Thomas Nelson Page to Woodrow Wilson

Title

Thomas Nelson Page to Woodrow Wilson

Creator

Page, Thomas Nelson, 1853-1922

Identifier

WWP22570

Date

1918 November 5

Source

Library of Congress, Woodrow Wilson Papers, 1786-1957

Text

CONFIDENTIAL
Rome

My dear Mr. President

As the epic events of these past weeks have succeeded each other, I have felt almost as though I were close beside you and saw, not only felt, unfolding the work which you have accomplished.

How tremendous this accomplishment has been many may know, and in time many more will know. But how vast and complicated the difficulties, and the problems of solving them, few, I believe, can know so well as I who have been close to some of the most complex and difficult portions of the problems which you had to solve.

For the present, in Italy at least, the actual war has entered on a phase so new that it seems here on the outside to be over. We know that it is not over, and the people will come to know it, but they will be ready now to endure further sacrifices since they feel that the end is so near, and are realizing that the victory has been won.

Yesterday was one of the great days in which I have lived. All day long the people of Rome marched and counter-marched through the streets acclaiming victory, and winding up in a demonstration in the Corso and in the Piazza Venezia at the foot of the Victor Emmanuel Statue, the Arapatrae and at the Campidoglio, which was one of the most extraordinary manifestations of popular joy that I have ever seen. It was the more impressive because it had in it something that was very solemn.

Three times during the day great demonstrations took place under the windows of the Embassy offices, and I was called on to address the crowds on behalf of America and yourself whom they were acclaiming. I was glad to speak to them because it gave me the opportunity to impress on them the necessity for continued resolution and for the preservation of order. Your name was not only applauded wildly, but was continually shouted. In fact, you have become to the people here not only the representative of the power of America, but also of what America stands for and this, I think, is worth more than the other.

I would say, if called on to define the feeling here, that you are tremendously respected and somewhat feared by public men generally, whom you have mystified no less than impressed, but that by the common people you are adored. I might even cite instances in which this is carried to a practical extent, as of soldiers placing candles beside your picture in their barracks and dugouts. And this will interest you no less than amuse you: I was told a few days ago of an old woman saying that she had heard that over in America there was a great saint (che bel Santo quel Santo Americano) who was making peace for us.

Perhaps I use only a different terminology, for I feel that you have, under the providence of God, made peace for us, and have made a peace which will be well worth preserving.

I know very well that in the presence of this great upheval of the world all personal ambition has become merged in the sense of duty, and even pleasure in personal declarations of appreciation becomes attenuated to nothing. But I want you at least to know that, as one who believes in the principles which you have enunciated, - and I may say codified into a system for the guidance of humanity in the new world which is forming under forces which you have done so much to co-ordinate and guide, - I have always followed with such ability as I could command the course which you have laid down, and that I believe that you have been the directive power which has saved Christian civilization and order for the future generations of men.

The war, in its military phase at least, seems now almost on the point of coming to a close, though doubtless there will be many terrible battles, or rather one great and continuous battle, to fight before Germany is brought to acknowledge her decisive and complete and final defeat. But even when the military phase shall close, or appear to close, there will be problems to solve, and no less tremendous and no less perilous should they not be solved right, in which you must play the controlling part which you have played in the actual direction of the war. On the sound solution of these problems will rest the future peace and the future prosperity and the future civilization of the world. In many of these problems Italy is involved, and in many others while not actually involved she will undoubtedly be a potent influence. The whole Balkan Peninsula, the eastern Mediterranean and the entire Near East must continue a field in which the ambitions of governments and the commercial interests of peoples will come in conflict in the present as they have been in the past. Into these ambitions and interests Italy will without doubt enter in the future in some form. Her vital interests cannot be entirely walled off from the interests of those great regions which lie to the northeast and the east of her. The break-up of Austria to any extent such as appears likely at present, introduces a whole new system of problems in Europe, and those problems are in themselves new, at least in the form which they now promise to bear. One of the consequences of the break-up of Austria will be the throwing into the arms of Germany some twelve millions of Germans -- formerly Austrian subjects -- besides some millions of Magyars whose hatred of other races will Germanize them. This brings German enterprise and power of organization down towards the Adriatic, and opens up the whole field of Balkan problems. Beside this, the next danger, as I see it, is that the German people, under whatever form of Government they may profess to start their new career, have already got a start in the Ukraine and in the other western Russian provinces, extending up to the Baltic. Unless something be done to oust Germany therefrom, and secure some measurable amount of independence, Germany is likely to annex all of western Russia, at least commercially and financially and to spread her influence gradually all over Russia and possibly once more become a menace to the world.

These are some of the things which stare me in the face as I try to work out what the future will be. There are many more problems than these to face in the near future, especially that overwhelming one of starting the new world to work under its new conditions when the twenty odd million of men under arms shall be de-mobilized.

I rejoice for more reasons than one that I am an American. One of the chief of them, however, is that I feel that we have in you a leader who has shown a vision which if not prophetic has been broad enough to take within its scope all the problems which have hitherto arisen and solve them in a way to give promise that those which arise hereafter will also be solved with courage and wisdom.

I am writing Colonel House once or twice a week now and am sending him copies of the important telegRAM S bearing on conditions here in accordance with a telegram that I received from the Department. I have written him urging him to come here at the first opportunity, and I am glad to know that he thinks he will be able to do so before a great while. I consider it of great importance that he should come.

Always, my dear Mr. President,

Sincerely yours,
Tho. Nelson Page


The President,
White House.

Original Format

Letter

To

Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924

Files

http://resources.presidentwilson.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/WWI1347.pdf

Collection

Citation

Page, Thomas Nelson, 1853-1922, “Thomas Nelson Page to Woodrow Wilson,” 1918 November 5, WWP22570, World War I Letters, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.