The two countries indeed seemed to be hastening toward a crisis.
Page's urgent letter to Mr.Wilson brought a telegram from Mr.Tumulty inviting the Ambassador to spend the next evening and night with the President at Shadow Lawn, the seaside house on the New Jersey coast in which Mr.Wilson was spending the summer.

Mr.Wilson received his old friend with great courtesy and listened quietly and with apparent interest to all that he had to say.

The written statement to which Page refers in his letter told the story of Anglo-American relations from the time of the Panama tolls repeal up to the time of Page's visit to Shadow Lawn.

Quotations have already been made from it in preceding chapters, and the ideas which it contains have abundantly appeared in letters already printed.

The document was an eloquent plea for American cooeperation with the Allies--for the dismissal of Bernstorff, for the adoption of a manly attitude toward Germany, and for the vindication of a high type of Americanism.
Page showed the President the _Lusitania_ medal, but that did not especially impress him.