That gaunt figure of America's time of agony proved an inspiration and hope in the anxieties that assailed the Ambassador.

"When our Civil War began," wrote Page to Col.

Edward M.
House--the date was November 24, 1916, one of the darkest days for the Allied cause--"every man who had a large and firm grip on economic facts foresaw how it would end--not when but how.

Young as I was, I recall a conversation between my father and the most distinguished judge of his day in North Carolina.

They put down on one side the number of men in the Confederate States, the number of ships, the number of manufactures, as nearly as they knew, the number of skilled workmen, the number of guns, the aggregate of wealth and of possible production.