wolves devour them.
Don't you think it better to work with the Government and to try to
steer it right than to go off organizing other agencies?

God pity our new masters! The President is all right. He's sound,
earnest, courageous. But his party! I still have some muscular
strength. In certain remote regions they still break stones in the
road by hand. Now I'll break stones before I'd have a job at
Washington now. I spent four days with them last week--the new
crowd. They'll try their best. I think they'll succeed. But, if
they do succeed and survive, they'll come out of the scrimmage
bleeding and torn. We've got to stand off and run 'em, Uncle Henry.
That's the only hope I see for the country. Don't damn Houston,
then, beforehand. He's a real man. Let's get on the job and tell
'em how.

Now, when you come East, come before you need to get any of your
meetings and strike a bee-line for Garden City; and don't be in a
hurry when you get here. If a Presbyterian meeting be necessary for
your happiness, I'll drum up one on the Island for you. And, of
course, you must come to my house and pack up right and get your
legs steady sometime before you sail--you and Mrs. Wallace: will
she not go with you?

In the meantime, don't be disgruntled. We can steer the old world
right, if you'll just keep your shoulder to the wheel. We'll work
it all out here in the summer and verify it all (including your job
of setting the effete kingdoms of Europe all right)--we'll verify
it all next winter down in North Carolina. I think things have got
such a start that they'll keep going in some fashion, till we check
up the several items, political, ethical, agricultural,
journalistic, and international. God bless us all!

Most heartily always yours,

WALTER H. PAGE.

Though Mr. Wilson did not offer Page the Agricultural Department, he
much desired to have him in his Cabinet, and had already decided upon
him for a post which the new President probably regarded as more
important--the Interior. The narrow margin with which Page escaped this
responsibility illustrates again the slender threads upon which history
is constructed. The episode is also not without its humorous side. For
there was only one reason why Page did not enter the Cabinet as
Secretary of the Interior; and that is revealed in t