During this period popular sentiment also underwent a notable development. Americans reacted sharply to German threats and outrages, and were thrown off their comfortable balance by the events which touched American honor and safety so closely. Like Wilson, they were shaken out of that sense of isolation which enveloped them in 1914, and they were thus prepared for the reception of broader ideals. The process of education was slow and difficult. It was hampered by the confusion of foreign issues. Propagandists took advantage of the controversy with Great Britain in order to obscure the principles upon which the discussions with Germany were based. The increasing stringency of British control of commerce and the blacklisting of various American firms by the British authorities resulted in numerous American protests and to some warmth of feeling. Wilson was no particular friend of the British, but he rightly insisted upon the distinction between the dispute with Germany, which involved the common right of humanity to life, and that with Great Britain, which involved merely rights of property. Nevertheless that distinction was blurred in the minds of many Americans, and their perception of the new ideals of foreign policy was necessarily confused.
The education of the American people to the significance of the issue was also hampered by the material change that came over the country during the latter part of 1915 and the spring of 1916. The influx of gold and the ease with which fortunes were accumulated could not but have widespread effects. The European war came at a moment when the United States was passing through a period of comparatively hard times. Stringency was naturally increased by the liquidation of foreign investments in 1914 and the closing of European markets to American commerce. Business was dull. But this condition was rapidly altered through the placing of large contracts by the Entente Governments and the most extensive buying by foreign purchasers. New markets were found among the neutral states, which were unable to buy in Europe. Naturally there developed a rapid extension of industrial activities. New manufacturing concerns grew up, large and small, as a result of these adventitious conditions, which paid enormous returns. Activities upon the stock market were unparalleled. New and sudden fortunes were made; millionaires became common. The whole world was debtor to America and a golden stream flowed across the Atlantic. Prices rose rapidly and wages followed.
Inevitably materialism conquered, at least for the moment. The demand for luxuries was only equaled by the craze for entertainment. Artisans and shopgirls invaded the jewelry stores of Fifth Avenue. Metropolitan life was a succession of luncheons and teas, where fertile brains were busied with the invention of new dancing steps rather than the issues of the European war. Cabarets were crowded and seats for midnight beauty shows must be secured well in advance or by means of gargantuan tips to plutocratic head waiters. Much of the materialism was simply external. In every town American women by the thousand gave lavishly of their time and strength to knit and roll bandages for the fighters and wounded overseas. America was collecting millions for the relief of Belgium, Serbia, and for the Red Cross. The American Ambulance in France was served by men imbued with the spirit of sacrifice. Thousands of American youths enlisted in the Canadian forces. The general atmosphere of the country, however, was heavy with amusement and money-making. Not yet did America fully realize that the war was a struggle of ideals which must concern every one closely. In such an atmosphere the idealistic policy of Wilson was not easily understood.
The President himself cannot escape a large share of the blame for America's blindness to the issue. During the first twelve months of the war, when the country looked to him for leadership, he had, purposely or otherwise, fostered the forces of pacifism and encouraged the advocates of national isolation. He had underlined the separation of the United States from everything that went on in Europe and insisted that in the issues of the war the American people had no interest. In deference to the spirit of pacifism that engrossed the Middle West, he had opposed the movement for military preparedness. When, late in 1915, Wilson changed his attitude and attempted to arouse the country to a sense of American interest in world affairs and to the need of preparing to accept responsibility, he encountered the opposition of forces which he himself had helped to vitalize.
Popular education, especially upon the Atlantic coast, was further hampered by the personal irritation which the President aroused. Disliked when inaugurated, he had attracted bitter enmity among the business men who dominate opinion in New England and the Eastern States. They accused him of truckling to labor. They were wearied by his idealism, which seemed to them all words and no deeds. They regarded his handling of foreign affairs, whether in the Mexican or submarine crises, as weak and vacillating. He was, in Rooseveltian nomenclature, a "pussyfooter." Hence grew up the tradition, which was destined to endure among many elements of opinion, that everything advocated by Wilson must, simply by reason of its authorship, be essentially wrong. The men of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were beginning to give over their attitude of isolation and admit with Roosevelt that the United States ought to stand with the Entente. The Wilsonian doctrine of service to the world, however, was not to their taste, partly because they did not like Wilson.
It was to the rural districts of the upper Mississippi and to the South that the President looked most eagerly for support of his new policy. These were the regions where indifference to and ignorance of foreign affairs had been most conspicuous, but they were also the regions where the President's personal influence was strongest; finally they were the districts where extreme pacifism was most deeply embedded. If Wilson's championship of the rights of liberty throughout the world could be accomplished by pacific methods, they would follow him; but if it meant war, no one could guarantee what their attitude might be. Bryan was popular in those parts. As yet Wilson, while he had formulated his policy in broad terms, had not indicated the methods or mechanism by which his principles were to be put into operation. He would without question encounter strong opposition among the German-Americans; he would find the attitude of the Irish foes of the Entente hostile; he would find the Pacific coast more interested in Japanese immigration than in the ideals of the European war. Fortunately events were to unify the heterogeneous elements of the country, at least for the moment, in a way that simplified greatly the President's problem. Not the least of the unifying forces was to be found in German psychology, which led the Imperial Government to believe that the United States could be rendered helpless through the intrigues of German spies.
CHAPTER IV
PLOTS AND PREPAREDNESS
The Government of the German Empire was inspired by a spirit that was at once modern and medieval, and this contradictory spirit manifested itself in the ways and means employed to win the sympathy of the United States and to prevent it, as a neutral power, from assisting the Entente. Germany worked on the one hand by means of open propaganda, which is the method of modern commercial advertisement translated into the political field, and on the other by secret intrigue reminiscent of the days of Louis XI. Her propaganda took the form of organized campaigns to influence opinion through speeches, pamphlets, and books, which were designed to convince the country of the justice of Germany's cause and the dangers of becoming the catspaw of the Entente. Her plans of intrigue were directed towards the use of German-Americans or German spies to assist in the return of German officers from this country, to hinder the transport of Canadian troops, to destroy communications, and to hamper the output of munitions for the Entente by strikes, incendiary fires, and explosions.