THE AMBASSADOR AND THE LAWYERS
References in the foregoing letters show that Page was still having his
troubles over the blockade. In the latter part of 1915, indeed, the
negotiations with Sir Edward Grey on this subject had reached their
second stage. The failure of Washington to force upon Great Britain an
entirely new code of naval warfare--the Declaration of London--has
already been described. This failure had left both the British Foreign
Office and the American State Department in an unsatisfactory frame of
mind. The Foreign Office regarded Washington with suspicion, for the
American attempt to compel Great Britain to adopt a code of naval
warfare which was exceedingly unfavourable to that country and
exceedingly favourable to Germany, was susceptible of a sinister
interpretation. The British rejection of these overtures, on the other
hand, had evidently irritated the international lawyers at Washington.
Mr. Lansing now abandoned his efforts to revolutionize maritime warfare
and confined himself to specific protests and complaints. His
communications to the London Embassy dealt chiefly with particular ships
and cargoes. Yet his persistence in regarding all these problems from a
strictly legalistic point of view Page regarded as indicating a
restricted sense of statesmanship.
_To Edward M. House_
London, August 4, 1915.
MY DEAR HOUSE:
... The lawyer-way in which the Department goes on in its dealings
with Great Britain is losing us the only great international
friendship that we have any chance of keeping or that is worth
having. Whatever real principle we have to uphold with Great
Britain--that's all right. I refer only to the continuous series of
nagging incidents--always criticism, criticism, criticism of small
points--points that we have to yield at last, and never anything
constructive. I'll illustrate what I mean by a few incidents that I
can recall from memory. If I looked up the record, I should find a
very, very much larger list.
(1) We insisted and insisted and insisted, not once but half a
dozen times, at the very beginning of the war, on England's
adoption of the Declaration of London entire in spite of the fact
that Parliament had distinctly declined to adopt it. Of course we
had to give in--after we had produced a distinctly unfriendly
atmosphere and much feeling.
(2) We denied the British right to put copper on the contraband
list--much to their annoyance. Of course we had at last to
acquiesce. They were within their rights.
(3) We protested against bringing ships into port to examine them.
Of course we had to give in--after producing irritation.
(4) We made a great fuss about stopped telegrams. We have no case
at all; but, even after acknowledging that we have no case, every
Pouch continues to bring telegrams with the request that I ask an
explanation why they were stopped. Such explanations are
practically refused. I have 500 telegrams. Periodically I wire the
state of the case and ask for more specific instructions. I never
get an answer to these requests. But the Department continues to
send the telegrams! We confessedly have no case here; and this
method can produce nothing but irritation.
I could extend this list to 100 examples--of mere lawyer-like
methods--mere useless technicalities and objections which it is
obvious in the beginning cannot be maintained. A similar method is
now going on about cotton. Now this is not the way Sir Edward Grey
takes up business. It's not the way I've done business all my life,
nor that you have, nor other frank men who mean what they say and
do not say things they do not mean. The constant continuation of
this method is throwing away the real regard and confidence of the
British Government and of the British public--very fast, too.
I sometimes wish there were not a lawyer in the world. I heard the
President say once that it took him twenty years to recover from
his legal habit of mind. Well, his Administration is suffering from
it to a degree that is pathetic and that will leave bad results for
100 years.
I suspect that in spite of all the fuss we have made we shall at
last come to acknowledge the British blockade; for it is pretty
nearly parallel to the United States blockade of the South during
our Civil War. The only difference is--they can't make the blockade
of the Baltic against the traffic from the Scandinavian neutral
states effective. That's a good technical objection; but, since
practically all the traffic between those States and Germany is in
our products, much of the real force of it is lost.
If a protest is made against cotton being made contraband--it'll
amount to nothing and give only irritation. It will only play into
Hoke Smith[14]--German hands and accomplish nothing here. We make
as much fuss about points which we have silently to yield later as
about a real principle. Hence they all say that the State
Department is merely captious, and they pay less and less attention
to it and care less and less for American opinion--if only they can
continue to get munitions. We are reducing English regard to this
purely mercenary basis....
We are--under lawyers' quibbling--drifting apart very rapidly, to
our complete isolation from the sympathy of the whole world.
Yours forever sincerely,
W.H.P.
Page refers in this letter to the "blockade"; this was the term which
the British Government itself used to describe its restrictive measures
against German commerce, and it rapidly passed into common speech. Yet
the truth is that Great Britain never declared an actual blockade
against Germany. A realization of this fact will clear up much that is
obscure in the naval warfare of the next two years. At the beginning of
the Civil War, President Lincoln laid an interdict on all the ports of
the Confederacy; the ships of all nations were forbidden entering or
leaving them: any ship which attempted to evade this restriction, and
was captured doing so, was confiscated, with its cargo. That was a
blockade, as the term has always been understood. A blockade, it is well
to keep in mind, is a procedure which aims at completely closing the
blockaded country from all commercial intercourse with the world. A
blockading navy, if the blockade is successful, or "effective,"
converts the whole country into a beleaguered fortress, just as an army,
surrounding a single town, prevents goods and people from entering or
leaving it. Precisely as it is the purpose of a besieging army to starve
a particular city or territory into submission, so it is the aim of a
blockading fleet to enforce the same treatment on the nation as a whole.
It is also essential to keep in mind that the question of contraband has
nothing to do with a blockade, for, under this drastic method of making
warfare, everything is contraband. Contraband is a term applied to
cargoes, such as rifles, machine guns, and the like, which are needed in
the prosecution of war.
That a belligerent nation has the right to intercept such munitions on
the way to its enemy has been admitted for centuries. Differences of
opinion have raged only as to the extent to which this right could be
carried--the particular articles, that is, that constituted contraband,
and the methods adopted in exercising it. But the important point to be
kept in mind is that where there is a blockade, there is no contraband
list--for everything automatically becomes contraband. The seizure of
contraband on the high seas is a war measure which is availed of only in
cases in which the blockade has not been established.
Great Britain, when she declared war on Germany, did not follow
President Lincoln's example and lay the whole of the German coast under
interdict. Perhaps one reason for this inaction was a desire not unduly
to offend neutrals, especially the United States; but the more impelling
motive was geographical. The fact is that a blockade of the German
seacoast would accomplish little in the way of keeping materials out of
Germany. A glance at the map of northwestern Europe will make this fact
clear. In the first place the seacoast of Germany is a small affair. In
the North Sea the German coast is a little indentation, not more than
two hundred miles long, wedged in between the longer coastlines of
Holland and Denmark; in the Baltic it is somewhat more extensive, but
the entrances to this sea are so circuitous and treacherous that the
suggestion of a blockade here is not a practicable one. The greatest
ports of Germany are located on this little North Sea coastline or on
its rivers--Hamburg and Bremen. It might therefore be assumed that any
nation which successfully blockaded these North Sea ports would have
strangled the commerce of Germany. That is far from being the case. The
point is that the political boundaries of Germany are simply fictions,
when economic considerations are involved. Holland, on the west, and
Denmark, on the north, are as much a part of the German transportation
system as though these two countries were parts of the German Empire.
Their territories and the territories of Germany are contiguous; the
railroad and the canal systems of Germany, Holland, and Denmark are
practically one. Such ports as Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen are
just as useful to Germany for purposes of commerce as are Hamburg and
Bremen, and, in fact, a special commercial arrangement with Rotterdam
has made that city practically a port of Germany since 1868. These
considerations show how ineffective would be a blockade of the German
coast which did not also comprehend the coast of Holland and Denmark.
Germany could still conduct her commerce through these neighbouring
countries. And at this point the great difficulty arose. A blockade is
an act of war and can be applied only to a country upon which war has
been declared. Great Britain had declared war on Germany and could
therefore legally close her ports; she had not declared war on Holland
and Denmark, and therefore could not use the same measure against those
friendly countries. Consequently the blockade was useless to Great
Britain; and so, in the first six months of the war, the Admiralty fell
back upon the milder system of declaring certain articles contraband of
war and seizing ships that were suspected of carrying them to Germany.
A geographical accident had apparently largely destroyed the usefulness
of the British fleet and had guaranteed Germany an unending supply of
those foodstuffs without which she could not maintain her resistance for
any extended period. Was Great Britain called upon to accept this
situation and to deny herself the use of the blockade in this, the
greatest struggle in her history? Unless the British fleet could stop
cargoes which were really destined to Germany but which were bound for
neutral ports, Great Britain could not win the war; if the British fleet
could intercept such cargoes, then the chances strongly favoured
victory. The experts of the Foreign Office searched the history of
blockades and found something which resembled a precedent in the
practices of the American Navy during the Civil War. In that conflict
Nassau, in the Bahamas, and Matamoros, in Mexico, played a part not
unlike that played by Rotterdam and Copenhagen in the recent struggle.
These were both neutral ports and therefore outside the jurisdiction of
the United States, just as Rotterdam and Copenhagen were outside the
jurisdiction of Great Britain. They were the ports of powers with which
the United States was at peace, and therefore they could not be
blockaded, just as Amsterdam and Copenhagen were ports of powers with
which Great Britain was now at peace.
Trade from Great Britain to the Bahamas and Mexico was ostensibly trade
from one neutral port to another neutral port in the same sense as was
trade from the United States to Holland and Denmark. Yet the fact is
that the "neutrality" of this trade, in the Civil War, from Great
Britain to the Bahamas and Mexico, was the most transparent subterfuge;
such trade was not "neutral" in the slightest degree. It consisted
almost entirely of contraband of war and was intended for the armies of
the Confederate States, then in arms against the Federal Government.
What is the reason, our Government asked, that these gentle and
unwarlike inhabitants of the Bahamas have so suddenly developed such an
enormous appetite for percussion caps, rifles, cannon, and other
instruments of warfare? The answer, of course, lay upon the surface; the
cargoes were intended for reshipment into the Southern States, and they
were, in fact, immediately so reshipped. The American Government, which
has always regarded realities as more important than logic, brushed
aside the consideration that this trade was conducted through neutral
ports, unhesitatingly seized these ships and condemned both the ships
and their cargoes. Its action was without legal precedent, but our
American courts devised a new principle of international law to cover
the case--that of "continuous voyage" or "ultimate destination." Under
this new doctrine it was maintained that cargoes of contraband could be
seized anywhere upon the high seas, even though they were going from one
neutral port to another, if it could be demonstrated that this
contraband was really on its way to the enemy. The mere fact that it was
transshipped at an intermediate neutral port was not important; the
important point was the "ultimate destination." British shippers
naturally raged over these decisions, but they met with little sympathy
from their own government. Great Britain filed no protest against the
doctrine of "continuous voyage," but recognized its fundamental
soundness, and since 1865 this doctrine has been a part of international
law.
Great Britain's good sense in acquiescing in our Civil War practices now
met its reward; for these decisions of American courts proved a godsend
in her hour of trial. The one neutral from which trouble was anticipated
was the United States. What better way to meet this situation than to
base British maritime warfare upon the decisions of American courts?
What more ideal solution of the problem than to make Chief Justice
Chase, of the United States Supreme Court, really the author of the
British "blockade" against Germany? The policy of the British Foreign
Office was to use the sea power of Great Britain to crush the enemy, but
to do it in a way that would not alienate American sympathy and American
support; clearly the one way in which both these ends could be attained
was to frame these war measures upon the pronouncements of American
prize courts. In a broad sense this is precisely what Sir Edward Grey
now proceeded to do. There was a difference, of course, which Great
Britain's enemies in the American Senate--such men as Senator Hoke
Smith, of Georgia, and Senator Thomas Walsh, of Montana--proceeded to
point out; but it was a difference of degree. Great Britain based her
blockade measures upon the American principle of "ultimate destination,"
but it was necessary considerably to extend that doctrine in order to
meet the necessities of the new situation. President Lincoln had applied
this principle to absolute contraband, such as powder, shells, rifles,
and other munitions of war. Great Britain now proceeded to apply it to
that nebulous class of commodities known as "conditional contraband,"
the chief of which was foodstuffs. If the United States, while a war was
pending, could evolve the idea of "ultimate destination" and apply it
to absolute contraband, could not Great Britain, while another war was
pending, carry it one degree further and make it include conditional
contraband? Thus reasoned the British Foreign Office. To this Mr.
Lansing replied that to stop foodstuffs on the way to Germany through a
neutral port was simply to blockade a neutral port, and that this was
something utterly without precedent. Seizing contraband is not an act of
war against the nation whose ships are seized; blockading a port is an
act of war; what right therefore had Great Britain to adopt measures
against Holland, Denmark, and Sweden which virtually amounted to a
blockade?
This is the reason why Great Britain, in the pronouncement of March 1,
1915, and the Order in Council of March 11, 1915, did not describe these
measures as a "blockade." President Wilson described his attack on
Mexico in 1914 as "measures short of war," and now someone referred to
the British restrictions on neutral commerce as "measures short of
blockade." The British sought another escape from their predicament by
justifying this proceeding, not on the general principles of warfare,
but on the ground of reprisal. Germany declared her submarine warfare on
merchant ships on February 4, 1915; Great Britain replied with her
announcement of March 1st, in which she declared her intention of
preventing "commodities of any kind from reaching or leaving Germany."
The British advanced this procedure as a retaliation for the illegal
warfare which Germany had declared on merchant shipping, both that of
the enemy and of neutrals. "The British and French governments will
therefore hold themselves free to detain and take into port ships
carrying goods of presumed enemy destination, ownership, and origin."
This sentence accurately describes the purposes of a blockade--to cut
the enemy off from all commercial relations with the outside world; yet
the procedure Great Britain now proposed to follow was not that of a
blockade. When this interdict is classically laid, any ship that
attempts to run the lines is penalized with confiscation, along with its
cargo; but such a penalty was not to be exacted in the present instance.
Great Britain now proposed to purchase cargoes of conditional contraband
discovered on seized ships and return the ships themselves to their
owners, and this soon became the established practice. Not only did the
Foreign Office purchase all cotton which was seized on its way to
Germany, but it took measures to maintain the price in the markets of
the world. In the succeeding months Southern statesmen in both Houses of
Congress railed against the British seizure of their great staple, yet
the fact was that cotton was all this time steadily advancing in price.
When Senator Hoke Smith made a long speech advocating an embargo on the
shipment of munitions as a punishment to Great Britain for stopping
American cotton on the way to Germany, the acute John Sharp Williams, of
Mississippi, arose in the Senate and completely annihilated the Georgia
politician by demonstrating how the Southern planters were growing rich
out of the war.
That the so-called "blockade" situation was a tortuous one must be
apparent from this attempt to set forth the salient facts. The basic
point was that there could be no blockade of Germany unless the neutral
ports of contiguous countries were also blockaded, and Great Britain
believed that she had found a precedent for doing this in the operations
of the American Navy in the Civil War. But it is obvious that the
situation was one which would provide a great feast for the lawyers.
That Page sympathized with this British determination to keep foodstuffs
out of Germany, his correspondence shows. Day after day the "protests"
from Washington rained upon his desk. The history of our foreign
relations for 1915 and 1916 is largely made up of an interminable
correspondence dealing with seized cargoes, and the routine of the
Embassy was an unending nightmare of "demands," "complaints,"
"precedents," "cases," "notes," "detentions" of Chicago meats, of
Southern cotton, and the like. The American Embassy in London contains
hundreds of volumes of correspondence which took place during Page's
incumbency; more material has accumulated for those five years than for
the preceding century and a quarter of the Government's existence. The
greater part of this mass deals with intercepted cargoes.
The following extract from a letter which Page wrote at this time gives
a fair idea of the atmosphere that prevailed in London while this
correspondence was engaging the Ambassador's mind:
The truth is, in their present depressed mood, the United States is
forgotten--everything's forgotten but the one great matter in hand.
For the moment at least, the English do not care what we do or what
we think or whether we exist--except those critics of
things-in-general who use us as a target since they must take a
crack at somebody. And I simply cannot describe the curious effect
that is produced on men here by the apparent utter lack of
understanding in the United States of the phase the war has now
entered and of the mood that this phase has brought. I pick up an
American paper eight days old and read solemn evidence to show that
the British Government is interrupting our trade in order to
advance its own at our expense, whereas the truth is that the
British Government hasn't given six seconds' thought in six months
to anybody's trade--not even its own. When I am asked to inquire
why Pfister and Schmidt's telegram from New York to Schimmelpfenig
and Johann in Holland was stopped (the reason is reasonably
obvious), I try to picture to myself the British Minister in
Washington making inquiry of our Government on the day after Bull
Run, why the sailing boat loaded with persimmon blocks to make golf
clubs is delayed in Hampton Roads.
I think I have neither heard nor read anything from the United
States in three months that didn't seem so remote as to suggest the
captain of the sailing ship from Hongkong who turned up at
Southampton in February and had not even heard that there was a
war. All day long I see and hear women who come to ask if I can
make inquiry about their sons and husbands, "dead or missing," with
an interval given to a description of a man half of whose body was
splashed against a brick wall last night on the Strand when a
Zeppelin bomb tore up the street and made projectiles of the
pavement; as I walk to and from the Embassy the Park is full of
wounded and their nurses; every man I see tells me of a new death;
every member of the Government talks about military events or of
Balkan venality; the man behind the counter at the cigar store
reads me part of a letter just come from his son, telling how he
advanced over a pile of dead Germans and one of them grunted and
turned under his feet-they (the English alone) are spending
$25,000,000 a day to keep this march going over dead Germans; then
comes a telegram predicting blue ruin for American importers and a
cheerless Christmas for American children if a cargo of German toys
be not quickly released at Rotterdam, and I dimly recall the
benevolent unction with which American children last Christmas sent
a shipload of toys to this side of the world--many of them for
German children--to the tune of "God bless us all"--do you wonder
we often have to pinch ourselves to find out if we are we; and
what year of the Lord is it? What is the vital thing--the killing
of fifty people last night by a Zeppelin within sight of St. Paul's
on one side and of Westminster Abbey on the other, or is it making
representations to Sir Edward Grey, who has hardly slept for a week
because his despatches from Sofia, Athens, Belgrade, and Salonika
come at all hours, each possibly reporting on which side a new
government may throw its army--to decide perhaps the fate of the
canal leading to Asia, the vast British Asiatic empire at stake--is
it making representations to Sir Edward while his mind is thus
occupied, that it is of the greatest importance to the United
States Government that a particular German who is somewhere in this
Kingdom shall be permitted to go to the United States because he
knows how to dye sealskins and our sealskins are yet undyed and the
winter is coming? There will be no new sealskins here, for every
man and woman must give half his income to keep the cigarman's son
marching over dead Germans, some of whom grunt and turn under his
feet. Dumba is at Falmouth to-day and gets just two lines in the
newspapers. Nothing and nobody gets three lines unless he or it in
some way furthers the war. Every morning the Washington despatches
say that Mr. Lansing is about to send a long note to England.
England won't read it till there comes a lull in the fighting or in
the breathless diplomatic struggle with the Balkans. London and the
Government are now in much the same mood that Washington and
Lincoln's administration were in after Lee had crossed the Potomac
on his way to Gettysburg. Northcliffe, the Lord of Yellow Journals,
but an uncommonly brilliant fellow, has taken to his bed from sheer
nervous worry. "The revelations that are imminent," says he, "will
shake the world--the incompetence of the Government, the losses
along the Dardanelles, the throwing away of British chances in the
Balkans, perhaps the actual defeat of the Allies." I regard Lord
Northcliffe less as an entity than as a symptom. But he is always
very friendly to us and he knows the United States better than any
Englishman that I know except Bryce. He and Bryce are both much
concerned about our Note's coming just "at this most distressing
time." "If it come when we are calmer, no matter; but now it cannot
receive attention and many will feel that the United States has hit
on a most unhappy moment--almost a cruel moment--to remind us of
our sins."--That's the substance of what they say.
Overwork, or perhaps mainly the indescribable strain on the nerves
and vitality of men, caused by this experience, for which in fact
men are not built, puts one of our staff after another in bed. None
has been seriously sick: the malady takes some form of "grip." On
the whole we've been pretty lucky in spite of this almost regular
temporary breakdown of one man after another. I've so far escaped.
But I am grieved to hear that Whitlock is abed--"no physical
ailment whatever--just worn out," his doctor says. I have tried to
induce him and his wife to come here and make me a visit; but one
characteristic of this war-malady is the conviction of the victim
that he is somehow necessary to hold the world together. About
twice a week I get to the golf links and take the risk of the
world's falling apart and thus escape both illness and its
illusions.
"I cannot begin to express my deep anxiety and even uneasiness about the
relations of these two great governments and peoples," Page wrote about
this time. "The friendship of the United States and Great Britain is
all that now holds the world together. It is the greatest asset of
civilization left. All the cargoes of copper and oil in the world are
not worth as much to the world. Yet when a shipper's cargo is held up he
does not think of civilization and of the future of mankind and of free
government; he thinks only of his cargo and of the indignity that he
imagines has been done him; and what is the American Government for if
not to protect his rights? Of course he's right; but there must be
somebody somewhere who sees things in their right proportion. The man
with an injury rushes to the Department of State--quite properly. He is
in a mood to bring England to book. Now comes the critical stage in the
journey of his complaint. The State Department hurries it on to me--very
properly; every man's right must be guarded and defended--a right to get
his cargo to market, a right to get on a steamer at Queenstown, a right
to have his censored telegram returned, any kind of a right, if he have
a right. Then the Department, not wittingly, I know, but humanly, almost
inevitably, in the great rush of overwork, sends his 'demands' to me,
catching much of his tone and apparently insisting on the removal of his
grievance as a right, without knowing all the facts in the case. The
telegrams that come to me are full of 'protests' and 'demands'--protest
and demand this, protest and demand that. A man from Mars who should
read my book of telegrams received during the last two months would find
it difficult to explain how the two governments have kept at peace. It
is this serious treatment of trifling grievances which makes us feel
here that the exactions and dislocations and necessary disturbances of
this war are not understood at home.
"I assure you (and there are plenty of facts to prove it) that this
Government (both for unselfish and selfish reasons) puts a higher value
on our friendship than on any similar thing in the world. They will
go--they are going--the full length to keep it. But, in proportion to
our tendency to nag them about little things will the value set on our
friendship diminish and will their confidence in our sincerity decline."
* * * * *
The note which Lord Bryce and Lord Northcliffe so dreaded reached the
London Embassy in October, 1915. The State Department had spent nearly
six months in preparing it; it was the American answer to the so-called
blockade established by the Order in Council of the preceding March.
Evidently its contents fulfilled the worst forebodings:
_To Edward M. House_
London, November 12, 1915.
DEAR HOUSE:
I have a great respect for the British Navy. Admiral Jellicoe now
has under his command 3,000 ships of all sorts-far and away the
biggest fleet, I think, that was ever assembled. For the first time
since the ocean was poured out, one navy practically commands all
the seas: nothing sails except by its grace. It is this fleet of
course that will win the war. The beginning of the end--however far
off yet the end may be--is already visible by reason of the
economic pressure on Germany. But for this fleet, by the way,
London would be in ruins, all its treasure looted; every French
seacoast city and the Italian peninsula would be as Belgium and
Poland are; and thousands of English women would be violated--just
as dead French girls are found in many German trenches that have
been taken in France. Hence I greatly respect the British fleet.
We have a good navy, too, for its size, and a naval personnel as
good as any afloat. I hear--with much joy--that we are going to
make our navy bigger--as much bigger (God save the mark!) as Bryan
will permit.
Now, whatever the future bring, since any fighting enterprise that
may ever be thrust on us will be just and justified, we must see to
it that we win, as doubtless we shall and as hitherto we always
have won. We must be dead sure of winning. Well, whatever fight may
be thrust on us by anybody, anywhere, at any time, for any
reason--if it only be generally understood beforehand that our
fleet and the British fleet shoot the same language, there'll be no
fight thrust upon us. The biggest bully in the world wouldn't dare
kick the sorriest dog we have. Here, therefore, is a Peace
Programme for you--the only basis for a permanent peace in the
world. There's no further good in having venerable children build
houses of sand at The Hague; there's no further good in peace
organizations or protective leagues to enforce peace. We had as
well get down to facts. So far as ensuring peace is concerned the
biggest fact in the world is the British fleet. The next biggest
fact is the American fleet, because of itself and still more
because of the vast reserve power of the United States which it
implies. If these two fleets perfectly understand one another about
the undesirability of wars of aggression, there'll be no more big
wars as long as this understanding continues. Such an understanding
calls for no treaty--it calls only for courtesy.
And there is no other peace-basis worth talking about--by men who
know how the world is governed.
Since I have lived here I have spent my days and nights, my poor
brain, and my small fortune all most freely and gladly to get some
understanding of the men who rule this Kingdom, and of the women
and the customs and the traditions that rule these men--to get
their trick of thought, the play of their ideals, the working of
their imagination, the springs of their instincts. It is impossible
for any man to know just how well he himself does such a difficult
task--how accurately he is coming to understand the sources and
character of a people's actions. Yet, at the worst, I do know
something about the British: I know enough to make very sure of the
soundness of my conclusion that they are necessary to us and we to
them. Else God would have permitted the world to be peopled in some
other way. And when we see that the world will be saved by such an
artificial combination as England and Russia and France and Japan
and Serbia, it calls for no great wisdom to see the natural way
whereby it must be saved in the future.
For this reason every day that I have lived here it has been my
conscious aim to do what I could to bring about a condition that
shall make sure of this--that, whenever we may have need of the
British fleet to protect our shores or to prevent an aggressive war
anywhere, it shall he ours by a natural impulse and necessity--even
without the asking.
I have found out that the first step toward that end is courtesy;
that the second step is courtesy, and the third step--such a fine
and high courtesy (which includes courage) as the President showed
in the Panama tolls controversy. We have--we and the
British--common aims and character. Only a continuous and sincere
courtesy--over periods of strain as well as of calm--is necessary
for as complete an understanding as will be required for the
automatic guidance of the world in peaceful ways.
Now, a difference is come between us--the sort of difference that
handled as between friends would serve only to bind us together
with a sturdier respect. We send a long lawyer's Note, not
discourteous but wholly uncourteous, which is far worse. I am
writing now only of the manner of the Note, not of its matter.
There is not a courteous word, nor a friendly phrase, nor a kindly
turn in it, not an allusion even to an old acquaintance, to say
nothing of an old friendship, not a word of thanks for courtesies
or favours done us, not a hint of sympathy in the difficulties of
the time. There is nothing in its tone to show that it came from an
American to an Englishman: it might have been from a Hottentot to a
Fiji-Islander.
I am almost sure--I'll say quite sure--that this uncourteous manner
is far more important than its endless matter. It has greatly hurt
our friends, the real men of the Kingdom. It has made the masses
angry--which is of far less importance than the severe sorrow that
our discourtesy of manner has brought to our friends--I fear to all
considerate and thoughtful Englishmen.
Let me illustrate: When the Panama tolls controversy arose, Taft
ceased to speak the language of the natural man and lapsed into
lawyer's courthouse zigzagging mutterings. Knox wrote a letter to
the British Government that would have made an enemy of the most
affectionate twin brother--all mere legal twists and turns, as
agreeable as a pocketful of screws. Then various bovine
"international lawyers" wrote books about it. I read them and
became more and more confused the further I went: you always do. It
took me some time to recover from this word-drunk debauch and to
find my own natural intelligence again, the common sense that I was
born with. Then I saw that the whole thing went wrong from the
place where that Knox legal note came in. Congressmen in the
backwoods quoted cryptic passages from it, thought they were saying
something, and proceeded to make their audiences believe that
somehow England had hit us with a club--or would have hit us but
for Knox. That pure discourtesy kept us apart from English sympathy
for something like two years.
Then the President took it up. He threw the legal twaddle into the
gutter. He put the whole question in a ten-minutes' speech to
Congress, full of clearness and fairness and high courtesy. It won
even the rural Congressmen. It was read in every capital and the
men who conduct every government looked up and said, "This is a
real man, a brave man, a just man." You will recall what Sir Edward
Grey said to me: "The President has taught us all a lesson and set
us all a high example in the noblest courtesy."
This one act brought these two nations closer together than they
had ever been since we became an independent nation. It was an act
of courtesy....
My dear House, suppose the postman some morning were to leave at
your door a thing of thirty-five heads and three appendices, and
you discovered that it came from an old friend whom you had long
known and greatly valued--this vast mass of legal stuff, without a
word or a turn of courtesy in it--what would you do? He had a
grievance, your old friend had. Friends often have. But instead of
explaining it to you, he had gone and had his lawyers send this
many-headed, much-appendiced ton of stuff. It wasn't by that method
that you found your way from Austin, Texas, to your present
eminence and wisdom. Nor was that the way our friend found his way
from a little law-office in Atlanta, where I first saw him, to the
White House.
More and more I am struck with this--that governments are human.
They are not remote abstractions, nor impersonal institutions. Men
conduct them; and they do not cease to be men. A man is made up of
six parts of human nature and four parts of facts and other
things--a little reason, some prejudice, much provincialism, and of
the particular fur or skin that suits his habitat. When you wish to
win a man to do what _you_ want him to do, you take along a few
well-established facts, some reasoning and such-like, but you take
along also three or four or five parts of human nature--kindliness,
courtesy, and such things--sympathy and a human touch.
If a man be six parts human and four parts of other things, a
government, especially a democracy, is seven, or eight, or nine
parts human nature. It's the most human thing I know. The best way
to manage governments and nations--so long as they are disposed to
be friendly--is the way we manage one another. I have a
confirmation of this in the following comment which came to me
to-day. It was made by a friendly member of Parliament.
"The President himself dealt with Germany. Even in his severity he
paid the Germans the compliment of a most courteous tone in his
Note. But in dealing with us he seems to have called in the lawyers
of German importers and Chicago pork-packers. I miss the high
Presidential courtesy that we had come to expect from Mr. Wilson."
An American banker here has told me of the experience of an
American financial salesman in the city the day after our Note was
published. His business is to make calls on bankers and other
financial men, to sell them securities. He is a man of good address
who is popular with his clients. The first man he called on, on
that day, said: "I don't wish to be offensive to you. But I have
only one way to show my feeling of indignation toward the United
States, and that is, to have nothing more to do with Americans."
The next man said: "No, nothing to-day, I thank you. No--nor
to-morrow either; nor the next day. Good morning."
After four or five such greetings, the fellow gave it up and is now
doing nothing.
I don't attach much importance to such an incident as this, except
as it gives a hint of the general feeling. These financial men
probably haven't even read our Note. Few people have. But they have
all read the short and sharp newspaper summary which preceded it in
the English papers. But what such an incident does indicate is the
prevalence of a state of public feeling which would prevent the
Government from yielding any of our demands even if the Government
so wished. It has now been nearly a week since the Note was
published. I have seen most of the neutral ministers. Before the
Note came they expressed great eagerness to see it: it would
champion their cause. Since it came not one of them has mentioned
it to me. The Secretary of one of them remarked, after being
invited to express himself: "It is too--too--long!" And, although I
have seen most of the Cabinet this week, not a man mentioned it to
me. People seem studiously to avoid it, lest they give offense.
I have, however, got one little satisfaction. An American--a
half-expatriated loafer who talks "art"--you know the
intellectually affected and degenerate type--screwed his courage up
and told me that he felt ashamed of his country. I remarked that I
felt sure the feeling was mutual. That, I confess, made me feel
better.
As nearly as I can make out, the highwater mark of English
good-feeling toward us in all our history was after the President's
Panama tolls courtesy. The low-water mark, since the Civil War, I
am sure, is now. The Cleveland Venezuela message came at a time of
no nervous strain and did, I think, produce no long-lasting
effect. A part of the present feeling is due to the English
conviction that we have been taken in by the Germans in the
submarine controversy, but a large part is due to the lack of
courtesy in this last Note--the manner in which it was written even
more than its matter. As regards its matter, I have often been over
what I conceive to be the main points with Sir Edward Grey--very
frankly and without the least offense. He has said: "We may have to
arbitrate these things," as he might say, "We had better take a cab
because it is raining." It is easily possible--or it was--to
discuss anything with this Government without offense. I have, in
fact, stood up before Sir Edward's fire and accused him of stealing
a large part of the earth's surface, and we were just as good
friends afterward as before. But I never drew a lawyer's indictment
of him as a land-thief: that's different.
I suppose no two peoples or governments ever quite understand one
another. Perhaps they never will. That is too much to hope for. But
when one government writes to another it ought to write (as men do)
with some reference to the personality of the other and to their
previous relations, since governments are more human than men. Of
course I don't know who wrote the Note. Hence I can talk about it
freely to you without implying criticism of anybody in particular.
But the man who wrote it never saw the British Government and
wouldn't know it if he met it in the road. To him it is a mere
legal entity, a wicked, impersonal institution against which he has
the task of drawing an indictment--not the task of trying to
persuade it to confess the propriety of a certain course of
conduct. In his view, it is a wicked enemy to start with--like the
Louisiana lottery of a previous generation or the Standard Oil
Company of our time.
One would have thought, since we were six months in preparing it,
that a draft of the Note would have been sent to the man on the
ground whom our Government keeps in London to study the situation
at first hand and to make the best judgment he can about the most
effective methods of approach on delicate and difficult matters. If
that had been done, I should have suggested a courteous short Note
saying that we are obliged to set forth such and such views about
marine law and the rights of neutrals, to His Majesty's Government;
and that the contention of the United States Government was
herewith sent--etc., etc.--Then this identical Note (with certain
court-house, strong, shirt-sleeve adjectives left out) could have
come without arousing any feeling whatsoever. Of course I have no
personal vanity in saying this to you. I am sure I outgrew that
foible many years ago. But such a use of an ambassador--of any
ambassador--is obviously one of the best and most natural uses he
could be put to; and all governments but ours do put their
ambassadors to such a use: that's what they have 'em for.
_Per contra_: a telegram has just come in saying that a certain
Lichtenstein in New York had a lot of goods stopped by the British
Government, which (by an arrangement made with their attorney here)
agreed to buy them at a certain price: will I go and find out why
the Government hasn't yet paid Lichtenstein and when he may expect
his money? Is it an ambassadorial duty to collect a private bill
for Lichtenstein, in a bargain with which our Government has had
nothing to do? I have telegraphed the Department, quite calmly,
that I don't think it is. I venture to say no ambassador ever had
such a request as that before from his Government.
My dear House, I often wonder if my years of work here--the kind of
high good work I've tried to do--have not been thrown away. I've
tried to take and to busy myself with a long-range view of great
subjects. The British Empire and the United States will be here
long after we are dead, and their relations will continue to be one
of the most important matters--perhaps the most important
matter--in the world. Well, now think of Lichtenstein's bill!
To get back where I started--I fear, therefore, that, when I next
meet the Admiral of the Grand Fleet (with whom I used to discuss
everything quite freely before he sailed away to the war), he may
forget to mention that we may have his 3,000 ships at our need.
Since this present difference is in danger of losing the healing
influence of a kindly touch--has become an uncourteous monster of
35 heads and 3 appendices--I see no early end of it. The British
Foreign Office has a lot of lawyers in its great back offices. They
and our lawyers will now butt and rebut as long as a goat of them
is left alive on either side. The two governments--the two human,
kindly groups--have retired: they don't touch, on this matter, now.
The lawyers will have the time of their lives, each smelling the
blood of the other.
If more notes must come--as the English papers report over and over
again every morning and every afternoon--the President might do
much by writing a brief, human document to accompany the
Appendices. If it be done courteously, we can accuse them of
stealing sheep and of dyeing the skins to conceal the theft-without
provoking the slightest bad feeling; and, in the end, they'll pay
another _Alabama_ award without complaint and frame the check and
show it to future ambassadors as Sir Edward shows the _Alabama_
check to me sometimes.
And it'll be a lasting shame (and may bring other Great Wars) if
lawyers are now permitted to tear the garments with which Peace
ought to be clothed as soon as she can escape from her present rags
and tatters.
Yours always heartily,
W.H.P.
P.S. My dear House: Since I have--in weeks and months past--both
telegraphed and written the Department (and I presume the President
has seen what I've sent) about the feeling here, I've written this
letter to you and not to the President nor Lansing. I will not run
the risk of seeming to complain--nor even of seeming to seem to
complain. But if you think it wise to send or show this letter to
the President, I'm willing you should. This job was botched:
there's no doubt about that. We shall not recover for many a long,
long year. The identical indictment could have been drawn with
admirable temper and the way laid down for arbitration and for
keeping our interpretation of the law and precedents intact--all
done in a way that would have given no offense.
The feeling runs higher and higher every day--goes deeper and
spreads wider.
Now on top of it comes the _Ancona_[15]. The English press,
practically unanimously, makes sneering remarks about our
Government. After six months it has got no results from the
_Lusitania_ controversy, which Bernstorff is allowed to prolong in
secret session while factories are blown up, ships supplied with
bombs, and all manner of outrages go on (by Germans) in the United
States. The English simply can't understand why Bernstorff is
allowed to stay. They predict that nothing will come of the
_Ancona_ case, nor of any other case. Nobody wants us to get into
the war--nobody who counts--but they are losing respect for us
because we seem to them to submit to anything.
We've simply dropped out. No English person ever mentions our
Government to me. But they talk to one another all the time about
the political anæmia of the United States Government. They think
that Bernstorff has the State Department afraid of him and that the
Pacifists dominate opinion--the Pacifists-at-any-price. I no longer
even have a chance to explain any of these things to anybody I
know.
It isn't the old question we used to discuss of our having no
friend in the world when the war ends. It's gone far further than
that. It is now whether the United States Government need be
respected by anybody.
W.H.P.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 14: Senator Hoke Smith, of Georgia, was at this time--and
afterward--conducting bitter campaign against the British blockade and
advocating an embargo as a retaliation.]
[Footnote 15: Torpedoed off Sardinia on Nov. 7, 1915, by the Austrians.
There was a large toss of life, including many Americans.]