noon; his purpose was to inform him that Great Britain had sent an
ultimatum to Germany. By this time Page and the Foreign Secretary had
established not only cordial official relations but a warm friendship.
The two men had many things in common; they had the same general outlook
on world affairs, the same ideas of justice and fair dealing, the same
belief that other motives than greed and aggrandizement should control
the attitude of one nation to another. The political tendencies of both
men were idealistic; both placed character above everything else as the
first requisite of a statesman; both hated war, and looked forward to
the time when more rational methods of conducting international
relations would prevail. Moreover, their purely personal qualities had
drawn Sir Edward and Page closely together. A common love of nature and
of out-of-door life had made them akin; both loved trees, birds,
flowers, and hedgerows; the same intellectual diversions and similar
tastes in reading had strengthened the tie. "I could never mention a
book I liked that Mr. Page had not read and liked too," Sir Edward Grey
once remarked to the present writer, and the enthusiasm that both men
felt for Wordsworth's poetry in itself formed a strong bond of union.
The part that the American Ambassador had played in the repeal of the
Panama discrimination had also made a great impression upon this British
statesman--a man to whom honour means more in international dealings
than any other consideration. "Mr. Page is one of the finest
illustrations I have ever known," Grey once said, "of the value of
character in a public man." In their intercourse for the past year the
two men had grown accustomed to disregard all pretense of diplomatic
technique; their discussions had been straightforward man-to-man talks;
there had been nothing suggestive of pose or finesse, and no attempts at
cleverness--merely an effort to get to the bottom of things and to
discover a common meeting ground. The Ambassador, moreover, represented
a nation for which the Foreign Secretary had always entertained the
highest respect and even affection, and he and Page could find no
happier common meeting-ground than an effort to bring about the closest
cooeperation between the two countries. Sir Edward, far-seeing statesman
that he was, had already appreciated, even amid the exciting and
engrossing experiences through which he was then passing, the critical
and almost determining part