And thus, despite the fusion of races and of the great contributions of other nations to her 100 millions of people and to her incalculable wealth, the United States is yet English-led and English-ruled." This was merely a way of phrasing a great historic truth--that overwhelmingly the largest element in the American population is British in origin[51]; that such vital things as its speech and its literature are English; and that our political institutions, our liberty, our law, our conceptions of morality and of life are similarly derived from the British Isles.

Page applied the word "English" to Americans in the same sense in which that word is used by John Richard Green, when he traces the history of the English race from a German forest to the Mississippi Valley and the wilds of Australia.
But the anti-British elements on this side of the water, taking "English-led and English-ruled" out of its context, misinterpreted the phrase as meaning that the American Ambassador had approvingly called attention to the fact that the United States was at present under the political control of Great Britain! Senator Chamberlain of Oregon presented a petition from the _Staatsverband Deutschsprechender Vereine von Oregon_, demanding the Ambassador's removal, while the Irish-American press and politicians became extremely vocal.
Animated as was this outburst, it was mild compared with the excitement caused by a speech that Page made while the Panama debate was raging in Congress.

At a dinner of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, in early March, the Ambassador made a few impromptu remarks.

The occasion was one of good fellowship and good humour, and Page, under the inspiration of the occasion, indulged in a few half-serious, half-jocular references to the Panama Canal and British-American good-feeling, which, when inaccurately reported, caused a great disturbance in the England-baiting press.

"I would not say that we constructed the Panama Canal even for you," he said, "for I am speaking with great frankness and not with diplomatic indirection.