[23] Just what this critical Briton had in mind, in thinking that the removal of a New York governor created a vacancy in the Vice-Presidency, is not clear. Possibly, however, he had a cloudy recollection of the fact that Theodore Roosevelt, after serving as Governor of New York State, became Vice-President, and may have concluded from this that the two offices were held by the same man.
[24] For years this idea of the stenographer back of a screen in the Foreign Office has been abroad, but it is entirely unfounded. Several years ago a Foreign Secretary, perhaps Lord Salisbury, put a screen behind his desk to keep off the draughts and from this precaution the myth arose that it shielded a stenographer who took a complete record of ambassadorial conversations. After an ambassador leaves, the Foreign Secretary, however, does write out the important points in the conversation. Copies are made and printed, and sent to the King, the Prime Minister, the British Ambassador in the country to which the interview relates, and occasionally to others. All these records are, of course, carefully preserved in the archives of the Foreign Office.
[25] The Rev. Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley, the well-known Vicar of Crosthwaite, Keswick, poet and student of Wordsworth. President Wilson, who used occasionally to spend his vacation in the Lake region, was one of his friends.
[26] It is perhaps unnecessary to say that the Ambassador was thinking only of a diplomatic "fight."
[27] The Underwood Bill revising the tariff "downward" became a law October, 1913. It was one of the first important measures of the new Wilson Administration.
[28] Secretary of Agriculture in President Wilson's Cabinet.
[29] Of Aberdeen, North Carolina, the Ambassador's brother.
[30] Of Pinehurst, North Carolina, the Ambassador's eldest son.
[31] Mr. and Mrs. Francis B. Sayre, son-in-law and daughter of President Wilson, at that time on their honeymoon trip in Europe.
[32] Mr. Robert N. Page, the Ambassador's brother, was at this time a Congressman from North Carolina.