has sunk lower, as regards British and European opinion, than it has ever been in our time, not as a part of the hysteria of war but as a result of this process of reasoning, whether it be right or wrong: 

We said that we should hold the Germans to strict accountability on account of the Lusitania.  We have not settled that yet and we still allow the German Ambassador to discuss it after the Hesperian and other such acts showed that his Arabic pledge was worthless.

The Lusitania grows larger and larger in European memory and imagination.  It looks as if it would become the great type of war atrocities and barbarities.  I have seen pictures of the drowned women and children used even on Christmas cards.  And there is documentary proof in our hands that the warning, which was really an advance announcement, of that disaster was paid for by the German Ambassador and charged to his Government.  It is the Lusitania that has caused European opinion to regard our foreign policy as weak.  It is not the wish for us to go to war.  No such general wish exists.

     I do not know, Mr. President, who else, if anybody, puts these
     facts before you with this complete frankness.  But I can do no less
     and do my duty.

No Englishman—­except two who were quite intimate friends—­has spoken to me about our Government for months, but I detect all the time a tone of pity and grief in their studied courtesy and in their avoidance of the subject.  And they talk with every other American in this Kingdom.  It is often made unpleasant for Americans in the clubs and in the pursuit of their regular business and occupations; and it is always our inaction about the Lusitania.  Our controversy with the British Government causes little feeling and that is a sort of echo of the Lusitania.  They feel that we have not lived up to our promises and professions.

     That is the whole story.

     Believe me always heartily,
     WALTER H. PAGE.

* * * * *

This dismissal of Dumba and of the Attaches has had little more effect on opinion here than the dismissal of the Turkish Ambassador[13].  Sending these was regarded as merely kicking the dogs of the man who had stolen our sheep.

VI

One of the reasons why Page felt so intensely about American policy at this time was his conviction that the severance of diplomatic relations, in the latter part of 1915, or the early part of 1916, in itself would have brought the European War to an end.  This was a conviction from which he never departed.  Count Bernstorff was industriously creating the impression in the United States that his dismissal would immediately cause war between Germany and the United States, and there is little doubt that the Administration accepted