Life and Letters of Walter H. Page

9780898753585

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Volume Three of a Three-Volume SetIn three vast and illustrated volumes, written by Burton J. Hendrick, this set is considered by many to be the definitive work on the life and labors of one of America's premier diplomats and a pioneer in publishing. Walter Hines Page (1855-1918) was an editor, publisher and diplomat, born in Cary, N.C. As editor of the Atlantic Monthly (1895-98), he added a political dimension to its coverage, boosting its popularity and prestige. In January 1900 he and Frank N. Doubleday founded the publishing house of Doubleday, Page and Company (afterward Doubleday and Company, Inc.) and the magazine The World's Work, which he edited until 1913. In 1911 Page was one of the first to propose Woodrow Wilson as a presidential candidate. One of Wilson's first acts after his inauguration in March 1913 was to appoint Page Ambassador to Great Britain. Page served during a crucial period as U.S. ambassador to Britain (1913-18). During World War I, he worked strenuously to maintain close relations between the two countries while the United States remained neutral and who, from an early stage of the war, urged U.S. intervention on an unwilling President Woodrow Wilson. Page was largely responsible for the repeal of a U.S. Panama Canal toll schedule that the British considered discriminatorily. When a German submarine sank the British steamship Lusitania (May 7, 1915), with the loss of more than 100 American lives, Page called for an U.S. declaration of war. He insisted then and later that U.S. intervention at that time would have resulted in a swift victory for the Allies. In April 1917, when Wilson did ask Congress to declare war on Germany, he used the arguments that Page had been using for two and a half years. Always in precarious health and further weakened by his labors as ambassador, Page became so ill in August 1918 that Wilson accepted his retirement. Page died shortly after returning home."'Here,' I have said to myself again and again, 'here is the voice of America's higher self. Here is a man who has unmistakably arrived at that point of view regarding our social and national destinies which all intelligent men will reach by and by.' " - Stuart P. Sherman