He had come to London with no experience in diplomacy.

Though the possibility of such an outbreak as this war had been in every man's consciousness for a generation, it had always been as something certain yet remote; most men thought of it as most men think of death--as a fatality which is inevitable, but which is so distant that it never becomes a reality.

Thus Page, when he arrived in London, did not have the faintest idea of the experience that awaited him.

Most people would have thought that his quiet and studious and unworldly life had hardly prepared him to become the representative of the most powerful neutral power at the world's capital during the greatest crisis of modern history.

To what an extent that impression was justified the happenings of the next four years will disclose; it is enough to point out in this place that in one respect at least the war found the American Ambassador well prepared.