of the sincere pain that such a war would cause the President and the
American people.

"I came away," the Ambassador afterward said, "with a sort of stunned
sense of the impending ruin of half the world[64]."

The significant fact in this interview is that the British Foreign
Secretary justified the attitude of his country exclusively on the
ground of the violation of a treaty. This is something that is not yet
completely understood in the United States. The participation of Great
Britain in this great continental struggle is usually regarded as having
been inevitable, irrespective of the German invasion of Belgium; yet the
fact is that, had Germany not invaded Belgium, Great Britain would not
have declared war, at least at this critical time. Sir Edward came to
Page after a week's experience with a wavering cabinet. Upon the general
question of Britain's participation in a European war the Asquith
Ministry had been by no means unanimous. Probably Mr. Asquith himself
and Mr. Lloyd George would have voted against taking such a step. It is
quite unlikely that the cabinet could have carried a majority of the
House of Commons on this issue. But the violation of the Belgian treaty
changed the situation in a twinkling. The House of Commons at once took
its stand in favour of intervention. All members of the cabinet,
excepting John Morley and John Burns, who resigned, immediately aligned
themselves on the side of war. In the minds of British statesmen the
violation of this treaty gave Britain no choice. Germany thus forced
Great Britain into the war, just as, two and a half years afterward, the
Prussian war lords compelled the United States to take up arms. Sir
Edward Grey's interview with the American Ambassador thus had great
historic importance, for it makes this point clear. The two men had
recently had many discussions on another subject in which the violation
of a treaty was the great consideration--that of Panama tolls--and there
was a certain appropriateness in this explanation of the British Foreign
Secretary that precisely the same point had determined Great Britain's
participation in the greatest struggle that has ever devastated Europe.

Inevitably the question of American mediation had come to the surface in
this trying time. Several days before Page's interview with Grey, the
American Ambassador, acting in response to a cablegram from Washington,
had asked if the good offices of the United States could be used