ancial allowance for maintaining the
office, had made his position almost an intolerable one. All Page's
predecessors for twenty-five years had been rich men who could advance
the cost of the Embassy from their own private purses; to meet these
expenses, however, Page had been obliged to encroach on the savings of a
lifetime, and such liberality on his part necessarily had its
limitations.

_To Edward M. House_

London, England,
February 13, 1914.

MY DEAR HOUSE:

. . . Of course I am open to the criticism of having taken the place
at all. But I was both uninformed and misinformed about the cost as
well as about the frightful handicap of having no Embassy. It's a
kind of scandal in London and it has its serious effect. Everybody
talks about it all the time: "Will you explain to me why it is that
your great Government has no Embassy: it's very odd!" "What a
frugal Government you have!" "It's a damned mean outfit, your
American Government." Mrs. Page collapses many an evening when she
gets to her room. "If they'd only quit talking about it!" The other
Ambassadors, now that we're coming to know them fairly well,
commiserate us. It's a constant humiliation. Of course this aspect
of it doesn't worry me much--I've got hardened to it. But it is a
good deal of a real handicap, and it adds that much dead weight
that a man must overcome; and it greatly lessens the respect in
which our Government and its Ambassador are held. If I had known
this fully in advance, I should not have had the courage to come
here. Now, of course, I've got used to it, have discounted it, and
can "bull" it through--could "bull" it through if I could afford to
pay the bill. But I shouldn't advise any friend of mine to come
here and face this humiliation without realizing precisely what it
means--wholly apart, of course, from the cost of it. . . .

My dear House, on the present basis much of the diplomatic
business is sheer humbug. It will always be so till we have our own
Embassies and an established position in consequence. Without a
home or a house or a fixed background, every man has to establish
his own position for himself; and unless he be unusual, this throws
him clean out of the way of giving emphasis to the right things. . . .

As for our position, I think I don't fool myself. The j