ss 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 creatures to whom the United States and the ideals of the
Fathers mean nothing? Who think a German is as good as an
Englishman? Who have no particular aims or aspirations for our
country and for democracy? When T.R. was in the White House he
surely was an active fellow. He called us to exercise ourselves
every morning. He bawled "Patriotism" loudly. We surely thought we
were a