Page Scored

Walter Hines Page -- onetime editor of the Forum, the Atlantic Monthly, the World's Work, one-time Ambassador to Great Britain --is now dead. But his reputation has grown more and more honorable, the publication of his letters has grown more and more profitable.

That being the case, Mr. Page was an excellent text for a sermon in Mr. H. L. Mencken's American Mercury. The Coolidge Myth having appeared some time ago, the Mercury (for September) carried The Page Legend. The article about Mr. Page was written by one C. Hartley Grattan.

Critic Grattan first cited the eulogies of Mr. Page: "The greatest and noblest American since Lincoln"; "The most heroic American of the War period"; "An intense patriot" (thus Charles W. Eliot, John W. Davis, Admiral Sims, Colonel House, Edward W. Bok, William H. Taft in an ad- dress to the Trustees of the Walter Hines Page School of Inter- national Relations); "A great citizen He gave his life for his

country Such a life as his

should be held up as a model to all generations." (Thus President Coolidge).

Then Mr. Grattan proceeded to tear Mr. Page's record to pieces:

"1) Page was too fond of hobnobbing with British aristocrats. Page had been born in a North Carolina hamlet; the gaudy trappings of royalty naturally made a powerful impression upon him. Things went on swimmingly, almost deliriously, for a year. He went everywhere, got to know everybody, was soon on familiar terms with dukes, princesses and members of the Cabinet."

(2) He was pro-British. Woodrow Wilson in his neutrality proclamation said: "We must be impartial in thought as well as in action. . . .Every man who really loves America will act and speak

in the true spirit of neutrality "

A British statesman said: "From the beginning he [Page] believed that Great Britain was right and Germany was wrong." Page wrote to Wilson speaking of "the completely barbarous behavior of Prussians." He swallowed the British propaganda whole. The day after the U. S. entered the War "a well known Englishman happened to meet Page leaving his house. . . .'Thank God' the Englishman said, 'there is one hypocrite less in London today. 'What do you mean?' asked Page. _ 'I mean you. Pretending all this time that you were neutral: That isn't necessary any longer.' 'You are right!' the ambassador answered as

he walked on " (Quoted by

Grattan from B. J. Hendricks' life of Page.)

3) Page was unsympathetic in enforcing U. S. rights as a neutral when Britain broke international law by going to extremes in her blockade of Germany. He fought with Lansing who tried to insist on American rights. He even gave Britain a hint to have a U. S. vessel seized by the French in order to ease up Anglo-American tension.

4) He helped to induce President Wilson to bring the U. S. into the War.

5) He said of isolationists in a letter to his son: "I have long concluded. . . that these men are the most ignorant men in the whole world; more ignorant -- because they are viciously ignorant--than the Negro boys who act as caddies at Pinehurst; more ignorant than the inmates of Morganton Asylum; more ignorant than sheep or rabbits or idiots."

Mr. Grattan concluded sarcastically: "He had guided this country to Bigger Things."