ust
3d, the German government declared war on France. The following day,
Great Britain demanded of Germany respect for Belgian neutrality and,
failing to receive the guarantee, broke off diplomatic relations. On the
5th, the British prime minister announced that war had opened between
England and Germany. The storm now broke in all its pitiless fury.

=The State of American Opinion.=--Although President Wilson promptly
proclaimed the neutrality of the United States, the sympathies of a
large majority of the American people were without doubt on the side of
Great Britain and France. To them the invasion of the little kingdom of
Belgium and the horrors that accompanied German occupation were odious
in the extreme. Moreover, they regarded the German imperial government
as an autocratic power wielded in the interest of an ambitious military
party. The Kaiser, William II, and the Crown Prince were the symbols of
royal arrogance. On the other hand, many Americans of German descent, in
memory of their ties with the Fatherland, openly sympathized with the
Central Powers; and many Americans of Irish descent, recalling their
long and bitter struggle for home rule in Ireland, would have regarded
British defeat as a merited redress of ancient grievances.

Extremely sensitive to American opinion, but ill informed about it, the
German government soon began systematic efforts to present its cause to
the people of the United States in the most favorable light possible.
Dr. Bernhard Dernburg, the former colonial secretary of the German
empire, was sent to America as a special agent. For months he filled the
newspapers, magazines, and periodicals with interviews, articles, and
notes on the justice of the Teutonic cause. From a press bureau in New
York flowed a stream of pamphlets, leaflets, and cartoons. A magazine,
"The Fatherland," was founded to secure "fair play for Germany and
Austria." Several professors in American universities, who had received
their training in Germany, took up the pen in defense of the Central
Empires. The German language press, without exception it seems, the
National German Alliance, minor German societies, and Lutheran churches
came to the support of the German cause. Even the English language
papers, though generally favorable to the Entente Allies, opened their
columns in the interest of equal justice to the spokesmen for all the
contending powers of Europe.

Before two weeks had elapsed the controversy