hope that in time I may see how to shape the constant
progression of incidents into a constructive course of events; for
we are soon coming into a time of big changes.

Most heartily yours,
WALTER H. PAGE.

_To David F. Houston_[28]
American Embassy, London [undated].

DEAR HOUSTON:

You're doing the bigger job: as the world now is, there is no other
job so big as yours or so well worth doing; but I'm having more
fun. I'm having more fun than anybody else anywhere. It's a large
window you look through on the big world--here in London; and,
while I am for the moment missing many of the things that I've most
cared about hitherto (such as working for the countryman, guessing
at American public opinion, coffee that's fit to drink, corn bread,
sunshine, and old faces) big new things come on the horizon. Yet a
man's personal experiences are nothing in comparison with the large
job that our Government has to do in its Foreign Relations. I'm
beginning to begin to see what it is. The American people are taken
most seriously here. I'm sometimes almost afraid of the respect and
even awe in which they hold us. But the American Government is a
mere joke to them. They don't even believe that we ourselves
believe in it. We've had no foreign policy, no continuity of plan,
no matured scheme, no settled way of doing things and we seem
afraid of Irishmen or Germans or some "element" when a chance for
real action comes. I'm writing to the President about this and
telling him stories to show how it works.

We needn't talk any longer about keeping aloof. If Cecil Spring
Rice would tell you the complaints he has already presented and if
you saw the work that goes on here--more than in all the other
posts in Europe--you'd see that all the old talk about keeping
aloof is Missouri buncombe. We're very much "in," but not frankly
in.

I wish you'd keep your eye on these things in cabinet meetings. The
English and the whole English world are ours, if we have the
courtesy to take them--fleet and trade and all; and we go on
pretending we are afraid of "entangling alliances." What about
disentangling alliances?

We're in the game. There's no use in letting a few wild Irish or
cocky Germans scare us. We need courtesy and frankness, and the
destin