and dedicate ourselves to this present grim business, I arranged for an American Dedicatory Service at St. Paul’s Cathedral.  The royal family came, the Government came, the Allied diplomats came, my Lords and Ladies came, one hundred wounded American (Canadian) soldiers came—­the pick of the Kingdom; my Navy and Army staff went in full uniform, the Stars and Stripes hung before the altar, a double brass band played the Star Spangled Banner and the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and an American bishop (Brent) preached a red-hot American sermon, the Archbishop of Canterbury delivered the benediction; and (for the first time in English history) a foreign flag (the Stars and Stripes) flew over the Houses of Parliament.  It was the biggest occasion, so they say, that St. Paul’s ever had.  And there’s been no spilling of American oratory since!  If you had published a shilling edition of the words and music of the Star Spangled Banner and the Battle Hymn you could have sent a cargo of ’em here and sold them.  There isn’t paper enough in this Kingdom to get out an edition here.

     Give my love to all the Doubledays and to all the fellows in the
     shop, and (I wonder if you will) try your hand at another letter. 
     You write very legibly these days!

     Sincerely yours,
     WALTER H. PAGE.

“Curiously enough,” Page wrote about this time, “these most exciting days of the war are among the most barren of exciting topics for private correspondence.  The ‘atmosphere’ here is unchanging—­to us—­and the British are turning their best side to us continuously.  They are increasingly appreciative, and they see more and more clearly that our coming into the war is all that saved them from a virtual defeat—­I mean the public sees this more and more clearly, for, of course, the Government has known it from the beginning.  I even find a sort of morbid fear lest they do not sufficiently show their appreciation.  The Archbishop last night asked me in an apprehensive tone whether the American Government and public felt that the British did not sufficiently show their gratitude.  I told him that we did not come into the war to win compliments but to whip the enemy, and that we wanted all the help the British can give:  that’s the main thing; and that thereafter of course we liked appreciation, but that expressions of appreciation had not been lacking.  Mr. Balfour and Sir Edward Carson also spoke to me yesterday much in the same tone as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

“Try to think out any line of action that one will, or any future sequence of events or any plan touching the war, one runs into the question whether the British are doing the best that could be done or are merely plugging away.  They are, as a people, slow and unimaginative, given to over-much self-criticism; but they eternally hold on to a task or to a policy.  Yet the question forever arises whether they show imagination, to say nothing of genius, and whether the waste of a slow, plodding policy is the necessary price of victory.