r. There is even talk of
spheres of German influence in the United States as in China. No
government could fall lower in English opinion than we shall fall if
more notes are sent to Austria or to Germany. The only way to keep any
shred of English respect is the immediate dismissal without more
parleying of every German and Austrian official at Washington. Nobody
here believes that such an act would provoke war.

"I can do no real service by mincing matters. My previous telegrams and
letters have been purposely restrained as this one is. We have now come
to the parting of the ways. If English respect be worth preserving at
all, it can be preserved only by immediate action. Any other course than
immediate severing of diplomatic relations with both Germany and Austria
will deepen the English opinion into a conviction that the
Administration was insincere when it sent the _Lusitania_ notes and that
its notes and protests need not be taken seriously on any subject. And
English opinion is allied opinion. The Italian Ambassador[12] said to
me, 'What has happened? The United States of to-day is not the United
States I knew fifteen years ago, when I lived in Washington.' French
officers and members of the Government who come here express themselves
even more strongly than do the British. The British newspapers to-day
publish translations of ridicule of the United States from German
papers."

_To the President_

London,
January 5, 1916.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

I wish--an impossible thing of course--that some sort of guidance
could be given to the American correspondents of the English
newspapers. Almost every day they telegraph about the visits of the
Austrian Charge or the German Ambassador to the State Department to
assure Mr. Lansing that their governments will of course make a
satisfactory explanation of the latest torpedo-act in the
Mediterranean or to "take one further step in reaching a
satisfactory understanding about the _Lusitania_." They usually go
on to say also that more notes are in preparation to Germany or to
Austria. The impression made upon the European mind is that the
German and Austrian officials in Washington are leading the
Administration on to endless discussion, endless notes, endless
hesitation. Nobody in Europe regards their pledges or promises as
worth anything at all: the _Arabic_ follows the _Lusitania_,