For this reason it is a calamity that most of these letters have not been preserved.

The few that have survived are interesting not only in themselves; they reveal Page's innermost thoughts on the subject of Woodrow Wilson.

That he admired the new President is evident, yet these letters make it clear that, even in 1912 and 1913, there was something about Mr.Wilson that caused him to hesitate, to entertain doubts, to wonder how, after all, the experiment was to end.
To Edwin A.Alderman Garden City, L.I.
December 31, 1912.
MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN: I have a new amusement, a new excitement, a new study, as you have and as we all have who really believe in democracy--a new study, a new hope, and sometimes a new fear; and its name is Wilson.

I have for many years regarded myself as an interested, but always a somewhat detached, outsider, believing that the democratic idea was real and safe and lifting, if we could ever get it put into action, contenting myself ever with such patches of it as time and accident and occasion now and then sewed on our gilded or tattered garments.
But now it is come--the real thing; at any rate a man somewhat like us, whose thought and aim and dream are our thought and aim and dream.

That's enormously exciting! I didn't suppose I'd ever become so interested in a general proposition or in a governmental hope.
Will he do it?
Can he do it?
Can anybody do it?
How can we help him do it?
Now that the task is on him, does he really understand?
Do I understand him and he me?
There's a certain unreality about it.
The man himself--I find that nobody quite knows him now.