informed Colonel House at this time. "That is to raze the whole
building, with its archives and papers, to the ground, and begin all
over again."

This state of affairs in Washington explains the curious fact that the
real diplomatic history of the United States and Great Britain during
this great crisis is not to be found in the archives of the State
Department, for the official documents on file there consist of the most
routine telegrams, which are not particularly informing, but in the
Ambassador's personal correspondence with the President, Colonel House,
and a few other intimates. The State Department did not have the first
requisite of a properly organized foreign office, for it could not be
trusted with confidential information. The Department did not tell Page
what it was doing, but it apparently told the whole world what Page was
doing. It is an astonishing fact that Page could not write and cable the
most important details, for he was afraid that they would promptly be
given to the reporters.

* * * * *

"I shall not send another confidential message to the State Department,"
Page wrote to Colonel House, September 15, 1914; "it's too dangerous.
Time and time again now the Department has leaked. Last week, I sent a
dispatch and I said in the body of it, '_this is confidential and under
no condition to be given out or made public, but to be regarded as
inviolably secret_.' The very next morning it was telegraphed from
Washington to the London newspapers. Bryan telegraphed me that he was
sure it didn't get out from the Department and that he now had so fixed
it that there could be no leak. He's said that at least four times
before. The Department swarms with newspaper men, I hear. But whether it