The "spark" came two weeks afterward with the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand.
"It is all a bad business," Colonel House wrote to Page when war broke out, "and just think how near we came to making such a catastrophe impossible! If England had moved a little faster and had let me go back to Germany, the thing, perhaps, could have been done."
To which Page at once replied:
"No, no, no—no power on earth could have prevented it. The German militarism, which is the crime of the last fifty years, has been working for this for twenty-five years. It is the logical result of their spirit and enterprise and doctrine. It had to come. But, of course, they chose the wrong time and the wrong issue. Militarism has no judgment. Don't let your conscience be worried. You did all that any mortal man could do. But nobody could have done anything effective.
"We've got to see to it that this system doesn't grow up again. That's all."
FOOTNOTES:
[54] Mr. and Mrs. Francis B. Sayre, son-in-law and daughter of President Wilson.
[55] Ex-President of the University of California, Roosevelt Professor at the University of Berlin, 1909-10.