the streets of London,
because they believed that his "subservience" to American trade
interests was losing the war for Great Britain; his tenure of office was
a constant struggle with British naval and military chiefs who asserted
that the Foreign Office, in its efforts to maintain harmonious relations
with America, was hamstringing the British fleet, was rendering almost
impotent its control of the sea, and was thus throwing away the greatest
advantage which Great Britain possessed in its life and death struggle.
"Some blight has been at work in our Foreign Office for years," said the
_Quarterly Review_, "steadily undermining our mastery of the sea."

"The fleet is not allowed to act," cried Lord Charles Beresford in
Parliament; the Foreign Office was constantly interfering with its
operations. The word "traitor" was not infrequently heard; there were
hints that pro-Germanism was rampant and that officials in the Foreign
Office were drawing their pay from the Kaiser. It was constantly charged
that the navy was bringing in suspicious cargoes only to have the
Foreign Office order their release. "I fight Sir Edward about stopping
cargoes," Page wrote to Colonel House in December, 1914; "literally
fight. He yields and promises this or that. This or that doesn't happen
or only half happens. I know why. The military ministers balk him. I
inquire through the back door and hear that the Admiralty and the War
Office of course value American good-will, but they'll take their
chances of a quarrel with the United States rather than let copper get
to Germany. The cabinet has violent disagreements. But the military men
yield as little as possible. It was rumoured the other day that the
Prime Minister threatened to resign; and I know that Kitchener's sister
told her friends, with tears in her eyes, that the cabinet shamefully
hindered her brother."

These criticisms unquestionably caused Sir Edward great unhappiness, but
this did not for a moment move him from his course. His vision was
fixed upon a much greater purpose. Parliamentary orators might rage
because the British fleet was not permitted to make indiscriminate
warfare on commerce, but the patient and far-seeing British Foreign
Secretary was the man who was really trying to win the war. He was one
of the few Englishmen who, in August, 1914, perceived the tremendous
extent of the struggle in which Great Britain had engaged. He saw that
the English people were facing the gre