Walter Hines Page to Woodrow Wilson

Score one! You have done a great historic deed and demonstrated and abundantly justified your leadership.
I have been telling Bagehot’s successor in the editorship of The Economist that the passing of commercial supremacy to the United States will be dated in the economic histories from the Tariff act of 1913 just as so many things in this realm are dated from the Reform bill; and that, although nothing sudden and nothing spectacular is going to happen, the freeing of great forces will work this inevitable change by the time he can adjust the thought of his readers to it. The change will come so quietly that it will be here before they are aware.
A large section of British opinion understands this. For example, there are here in this castle of vanity and help the heads of the Scotch universities, and even they forget their quest of succour long enough to assent to this view. We can still more easily command British capital now - the best proof that we compel their proper envy.
It is so good to be alive at such a time that I have driven my golf ball clean over the greens and lost the game from excitement.