on.

And I am afraid that this feeling will show itself in our future
dealings with this government. The public opinion of the nation as
well as the Government accepts their blockade as justified as well
as necessary. They will not yield on that point, and they will
regard our protests as really inspired by German influence--thus
far at least: that the German propaganda has organized and
encouraged the commercial objection in the United States, and that
this propaganda and the peace-at-any-price sentiment demand a stiff
controversy with England to offset the stiff controversy with
Germany; and, after all, they ask, what does a stiff controversy
with the United States amount to? I had no idea that English
opinion could so quickly become practically indifferent as to what
the United States thinks or does. And as nearly as I can make it
out, there is not a general wish that we should go to war. The
prevalent feeling is not a selfish wish for military help. In fact
they think that, by the making of munitions, by the taking of
loans, and by the sale of food we can help them more than by
military and naval action. Their feeling is based on their
disappointment at our submitting to what they regard as German
dallying with us and to German insults. They believe that, if we
had sent Bernstorff home when his government made its
unsatisfactory reply to our first _Lusitania_ note, Germany would
at once have "come down"; opportunist Balkan States would have come
to the help of the Allies; Holland and perhaps the Scandinavian
States would have got some consideration at Berlin for their losses
by torpedoes; that more attention would have been paid by Turkey to
our protest against the wholesale massacre of the Armenians; and
that a better settlement with Japan about Pacific islands and
Pacific influence would have been possible for the English at the
end of the war. Since, they argue, nobody is now afraid of the
United States, her moral influence is impaired at every capital;
and I now frequently hear the opinion that, if the war lasts
another year and the Germans get less and less use of the United
States as a base of general propaganda in all neutral countries,
especially all American countries, they are likely themselves to
declare war on us as a mere defi