It latterly became known that though Hughes had repeatedly declared himself clearly on the issues in the course of his campaign speeches his remarks on this subject were not reported. All reference to the European situation and his views thereon were suppressed.
The city of Milwaukee gave Wilson 6,000 majority over Hughes. He carried the assured Republican State of Ohio on the issue that he would keep us out of the war and the decisive vote was given by California under the belief that with Wilson peace would be assured.
The defeat of Hughes secondarily must be attributed to Colonel Roosevelt. The latter’s personality fell like an ominous shadow across the path of the Republican candidate. Roosevelt was satisfied with nothing short of immediate war, and, nominally fighting Wilson, was in effect making the election of Hughes impossible. Repeatedly proven to have lost his power of influencing political results in his own State of New York, in New England and other sections, he still was able to decree the defeat of the candidate of his own party by inspiring popular fear of his future sway over him.
In Washington it was known that preparations for war with Germany were long under way. Secretary McAdoo, the President’s son-in-law, was understood to have entered into a secret arrangement with Brazil, during his visit there, for the seizure of German ships when the hour to strike should have arrived. The administration in 1916, months before the election, passed through Congress appropriations for military purposes larger than those provided in the German budget for 1914, the year of the war:
| United States, for 1917 | $294,565,623 |
| German Empire, for 1914 | 294,390,000 |
| In excess of Germany | $ 175,623 |
The national election occurred in November, 1916. Three months later, early in February, 1917, Count Bernstorff, the German ambassador, was handed his passports and relations with Germany were broken off. The announcement came like a bolt out of a clear sky. The President was not to be inaugurated until March 4 following. Within a month of his formal inauguration he announced that we were in a state of war with the imperial German government.
The events that followed were marked by a complete surrender of Congress and the domination of the Executive over the Legislative branch of our government. The President was invested with dictatorial powers; political traditions and the time-honored admonitions of the founders of the government were disregarded and overruled. A Cabinet order had already decreed that American citizens forswearing their allegiance in order to serve in the British army were not to lose their standing as American citizens. Now armies of conscripts were made ready to be sent a distance of 3,000 miles to fight for the safeguarding of democracy in Europe and to protect us from an invasion, possible only by ships which were subsequently pronounced by the Secretary of the Navy to be restricted by their bunker capacity to operations in European waters.
A sudden mad fury seized the people, following a visit of Lord Northcliffe, marked by numerous conferences with publishers during a trip West. The press became unanimous, with the exception of the Hearst papers, on the question that Germany must be crushed. During the floating of the $500,000,000 loan to England and France pending our neutrality, full page advertisements had been generously distributed to papers throughout the country by the Morgan banking interests. In mining regions, in steel-producing sections, in great industrial centers, in cities having large packing interests or sugar refineries, local interests prevailed to influence sentiment for war as a means of profit and prosperity. Public opinion was soon rendered so completely unfit for sober reflection by the continued propaganda directed from Wall Street and British and French publicity centers in this country that a wave of hate against people of German descent swept everything before it. The Germans were not wanted, and papers like the New York “Sun” declared that Germans were not human beings in the same sense as other members of the family.
Yet, shortly prior to the election, a member of the Cabinet and others in the confidence of the administration had come to New York to confer with those whom they regarded authorized to speak for the German element to prevail upon them to influence the so-called German vote in favor of the Democratic candidate, and in one case, at least, a post of honor was tentatively promised to one such spokesman by an agent direct from the highest source.