atest crisis since William of
Normandy, in 1066, subjected their island to foreign rule. Was England
to become the "Reichsland" of a European monarch, and was the British
Empire to pass under the sway of Germany? Proud as Sir Edward Grey was
of his country, he was modest in the presence of facts; and one fact of
which he early became convinced was that Great Britain could not win
unless the United States was ranged upon its side. Here was the
country--so Sir Edward reasoned--that contained the largest effective
white population in the world; that could train armies larger than those
of any other nation; that could make the most munitions, build the
largest number of battleships and merchant vessels, and raise food in
quantities great enough to feed itself and Europe besides. This power,
the Foreign Secretary believed, could determine the issue of the war. If
Great Britain secured American sympathy and support, she would win; if
Great Britain lost this sympathy and support, she would lose. A foreign
policy that would estrange the United States and perhaps even throw its
support to Germany would not only lose the war to Great Britain, but it
would be perhaps the blackest crime in history, for it would mean the
collapse of that British-American cooeperation, and the destruction of
those British-American ideals and institutions which are the greatest
facts in the modern world. This conviction was the basis of Sir Edward's
policy from the day that Great Britain declared war. Whatever enemies he
might make in England, the Foreign Secretary was determined to shape his
course so that the support of the United States would be assured to his
country. A single illustration shows the skill and wisdom with which he
pursued this great purpose.

Perhaps nothing in the early days of the war enraged the British
military chiefs more than the fact that cotton was permitted to go from
the United States to Germany. That Germany was using this cotton in the
manufacture of torpedoes to sink British ships and of projectiles to
kill British soldiers in trenches was well known; nor did many people
deny that Great Britain had the right to put cotton on the contraband
list. Yet Grey, in the pursuit of his larger end, refused to take this
step. He knew that the prosperity of the Southern States depended
exclusively upon the cotton crop. He also knew that the South had raised
the 1914 crop with no knowledge that a war was impending and that to
deny