To the President

     London,
     January 5, 1916.

     DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: 

I wish—­an impossible thing of course—­that some sort of guidance could be given to the American correspondents of the English newspapers.  Almost every day they telegraph about the visits of the Austrian Charge or the German Ambassador to the State Department to assure Mr. Lansing that their governments will of course make a satisfactory explanation of the latest torpedo-act in the Mediterranean or to “take one further step in reaching a satisfactory understanding about the Lusitania.”  They usually go on to say also that more notes are in preparation to Germany or to Austria.  The impression made upon the European mind is that the German and Austrian officials in Washington are leading the Administration on to endless discussion, endless notes, endless hesitation.  Nobody in Europe regards their pledges or promises as worth anything at all:  the Arabic follows the Lusitania, the Hesperian follows the Arabic, the Persia follows the Ancona.  “Still conferences and notes continue,” these people say, “proving that the American Government, which took so proper and high a stand in the Lusitania notes, is paralyzed—­in a word is hoodwinked and ‘worked’ by the Germans.”  And so long as these diplomatic representatives are permitted to remain in the United States, “to explain,” “to parley” and to declare that the destruction of American lives and property is disavowed by their governments, atrocities on sea and land will of course continue; and they feel that our Government, by keeping these German and Austrian representatives in Washington, condones and encourages them and their governments.

     This is a temperate and even restrained statement of the English
     feeling and (as far as I can make out) of the whole European
     feeling.

It has been said here that every important journal published in neutral or allied European countries, daily, weekly, or monthly, which deals with public affairs, has expressed a loss of respect for the United States Government and that most of them make continuous severe criticisms (with surprise and regret) of our failure by action to live up to the level of our Lusitania notes.  I had (judiciously) two American journalists, resident here—­men of judgment and character—­to inquire how true this declaration is.  After talking with neutral and allied journalists here and with men whose business it is to read the journals of the Continent, they reported that this declaration is substantially true—­that the whole European press (outside Germany and its allies) uses the same tone toward our Government that the English press uses—­to-day, disappointment verging on contempt; and many of them explain our keeping diplomatic intercourse with Germany by saying that we are afraid of