We did without this war insurance in the decade from 1850 to 1860, when we at that time needed insurance only to the amount of 100,000 trained soldiers. This would have cost about seventy-five millions. Had we possessed this insurance the Civil War would never have been fought. For the lack of it our country missed disintegration by a hair’s breadth, and escaped disaster only because we happened to have one of the great men of history as President. The ultimate victory was won at a cost of which the following items were only a part:
750,000 lives.
10,000 million dollars in national debt and pensions.
25,000 million dollars in property damage.
All this would have been prevented by a protective expenditure of 75 millions a year.
No more fatal delusion was ever cherished than the belief that “it takes two to make a quarrel.” In world history it has seldom needed two to make a quarrel. Did Belgium quarrel with Germany?
Our legation in Berne has always been the most isolated, humdrum spot on earth. People stationed here nearly died of ennui; nothing ever happened, until all Europe suddenly was plunged into the conflagration of war, and then Berne became, of necessity, the clearing house for the continent for dispatches, mail, telegrams, money, prisoners, and refugees. Every telegram which the American Embassy in Paris sends to the Embassies in Germany, Austria, or Italy is directed: “American Legation, Berne. Repeat to Gerard”—or Penfield or Page, as the case may be.
German prisoners in France are numbered in tens of thousands and for a long time the only means of communication from them and to them was by means of the two American Embassies through the American Legation in Berne. The little three-room Berne Legation with its small staff was simply overwhelmed with work.
Donait and I were sent by Minister Stovall to make a verbal report on the situation of the Germans in France to Baron Romberg, the German Minister to Switzerland. I was much impressed in this my first touch with a German official. He is rather small, slim of body, but keen of mind, with excellent repose and control. Like all German diplomats, he speaks faultless English. A startling evidence of the efficiency of the German Information Bureau was furnished by the fact that he already knew to the minutest details nearly as much about my work in Paris in caring for German subjects as did I myself.
He spoke quite unreservedly about many matters but did not attempt to draw us into indiscretions as do so many foreign diplomats when dealing with younger men.
This evening I walked out along the embankment in front of the Parliament Houses and watched a gorgeous sunset and Alpine glow upon the snow mountains of the Bernese Oberland.