To Edward M. House
     American Embassy, London,
     October 22, 1914.

     DEAR HOUSE: 

     This is about the United States and England.  Lets get that settled
     before we try our hands at making peace in Europe.

One of our greatest assets is the friendship of Great Britain, and our friendship is a still bigger asset for her, and she knows it and values it.  Now, if either country should be damfool enough to throw this away because old Stone[96] roars in the Senate about something that hasn’t happened, then this crazy world would be completely mad all round, and there would be no good-will left on earth at all.

The case is plain enough to me.  England is going to keep war-materials out of Germany as far as she can.  We’d do it in her place.  Germany would do it.  Any nation would do it.  That’s all she has declared her intention of doing.  And, if she be let alone, she’ll do it in a way to give us the very least annoyance possible; for she’ll go any length to keep our friendship and good will.  And she has not confiscated a single one of our cargoes even of unconditional contraband.  She has stopped some of them and bought them herself, but confiscated not one.  All right; what do we do?  We set out on a comprehensive plan to regulate the naval warfare of the world and we up and ask ’em all, “Now, boys, all be good, damn you, and agree to the Declaration of London.”

     “Yah,” says Germany, “if England will.”

Now Germany isn’t engaged in naval warfare to count, and she never even paid the slightest attention to the Declaration all these years.  But she saw that it would hinder England and help her now, by forbidding England to stop certain very important war materials from reaching Germany.  “Yah,” said Germany.  But England said that her Parliament had rejected the Declaration in times of peace and that she could now hardly be expected to adopt it in the face of this Parliamentary rejection.  But, to please us, she agreed to adopt it with only two changes.

     Then Lansing to the bat: 

     “No, no,” says Lansing, “you’ve got to adopt it all.”

Four times he’s made me ask for its adoption, the last time coupled with a proposition that if England would adopt it, she might issue a subsequent proclamation saying that, since the Declaration is contradictory, she will construe it her own way, and the United States will raise no objection!

Then he sends eighteen pages of fine-spun legal arguments (not all sound by any means) against the sections of the English proclamations that have been put forth, giving them a strained and unfriendly interpretation.

In a word, England has acted in a friendly way to us and will so act, if we allow her.  But Lansing, instead of trusting to her good faith and reserving all our rights under international law