Late Ambassador at Washington from Great Britain; Chief
Secretary for Ireland, 1905-6; author of "The American
Commonwealth," and of studies in history and biography.
It has been a great pleasure to see from your published letter, which
has just reached us, that you so clearly understand the motive and
feelings with which Great Britain has entered on the present war.
Neither commercial rivalry nor any fancied jealousy of Germany's
greatness has led us into it, and to the German people our people bear
no ill-will whatever. Along with many others I have worked steadily
during long years for the maintenance of friendship with Germany,
admiring the splendid gifts of the German race, and recognizing their
enormous services to science, philosophy, and literature. We had hoped,
as some thoughtful statesmen in Germany had also hoped, that by a
cordial feeling between Germany and Britain the peace of Europe might be
secured and something done to bring about permanently better relations
between Germany and her two great neighbors with whom we found ourselves
on friendly terms; and we had confidently looked to the United States to
join with us in this task. But the action of the German Government in
violating the neutrality of Belgium when France had assured us that she
would respect it, the invasion of a small State whose neutrality and
independence she and England had joined in guaranteeing, evoked in this
country an almost unanimous sentiment that the faith of treaties and the
safety of small States must be protected. There has been no war for more
than a century--perhaps two centuries--into which the nation has entered
with so general a belief that its action is justified. We rejoice to be
assured that this is the general feeling of the people of the United
States, whose opinion we naturally value more than we do that of any
other people.
Most persons in this country, including all those who work for peace,
agree with you in deploring the vast armaments which European States
have been piling up, and will hope with you that after this war they may
be reduced--and safely reduced--to slender dimensions. Their existence
is a constant menace to peace. They foster that spirit of militarism
which has brought these horrors on the world; for they create in the
great countries of the Continent a large and powerful military and naval
caste which lives for war, talks and writes incessantly of war, and
glorifies war as a thing good in itself.
It is (as you say) to the peoples that we must henceforth look to
safeguard international concord. They bear the miseries of war, they
ought to have the power to arrest the action of those who are hurrying
them into it.
To get rid of secret diplomacy is more difficult in Europe than in
America, whose relations with foreign States are fewer and simpler, but
what you say upon that subject also will find a sympathetic echo here
among the friends of freedom and of peace. I am always sincerely yours,