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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 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 dollars.

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. A memorial plaque in his honor rests in Westminster Abbey in Westminster, London, UK.