(2 of 5)
British diplomacy. Woodrow Wilson was elected President in 1912 on a platform of domestic reform; the Democrats knew little and cared less about Europe. "It would be the irony of Fate." said Wilson, "if my Administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs." When "Colonel'' Edward Mandell House, self-constituted peace apostle, went to Europe in the spring of 1914 with Wilson's unofficial blessing, he soon suspected that .Europe was in a dangerous state but it took him a long time to realize that European diplomacy was not exactly aboveboard. After the War began Col. House made annual trips abroad to see what the U. S. could do about composing the quarrel. His confidential scurryings about the embattled chancelleries of Europe accomplished nothing, gave off "a strong suggestion of innocence in a den of suspicious gangsters." High point of the House diplomacy was the now-famed memorandum (1916) he gave Sir Edward Grey, English Foreign Minister. In this "extraordinary document'' House practically promised U. S. aid to the Allies in the event of Germany's refusal of Allied peace terms; Grey promised literally nothing. Sir Edward also completely captivated the U. S. Ambassador, Walter Hines Page, had him eating out of his hand from the beginning. In the first days of the War Page reported a notable interview with Grey: "I think I shall never forget yesterday. There sat this always solitary man—he and I, of course, in the room alone, each, I am sure, giving the other his full confidence.'' Says Millis: "It was a dangerous illusion for a diplomatist at a moment like that one." Page soft-pedalled Wilson's sharpest notes to the British Government, drew frequent Wilsonian rebukes: "Beg that you will not regard the position of this Government as merely academic. Contact with opinion on this side the water would materially alter your view. . . ." But long before the U. S. joined the Allies, Page had become, in Wilson's eyes, "just another Englishman."
British diplomacy's most potent role during the War was in rationalizing the obviously illegal practices of the Allied blockade of Germany. The Allied fleets destroyed U. S.. trade with the Central Powers, then with neutrals, abrogated the Declaration of London bit by bit, in flagrant violation of international law. In reply to U. S. protests Britain insisted that all these measures were "essential to our existence." Writer Millis: "As long as that plea carried weight with our statesmen and the corresponding plea from Germany did not, the U. S. was unavoidably a silent partner of the Entente." Having permitted the Allies to destroy U. S. trade with the Central Powers, "if we now permitted the Central Powers to destroy our trade with the Allies, we should be risking a real and final economic collapse. No political administration could face that prospect." But why. of these two evils, did the U. S. choose to swallow one rather than the other? The answer, says Millis, is: