United States for the purpose of
organizing such a committee. Among the eminent Americans whom he
persuaded to give several months of their time to this work of
heartening our British allies were Mr. George E. Vincent, President of
the Rockefeller Foundation, Mr. Harry Pratt Judson, President of Chicago
University, Mr. Charles H. Van Hise, President of the University of
Wisconsin, Mr. Edwin A. Alderman, President of the University of
Virginia, Mr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, and Bishop Lawrence of
Massachusetts. It was certainly a distinguished group, but it was the
gentleman selected to be its head that gave it almost transcendent
importance in the eyes of the British Government. This was ex-President
William H. Taft. The British lay greater emphasis upon official rank
than do Americans, and the fact that an ex-President of the United
States was to head this delegation made it almost an historic event. Mr.
Taft was exceedingly busy, but he expressed his willingness to give up
all his engagements for several months and to devote his energies to
enlightening the British public about America and its purposes in the
war. An official invitation was sent him from London and accepted.

Inasmuch as Mr. Taft was an ex-President and a representative of the
political party opposed to the one in power, he thought it only
courteous that he call upon Mr. Wilson, explain the purpose of his
mission, and obtain his approval. He therefore had an interview with the
President at the White House; the date was December 12, 1917. As soon as
Mr. Wilson heard of the proposed visit to Great Britain he showed signs
of irritation. He at once declared that it met with his strongest
disapproval. When Mr. Taft remarked that the result of such an
enterprise would be to draw Great Britain and the United States more
closely together, Mr. Wilson replied that he seriously questioned the
desirability of drawing the two countries any more closely together than
they already were. He was opposed to putting the United States in a
position of seeming in any way to be involved with British policy. There
were divergencies of purpose, he said, and there were features of the
British policy in this war of which he heartily disapproved. The motives
of the United States in this war, the President continued, "were
unselfish, but the motives of Great Britain seemed to him to be of a
less unselfish character." Mr. Wilson cited the treaty between Great
Britain and Italy as a