Of course, I know that the whole infernal thing is cooked up to beat you, if possible. But that is the greater reason why you must win. I am willing to be sacrificed, if that will help—for forgetting the impending row or for any reason you will.
I suppose we've got to go through such a struggle to pull our Government and our people up to an understanding of our own place in the world—a place so high and big and so powerful that all the future belongs to us. From an economic point of view, we are the world; and from a political point of view also. How any man who sees this can have any feeling but pity for the Old World, passes understanding. Our rôle is to treat it most courteously and to make it respect our character—nothing more. Time will do the rest.
I congratulate you most heartily on the character of most of your opposition—the wild Irish (they must be sat upon some time, why not now?), the Clark[53] crowd (characteristically making a stand on a position of dishonour), the Hearst press, and demagogues generally. I have confidence in the people.
This stand is necessary to set us right before the world, to enable us to build up an influential foreign policy, to make us respected and feared, and to make the Democratic Party the party of honour, and to give it the best reason to live and to win.
May I make a suggestion?
The curiously tenacious hold that Anglophobia has on a certain class of our people—might it not be worth your while to make, at some convenient time and in some natural way, a direct attack on it—in a letter to someone, which could be published, or in some address, or possibly in a statement to a Senate committee, which could be given to the press? Say how big and strong and sure-of-the-future we are; so big that we envy nobody, and that those who have Anglophobia or any Europe-phobia are the only persons who "truckle" to any foreign folk or power; that in this tolls-fight all the Continental governments are a unit; that we respect them all, fear none, have no favours, except proper favours among friendly nations, to ask of anybody; and that the idea of a "trade" with England for holding off in Mexico is (if you will excuse my French) a common gutter lie.
This may or may not be wise; but you will forgive me for venturing to suggest it. It is we who are the proud and erect and patriotic Americans, fearing nobody; but the other fellows are fooling some of the people in making them think that they are.
Yours most gratefully,
WALTER H. PAGE.
To the President.
From the President
The White House, Washington,
April 2, 1914.