Volume I Part 33 (1/2)

Sir Edward granted that.

”Don't you think that the French fleet ought to have a little advertising?”

”What on earth are you talking about?”

”Well,” said Page, ”there's the _Dacia_. Why not let the French fleet seize it and get some advertising?”

A gleam of understanding immediately shot across Grey's face. The old familiar twinkle came into his eye.

”Yes,” he said, ”why not let the Belgian royal yacht seize it?”

This suggestion from Page was one of the great inspirations of the war.

It amounted to little less than genius. By this time Was.h.i.+ngton was pretty wearied of the _Dacia_, for mature consideration had convinced the Department that Great Britain had the right on its side. Was.h.i.+ngton would have been only too glad to find a way out of the difficult position into which it had been forced, and this Page well understood.

But this government always finds itself in an awkward plight in any controversy with Great Britain, because the hyphenates raise such a noise that it has difficulty in deciding such disputes upon their merits. To ignore the capture of this s.h.i.+p by the British would have brought all this hullabaloo again about the ears of the Administration.

But the position of France is entirely different; the memories of Lafayette and Rochambeau still exercise a profound spell on the American mind; France does not suffer from the persecution of hyphenate populations, and Americans will stand even outrages from France without getting excited. Page knew that if the British seized the _Dacia_, the cry would go up in certain quarters for immediate war, but that, if France committed the same crime, the guns of the adversary would be spiked. It was purely a case of sentiment and ”psychology.” And so the event proved. His suggestion was at once acted on; a French cruiser went out into the Channel, seized the offending s.h.i.+p, took it into port, where a French prize court promptly condemned it. The proceeding did not cause even a ripple of hostility. The _Dacia_ was sold to Frenchmen, rechristened the _Yser_ and put to work in the Mediterranean trade. The episode was closed in the latter part of 1915 when a German submarine torpedoed the vessel and sent it to the bottom.

Such was the spirit which Page and Sir Edward Grey brought to the solution of the great s.h.i.+pping problems of 1914-1917. There is much more to tell of this great task of ”waging neutrality,” and it will be told in its proper place. But already it is apparent to what extent these two men served the great cause of English-speaking civilization. Neither would quibble or uphold an argument which he thought unjust, even though his nation might gain in a material sense, and neither would pitch the discussion in any other key than forbearance and mutual accommodation and courtliness. For both men had the same end in view. They were both thinking, not of the present, but of the coming centuries. The cooperation of the two nations in meeting the dangers of autocracy and Prussian barbarism, in laying the foundations of a future in which peace, democracy, and international justice should be the directing ideas of human society--such was the ultimate purpose at which these two statesmen aimed. And no men have ever been more splendidly justified by events. The Anglo-American situation of 1914 contained dangers before which all believers in real progress now shudder. Had Anglo-American diplomacy been managed with less skill and consideration, the United States and Great Britain would have become involved in a quarrel beside which all their previous differences would have appeared insignificant.

Mutual hatreds and hostilities would have risen that would have prevented the entrance of the United States into the war on the side of the Allies. It is not inconceivable that the history of 1812 would have been repeated, and that the men and resources of this country might have been used to support purposes which have always been hateful to the American conscience. That the world was saved from this calamity is owing largely to the fact that Great Britain had in its Foreign Office a man who was always solving temporary irritations with his eyes constantly fixed upon a great goal, and that the United States had as amba.s.sador in London a man who had the most exalted view of the mission of his country, who had dedicated his life to the world-wide spread of the American ideal, and who believed that an indispensable part of this work was the maintenance of a sympathetic and helpful cooperation with the English-speaking peoples.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 90: In a letter addressed to ”My fellow Countrymen” and presented to the Senate by Mr. Chilton.]

[Footnote 91: This was in October, 1914. In August, 1915, when conditions had changed, cotton was declared contraband.]

[Footnote 92: Mr. Chandler P. Anderson, of New York, at this time advising the American Emba.s.sy on questions of international law.]

[Footnote 93: Mr. Irwin Laughlin, first secretary of the Emba.s.sy.]

[Footnote 94: Sir Cecil Spring Rice, British Amba.s.sador at Was.h.i.+ngton.]

[Footnote 95: Sir Edward Grey.]

[Footnote 96: Senator William J. Stone, perhaps the leading spokesman of the pro-German cause in the United States Senate. Senator Stone represented Missouri, a state with a large German-American element.]

[Footnote 97: See Chapter VII.]

[Footnote 98: Private secretary to Sir Edward Grey.]

[Footnote 99: The reference is to an attempt by Germany to start peace negotiations in September, 1914, after the Battle of the Marne. This is described in the next chapter.]

CHAPTER XIII

GERMANY'S FIRST PEACE DRIVES

The Declaration of London was not the only problem that distracted Page in these early months of the war. Was.h.i.+ngton's apparent determination to make peace also added to his daily anxieties. That any attempt to end hostilities should have distressed so peace-loving and humanitarian a statesman as Page may seem surprising; it was, however, for the very reason that he was a man of peace that these Was.h.i.+ngton endeavours caused him endless worry. In Page's opinion they indicated that President Wilson did not have an accurate understanding of the war. The inspiring force back of them, as the Amba.s.sador well understood, was a panic-stricken Germany. The real purpose was not a peace, but a truce; and the cause which was to be advanced was not democracy but Prussian absolutism. Between the Battle of the Marne and the sinking of the _Lusitania_ four attempts were made to end the war; all four were set afoot by Germany. President Wilson was the man to whom the Germans appealed to rescue them from their dilemma. It is no longer a secret that the Germans at this time regarded their situation as a tragic one; the success that they had antic.i.p.ated for forty years had proved to be a disaster. The attempt to repeat the great episodes of 1864, 1866, and 1870, when Prussia had overwhelmed Denmark, Austria, and France in three brief campaigns, had ignominiously failed. Instead of beholding a conquered Europe at her feet, Germany awoke from her illusion to find herself encompa.s.sed by a ring of resolute and powerful foes. The fact that the British Empire, with its immense resources, naval, military, and economic, was now leading the alliance against them, convinced the most intelligent Germans that the Fatherland was face to face with the greatest crisis in its history.

Peace now became the underground Germanic programme. Yet the Germans did not have that inexorable respect for facts which would have persuaded them to accept terms to which the Allies could consent. The military oligarchy were thinking not so much of saving the Fatherland as of saving themselves; a settlement which would have been satisfactory to their enemies would have demanded concessions which the German people, trained for forty years to expect an unparalleled victory, would have regarded as a defeat. The collapse of the militarists and of Hohenzollernism would have ensued. What the German oligarchy desired was a peace which they could picture to their deluded people as a triumph, one that would enable them to extricate themselves at the smallest possible cost from what seemed a desperate position, to escape the penalties of their crimes, to emerge from their failure with a Germany still powerful, both in economic resources and in arms, and to set to work again industriously preparing for a renewal of the struggle at a more favourable time. If negotiations resulted in such a truce, the German purpose would be splendidly served; even if they failed, however, the gain for Germany would still be great. Germany could appear as the belligerent which desired peace and the Entente could perhaps be manoeuvred into the position of the side responsible for continuing the war. The consideration which was chiefly at stake in these tortuous proceedings was public opinion in the United States. Americans do not yet understand the extent to which their country was regarded as the determining power. Both the German and the British Foreign Offices clearly understood, in August, 1914, that the United States, by throwing its support, especially its economic support, to one side or the other, could settle the result. Probably Germany grasped this point even more clearly than did Great Britain, for, from the beginning, she constantly nourished the hope that she could embroil the United States and Great Britain--a calamity which would have given victory to the German arms.