and pacifist, he saw eye to eye with Wilson; his sense of political actualities, however, was infinitely more keen.

But even the skill of Colonel House was not sufficient to induce Germany to hold her hand, and, as spring advanced, it became increasingly clear that she was resolved to carry her threats of unrestricted submarine warfare into effect. The quality of Wilson's pacifism was about to be put to the test. In March a British steamer, the Falaba, was sunk and an American citizen drowned; some weeks later an American boat, the Cushing, was attacked by a German airplane; and on the 1st of May, another American steamer, the Gulflight, was sunk by a submarine with the loss of two American lives. When was Wilson going to translate into action his summary warning of "strict accountability?" Even as the question was asked, we heard that the Germans had sunk the Lusitania. On the 7th of May, 1915, at two in the afternoon, the pride of the British merchant marine was struck by two torpedoes fired from a German submarine. She sank in half an hour. More than eleven hundred of her passengers and crew were drowned, among them one hundred and twenty-four Americans, men, women, and children.

The cry that went up from America was one of anguish, but still more one of rage. This attack upon non-combatant travelers, citizens of a neutral state, had been callously premeditated and ruthlessly executed in cold blood, The German Government had given frigid warning, in a newspaper advertisement, of its intention to affront the custom of nations and the laws of humanity. A wave of the bitterest anti-German feeling swept down the Atlantic coast and out to the Mississippi; for the first time there became apparent a definite trend of opinion demanding the entrance of the United States into the war on the side of the Entente. On that day Wilson might have won a declaration of war, so strong was popular sentiment; and despite the comparative indifference of the Missouri valley and the Far West, he might have aroused enthusiasm if not unity.

But a declaration of war then would, in all probability, have been a mistake. Entrance into the war at that time would have been based upon neither judgment nor ideals, but merely upon emotion. The American people were in no way prepared to bring material aid to the cause of justice, nor did the nation yet appreciate the moral issues involved. It would have been a war of revenge for American lives

lost. The President was by temperament disinclined to listen to the passionate demands for intervention, and, as historian, he must have had in mind the error committed by McKinley when he permitted the declaration of war on Spain, after the sinking of the Maine in 1898. Sober afterthought has generally agreed that Wilson was right. But he was himself led into a serious error that produced consequences which were not soon to be dissipated. Speaking three days after the event, when the world looked to him to express the soul of America, and dealing with the spirit of Americanism, he permitted an unfortunate phrase to enter his address and to cloud his purpose. "There is such a thing," he said, “as a man being too proud to fight." The phrase was by no means essential to the main points of his address; it was preceded by one of greater importance, namely that "the example of America must be a special example of peace because peace is the healing and elevating influ of the world and strife is not." It was followed by another of equal importance, that a nation may be so much in the right "that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right." These two phrases expressed what was in the President's mind clearly and definitely: the United States was

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consecrated to ideals which could not be carried into effect through force, unless every other method dictated by supreme patience had failed. But the world did not notice them. All that it remembered was that the United States was "too proud to fight." What did this mean to the average man except that the country was afraid to fight? The peoples of the Entente powers were contemptuous; Germans were reassured; Americans were humiliated.

Wilson the phrase-maker was betrayed by a phrase, and it was to pursue him like a Fury. The chorus of indignation and shame aroused by this phrase covered completely the determination and skill with which he entered upon the diplomatic struggle with Germany. His purpose was definite. He had gone on record in February that the United States Government would protect the rights of American citizens, and he was bound to secure from Germany a promise that merchant ships should not be torpedoed without warning or assuring the lives of crew and passengers. And yet by virtue of his pacific principles this promise could not be forcibly extracted until every other possible method had been attempted in vain. Unquestionably he was supported in his policy by many, perhaps most,

thoughtful people, although wherever support was given him in the East it was generally grudging. Such a representative and judicial mind as that of ex-President Taft favored cool consideration and careful action. But the difficulties encountered by the President were tremendous. On the one hand he met the bitter denunciations of the group, constantly increasing in numbers, which demanded our immediate intervention on the side of the Entente. Led by Roosevelt, who no longer felt as in the previous September, that the United States had no immediate interest in the war, this group included influential men of business and many writers. They had lost patience with Wilson's patience. His policy was, in their opinion, that of a coward. On the other hand, Wilson was assailed by pro-Germans and die-hard pacifists; the former believed that the British blockade justified Germany's submarine warfare; the latter were afraid even of strong language in diplomatic notes, lest it lead to war. At the very outset of the diplomatic controversy with Germany, before the second Lusitania note was dispatched, the Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, resigned, in the belief that the President's tone was too peremptory. For Bryan was willing to arbitrate even Germany's right to drown American