“The fleet is not allowed to act,” cried Lord Charles Beresford in Parliament; the Foreign Office was constantly interfering with its operations.  The word “traitor” was not infrequently heard; there were hints that pro-Germanism was rampant and that officials in the Foreign Office were drawing their pay from the Kaiser.  It was constantly charged that the navy was bringing in suspicious cargoes only to have the Foreign Office order their release.  “I fight Sir Edward about stopping cargoes,” Page wrote to Colonel House in December, 1914; “literally fight.  He yields and promises this or that.  This or that doesn’t happen or only half happens.  I know why.  The military ministers balk him.  I inquire through the back door and hear that the Admiralty and the War Office of course value American good-will, but they’ll take their chances of a quarrel with the United States rather than let copper get to Germany.  The cabinet has violent disagreements.  But the military men yield as little as possible.  It was rumoured the other day that the Prime Minister threatened to resign; and I know that Kitchener’s sister told her friends, with tears in her eyes, that the cabinet shamefully hindered her brother.”

These criticisms unquestionably caused Sir Edward great unhappiness, but this did not for a moment move him from his course.  His vision was fixed upon a much greater purpose.  Parliamentary orators might rage because the British fleet was not permitted to make indiscriminate warfare on commerce, but the patient and far-seeing British Foreign Secretary was the man who was really trying to win the war.  He was one of the few Englishmen who, in August, 1914, perceived the tremendous extent of the struggle in which Great Britain had engaged.  He saw that the English people were facing the greatest crisis since William of Normandy, in 1066, subjected their island to foreign rule.  Was England to become the “Reichsland” of a European monarch, and was the British Empire to pass under the sway of Germany?  Proud as Sir Edward Grey was of his country, he was modest in the presence of facts; and one fact of which he early became convinced was that Great Britain could not win unless the United States was ranged upon its side.  Here was the country—­so Sir Edward reasoned—­that contained the largest effective white population in the world; that could train armies larger than those of any other nation; that could make the most munitions, build the largest number of battleships and merchant vessels, and raise food in quantities great enough to feed itself and Europe besides.  This power, the Foreign Secretary believed, could determine the issue of the war.  If Great Britain secured American sympathy and support, she would win; if Great Britain lost this sympathy and support, she would lose.  A foreign policy that would estrange the United States and perhaps even throw its support to Germany would not only lose the war to Great Britain, but it would be perhaps the