Walter Hines Page

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Walter Hines Page (August 15, 1855 - December 21, 1918) was an American journalist, publisher, and diplomat. He was the United States ambassador to the United Kingdom during World War I.

Walter Hines Page

Born in Cary, North Carolina, Page was educated at Trinity College (Duke University), then at Randolph-Macon College and Johns Hopkins University. His studies complete, he began a journalistic career editing the St. Joseph Gazette. Later he edited The Atlantic Monthly. He was partner and vice president of Doubleday, Page & Co. from 1900 to 1913, as well as editor, of World's Work magazine, when he was appointed ambassador to Britain by President Woodrow Wilson.

Page was a founding member of the Watauga Club in 1884, along with Arthur Winslow and William Joseph Peele. Together, they memorialized the North Carolina General Assembly early in 1885 to create an institution for instruction in "wood-work, mining, metallurgy, practical agriculture and in such other branches of industrial education as may be deemed expedient," establishing what is now North Carolina State University.

Page believed that a free and open education was fundamental to democracy. In 1902 he published "The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths" (New York: Doubleday, Page). He felt that nothing -- class, economic means, race, religion -- should be a barrier to education.

Page was one of the key figures involved in bringing the United States into World War I on the Allied side. A proud Southerner, he admired his British roots and assumed that the United Kingdom was fighting a war for democracy. As ambassador to Britain, he defended British policies to Wilson and so helped to shape a pro-Allied slant in the President and in America as a whole.

When ambassador in London, on March 5, 1917, Page sent a message to Wilson saying that the British-French front was about to break down unless it could count on American help. This message did not correspond to the facts and was probably sent on request from J. P. Morgan & Co. who paid Page an annual salary of $25,000.

Page was criticized for his unabashedly pro-British stance as it seemed to keep him from what his job was supposed to be, the defending of the USA's interests in the face of British criticism.

One month after Page's message to Wilson, the U.S. Congress declared war on Germany.

The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, by Burton J. Hendrick, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1923, and The Training of an American: The Earlier Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, by Burton J. Hendrick, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1929.

There is a Walter Hines Page High School in Greensboro, North Carolina, and a Walter Hines Page Research Professor of Literature (currently Ariel Dorfman) at Duke University. A memorial plaque in his honor rests in Westminster Abbey in Westminster, London, UK.^[1] He became ill and resigned his post as Ambassador to the Court of St. James and returned to his home in Pinehurst, North Carolina, where he died and he is buried in Old Bethesda Cemetery in Aberdeen, North Carolina.