_A.G. Gardiner, editor of The London Daily News, writing in that paper
on June 12, says the rupture between President Wilson and Mr. Bryan is
one of the great landmarks of the war. He goes on:_
Whatever other significance the event may have, it is conclusive
evidence of the failure of German diplomacy in America. The Kaiser has
made many miscalculations about nations and about men, but no greater
miscalculation than that which he has made in regard to President
Wilson and the United States.
He is not alone in that. There has been a good deal of ignorance on
the same subject in this country. In the early stages of the war there
was a mischievous clamor against the United States in a section of the
press, which has never quite got rid of the idea that America is only
a rather rebellious member of our own household, to be patronized when
it does what we want and lectured like a disobedient child when it
does not.
President Wilson has assumed in these ill-informed quarters to be a
timid academic person, so different from that magnificent tub thumper,
Roosevelt, who would have been at war with Mexico in a trice, and
would, it was believed, have plunged into the European struggle with
or without an excuse.
If there was misunderstanding here on this subject, we cannot be
surprised that the Kaiser blundered so badly. He, too, believed in the
schoolmaster view of Woodrow Wilson. A man who had refused such a
golden opportunity of annexing Mexico must be a timid, invertebrate
person, who had only to be bullied in order to do what he was told.
Moreover, was there not a great German population to serve as a whip
for the Presidential blank and see that he did not send the polite,
the gracious, the supple Prince von Bülow to Washington?
That courtly gentleman was dispatched to Italy to charm the Italian
Nation into quiescence. For the Americans he needed another style of
diplomacy, and he sent thither the stout and rather stupid Dernburg to
let President Wilson and the Americans know that Germany was a very
rough customer and would stand no nonsense from anybody.
It was a fatal blunder, the blunder of a people who had been so
blinded by materialism that they do not seem to have so much as the
consciousness that there is such a thing as moral strength on earth.
No one who had followed with intelligent understanding the career of
President Wilson could have doubted that he had to deal with a man of
iron, a man with a moral passion as fervid as that of his colleague
Bryan, but with that passion informed by wide knowledge and controlled
by a masterful will, a quiet, still man, who does not live with his
ear to the ground and his eye on the weathercock, who refuses to buy
popularity by infinite hand-shaking and robustous speech, but comes
out to action from a sanctuary of his own thoughts, where principle
and not expediency is his counselor.
It is because no man in a conspicuous position of the democratic world
today is so entirely governed by principle and by moral sanctions that
President Wilson is not merely the first citizen of the United States,
but the first citizen of the world.
_The Daily Chronicle says:_
President Wilson's note gives Germany every opportunity of saving her
face if she desires to do so. Not only is it phrased in the most
friendly terms, but it invites a submission of further evidence
regarding the Lusitania's alleged guns and even the resumption of
negotiations with Great Britain through American intermediacy. Here
are the vistas of a negotiation which might keep the diplomatists of
Berlin and Washington happily employed till the war is over; only the
President insists once more that the submarine outrages must stop
while the negotiations are in progress. It is this last point, firmly
submitted at the end of the note, which gives significance to the
whole. Obviously, without it the note would be nothing but an
abdication on the part of the United States, and it is because it is
not that Mr. Bryan disapproves it.
We do not question the sincerity of Mr. Bryan's attachment to the
cause of arbitration; but it is strange that he does not see what a
disservice he does to arbitration by accepting and preaching a
travesty of it. When there is litigation between individuals over an
alleged wrong, the first condition is that the wrong shall stop for
the interim--a result effected through an interim injunction between
nations. There is no judge to grant such an injunction. It has to be
obtained by mutual consent unless it is obtained by arbitration. It
simply means a license to the wrongdoer to continue his wrongdoing for
as long as he can make the arbitration last, which, where the time is
important, will be all that he wants. To accept such a doctrine, as
Mr. Bryan apparently does, is simply to put a premium on the
wrongdoing and a very heavy discount on arbitration.
_The Morning Post comments as follows:_
Mr. Bryan resigned, according to his own explanation, because he
thought President Wilson's note to Germany would endanger the cause of
peace. It might, therefore, have been supposed that the American note
was to be a departure from the previous American policy; but now that
President Wilson's note is published we are puzzled to find the
reason for Mr. Bryan's action. The note contains nothing new; it
merely affirms in a friendly manner the position taken up by the
United States--a position founded upon the generally accepted
principles of international law. It testates the claim which America
has always made, that a belligerent has no right to sink a presumably
innocent merchantman and endanger the lives of its crew and
passengers, but must first determine the character of its cargo and
establish its contraband nature and must secure the safety of the
people on board. This is obviously a stand in the cause of humanity.
We might call it the irreducible minimum of the rights of neutrals;
for it is clear that, if a Government allows its subjects to be slain
in cold blood and its ships to be destroyed, it abandons the primary
function of a Government.
_The Daily Mail says:_
The first impression made upon most readers of the new American note
to Germany will be, we suspect, that it is extremely polite and quite
harmless. They will ask in wonder what Mr. Bryan could have found in
it sufficiently menacing to call for his resignation. To many people
it will seem that Mr. Bryan altogether misjudged the effect of the
American reply. They will find it difficult to believe that any
diplomatic dispatch could in the circumstances be more courteous or
more restrained. It observes all the forms of international
politeness, with, if anything, almost exaggerated punctiliousness.
Yet it is possible that Mr. Bryan is as nearly right as he ever is.
The vital passages in the note are those in which the United States
Government "very earnestly and very solemnly renews the
representations of its note" of May 15, and again asks for assurances
that American lives and American ships shall not be endangered on the
high seas. In other words, the United States still presses for an
official disavowal of the acts of German submarine commanders, still
demands reparation for the American lives lost in the Lusitania, and
still calls for a promise that no similar outrage will be perpetrated
in future.
_The Daily Telegraph says:_
The note presented to Germany on behalf of the United States
Government is a firm and courteous document--the courtesy at least as
obvious as the firmness--stating the position of the President very
much on the lines expected, and leaving us to wonder even more than we
did before why Bryan thought it necessary to resign his Secretaryship.
The spirit of the second note is exactly that of the first.
_Following is The London Times comment:_
The gist of President Wilson's note lies in the last half dozen words
and proceeds. It remains to be seen what answer will be made to this
categorical demand. The general opinion in the United States appears
to be that it will not be a refusal. Germany, it is thought, will
begin by making concessions enough to prevent the abrupt conclusion of
conversations, and will finally extend them sufficiently to preserve
friendly relations with the Republic.
It would be rash to express a decided view, but we shall not be
surprised should this forecast prove to be correct. The feeling in
Germany is very bitter against the Government and people of the United
States; but it seems unlikely that the Government in Berlin will allow
the ill-temper of the public to influence its conduct. The
semi-official Lokalanzeiger is already deprecating an unfriendly
attitude toward the United States. There is nothing in the note to
suggest that a policy such as the American newspapers seem to expect
from Germany would be doomed to failure. The American people, we are
told, are determined to attain their ends, but they welcome every
prospect of attaining them by peaceful means.
The note, it is observed, not only does not shut out further
conversations, but gives a distinct opening for them by its treatment
of von Jagow's renewed intimation that Germany would gladly accept
American good offices in negotiations with this country as to the
character and conditions of maritime war. The Wilhelmstrasse can
discover in this and some other passages material for procrastination
if it so desires.