officialdom.

Page's letters sufficiently reveal his fondness for Sir Edward Grey and
the splendid relations that existed between them. The sympathetic chords
which the two men struck upon their first meeting only grew stronger
with time. A single episode brings out the bonds that drew them
together. It took place at a time when the tension over the blockade was
especially threatening. One afternoon Page asked for a formal interview;
he had received another exceedingly disagreeable protest from
Washington, with instructions to push the matter to a decision; the
Ambassador left his Embassy with a grave expression upon his face; his
associates were especially worried over the outcome. So critical did the
situation seem that the most important secretaries gathered in the
Ambassador's room, awaiting his return, their nerves strung