the thing in a long-range way, we’re bound to get into the war.  For the Germans will blow up more American travellers without notice.  And by dallying with them we do not change the ultimate result, but we take away from ourselves the spunk and credit of getting in instead of being kicked and cursed in.  We’ve got to get in:  they won’t play the game in any other way.  I have news direct from a high German source in Berlin which strongly confirms this....

     It’s a curious thing to say.  But the only solution that I see is
     another Lusitania outrage, which would force war.

     W.H.P.

P.S.  The London papers every day say that the President will send a strong note, etc.  And the people here say, “Damn notes:  hasn’t he written enough?” Writing notes hurts nobody—­changes nothing.  The Washington correspondents to the London papers say that Burleson, the Attorney-General, and Daniels are Bryan men and are holding the President back.

* * * * *

The prophecy contained in this letter was quickly fulfilled.  A week or two after Colonel House had received it, the Arabic was sunk with loss of American life.

Page was taking a brief holiday with his son Frank in Rowsley, Derbyshire, when this news came.  It was telegraphed from the Embassy.

“That settles it,” he said to his son.  “They have sunk the Arabic.  That means that we shall break with Germany and I’ve got to go back to London.”

     To Edward M. House

     American Embassy, London, August 23, 1915.

     DEAR HOUSE: 

The sinking of the Arabic is the answer to the President and to your letter to me.  And there’ll be more such answers.  You said to me one day after you had got back from your last visit to Berlin:  “They are impossible.”  I think you told the truth, and surely you know your German and you know your Berlin—­or you did know them when you were here.

The question is not what we have done for the Allies, not what any other neutral country has done or has failed to do—­such comparisons, I think, are far from the point.  The question is when the right moment arrives for us to save our self-respect, our honour, and the esteem and fear (or the contempt) in which the world will hold us.

Berlin has the Napoleonic disease.  If you follow Napoleon’s career—­his excuses, his evasions, his inventions, the wild French enthusiasm and how he kept it up—­you will find an exact parallel.  That becomes plainer every day.  Europe may not be wholly at peace in five years—­may be ten.

     Hastily and heartily,
     W.H.P.

     I have your note about Willum J....  Crank once, crank always.  My
     son, never tie up with a crank.

     W.H.P.

     To Edward M. House