as one of the reasons ascribed to Germany's apparent
complacence to the entrance of America as a belligerent was that she
counted on the United States as a balance wheel that might restrain
the Entente's war activities and hasten peace, or later operate to
curtail the Entente's demands at the peace conference. On these
assumptions America's participation was supposed to be not wholly
unwelcome to Berlin.

American freedom of action was unlikely to confuse the war issues in
the manner Germany looked for. Whatever hopes Germany built upon that
freedom did not deter Secretary Lansing and Mr. Balfour from hastening
to counteract misleading impressions current that America would be
embarrassed in its postwar foreign policy by becoming involved in
European territorial questions, from which, for more than a century,
it had remained aloof.

The French mission also achieved an incontestable popular triumph, due
to the presence of Marshal Joffre and to memories of French assistance
in the Revolutionary War. France's heroic resistance to German
invasion of her territory, specially in thwarting the advance on
Paris, had also attached American sympathies to her cause. M. Viviani
and Marshal Joffre did not hesitate to avail themselves of this
feeling by plainly requesting the immediate dispatch of American
troops to France. While this course conflicted with the early plans of
the American General Staff, the latter had to recognize the immense
moral effect which the flying of the Stars and Stripes would have on
the Allied troops in the Franco-Belgian trenches, and the request did
not go unheeded. The country realized that the French importunity for
troops was born of an equally importunate need.

All the missions, except the British, were birds of passage, who
departed upon fulfilling their errands of securing American aid in
directions where it was most required. There was more permanency to
the British mission, owing to Great Britain's role of general provider
to her Allies, which called for the establishment of several British
organizations in New York and Washington as clearing houses. Mr.
Balfour and his suite left, to be succeeded by Lord Northcliffe, chief
proprietor of the London "Times," London "Daily Mail," and many other
British publications, who was commissioned by Lloyd-George to continue
the work Mr. Balfour had begun and to coordinate the ramifications
produced by extensive scope of the Allies' calls on American
in