ld simply be provoking another war, after a period of dread such as
they have lived through the last ten years; a large and increasing
proportion of the letters you see are on black-bordered paper and this
whole island is becoming a vast hospital and prisoners' camp--all which,
so far from bringing them to think of peace, urges them to renewed
effort; and all the while the bitterness grows.

"The Straus incident' produced the impression here that it was a German
trick to try to shift the responsibility of continuing the war, to the
British shoulders. Mr. Sharp's bare mention of peace in Paris caused the
French censor to forbid the transmission of a harmless interview; and
our insistence on the Declaration left, for the time being at least, a
distinct distrust of our judgment and perhaps even of our good-will. It
was suspected--I am sure--that the German influence in Washington had
unwittingly got influence over the Department. The atmosphere (toward
me) is as different now from what it was a week ago as Arizona sunshine
is from a London fog, as much as to say, 'After all, perhaps, you don't
_mean_ to try to force us to play into the hands of our enemies!'"

III

And so this crisis was passed; it was the first great service that Page
had rendered the cause of the Allies and his own country. Yet shipping
difficulties had their more agreeable aspects. Had it not been for the
fact that both Page and Grey had an understanding sense of humour,
neutrality would have proved a more difficult path than it actually was.
Even amid the tragic problems with which these two men were dealing
there was not lacking an occasional moment's relaxation into the lighter
aspect of things. One of the curious memorials preserved in the British
Foreign Office is the cancelled $15,000,000 check with which Great
Britain paid the _Alabama_ claims. That the British should frame this
memento of their great diplomatic defeat and hang it in the Foreign
Office is an evidence of the fact that in statesmanship, as in less
exalted matters, the English are excellent sports. The real
justification of the honour paid to this piece of paper, of course, is
that the settlement of the _Alabama_ claims by arbitration signalized a
great forward step in international relations and did much to heal a
century's troubles between the United States and Great Britain. Sir
Edward Grey used frequently to call Page's attention to this document.
It represented the amount o