part of the passing hysteria of war. This remark shows how
House was living in an atmosphere of illusion.

As the matter stands to-day our Government has sunk lower, as
regards British and European opinion, than it has ever been in our
time, not as a part of the hysteria of war but as a result of this
process of reasoning, whether it be right or wrong:

We said that we should hold the Germans to strict accountability on
account of the _Lusitania_. We have not settled that yet and we
still allow the German Ambassador to discuss it after the
_Hesperian_ and other such acts showed that his _Arabic_ pledge was
worthless.

The _Lusitania_ grows larger and larger in European memory and
imagination. It looks as if it would become the great type of war
atrocities and barbarities. I have seen pictures of the drowned
women and children used even on Christmas cards. And there is
documentary proof in our hands that the warning, which was really
an advance announcement, of that disaster was paid for by the
German Ambassador and charged to his Government. It is the
_Lusitania_ that has caused European opinion to regard our foreign
policy as weak. It is not the wish for us to go to war. No such
general wish exists.

I do not know, Mr. President, who else, if anybody, puts these
facts before you with this complete frankness. But I can do no less
and do my duty.

No Englishman--except two who were quite intimate friends--has
spoken to me about our Government for months, but I detect all the
time a tone of pity and grief in their studied courtesy and in
their avoidance of the subject. And they talk with every other
American in this Kingdom. It is often made unpleasant for Americans
in the clubs and in the pursuit of their regular business and
occupations; and it is always our inaction about the _Lusitania_.
Our controversy with the British Government causes little feeling
and that is a sort of echo of the _Lusitania_. They feel that we
have not lived up to our promises and professions.

That is the whole story.

Believe me always heartily,
WALTER H. PAGE.

* * * * *

This dismissal of Dumba and of the Attaches has had little more effect
on opinion here than the dismissal of the Turkish Ambassador[13].
Sending these was