days of luncheons and dinners and garden
parties--and (what I set out to say) I got back to London last
night dead tired. To-day your mother and I came here--about
twenty-five miles from London--for a fortnight.

This is Bulwer-Lytton's house--a fine old English place hired this
year by Lady Strafford, whom your mother is visiting for a
fortnight or more, and they let me come along, too. They have given
me the big library, as good a room as I want--with as bad pens as
they can find in the Kingdom.

Your mother is tired, too. Since the American Red Cross was
organized here, she has added to her committee and hospitals. But
she keeps well and very vigorous. A fortnight here will set her up.
She enjoyed Plymouth very much in spite of the continual rush, and
it was a rush.

What the United States is doing looks good and large at this
distance. The gratitude here is unbounded; but I detect a feeling
here and there of wonder whether we are going to keep up this
activity to the end.

I sometimes feel that the German collapse _may_ come next winter.
Their internal troubles and the lack of sufficient food and raw
materials do increase. The breaking point may be reached before
another summer. I wish I could prove it or even certainly predict
it. But it is at least conceivable. Alas, no one can _prove_
anything about the war. The conditions have no precedents. The sum
of human misery and suffering is simply incalculable, as is the
loss of life; and the gradual and general brutalization goes on and
on and on far past any preceding horrors.

With all my love to you and Mollie and the trio,

W.H.P.

And so for five busy and devastating years Page did his work. The
stupidities of Washington might drive him to desperation, ill-health
might increase his periods of despondency, the misunderstandings that he
occasionally had with the British Government might add to his
discouragements, but a naturally optimistic and humorous temperament
overcame all obstacles, and did its part in bringing about that united
effort which ended in victory. And that it was a great part, the story
of his Ambassadorship abundantly proves. Page was not the soldier
working in the blood and slime of Flanders, nor the sea fighter spending
day and night around the foggy coast of Ireland, nor the statesman
bending parlia