The first answer which I shall give is entirely sane and will be accepted by the rankest cynic.  America came into the war at the moment she realised that her own national life was endangered.  Her leaders realised this months before her masses could be persuaded.  The political machinery of the United States is such that no Government would dare to commence hostilities unless it was assured that its decision was the decision of the entire nation.  That the Government might have this assurance, Mr. Wilson had to maintain peace long after the intellect of America had declared for war, while he educated the cosmopolitan citizenship of his country into a knowledge of Hun designs.  The result was that he created the appearance of having been pushed into hostilities by the weight of public opinion.

For many months the Secret Service agents of the States, aided by the agents of other nations, were unravelling German plots and collecting data of treachery so irrefutable that it had to be accepted.  When all was ready the first chapters of the story were divulged.  They were divulged almost in the form of a serial novel, so that the man who read his paper to-day and said, “No doubt that isolated item is true, but it doesn’t incriminate the entire German nation,” next day on opening his paper, found further proof and was forced to retreat to more ingenious excuses.  One day he was informed of Germany’s abuse of neutral embassies and mail-bags; the next of the submarine bases in Mexico, prepared as a threat against American shipping; the day after that the whole infamous story of how Berlin had financed the Mexican Revolution.  Germany’s efforts to provoke an American-Japanese war leaked out, her attempts to spread disloyalty among German-Americans, her conspiracies for setting fire to factories and powder-plants, including the blowing up of bridges and the Welland Canal.  Quietly, circumstantially, without rancour, the details were published of the criminal spider-web woven by the Dernburgs, Bernstorffs and Von Papens, accredited creatures of the Kaiser, who with Machiavellian smiles had professed friendship for those whom their hands itched to slay and strangle.  Gradually the camouflage of bovine geniality was lifted from the face of Germany and the dripping fangs of the Blonde Beast were displayed—­the Minotaur countenance of one glutted with human flesh, weary with rape and rapine, but still tragically insatiable and lusting for the new sensation of hounding America to destruction.

I have not placed these revelations in their proper sequence; some were made after war had been declared.  They had the effect of changing every decent American into a self-appointed detective.  The weight of evidence put Germany’s perfidy beyond dispute; clues to new and endless chains of machinations were discovered daily.  The Hun had come as a guest into America’s house with only one intent—­to do murder as soon as the lights were out.