r this appeal. The more violent
pro-Germans and the more violent pro-French and pro-British regarded it
as a personal insult and an attempt on the part of the President to
stifle what they were pleased to regard as their conscience.

Mr. Wilson asked the American people to be impartial in thought because
he knew as a historian the danger that threatened if the country were
to be divided into two hostile camps, the one blindly and unreasoningly
applauding every act of the Germans and the other blindly and
unreasoningly applauding every act of the Allies. In the early years of
his life the Republic was all but wrecked by the emotional and
political excesses of the pro-French Americans and the pro-British
Americans in the war that followed the French Revolution. The warning
against a passionate attachment to the interests of other nations which
is embodied in Washington's Farewell Address was the first President's
solemn admonition against the evils of a divided allegiance. Mr. Wilson
had no desire to see the country drift into a similar situation in
which American rights, American interests and American prestige would
all be sacrificed to gratify the American adherents of the various
European belligerents. Moreover, he understood far better than his
critics that issues would soon arise between the belligerents and the
United States which would require on the part of the American people
that impartiality of thought that is demanded of the just and upright
judge. He knew that the American people might ultimately become the
final arbiters of the issues of the conflict.

The United States was the only great nation outside the sphere of
conflict. It was the only great nation that had no secret diplomatic
understandings with either set of belligerents. It was the only great
nation that was in a position to uphold the processes of international
law and to use its good offices as a mediator when the opportunity
arose.

For two years Mr. Wilson genuinely believed that it would be possible
for the United States to fulfill this mission, and he never fully lost
hope until that day in January, 1917, when the German Government
wantonly wrecked all the informal peace negotiations that were then in
progress and decided to stake the fate of the empire on a single throw
of the U-boat dice.

_A United Country First_

Mr. Wilson perceived quite as quickly and quite as early as anybody the
possibility that the United States would be d