the Mexico telegram would have served no purpose.
I am therefore able to say, with a clean conscience, that I did
everything that stood in my power, to remedy the error committed
in the dispatch of the telegram.

In Helfferich's account of these events, the author says:

"If Count Bernstorff was, and apparently is still, of the opinion,
that Wilson was actually engaged in trying to bring about a peace
which would have been acceptable and tolerable to us, and with
a promise of success, this can only be explained as the result
of the enduring effect of suggestion, which, acting upon him for
two years, had had no really adequate knowledge of home opinion to
counteract it. As the communication between Berlin and the German
Embassy in Washington was completely cut off, it is not surprising
that our representatives on the other side of the vast ocean should
have lost touch with their fellow-countrymen struggling for their
lives, and should have failed to retain the proper standpoint in
regard to what was either necessary or tolerable."

To this I should like to reply, in the first place, that the
unrestricted U-boat war did not in the least bring the German people
either what was necessary or tolerable. Furthermore, not only I
myself, but almost all those gentlemen who returned with me to
Germany, had the feeling, on reaching home, that we in America
had formed a much clearer notion of the true state of Germany,
than those of our fellow-countrymen who had been living at home;
for they had been completely cut off from the world by the Blockade.
After we had seen the conditions prevailing in Germany, we could
understand even less than we had before, why the Imperial Government
had not snatched with joy at the chance of making peace.

As to the question whether we should have obtained an acceptable
and tolerable peace through Mr. Wilson's efforts, I am still firmly
convinced to-day, that this would have been the case. The President
would not have offered to mediate if he had not been able to reckon
with certainty upon success, and he was better situated than any
German, to know the attitude of the Entente. In his farewell letter
to me, Mr. House wrote:

"It is too sad that your Government should have declared the
unrestricted U-boat war at a moment when we were so near to peace.
The day will come when people in Germany will see how much you
have done for your country in America."

Moreover, later on, Mr. Bonar Law