Volume II Part 16 (1/2)

The Secretary [of State] betrayed not the slightest curiosity about our relations with Great Britain. I saw him several times--(1) in his office; (2) at his house; (3) at the French Amba.s.sador's; (4) at Wallace's; (5) at his office; (6) at Crozier's[44]--this during my first stay in Was.h.i.+ngton. The only remark he made was that I'd find a different atmosphere in Was.h.i.+ngton from the atmosphere in London. Truly.

All the rest of his talk was about ”cases.” Would I see Senator Owen?

Would I see Congressman Sherley? Would I take up this ”case” and that?

His mind ran on ”cases.”

Well, at Y's, when I was almost in despair, I rammed down him a sort of general statement of the situation as I saw it; at least, I made a start. But soon he stopped me and ran off at a tangent on some historical statement I had made, showing that his mind was not at all on the real subject, the large subject. When I returned to Was.h.i.+ngton, and he had read my interviews with Grey, Asquith, and Bryce[45], and my own statement, he still said nothing, but he ceased to talk of ”cases.” At my final interview he said that he had had difficulty in preventing Congress from making the retaliatory resolution mandatory. He had tried to keep it back till the very end of the session, etc.

This does not quite correspond with what the President told me--that the State Department asked for this retaliatory resolution.

I made specific suggestions in my statement to the President and to Lansing. They have (yet) said nothing about them. I fancy they will not.

I have found nowhere any policy--only ”cases.”

I proposed to Baker and Daniels that they send a General and an Admiral as attaches to London. They both agreed. Daniels later told me that Baker mentioned it to the President and he ”stepped on the suggestion with both feet.” I did not bring it up. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, both General McClellan (or Sheridan[46]?) and General Forsythe were sent to the German Army. Our military ideas have shrunk since then!

I find at this date (a month before the Presidential election), the greatest tangle and uncertainty of political opinion that I have ever observed in our country. The President, in spite of his unparalleled leaders.h.i.+p and authority in domestic policy, is by no means certain of election. He has the open hostility of the Germans--all very well, if he had got the fruits of a real hostility to them; but they have, in many ways, directed his foreign policy. He has lost the silent confidence of many men upon whose conscience this great question weighs heavily. If he be defeated he will owe his defeat to the loss of confidence in his leaders.h.i.+p on this great subject. His opponent has put forth no clear-cut opinion. He plays a silent game on the German ”issue.” Yet he will command the support of many patriotic men merely as a lack of confidence in the President.

Nor do I see any end of the results of this fundamental error. In the economic and political readjustment of the world we shall be ”out of the game,” in any event--unless we are yet forced into the war by Hughes's election or by the renewal of the indiscriminate use of submarines by the Germans.

There is a great lesson in this lamentable failure of the President really to lead the Nation. The United States stands for democracy and free opinion as it stands for nothing else and as no other nation stands for it. Now when democracy and free opinion are at stake as they have not before been, we take a ”neutral” stand--we throw away our very birthright. We may talk of ”humanity” all we like: we have missed the largest chance that ever came to help the large cause that brought us into being as a Nation....

And the people, sitting on the comfortable seats of neutrality upon which the President has pushed them back, are grateful for Peace, not having taken the trouble to think out what Peace has cost us and cost the world--except so many as have felt the uncomfortable stirrings of the national conscience.

There is not a man in our State Department or in our Government who has ever met any prominent statesmen in any European Government--except the third a.s.sistant Secretary of State, who has no authority in forming policies; there is not a man who knows the atmosphere of Europe. Yet when I proposed that one of the under Secretaries should go to England on a visit of a few weeks for observation, the objection arose that such a visit would not be ”neutral.”

III

The extraordinary feature of this experience was that Page had been officially summoned home, presumably to discuss the European situation, and that neither the President nor the State Department apparently had the slightest interest in his visit.

”The President,” Page wrote to Mr. Laughlin, ”dominates the whole show in a most extraordinary way. The men about him (and he sees them only on 'business') are very nearly all very, very small fry, or worse--the narrowest twopenny lot I've ever come across. He has no real companions.

n.o.body talks to him freely and frankly. I've never known quite such a condition in American life.” Perhaps the President had no desire to discuss inconvenient matters with his Amba.s.sador to Great Britain, but Page was certainly determined to have an interview with the President.

”I'm not going back to London,” he wrote Mr. Laughlin, ”till the President has said something to me or at least till I have said something to him. I am now going down to Garden City and New York till the President send for me; or, if he do not send for me, I'm going to his house and sit on his front steps till he come out!” Page had brought from England one of the medals which the Germans had struck in honour of the _Lusitania_ sinking, and one reason why he particularly wished to see the President alone was to show him this memento.

Another reason was that in early September Page had received important news from London concerning the move which Germany was making for peace and the att.i.tude of Great Britain in this matter. The several plans which Germany had had under consideration had now taken the form of a definite determination to ask for an armistice before winter set in. A letter from Mr. Laughlin, Charge d'affaires in Page's absence, tells the story.

_From Irwin Laughlin_

Emba.s.sy of the United States of America.

London, August 30, 1916.

DEAR MR. PAGE:

For some little time past I have heard persistent rumours, which indeed are more than rumours, since they have come from important sources, of an approaching movement by Germany toward an early armistice. They have been so circ.u.mstantial and so closely connected--in prospect--with the President, that I have examined them with particular attention and I shall try to give you the results, and my conclusions, with the recommendation that you take the matter up directly with the President and the Secretary of State. I have been a little at a loss to decide how to communicate what I have learned to the Government in Was.h.i.+ngton, for the present conditions make it impossible to set down what I want to say in an official despatch, but the fortunate accident of your being in the United States gives me the safe opportunity I want, and so I send my information to you, and by the pouch, as time is of less importance than secrecy.

There seems to be no doubt that Germany is casting about for an opportunity to effect an armistice, if possible before the winter closes in. She hopes it may result in peace--a peace more or less favourable to her, of course--but even if such a result should fail of accomplishment she would have gained a breathing s.p.a.ce; have secured an opportunity to improve her strategic position in a military sense, perhaps by shortening her line in Flanders: have stiffened the resistance of her people; and probably have influenced a certain body of neutral opinion not only in her favour but against her antagonists.

I shall not try to mention the various sources from which the threads that compose this fabric have been drawn, but I finally fastened on X of the Admiralty as a man with whom I could talk profitably and confidentially, and he told me positively that his information showed that Germany was looking in the direction I have indicated, and that she would soon approach the President on the subject--even if she had not already taken the first steps toward preparing her advance to him.