To Edward M. House
American Embassy, London, August 23, 1915.
DEAR HOUSE:
The sinking of the Arabic is the answer to the President and to your letter to me. And there'll be more such answers. You said to me one day after you had got back from your last visit to Berlin: "They are impossible." I think you told the truth, and surely you know your German and you know your Berlin—or you did know them when you were here.
The question is not what we have done for the Allies, not what any other neutral country has done or has failed to do—such comparisons, I think, are far from the point. The question is when the right moment arrives for us to save our self-respect, our honour, and the esteem and fear (or the contempt) in which the world will hold us.
Berlin has the Napoleonic disease. If you follow Napoleon's career—his excuses, his evasions, his inventions, the wild French enthusiasm and how he kept it up—you will find an exact parallel. That becomes plainer every day. Europe may not be wholly at peace in five years—may be ten.
Hastily and heartily,
W.H.P.
I have your note about Willum J.... Crank once, crank always. My son, never tie up with a crank.
W.H.P.
To Edward M. House
London, September 2nd, 1915.
DEAR HOUSE: