Now when democracy and free opinion are at stake as they have not before been, we take a "neutral" stand--we throw away our very birthright.

We may talk of "humanity" all we like: we have missed the largest chance that ever came to help the large cause that brought us into being as a Nation....
And the people, sitting on the comfortable seats of neutrality upon which the President has pushed them back, are grateful for Peace, not having taken the trouble to think out what Peace has cost us and cost the world--except so many as have felt the uncomfortable stirrings of the national conscience.
There is not a man in our State Department or in our Government who has ever met any prominent statesmen in any European Government--except the third Assistant Secretary of State, who has no authority in forming policies; there is not a man who knows the atmosphere of Europe.

Yet when I proposed that one of the under Secretaries should go to England on a visit of a few weeks for observation, the objection arose that such a visit would not be "neutral." III The extraordinary feature of this experience was that Page had been officially summoned home, presumably to discuss the European situation, and that neither the President nor the State Department apparently had the slightest interest in his visit.
"The President," Page wrote to Mr.Laughlin, "dominates the whole show in a most extraordinary way.

The men about him (and he sees them only on 'business') are very nearly all very, very small fry, or worse--the narrowest twopenny lot I've ever come across.

He has no real companions.
Nobody talks to him freely and frankly.