seeming to complain--nor even of seeming to seem to
complain. But if you think it wise to send or show this letter to
the President, I'm willing you should. This job was botched:
there's no doubt about that. We shall not recover for many a long,
long year. The identical indictment could have been drawn with
admirable temper and the way laid down for arbitration and for
keeping our interpretation of the law and precedents intact--all
done in a way that would have given no offense.

The feeling runs higher and higher every day--goes deeper and
spreads wider.

Now on top of it comes the _Ancona_[15]. The English press,
practically unanimously, makes sneering remarks about our
Government. After six months it has got no results from the
_Lusitania_ controversy, which Bernstorff is allowed to prolong in
secret session while factories are blown up, ships supplied with
bombs, and all manner of outrages go on (by Germans) in the United
States. The English simply can't understand why Bernstorff is
allowed to stay. They predict that nothing will come of the
_Ancona_ case, nor of any other case. Nobody wants us to get into
the war--nobody who counts--but they are losing respect for us
because we seem to them to submit to anything.

We've simply dropped out. No English person ever mentions our
Government to me. But they talk to one another all the time about
the political anaemia of the United States Government. They think
that Bernstorff has the State Department afraid of him and that the
Pacifists dominate opinion--the Pacifists-at-any-price. I no longer
even have a chance to explain any of these things to anybody I
know.

It isn't the old question we used to discuss of our having no
friend in the world when the war ends. It's gone far further than
that. It is now whether the United States Government need be
respected by anybody.

W.H.P.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 14: Senator Hoke Smith, of Georgia, was at this time--and
afterward--conducting bitter campaign against the British blockade and
advocating an embargo as a retaliation.]

[Footnote 15: Torpedoed off Sardinia on Nov. 7, 1915, by the Austrians.
There was a large toss of life, including many Americans.]

CHAPTER XVI

DARK DAYS FOR THE ALLIES

_To Edward M. House_

June 30, 1915.