nator Owen?
Would I see Congressman Sherley? Would I take up this "case" and that?
His mind ran on "cases."

Well, at Y's, when I was almost in despair, I rammed down him a sort of
general statement of the situation as I saw it; at least, I made a
start. But soon he stopped me and ran off at a tangent on some
historical statement I had made, showing that his mind was not at all on
the real subject, the large subject. When I returned to Washington, and
he had read my interviews with Grey, Asquith, and Bryce[45], and my own
statement, he still said nothing, but he ceased to talk of "cases." At
my final interview he said that he had had difficulty in preventing
Congress from making the retaliatory resolution mandatory. He had tried
to keep it back till the very end of the session, etc.

This does not quite correspond with what the President told me--that the
State Department asked for this retaliatory resolution.

I made specific suggestions in my statement to the President and to
Lansing. They have (yet) said nothing about them. I fancy they will not.
I have found nowhere any policy--only "cases."

I proposed to Baker and Daniels that they send a General and an Admiral
as attaches to London. They both agreed. Daniels later told me that
Baker mentioned it to the President and he "stepped on the suggestion
with both feet." I did not bring it up. In the Franco-Prussian War of
1870, both General McClellan (or Sheridan[46]?) and General Forsythe
were sent to the German Army. Our military ideas have shrunk since then!

I find at this date (a month before the Presidential election), the
greatest tangle and uncertainty of political opinion that I have ever
observed in our country. The President, in spite of his unparalleled
leadership and authority in domestic policy, is by no means certain of
election. He has the open hostility of the Germans--all very well, if he
had got the fruits of a real hostility to them; but they have, in many
ways, directed his foreign policy. He has lost the silent confidence of
many men upon whose conscience this great question weighs heavily. If he
be defeated he will owe his defeat to the loss of confidence in his
leadership on this great subject. His opponent has put forth no
clear-cut opinion. He plays a silent game on the German "issue." Yet he
will command the support of many patriotic men merely as a lack of
confidence in the President.

Nor do I see any end of the results of this fundamen