Walter Hines Page to Woodrow Wilson

The rather impatient and unappreciative remarks made by the Prime Minister before a large meeting of preachers of the "free" churches about a League of Nations reminds me to write you about the state of British opinion on that subject. What Lloyd George said to these preachers is regrettable because it showed a certain impatience of mind from which he sometimes suffers; but it is only fair to him to say that his remarks that day did not express a settled opinion. For on more than one previous occasion he spoke of the subject in a wholly different tone much more appreciatively. On that particular day he had in mind only the overwhelming necessity to win the war other things, all other things must wait. In a way this is his constant mood the mood to make everybody feel that the only present duty is to win the war. He has been accused of almost every defect and falling-short in the calendar of possible short-comings, except of slackness about the war. Nobody has ever doubted his earnestness nor his energy about that. And the universal confidence in his energy and earnesty is what keeps him in office. Nobody sees any other man who can push and inspire as well as he does. It wd be a mistake, therefore, to pay too much heed to any particular utterance of this electrical creature of moods, on any subject, in any one address.

Nevertheless he hasn't thought out the project of a League to Enforce Peace further than to see the difficulties. He sees that such a League might mean, in theory at least, the giving over in some possible crisis the command of the British Fleet to an officer of some other nationality. That's unthinkable to any red-blooded son of these Islands. Seeing even a theoretical possibility even of raising such a question, the British mind stops and refuses to go further refuses in most cases even to inquire seriously whether any such contingency ever is ever likely to come.

The British Grand Fleet, in fact, is a subject that stands alone in power and value and in difficulties. It classifies itself with nothing else. Since over and over again it has saved these Islands from invasion when nothing else cd have saved them and since during this war in particular it has saved the world from German conquest so every Englishman believes, it lies in their reverence and their gratitude and their abiding convictions as a necessary and perpetual shield so long as Great Britain shall endure. If the Germans are thrashed to a frazzle (and we haven't all together done that yet) and we set about putting the world in order, when we come to discuss Disarmament, the British Fleet will be the most difficult item in the world to dispose of. It is not only a Fact, with a great and saving history, it is also a sacred Tradition and an Article of Faith.

The first reason, therefore, why the British general mind has not firmly got hold on a League is the instinctive fear that the formation of any League may in some conceivable way affect the Grand Fleet. Another reason is the general ability of a somewhat slow public opinion to take hold on more than one subject at a time or more than one urgent part of one subject. The One Subject, of course, is winning the war. Since everything else depends on that, everything else must wait on that.

The League, therefore, has not taken hold on the public imagination here as it has in the United States. The large mass of the people have not thought seriously about it: it has not been strongly and persistently presented to the mass of the people. There is no popular or general organization to promote it. There is even, here and there, condemnation of the idea. The (London) Morning Post, for example, goes out of its way once in a while to show the wickedness of the idea because, so it argues, it will involve the sacrifice, more or less, of nationality. But the Morning Post is impervious to new ideas and is above all things critical in its activities and very seldom constructive. The typical Tory mind in general sees no good in the idea. The typical Tory mind is the insular mind.

On the other hand the League idea is understood as a necessity and heartily approved by two powerful sections of public opinion
(1) the group of public men who have given attention to it, such as Bryce, Lord Robert Cecil and the like, and
(2) some of the best and strongest leaders of Labor also
(3) by the Established Church in particular. There is good reason to hope that whenever a fight and an agitation is made for a League these two sections of public opinion will win; but an agitation and a fight must come. Lord Bryce, in the intervals of his work as Chairman of a Committee to make a plan for the reorganization of the House of Lords, which, he remarked to me the other day, "involves as much labor as a Government Department," has fits of impatience about pushing a campaign for a League, and so have a few other men. They ask me if it be not possible to have good American public speakers come here privately, of course, and in no way connected with our Government nor speaking for it, to explain the American movement for a League what it means and how it was got going in order to arouse a public sentiment on the subject.

Thus the case stands at present.
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Truth and error alike and odd admixtures of them come in waves over this censored land where one can seldom get the proper cue, before the event, from the newspapers. "News" travels by word of mouth and information that one can depend on is got by personal inquiry from sources that can be trusted. There is a curious wave of fear just now about what Labour may do, and the common gossip has it that there is grave danger in the situation. I can find no basis for such a fear. I have talked with Labour leaders and I have talked with members of the Government who know most about the subject. There is not a satisfactory situation there has not been since the war began. There has been a continuous series of Labour "crises," and there have been a good many embarrassing strikes all which have first been hushed-up and settled at least postponed. One cause of continuous trouble has been the notion held by the Unions, sometimes right and sometimes wrong, that the employers were making abnormal profits and that they were not getting their due share. There have been and are also other causes of trouble. It was a continuous quarrel even in peace-times. But I can find no especial cause of fear now. Many of the Unions have had such advances of wages that the Government has been severely criticized for giving in. Just lately a large wing of the Labor Party put forth its war-aims which with relatively unimportant exceptions coincide with the best declarations made by the Government's own spokesmen.

Of course no prudent man wd venture to make dogmatic predictions. There have been times when for brief intervals anyone wd have been tempted to fear that these quarrels might cause an unsatisfactory conclusion of the war. But the undoubted patriotism of the British workman has every time saved the situation. While a danger-point does lie here, there is no reason to be more fearful now than at any preceding time when no especial trouble was brewing. This wave of gossip and fear has no right to sweep over the country now.Labour hopes and expects and is preparing to win the next General Election whether with good reason or not, I cannot guess. But most men expect it to win the Government at some time most of them after the war. I recall that Lord Grey once said to me, before the war began, that a general political success of the Labour Party was soon to be expected.
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Another wave which, I hear, has swept over Rome as well as London is a wave of early peace-expectation. The British newspapers have lately been encouraging this by mysterious phrases. Some men here of good sense and sound judgment think that this is the result of the so-called German "peace-offensive."
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It's an interesting "show" that I am enabled to watch the going of the Emperor of Austria's letter to the King of Spain to go to you; my getting a copy of it in your hands five days before you receive it from the Spanish Ambassador in Washington; reading his report to his Government about the "surprise" with which you received it, and so on and so on. All these things come to me, of course, from Admiral Hall. Now I hear (and I am afraid it is true) that Lord Beaverbrook, the new Head of Information and Propaganda, is trying to have Hall removed. That wd be one of the worst blows to us that cd happen [Beaverbrook isn't doing it in order to hit us I don't mean that for he probably knows nothing of Hall's service to us; but he has some other reason.] Of my own knowledge I know little about Beaverbrook. But he is regarded by a large section of public opinion as a Canadian scoundrel of brilliant criminality. On my own book and secretly and privately, I'm trying to see to it that Hall is retainedthrough Northcliffe and other friends of Beaverbrook.Hall is one genius that the war has developed.

Neither in fiction or in fact can you find any such man to match him. Of the wonderful things that I know he has done, there are several that it wd take an exciting volume to tell. The man is a genius a clear case of genius. All other secret service men are amateurs by comparison. If there be any life left me after this war and if Hall's abnormal activity and ingenuity of mind have not caused him to be translated, I wish to spend a week with him in some quiet place and then spend a year in writing out what he will have told me. That's the shortest cut to immortality for him and for me that has yet occurred to me. I shall never meet another man like him: that were too much to expect. Now for a Canadian promoter to come along and buy a seat in the House of Lords and get in the way of a Great Man like Hall such a thing couldn't happen except in a crazy world. And (whether it becomes me to say so or not) Bell and I have his complete confidence and that fact entitles us to some special consideration in the esteem of our friends. For Hall can look through you and see the very muscular movements of your immortal soul while he is talking to you. Such eyes as the man has! which is well, because he hasn't a hair on his head nor a tooth in his mouth. Some dreadful illness once all but killed him and left him a man of genius, a freak, if you will, as I dare say all men of genius are. My Lord! I do study these men here most diligently who have this vast & appalling War-Job. There are most uncommon creatures among them men about whom our great-grandchildren will read in their school histories; but, of them all, the most extraordinary is this naval officer of whom, probably, they'll never hear. He locks up certain documents "not to be opened till 20 years after this date." I've made up my mind to live twenty years more. I shall be present at the opening of that safe. Now he tells me certain things (and Bell always) which he doesn't tell his own Government that's my claim to distinction. He sent a "sleuth" to steal the German code from a fleeing German Minister to Turkey Persia, whereby he was able to translate the Zimmerman telegram and the letter from the Emperor of Austria to the King of Spain; and he planned the battle of the Falkland Islands, in London, exactly as Sturdee carried it out.
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Lichnowsky, the late German Ambassador- to this Kingdom, has made an interesting revelation about the work and character of Edward Grey it's all true. Grey is a man of as great character as Hall is a man of great genius.But I run the risk of wearying you, my dear Mr. President, with these personal studies. But there's no other relief from the war so pleasant to me the great beast of war which will not move, unless it move in Italy, till it can feed on the precious lives of our American youth, God help us!

Sincerely Yours,
Walter H. Page

ToThe President
The White House