CHAPTER CXCIV. THE UNITED STATES AT WAR. THE RUPTURE OF RELATIONS WITH GERMANY-TWO CRITICAL MONTHS-PRESIDENT WILSON'S POLICY-LAST HOPES OF PEACE-GERMAN SHIPS IN AMERICAN PORTS--ATTEMPTS TO BULLY MR. GERARD-GERMAN ATTEMPT TO REOPEN NEGOTIATIONS--ARMING OF AMERICAN SHIPSMORE SUBMARINE CRIMES MEETING OF CONGRESS ON APRIL 2-TEXT OF THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE THE UNITED STATES AT WAR-THE OUTLOOK-MILITARY UNPREPAREDNESS-GERMAN PLOTS-PUBLIC OPINION-CONFERENCES WITH THE ALLIES-THE JOFFRE AND BALFOUR MISSIONS --ADOPTION OF CONSCRIPTION-THE ARMY DRAFT LAW-AMERICAN TROOPS FOR FRANCE — GENERAL PERSHING--THE LIBERTY LOAN-ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION SITUATION IN THE SPRING OF 1917. T HE story of the long process by which Germany slowly leavened the great body of American opinion with growing apprehension that the maintenance of peace with her might prove treason to the Republic and to the high ideals of democracy has been told in earlier chapters. It has been shown how the Note of January 31, 1917, by which Germany notified the United States that she would sink at sight all ships within the "barred zones" from February 1, provoked President Wilson to dismiss her Ambassador two days after this date and to justify his action the same day in his Address to Congress. The President, it will be remembered, did not even then accept war as inevitable. He refused to believe that Germany would do what she threatened to do. 66 Only actual overt acts," he declared, would convince him that his 66 ' inveterate confidence "" was unfounded. Should it prove unfounded, he continued, he would have to appear again before Congress and “ask that authority be given to me to use any means that may be necessary for the protection of our seamen and our people in the prosecution of their peaceful legitimate errands on the high seas." The events which shattered his confidence Vol. XIII-Part 157 1 and forced the American people into war and their first preparations for the struggle are the subject of the present chapter. The President's action was followed by two most interesting and critical months. It has already been explained why the United States, in spite of outrages against her citizens like the sinking of the Lusitania and the Sussex, in spite of the campaign of crime on American soil, organized, conducted and paid for by the Buenzs, the Boy-Eds and the Papens, and in spite of the cumulative evidence that a Teutonic victory would destroy everything in the world that to Americans as to other free peoples makes life worth living, had hitherto maintained a policy of aloof, albeit unofficially indignant, neutrality. Nurtured in a fixed belief that their destiny was one of comfortable and prosperous isolation, encouraged in the belief by the leadership of a President of orthodox, almost mid-Victorian, Liberal tendencies, it was impossible that the American people should see at once that the success of the Prussian menace would compromise their future as surely as, though less immediately than, the future of France or England. The war tended to appear to them as a kind of spectacle upon a stage. Germany's behaviour aroused disgust ; |