urable to the
cause of those who were at war with the German Empire. Yet it was at
that time equally decided and much more unanimous against American
intervention in the European quarrel.

The real nature of this attitude was not grasped in England, and the
resultant misunderstanding led to criticisms and recriminations which
everyone now regrets. The fact is that the Americans had very good
reason for disliking the idea of being drawn into the awful whirlpool in
which Europe seemed to be perishing. It was not cowardice that held her
back: her sons had done enough during the four terrible years of civil
conflict in which her whole manhood was involved to repel that charge
for ever. Rather was it a realistic memory of what such war means that
made the new America eager to keep the peace as long as it might. There
was observable, it is true, a certain amount of rather silly Pacifist
sentiment, especially in those circles which the Russians speak of as
"Intelligenzia," and Americans as "high-brow." It went, as it usually
goes, though the logical connection is not obvious, with teetotalism
and similar fads. All these fads were peculiarly rampant in the United
States in the period immediately preceding the war, when half the States
went "dry," and some cities passed what seems to us quite lunatic
laws--prohibiting cigarette-smoking and creating a special female police
force of "flirt-catchers." The whole thing is part, one may suppose, of
the deliquescence of the Puritan tradition in morals, and will probably
not endure. So far as such doctrinaire Pacifism is concerned, it seems
to have dissolved at the first sound of an American shot. But the
instinct which made the great body of sensible and patriotic Americans,
especially in the West, resolved to keep out of the war, so long as
their own interests and honour were not threatened, was of a much more
solid and respectable kind. Undoubtedly most Americans thought that the
Allies were in the right; but if every nation intervened in every war
where it thought one or other side in the right, every war must become
universal. The Republic was not pledged, like this country, to enforce
respect for Belgian neutrality; she was not, like England, directly
threatened by the Prussian menace. Indirectly threatened she was, for a
German victory would certainly have been followed by an attempt to
realize well-understood German ambitions in South America. But most
Americans were against mee