in that
Mr. Wilson was never even near to being pro-German. By descent,
education and training he was unconsciously much too much under the
English influence already mentioned. But until the 31st January,
1917, the President had striven to be neutral. All his speeches
testify to this. No un-neutral remark of Mr. Wilson, even in private,
has ever reached my ears. He always resisted the pressure of the
Entente party, in spite of the fact that he was almost entirely
surrounded by anti-Germans. The only one I could mention whose
advice to the President was always definitely neutral was Mr. House.
For the rest in the east of the United States we found ourselves
morally in an enemy country. Every neutral step taken by Mr. Wilson
was immediately hailed as "pro-German." For instance, I am convinced
that the President could never have carried out the threat contained
in the final clause of the Memorandum of the 18th January. Gradually
all the Entente merchantmen were armed. If these were to be treated
in American ports as auxiliary cruisers the whole of American commerce
would of necessity have come to a standstill, for it was already
suffering seriously from lack of freight space. The Entente knew
exactly how much value all Americans placed on their commerce,
and could therefore reject the proposal of the United States with
equanimity.

Nevertheless, it is well worthy of notice that in the Memorandum
of the 18th January, 1916, the legally trained and legally minded
Secretary of State Lansing, as well as Mr. Bryan, brought forward
or attempted to bring forward a different kind of neutrality from
that of the President. The only question is whether Mr. Wilson
could at that time have carried through the Lansing policy. I do
not think so. This does not in itself relieve the President of the
responsibility of not wishing to make such a sharp thrust against
the Entente as was represented by the Memorandum so long as the
negotiations on the _Lusitania_ affair still remained unsettled. Yet
throughout the whole war Holland has never followed the regulations
of the Memorandum. This fact remains. Mr. Wilson did not enforce
the Memorandum because he could not do so without prejudicing the
interests of American commerce. In this case Mr. Lansing was the
neutral advocate and the President the American politician, whose
decisions on foreign questions, as usually happens in the United
States, were actuated by domestic politics.

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