A week or two after Colonel House had received it, the _Arabic_ was sunk with loss of American life.
Page was taking a brief holiday with his son Frank in Rowsley, Derbyshire, when this news came.

It was telegraphed from the Embassy.
"That settles it," he said to his son.

"They have sunk the _Arabic_.
That means that we shall break with Germany and I've got to go back to London." _To Edward M.House_ American Embassy, London, August 23, 1915.
DEAR HOUSE: The sinking of the _Arabic_ is the answer to the President and to your letter to me.

And there'll be more such answers.

You said to me one day after you had got back from your last visit to Berlin: "They are impossible." I think you told the truth, and surely you know your German and you know your Berlin--or you did know them when you were here.
The question is not what we have done for the Allies, not what any other neutral country has done or has failed to do--such comparisons, I think, are far from the point.