Westward with the Prince of Wales

by W. Douglas Newton

CHAPTER XXIII

WASHINGTON

I

My own first real impression of the United States lay in my sorrow that I had been betrayed into winter underclothing.

When the Prince left Ottawa on the afternoon of November 10th in the President's train, the weather was bitterly cold. I suppose it was bitterly cold for most of the run south, but an American train does not allow a hint of such a thing to penetrate. The train was steam-heated to a point to which I had never been trained. And at Washington the station was steam-heated and the hotel was steam-heated, and Washington itself was, for that moment, on the steam-heated latitude. America, I felt, had rather "put it over on me."

It was at 8.20 on the night of Monday the 10th that the Prince entered the United States at the little station of Rouses Point. There was very little ceremony, and it took only the space of time to change our engine of Canada to an engine of America. But the short ceremony under the arc lamps, and in the centre a small crowd, had attraction and significance.

On the platform were drawn up ranks of khaki men, but khaki men with a new note to us. It was a guard of honour of "Doughboys," stocky and useful-looking fellows, in their stetsons and gaiters. Close to them was a band of American girls, holding as a big canopy the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes joined together to make one flag, joined in one piece to signify the meeting-place of the two Anglo-Saxon peoples also.

With this company were the officials who had come to welcome the Prince at the border. They were led by Mr. Lansing, the Secretary of State, Major-General Biddle, who commanded the Americans in England, and who was to be the Prince's Military aide, and Admiral Niblack, who was to be the Naval aide while the Prince was the guest of the United States.

The Prince in a Guard's greatcoat greeted his new friends, and inspected the Doughboys, laughing back at the crowd when some one called: "Good for you, Prince." To the ladies who held the twin flags he also expressed his thanks, telling them it was very nice of them to come out on so cold a night to meet him. Feminine America was, for an instant, non-plussed, and found nothing to answer. But their vivacity quickly came back to them, and they very quickly returned the friendliness and smiles of the Prince, shook his hand and wished him the happiest of visits in their country.

The interchange of nationalities in engines being effected, the train swung at a rapid pace beside the waters of Lake Champlain, pushing south along the old marching route into and out of Canada.

On the morning of November 11th it was raining heavily and the train ran through a depressing greyness. We were all eager to see America, and see her at her best, but a train journey, especially in wet weather, shows a country at its worst. The short stops, for instance, in the stations of great cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore were the sort of things to give a false impression. The stations themselves were empty, a novelty to us, who had had three months of crowded stations, and, also, about these stations we saw slums, for the first time on this Western continent. After having had the conviction grow up within me that this Continent was the land of comely and decent homes, the sight of these drab areas and bad roads was, personally, a shock. Big and old cities find it hard to eliminate slums, but it seemed to me that it would be merely good business to remove such places from out of sight of the railways, and to plan town approaches on a more impressive scale. America certainly can plan buildings on an impressive scale. It has the gift of architecture.

The train went through to Washington in what was practically a non-stop run, and arrived in the rain. The Prince was received in the rain at the back of the train, though that reception was truncated, so that the great Americans who were there to meet him could be presented in the dryness under the station roof.

Heading the group of notable men who met the Prince was the Vice-President, Mr. Marshall, and with him was the British Ambassador, Lord Grey, and General Pershing, a popular figure with the waiting crowd and a hero regarded with rapture by American young womanhood—which was willing to break the Median regulations of the American police to get "just one look at him."

Outside the station there was a vast crowd of American men and women who had braved the downpour to give the Prince a welcome of that peculiarly generous quality which we quickly learnt was the natural expression of the American feeling towards guests.

I was told, too, that crowds along the streets caught up that very cheerful greeting, so that all through his ride along the beautiful streets to the Belmont House in New Hampshire Avenue, which was to be his home in Washington, the Prince was made aware of the hospitality extended to him.

But of this fact I can only speak from hearsay. The Press Correspondents were unable to follow His Royal Highness through the city. We were told that a car was to be placed at our disposal, as one had been elsewhere, and we were asked to wait our turn. Wait we certainly did, until the last junior attaché had been served. By that time, however, His Royal Highness had outdistanced us, for, without a car and without being able to join the procession at an early interval, we lost touch with happenings.

By the time we were able to get on to the route the streets were deserted; all we could do was to admire through the rain the architecture of one of the most beautiful cities of the world.

Apart from the rain on the first day, there was another factor which handicapped Washington in its welcome to the Prince—the warmth of which could not be doubted when it had opportunity for adequate expression. This was the fact that no program of his doings was published. For some reason which I do not pretend to understand, the time-table of his comings and goings about the city was not issued to the Press, so that the people of Washington had but vague ideas of where to see him. The Washington journalists protested to us that this was unfair to a city that has such a great and just reputation for its public hospitality.

However, where the Prince and the Washington people did come together there was an immediate and mutual regard. There was just such a "mixing" that evening, when he visited the National Press Club.

He had spent the day quietly, receiving and returning calls. One of these calls was upon President Wilson at the White House, the Prince driving through this city of an ideal in architecture come true, to spend ten minutes with Mrs. Wilson in a visit of courtesy.

The National Press Club at Washington is probably unique of its kind. I don't mean by that that it is comfortable and attractive; all American and Canadian clubs are supremely comfortable and attractive, for in this Continent clubs have been exalted to the plane of a gracious and fine art; I mean that the spirit of the club gave it a distinguished and notable quality.

America being a country extremely interested in politics—Americans enter into politics as Englishmen enter into cricket—and Washington being the vibrant centre of that intense political concern, the most acute brains of the American news world naturally gravitate to the Capital. The National Press Club at Washington is a club of experts. Its membership is made up of men whose keen intelligence, brilliance in craft and devotion to their calling has lifted them to the top of the tree in their own particular métier.

There was about these men that extraordinary zest in work and every detail of that work that is the secret of American driving power. With them, and with every other American I came into contact with, I felt that work was attacked with something of the joy of the old craftsman. My own impression after a short stay in America is that the American works no harder, and perhaps not so hard as the average Briton; but he works with infinitely more zest, and that is what makes him the dangerous fellow in competition that he is.

The Prince had met many journalists at Belmont House in the morning, and had very readily accepted an invitation to visit them at their club, and after dinner he came not into this den of lions, but into a den of Daniels—a condition very trying for lions. Arriving in evening dress, his youth seemed accentuated among so many shrewd fellows, who were there obviously not to take him or any one for granted.

From the outset his frankness and entire lack of affectation created the best of atmospheres, and in a minute or two his sense of humour had made all there his friends. Having met a few of the journalist corps in the morning, he now expressed a wish to meet them all. The President of the Club raised his eyebrows, and, indicating the packed room, suggested that "all" was, perhaps, a large order. The Prince merely laughed: "All I ask is that you don't grip too hard," he said, and he shook hands with and spoke to every member present.

The Prince certainly made an excellent impression upon men able to judge the quality of character without being dazzled by externals, and many definite opinions were expressed after he left concerning his modesty, his manliness and his faculty for being "a good mixer," which is the faculty Americans most admire.

II

Wednesday, November 13th, was a busy day. The Prince was out early driving through the beautiful avenues of the city in a round of functions.

Washington is one of the most attractive of cities to drive in. It is a city, one imagines, built to be the place where the architects' dreams come true. It has the air of being a place where the designer has been able to work at his best; climate and a clarified air, natural beauty and the approbation of brother men have all conspired to help and stimulate.

It has scores of beautiful and magnificently proportioned buildings, each obviously the work of a fine artist, and practically every one of those buildings has been placed on a site as effective and as appropriate as its design. That, perhaps, was a simple matter, for the whole town had been planned with a splendid art. Its broad avenues and its delightful parks fit in to the composite whole with an exquisite justness. Its residences have the same charm of excellent craftsmanship one appreciates in the classic public buildings; they are mellow in colouring, behind their screen of trees; nearly all are true and fine in line, while some—an Italianate house on, I think, 15th Avenue, which is the property of Mr. McLean of the Washington Post, is one—are supremely beautiful.

The air of the city is astonishingly clear, and the grave white buildings of the Public Offices, the splendid white aspiration of the skyscrapers, have a sparkling quality that shows them to full advantage. There may, of course, be more beautiful cities than Washington, but certainly Washington is beautiful enough.

The streets have an exhilaration. There is an intense activity of humanity. Automobiles there are, of course, by the thousand, parked everywhere, with policemen strolling round to chalk times on them, or to impound those cars that previous chalk-marks show to have been parked beyond the half-hour or hour of grace. The sidewalks are vivid with the shuttling of the smartest of women, women who choose their clothes with a crispness, a flair of their own, and which owes very little to other countries, and carry them and themselves with a vivid exquisiteness that gives them an undeniable individuality. The stores are as the Canadian stores, only there are more of them, and they are bigger. Their windows make a dado of attractiveness along the streets, but, all the same, I do not think the windows are dressed quite as well as in London, and I'm nearly sure not so well as in Canada—but this is a mere masculine opinion.

Through this attractive city the Prince drove in a round of ceremonies. His first call was at the Headquarters of the American Red Cross, then wrung with the fervours of a "tag" week of collecting. From here he went to the broad, sweet park beside the Potomac, where a noble memorial was being erected to the memory of Lincoln. This, as might be expected from this race of fine builders, is an admirable Greek structure admirably situated in the green of the park beside the river.

The Prince went over the building, and gained an idea of what it would be like on completion from the plans. He also surprised his guides by his intimate knowledge of Lincoln's life and his intense admiration for him.

At the hospital, shortly after, he visited two thousand of "My comrades in arms," as he called them. Outside the hospital on the lawns were many men who had been wounded at Château Thierry, some in wheeled chairs. Seeing them, the Prince swung aside from his walk to the hospital entrance and chatted with them, before entering the wards to speak with others of the wounded men.

On leaving the hospital he was held up. A Red Cross nurse ran up to him and "tagged" him, planting the little Red Cross button in his coat and declaring that the Prince was enrolled in the District Chapter. The Prince very promptly countered with a dollar bill, the official subscription, saying that his enrolment must be done in proper style and on legal terms.

In the afternoon, the Prince utilized his free time in making a call on the widow of Admiral Dewey, spending a few minutes in interesting conversation with her.

The evening was given over to one of the most brilliant scenes of the whole tour. At the head of the splendid staircase of white marble in the Congress Library he held a reception of all the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives, their wives and their families.

Even to drive to such a reception was to experience a thrill.

As the Prince drove down the straight and endless avenues that strike directly through Washington to the Capitol, like spokes to the hub of a vast wheel, he saw that immense, classic building shining above the city in the sky. In splendid and austere whiteness the Capitol rises terrace upon terrace above the trees, its columns, its cornices and its dome blanched in the cold radiance of scores of arc lights hidden among the trees.

Like fireflies attracted to this centre of light, cars moved their sparkling points of brightness down the vivid avenues, and at the vestibule of the Library, which lies in the grounds apart from the Capitol, set down fit denizens for this kingdom of radiance.

Senators and parliamentarians generally are sober entities, but wives and daughters made up for them in colour and in comeliness. In cloth of gold, in brocades, in glowing satin and flashing silk, multi-coloured and ever-shifting, a stream of jewelled vivacity pressed up the severe white marble stairs in the severe white marble hall. There could not have been a better background for such a shining and pulsating mass of living colour. There was no distraction from that warm beauty of moving humanity; the flowers, too, were severe, severe and white; great masses of white chrysanthemums were all that was needed, were all that was there.

And at the head of the staircase a genius in design had made one stroke of colour, one stroke of astounding and poignant scarlet. On this scarlet carpet the Prince in evening dress stood and encountered the tide of guests that came up to him, were received by him, and flowed away from him in a thousand particles and drops of colour, as women, with all the vivacity of their clothes in their manner, and men in uniforms or evening dress, striving to keep pace with them, went drifting through the high, clear purity of the austere corridors.

It was a scene of infinite charm. It was a scene of infinite significance, also. For close to the Prince as he stood and received the men and women of America, were many original documents dealing with the separation of England and the American colonies. There was much in the fact that a Prince of England should be receiving the descendants of those colonies in such surroundings, and meeting those descendants with a friendliness and frankness which equalled their own frank friendliness.

III

Thursday, November 14th, was a day of extreme interest for the Prince. It was the day when he visited the home of the first President of America, and also visited, in his home, the President in power today.

The morning was given over to an investiture of the American officers and nurses who had won British honours during the war. It was held at Belmont House, and was a ceremony full of colour. Members of all the diplomatic corps in Washington in their various uniforms attended, and these were grouped in the beautiful ballroom full of splendid pictures and wonderful china. The simplicity of the investiture itself stood out against the colourful setting as generals in khaki, admirals in blue, the rank and file of both services, and the neat and picturesque Red Cross nurses came quietly across the polished floor to receive their decorations and a comradely hand-clasp from the Prince.

It was after lunch that the Prince motored out to Mount Vernon, the home and burial-place of Washington, to pay his tribute to the great leader of the first days of America. It is a serene and beautiful old house, built in the colonial style, with a pillared verandah along its front. The visit here was of the simplest kind.

At the modest tomb of the great general and statesman, which is near the house, the Prince in silence deposited a wreath, and a little distance away he also planted a cedar to commemorate his visit. He showed his usual keen curiosity in the house, whose homely rooms of mellow colonial furniture seemed as though they might be filled at any moment with gentlemen in hessians and brave coats, whose hair was in queues and whose accents would be loud and rich in condemnation of the interference of the Court Circle overseas.

Showing interest in the historic details of the house, the picture of his grandfather abruptly filled him with anxiety. He looked at the picture and asked if "Baron Renfrew" (King Edward) had worn a top hat on his visit, and from his nervousness it seemed that he felt that his own soft felt hat was not quite the thing. He was reassured, however, on this point, for democracy has altered many things since the old days, including hats.

Both on his way out, and his return journey, the Prince was the object of enthusiasm from small groups who recognized him, most of whom had trusted to luck or their intuition for their chance of seeing him. About the entrance of the White House, to which he drove, there was a small and ardent crowd, which cheered him when he swept through the gates with his motor-cycle escort, and bought photographs of him from hawkers when he had passed. The hawker, in fact, did a brisk trade.

There had been much speculation whether His Royal Highness would be able to see President Wilson at all, for he was yet confined to his bed. The doctors decided for it, and there was a very pleasant meeting which seems to have helped the President to renew his good spirits in the youthful charm of his visitor.

After taking tea with Mrs. Wilson, His Royal Highness went up to the room of the President on the second floor, and Mr. Wilson, propped up in bed, received him. The friendship that had begun in England was quickly renewed, and soon both were laughing over the Prince's experiences on his tour and "swopping" impressions.

Mr. Wilson's instinctive vein of humour came back to him under the pleasure of the reunion, and he pointed out to the Prince that if he was ill in bed, he had taken the trouble to be ill in a bed of some celebrity. It was a bed that made sickness auspicious. King Edward had used it when he had stayed at the White House as "Baron Renfrew," and President Lincoln had also slept on it during his term of office, which perhaps accounted for its massive and rugged utility.

The visit was certainly a most attractive one for the President, and had an excellent effect; his physician reported the next morning that Mr. Wilson's spirits had risen greatly, and that as a result of the enjoyable twenty minutes he had spent with the Prince. On Friday, November 15th, the Prince went to the United States Naval College at Annapolis, a place set amid delightful surroundings. He inspected the whole of the Academy, and was immensely impressed by the smartness of the students, who, themselves, marked the occasion by treating him to authentic college yells on his departure.

The week-end was spent quietly at the beautiful holiday centre of Sulphur Springs. It was a visit devoted to privacy and golf.

IV

During our stay in Washington the air was thick with politics, for it was the week in which the Senate were dealing with Clause Ten of the Peace Treaty. The whole of Washington, and, in fact, the whole of America, was tingling with politics, and we could not help being affected by the current emotion.

I am not going to attempt to discuss American politics, but I will say that it seemed to me that politics enter more personally into the life of Americans than with the British, and that they feel them more intensely. At the same time I had a definite impression that American politics have a different construction to ours. The Americans speak of "The Political Game," and I had the feeling that it was a game played with a virtuosity of tactics and with a metallic intensity, and the principle of the game was to beat the other fellows. So much so that the aim and end of politics were obscured, and that the battle was fought not about measures but on the advantages one party would gain over another by victory.

That is, the "Political Game" is a game of the "Ins" and "Outs" played for parliamentary success with the habitual keenness and zest of the American.

This is not a judgment but an impression. I do not pretend to know anything of America. I do not think any one can know America well unless he is an American. Those who think that America quickly yields its secrets to the British mind simply because America speaks the English language need the instruction of a visit to America.

America has all the individuality and character of a separate and distinct State. To think that the United States is a sort of Transatlantic Britain is simply to approach the United States with a set of preconceived notions that are bound to suffer considerable jarring. Both races have many things in common, that is obvious from the fact of a common language, and, in a measure, from a common descent; but they have things that are not held in common. It needs a closer student of America than I am to go into this; I merely give my own impression, and perhaps a superficial one at that. It may offer a point of elucidation to those people who find themselves shocked because English-speaking America sometimes does not act in an English manner, or respond to English acts.

America is America first and all the time; it is as complete and as definite in its spirits as the oldest of nations, and in its own way. Its patriotism is intense, more intense than British patriotism (though not more real), because by nature the American is more intense. The vivid love of Americans for America is the same type of passion that the Frenchman has for France.

The character of the American, as I encountered him in Washington, Detroit, and New York—a very limited orbit—suggested differences from the character of the Englishman. The American, as I see him, is more simple, more puritan, and more direct than the Briton. His generosity is a most astonishing thing. He is, as far as I can see, a genuine lover of his brother-man, not theoretically but actively, for he is anxious to get into contact, to "mix," to make the most of even a chance acquaintance. Simply and directly he exposes the whole of himself, says what he means and withholds nothing, so that acquaintance should be made on an equitable and genuine basis. To the more conservative Briton this is alarming; brought up in a land of reticences, the Briton wonders what the American is "getting at," what does he want? What is his game? The American on his side is baffled by the British habit of keeping things back, and he, too, perhaps wonders why this fellow is going slow with me? Doesn't he want to be friends?

Personally, I think that the directness and simplicity of the Americans is the directness and simplicity of the artist, the man who has no use for unessentials. And one gets this sense of artistry in an American's business dealings. He goes directly at his object, and he goes with a concentrated power and a zest that is exhilarating. Here, too, he exposes his hand in a way bewildering to the Britisher, who sometimes finds the American so candid in his transactions that he becomes suspicious of there being something more behind it.

To the American work is something zestful, joyous. He likes to get things done; he likes to do big things with a big gesture—sometimes to the damage of detail, which he has overlooked—for him work is craftsmanship, a thing to be carried through with the delight of a craftsman. He is, in fact, the artist as business man.

Like all artists he has an air of hardness, the ruthlessness to attain an end. But like all artists he is quick and generous, vivid in enthusiasm and hard to daunt. Like the artist he is narrow in his point of view at times and decisive in opinion—simply because his own point of vision is all-absorbing.

This, for example, is apparent in his democracy, which is extraordinarily wide in certain respects, and singularly restricted in others—an example of this is the way the Americans handle offenders against their code; whether they be I.W.W., strikers or the like, their attitude is infinitely more ruthless than the British attitude. Another example is, having so splendid a freedom, they allow themselves to be "bossed" by policemen, porters and a score of others who exert an authority so drastic on occasions that no Briton would stand it.

But over all I was struck by the vividity of the Americans I met. Business men, journalists, writers, store girls, clerks, clubmen, railway men—all of them had an air of passionate aliveness, an intellectual avidity that made contact with them an affair of delightful excitement.