shock, nor a sorrow. It is exactly what we expect of Washington politicians who are ever on the look-out for an opportunity of making themselves offensive to this country, because such action, being acceptable to the vast Anglophobe vote, brings grist to their mill. We warmly welcome the prospect of the Foreign Relations Committee presenting such a Resolution to the Senate, the Senate's adopting it, and the State Department pressing these claims on our Government. Nothing less would awaken our AngloAmericanizing Press from its trance and cure it of its halucinations regarding the United States. The predominant idea of practical politicians across the Atlantic, as everyone at pains to face the facts realizes, is to score off this country. Our politicians and many prominent journals encourage these manœuvres by their abject attitude towards the United States which they affect to regard as though the great mass of Americans were animated by the amiable sentiments that may be heard after dinner in the oratory of the Pilgrims' Society, after lunch at the English Speaking Union, and at tea at the Sulgrave Institute. No one doubts that many of the organizers of these futile functions mean well and are sincere in the nonsense they talk-though others are out for a little cheap advertisement-but they are like not a few other well-meaning people, mischievous because they mislead our public concerning true American sentiment and play into the hands of Anglophobes across the Atlantic who regard us as a pack of fools who will stomach anything. The Washington Government has been so spoilt by Downing Street that the State Department is confident of getting these blockade "claims " paid if they are properly pressed. Nor can we be surprised. Indeed, we should be anxious as to what might happen if matters were fixed up behind the scenes by Responsible Statesmen, bankers and bureaucrats. Fortunately the gaff has been blown, and however anxious to "conciliate" the Americans, His Majesty's Ministers will hesitate to outrage the British people by entertaining this outrageous demand which we only hesitate to describe as "the limit " because there may be unplumbed depths beyond. The State Department

might present us with a bill for American War costs, and after we have paid that they might seek an Indemnity. This rod will be kept in pickle against some impending election.

The Word in Season

WE Confess to not often being in sympathy with German official utterances, which rarely mean what they say or say what they mean. But the German Minister of the Interior (Herr Külze), in the absence of the German Chancellor (Dr. Luther) and the German Foreign Minister (Herr Stresemann) on their rest cure at Geneva, succeeded in saying the word in season which hitherto no German public man in the front rank has had the nerve to utter. We are not surprised to find this remarkable speech slurred over or "skied" in our Progressive Press, which is becoming more German than the Germans. The occasion was a debate in the Reichstag (March 12th) on the Estimates of the Ministry of the Interior. The Minister emphasized the need of unity and a better conception of Federalism, while complaining that seven years after the Revolution there should still be officials who were disloyal to the State and who paid no proper respect to the symbols of the Republic. This accusation produced no small excitement among the Nationalists, one of whom (Herr Kube) quoted an enthusiastic speech delivered during the war on the Kaiser's birthday by the Minister of the Interior, then Burgomaster of Dresden. This attack provoked a crushing rejoinder from Dr. Külze, who said he had never disguised his sympathy with the Monarchists and was not ashamed of it, but

when a Kaiser who demanded from millions of Germans that they should stake their lives for the monarchy fled to Holland at a time when history for the first time demanded that he himself should defend the monarchical idea, the tie which bound us to him was severed. History will not seek the grave of monarchy on German soil but on the road to Holland. I could quite imagine that the monarchical idea would have risen again if the monarch had acted like Frederick the Great, who at the battle of Torgau (1760) fought from morn to eve, bespattered with mud and blood, shoulder to shoulder with his grenadiers and saved the monarchy. As far as I am concerned the monarchy is lying on the bier. One can revere the dead, but our energy must be expended in the interest of the living, in the interest of the German nation and of the German State, which are both alive.

So strange is the mentality of German Monarchists that instead of applauding this eloquent tribute to the monarchical idea, the Nationalists created such an uproar that the President of the Reichstag adjourned the Debate and the Nationalist Leader, Count Westarp, gave notice of a vote of censure on the Minister of the Interior, whom The Times Berlin Correspondent expected would be deserted by many Ministerialists. Such is post-war Germany under the influence of "the Spirit of Locarno." Any man with any respect for truth is violently assailed.

THE practice of publishing private and confidential letters and private and confidential conversations-the essence of which was their privacy and the belief of Indiscretion

the parties that they were not addressing the public-has attained the dimensions of an international scandal. It is grossly aggravated when the individuals aspersed are no longer in this world and a slur is cast on their reputation which may pass into history in the case of men occupying high official positions. We need say nothing more here of Colonel House's grotesque account of a lunch at Lord Northcliffe's table in May 1915, when military information of value to the enemy was said to have been indiscreetly disclosed by the "babblers concerned. In the grammatical construction of the Colonel's not always pellucid style, it was uncertain whether the culprit was supposed to be the Editor of the National Review (credited with military knowledge he never possessed) or our host, Lord Northcliffe, whose whole soul was concentrated on winning the war, to which he so powerfully contributed, and who would be the very last man to knowingly utter a single word that could conceivably help any enemy of his country. However, that matter is disposed of, and Lord Northcliffe's reputation could not be besmirched as "a babbler at the back," as he spared himself so little that his untimely death was directly due to his unsparing labours during 1914-18. We need say nothing more on this unpleasant episode. Lord Northcliffe's record renders him safe from the detraction of any passing war-guest he may have entertained. But

others are less fortunate because less well known to the public, and we cannot but think it a flagrant breach of taste-if nothing else—to cast reflections on the dead which, besides being outrageous, are calculated to give pain to their families and friends.

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WE should probably do more harm than good by emphasizing the case of Dr. Walter Hines Page, the American Ambassador in London, because we realize that the surest Dr. Page way to damn any American in the United States is for him to be well spoken of in London. Those of us who had the privilege and honour of meeting Dr. Page, both before and after America's entry into the war, regarded him as an American to the finger-tips, whose devotion to his own country was so keen that he could not bear seeing her going astray, as he thought, on an imperfect appreciation of the situation. He came to London without any pro-British prepossessions whatsoever. On the contrary, his attitude was one of amused and critical contempt, not unmixed with irritation at our stolidity and inertia. His sentiments were indeed typical of those of the best type of educated American who only knows England from books and who was brought up to regard her as an antique" of some distinction, but politically "a back number" living on her past. He happened, however, to get a glimpse of the England that rarely reveals itself, and practically never to foreigners. Dr. Page was too honest not to be affected, and in the light of what he saw with his own eyes he revised some of his previous prejudices against the Old Country, to his own detriment in Washington, where he was forthwith discounted as pro-British" by the President and politicians generally who had remained imbued with the feelings the Ambassador had now discarded. They consequently ignored his opinions, refused to read his despatches, and his private letters became an annoyance to the President. Since those days the tributes Page has received on this side of the Atlantic have simply confirmed suspicion on the other that he was "nobbled by London Society." In fact, there has been a regular campaign against his memory by all

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sorts and conditions of Americans, official, semi-official and unofficial, who regard any compatriot who abandons "tail-twisting" as "a backslider."

DR PAGE'S offence was, once his eyes were opened, that he could not be brought to regard the Great War as a mere branch of Washington politics, as something His Offence to be exploited for the benefit of the Democratic Party or the personal glorification of President Wilson. This naturally and inevitably made his standpoint unsympathetic to Colonel House. Moreover, as an intelligent man with some appreciation of European conditions, Dr. Page could distinguish between the belligerents as well as appreciate the issues at stake, which he considered concerned America as nearly as any Ally. He was extraordinarily tolerant of the Amateur Diplomacy of his friend "the Texas Talleyrand," who claims no small share in Page's appointment as Ambassador, but there came a point when their views diverged, because Page saw things steadily and saw them whole, and regarded the crude plans of the President's alter ego to project the President into the picture at all costs with increasing doubt, hesitation and pain. They must in his judgment be either futile or disastrous. Then it must obviously have been an unspeakable nuisance to any regular Ambassador of the United States to have a personal emissary of the White House touring the world at such a crisis, embarking on any negotiations he fancied, making what commitments he pleased, and reporting privately to the President in letters of which presumably the Ambassadors had no cognizance. No Diplomatic Service, except that of pre-war Germany, was ever asked to accept such a régime, and the Prussian practice of deputing one diplomat to surveiller others was generally voted one of the least admirable features of Teutonic policy. Were we as indiscreet as Colonel House, we should repeat a private conversation with Dr. Page at Plymouth in the summer of 1917 which clearly indicated the handicap borne by American Diplomacy through the personal relationship between Colonel House and President Wilson, accentuated