It isn’t the old question we used to discuss of our having no friend in the world when the war ends.  It’s gone far further than that.  It is now whether the United States Government need be respected by anybody.

     W.H.P.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 14:  Senator Hoke Smith, of Georgia, was at this time—­and afterward—­conducting bitter campaign against the British blockade and advocating an embargo as a retaliation.]

[Footnote 15:  Torpedoed off Sardinia on Nov. 7, 1915, by the Austrians.  There was a large toss of life, including many Americans.]

CHAPTER XVI

DARK DAYS FOR THE ALLIES

     To Edward M. House

     June 30, 1915.

     MY DEAR HOUSE: 

There’s a distinct wave of depression here—­perhaps I’d better say a period of setbacks has come.  So far as we can find out only the Germans are doing anything in the war on land.  The position in France is essentially the same as it was in November, only the Germans are much more strongly entrenched.  Their great plenty of machine guns enables them to use fewer men and to kill more than the Allies.  The Russians also lack ammunition and are yielding more and more territory.  The Allies—­so you hear now—­will do well if they get their little army away from the Dardanelles before the German-Turks eat ’em alive, and no Balkan state comes in to help the Allies.  Italy makes progress-slowly, of course, over almost impassable mountains—­etc., etc.  Most of this doleful recital I think is true; and I find more and more men here who have lost hope of seeing an end of the war in less than two or three years, and more and more who fear that the Germans will never be forced out of Belgium.  And the era of the giant aeroplane seems about to come—­a machine that can carry several tons and several men and go great distances—­two engines, two propellers, and the like.  It isn’t at all impossible, I am told, that these machines may be the things that will at last end the war—­possibly, but I doubt it.

At any rate, it is true that a great wave of discouragement is come.  All these events and more seem to prove to my mind the rather dismal failure the Liberal Government made—­a failure really to grasp the problem.  It was a dead failure.  Of course they are waking up now, when they are faced with a certain dread lest many soldiers prefer frankly to die rather than spend another winter in practically the same trenches.  You hear rumours, too, of great impending military scandals—­God knows whether there be any truth in them or not.

In a word, while no Englishman gives up or will ever give up—­that’s all rot—­the job he has in hand is not going