against neutrals the Kaiser and his advisers were not to be henceforth restrained (if they ever had been) by any recognition of American rights, and the spirit of the whole submarine warfare may be read out of these undisguised threats made to our ambassador at Berlin.

CHAPTER V

ALIENATION OF AMERICAN SYMPATHIES

TH

HE United States finally entered the war against Germany as the result of a long series of actions which proved that we were dealing, in President Wilson's expressive phrase, with "an irresponsible Government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck." If a "just and necessary war" (granted that to-day there can be such a war) had arisen between Germany and Austria, on the one hand, and France, Russia, and Great Britain on the other, and had been conducted according to the recognized laws of war, there is no reason to believe that the majority of Americans would have sided against the Central Empires. They had not sided against Germany in 1870. trary. Germans like Herkimer, Steuben, Karl Schurz, and Franz Sigel had played an important part in our history. The Germans were a large element in our emigrant population and

Quite the con

had proved themselves thrifty and law-abiding citizens. We had never been at war with their country; our old treaty with Prussia seemed to indicate that we were friendly rather than rival Powers. Indeed, the tension between us had never been as keen as it was between ourselves and France in the days of the French Revolution and the Directorate, and on our unswept political hearth there lay still the ashes of old wars with Britain. Toward neither side was there any initial hostility, however, though past relationships favored Germany, the land of the universities in which most of the leaders in our academic life had been trained. It is, therefore, fair to say that if the American people had taken any side it would have been that to which unprejudiced judgment on the issues of the war and its conduct forced them, and that in general the American people would have preferred to regard the conflict in accordance with our historic policy as a war in another world. From the President's Proclamation of August 19, 1914, we have seen that at the outset, our government had assumed that this was such a war. But even after we had refused to

pass judgment on the issues involved, Germany was to render impossible the continuance of this initial attitude of aloofness. She was to begin by throwing away the good-will of the world, and step by step her course was to alienate American sympathy also. She forced us to recognize in her, first the enemy to the peace of Europe and then the enemy to the peace of the world and to the life and institutions of all free peoples. Indeed, so flagrant was her conduct that the phrase "strictly neutral," which should have served as the standard of the American attitude, became among our people a byword and reproach.

In this process of alienation the first step was her violation of the neutrality of Belgium, which, as one of the Powers signatory to the treaty of 1839 she had pledged herself to defend. The brutality and injustice of this act was made somewhat less shocking by the plea of guilty which the German chancellor promptly offered before the Reichstag. The world, however, condemned this treacherous aggression. To make amends, therefore, Germany began to vilify her innocent victim. Some weeks later,

in the course of the invasion, she claimed to have discovered memoranda of conversations between the English and Belgian military attachés, and falsely announced to the world that Belgium had forfeited her neutrality and had entered into an alliance with England. No one knew better than those responsible for this accusation how dishonest it was, for, as the exdirector of Krupp's was later to make plain, Belgium had such confidence in Germany's pledges that she was dependent on Krupp and German munition-makers for her war material. When, therefore, she was forced to defend herself against Germany her difficulties were much increased by the fact that the Allies, to whom she was forced to look for protection, could not provide the ammunition she used or the type of gun to which she was accustomed. If, therefore, Germany's act was brutal, her excuse was vicious. The morality of the whole procedure was summarized by a Swiss neutral, Karl Spitteler, who says:

"That a wrong was done to Belgium was originally openly confessed by the perpetrator. As an after-thought, in order to appear whiter,