can have any feeling but pity for the Old World, passes
understanding. Our role is to treat it most courteously and to make
it respect our character--nothing more. Time will do the rest.

I congratulate you most heartily on the character of most of your
opposition--the wild Irish (they must be sat upon some time, why
not now?), the Clark[53] crowd (characteristically making a stand
on a position of dishonour), the Hearst press, and demagogues
generally. I have confidence in the people.

This stand is necessary to set us right before the world, to enable
us to build up an influential foreign policy, to make us respected
and feared, and to make the Democratic Party the party of honour,
and to give it the best reason to live and to win.

May I make a suggestion?

The curiously tenacious hold that Anglophobia has on a certain
class of our people--might it not be worth your while to make, at
some convenient time and in some natural way, a direct attack on
it--in a letter to someone, which could be published, or in some
address, or possibly in a statement to a Senate committee, which
could be given to the press? Say how big and strong and
sure-of-the-future we are; so big that we envy nobody, and that
those who have Anglophobia or any Europe-phobia are the only
persons who "truckle" to any foreign folk or power; that in this
tolls-fight all the Continental governments are a unit; that we
respect them all, fear none, have no favours, except proper favours
among friendly nations, to ask of anybody; and that the idea of a
"trade" with England for holding off in Mexico is (if you will
excuse my French) a common gutter lie.

This may or may not be wise; but you will forgive me for venturing
to suggest it. It is _we_ who are the proud and erect and patriotic
Americans, fearing nobody; but the other fellows are fooling some
of the people in making them think that _they_ are.

Yours most gratefully,

WALTER H. PAGE.

To the President.

_From the President_
The White House, Washington,

April 2, 1914.

MY DEAR PAGE:

Please do not distress yourself about that speech. I think with you
that it was a mistake to touch upon that matter while it was right
hot, because any touch would be sure to burn the finger; but as for
the s