The President’s address to the Senate, which was received to-day (January 16th)[51], shows that he thinks he can play peace-maker.  He does not at all understand, (or, if he do, so much the worse for him) that the Entente Powers, especially Great Britain and France, cannot make “peace without victory.”  If they do, they will become vassals of Germany.  In a word, the President does not know the Germans; and he is, unconsciously, under their influence in his thought.  His speech plays into their hands.

     This address will give great offense in England, since it puts each
     side in the war on the same moral level.

I immediately saw the grave danger to our relations with Great Britain by the Peace-without-Victory plan; and I telegraphed the President, venturing to advise him to omit that phrase—­with no result.

Afterward Page added this to the above: 

Compare this Senate speech with his speech in April calling for war:  Just when and how did the President come to see the true nature of the German?  What made him change from Peace-Maker to War-Maker?  The Zimmermann telegram, or the February U-boat renewal of warfare?  Had he been so credulous as to believe the German promise?  This promise had been continuously and repeatedly broken.

     Or was it the pressure of public opinion, the growing impatience of
     the people that pushed him in?

This distressing peace-move—­utterly out of touch with the facts of the origin of the war or of its conduct or of the mood and necessities of Great Britain—­a remote, academic deliverance, while Great Britain and France were fighting for their very lives—­made a profoundly dejected feeling; and it made my place and work more uncomfortable than ever.  “Peace without victory” brought us to the very depths of European disfavour.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 49:  “My Three Years in America,” by Count Bernstorff, p. 294.]

[Footnote 50:  This narrative is based upon memoranda made by Page.]

[Footnote 51:  It was delivered and published on January 22nd.]

CHAPTER XXI

THE UNITED STATES AT WAR

I

The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany on February 3, 1917.  The occasion was a memorable one in the American Embassy in London, not unrelieved by a touch of the ridiculous.  All day long a nervous and rather weary company had waited in the Ambassador’s room for the decisive word from Washington.  Mr. and Mrs. Page, Mr. and Mrs. Laughlin, Mr. Shoecraft, the Ambassador’s secretary, sat there hour after hour, hardly speaking to one another in their tense excitement, waiting for the news that would inform them that Bernstorff’s course had been run and that their country had taken its decision on the side of the Allies.  Finally, at nine o’clock in the evening, the front door bell rang.  Mr. Shoecraft excitedly left the room; half way downstairs he met Admiral William Reginald Hall, the head of the British Naval Intelligence, who was hurrying up to the Ambassador.  Admiral Hall, as he spied Mr. Shoecraft, stopped abruptly and uttered just two words: