publicly admitted in the English
Parliament that Great Britain would have collapsed financially, if
American help had not saved her. The war-spirit in France, during
the year 1917 was simply upheld by the hope of American help, and
finally, in March, the Russian Revolution broke out. If we had
accepted Wilson's mediation, the whole of American influence in
Russia would have been exercised in favor of peace, and not, as
events ultimately proved, against ourselves. Out of Wilson's and
Kerensky's Peace programme, we might, by means of diplomatic
negotiations, easily have achieved all that we regarded as necessary.
My conviction that we could in the year 1917 have obtained a peace
which would have been acceptable to ourselves, is based not so much
on Wilson's good will, as upon the fact that, without American
help, the Entente could not possibly have achieved a victory.

Against this view, the argument is advanced that the United States
would in any case have entered the war, in order to avoid a German
victory. I have already pointed out, that according to my view,
no "German Peace" was any longer possible after the first battle
of the Marne. Besides, it was precisely the object of the policy
which was directed at American mediation, to prevent the United
States from entering the war.

At the present time, even Mr. Wilson himself is produced as
crown-witness in support of the view that America would have entered
the war against us whatever might have happened. In the discussions
about the Peace Treaty, which the President held in the White House
on the 19th August, 1919, much stress is laid upon a certain passage
in particular, which gives the impression that Mr. Wilson would have
wished America to enter the war, even if Germany had not declared
the unrestricted U-boat campaign. Almost without exception, all
the German national newspapers interpreted the short dialogue in
question between the President and Senator McCumber in this way,
and the _Deutsche Tageszeitung_ even went so far as to regard it as
a striking proof of what they called Wilson's "_a priori_ resolve
to have war with Germany."

I must most emphatically reject this interpretation of the passage
under discussion, which was turned to account by some papers in
America in the political fight.

In the first place I should like to point out that it is obviously
inadmissible to take the above-mentioned passage out of the context,
and to regard it in itself as