The big financiers and the men generally who were susceptible to touch on the money nerve, and who cared nothing for National honor if it conflicted even temporarily with business prosperity, were against the war.  The more fatuous type of philanthropist agreed with them.  The newspapers controlled by, or run in the interests of, these two classes deprecated war, and did everything in their power to prevent any preparation for war.  As a whole the people in Congress were at that time (and are now) a shortsighted set as regards international matters.  There were a few men, Senators Cushman K. Davis,[*] for instance, and John Morgan, who did look ahead; and Senator H. C. Lodge, who throughout his quarter of a century of service in the Senate and House has ever stood foremost among those who uphold with farsighted fearlessness and strict justice to others our national honor and interest; but most of the Congressmen were content to follow the worst of all possible courses, that is, to pass resolutions which made war more likely, and yet to decline to take measures which would enable us to meet the war if it did come.

     [*] In a letter written me just before I became Assistant
     Secretary, Senator Davis unburdened his mind about one of
     the foolish “peace” proposals of that period; his letter
     running in part:  “I left the Senate Chamber about three
     o’clock this afternoon when there was going on a deal of
     mowing and chattering over the treaty by which the United
     States is to be bound to arbitrate its sovereign
          functions—­for policies are matters of sovereignty. . . . 
          The
     aberrations of the social movement are neither progress nor
     retrogression.  They represent merely a local and temporary
     sagging of the line of the great orbit.  Tennyson knew this
     when he wrote that fine and noble ‘Maud.’  I often read it,
     for to do so does me good.”  After quoting one of Poe’s
     stories the letter continues:  “The world will come out all
     right.  Let him who believes in the decline of the military
     spirit observe the boys of a common school during the recess
     or the noon hour.  Of course when American patriotism speaks
     out from its rank and file and demands action or expression,
     and when, thereupon, the ‘business man,’ so called, places
     his hand on his stack of reds as if he feared a policeman
     were about to disturb the game, and protests until American
     patriotism ceases to continue to speak as it had started to
     do—­why, you and I get mad, and I swear.  I hope you will be
     with us here after March 4.  We can then pass judgment
     together on the things we don’t like, and together indulge
     in hopes that I believe are prophetic.”