The beginning of the new year saw no improvement in German-American relations.  Germany and Austria continued to violate the pledge given by Bernstorff after the sinking of the Arabic—­if that shifty statement could be regarded as a “pledge.”  On November 7, 1915, the Austrians sank the Ancona, in the Mediterranean, drowning American citizens under conditions of particular atrocity, and submarine attacks on merchant ships, without the “warning” or attempt to save passengers and crew which Bernstorff had promised, took place nearly every day.  On April 18, 1916, the Sussex was torpedoed in the English Channel, without warning and with loss of American life.  This caused what seemed to be a real crisis; President Wilson sent what was practically an ultimatum to Germany, demanding that it “immediately declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods of warfare against passenger and freight carrying vessels,” declaring that, unless it did so, the United States would sever diplomatic relations with the German Empire.  In reply, Germany apparently backed down and gave the promise the President had demanded.  However, it coupled this concession with an expression of its expectation that the United States would compel Great Britain to observe international law in the blockade.  As this latter statement might be interpreted as a qualification of its surrender, the incident hardly ended satisfactorily.

     To Arthur W. Page

     Bournemouth

     May 22, 1916.

     DEAR ARTHUR: 

I stick on the back of this sheet a letter that Sydney Brooks wrote from New York (May 1st) to the Daily Mail.  He formulates a question that we have many times asked ourselves and that, in one way or other, comes into everybody’s mind here.  Of course the common fellow in Jonesville who has given most of his time and energy to earning a living for his wife and children has no foreign consciousness, whether his Jonesville be in the United States or in England or in France or in Zanzibar.  The real question is, Do these fellows in Jonesville make up the United States? or has there been such a lack of prompt leadership as to make all the Jonesville people confused?  It’s hard for me to judge at this distance just how far the President has led and just how far he has waited and been pushed along.  Suppose he had stood on the front steps every morning before breakfast for a month after the Lusitania went down and had called to the people in the same tone that he used in his note to Germany—­had sounded a bugle call—­would we have felt as we now feel?  What would the men in Jonesville have done then?  Would they have got their old guns down from over the doors?  Or do they so want peace and so think that they can have peace always that they’ve lost their spine?  Have they really been Bryanized, Fordized, Janeaddamsized, Sundayschooled, and Chautauquaed into supine