ocial history of London. The
Ambassador was constantly receiving bulletins from his Chancery, and
these, as quickly as they were received, he read to his guests. His
voice was quiet and subdued; there were no indications of excitement in
his manner or in that of his friends, and hardly of suppressed emotion.
The atmosphere was rather that of dumb stupefaction. The news seemed to
have dulled everyone's capacity for thought and even for feeling. If any
one spoke, it was in whispers. Afterward, in the drawing room, this same
mental state was the prevailing one; there was little denunciation of
Germany and practically no discussion as to the consequences of the
crime; everyone's thought was engrossed by the harrowing and
unbelievable facts which the Ambassador was reading from the little
yellow slips that were periodically brought in. An irresistible
fascination evidently kept everybody in the room; the guests stayed
late, eager for every new item. When they finally left, one after
another, their manner was still abstracted and they said their
good-nights in low voices. There were two reasons for this behaviour.
The first was that the Ambassador and his guests had received the
details of the greatest infamy which any supposedly civilized state had
perpetrated since the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. The second was the
conviction that the United States would at once declare war on Germany.

On this latter point several of the guests expressed their ideas and one
of the most shocked and outspoken was Colonel House. For a month the
President's personal representative had been discussing with British
statesmen possible openings for mediation, but all his hopes in this
direction now vanished. That President Wilson would act with the utmost
energy Colonel House took for granted. This act, he evidently believed,
left the United States no option. "We shall be at war with Germany
within a month," he declared.

The feeling that prevailed in the Embassy this evening was the one that
existed everywhere in London for several days. Emotionally the event
acted like an anaesthetic. This was certainly the condition of all
Americans associated with the American Embassy, especially Page
himself. A day or two after the sinking the Ambassador went to Euston
Station, at an early hour in the morning, to receive the American
survivors. The hundred or more men and women who shambled from the train
made a listless and bedraggled gathering. Their gr