Extended trips for the Near East and Jewish Relief Committees, and also for the Liberty Loan and United War Work Drive, had taken me during these months into almost every part of the country, addressing gatherings in cities as far scattered as Lewiston, Me., Atlanta, Ga., and Portland, Ore. The itinerary included most places of any size in the Middle West and frequently demanded speeches for two or three of the causes the same day.
The meetings were usually preceded by dinners or luncheons or followed by receptions, at which the leading men of the cities gathered. A more inspiring experience it would be hard to imagine than seeing every prejudice and hatred laid aside for labour in a common cause. Wherever my way led there were revealed, as national characteristics, an intense moral enthusiasm, warm-hearted response to human suffering, open-handed generosity, and mutual tolerance.
Nevertheless, contact with voters in these drives had intensified my realization that a large number of our citizens were still Pacifists and that many of the German-Americans and their friends were protesting that the German Empire, innocent of having caused the world struggle, was fighting in self-defense. As I had positive information through Baron Wangenheim and the Marquis Pallavicini, my German and Austrian colleagues at Constantinople, that the war was premeditated, I consulted my friend, Frank I. Cobb, of the New York World, how best to make this fact public. The result was his collaboration and the appearance in that paper on October 14, 1917, of an article in which it was declared:
This war was no accident. Neither did it come through the temporary break-down of European diplomacy. It was carefully planned and deliberately executed in cold blood.... It was undertaken in the furtherance of a definite programme of Prussian imperialism.
Proceeding to give my reasons for such a statement, as cause and effect had been revealed to me by Von Wangenheim himself, the article included the first authoritative confirmation of the rumour that the Kaiser had indeed held the now famous Potsdam Conference, at which the German financiers, as early as the first week of July, 1914, had been instructed to complete the concentration of the Empire’s resources for war. The disclosure of these facts, copied in newspapers throughout the country, created a sensation and profoundly influenced American public opinion.
A number of friends urged me to write a book, giving my evidence more fully and revealing how Germany had dominated Turkish policy and forced the Sublime Porte into the war. Hesitancy as to the propriety of an Ambassador using his information publicly led me to consult President Wilson. In doing so I expressed the opinion that the Congressional election of 1918 was in grave doubt and that everything should be done to prove that the Executive had been right in entering the war. The following letter resolved my doubts and confirmed my inclination:
The White House
27 November, 1917.
My dear Mr. Morgenthau:
I have just received your letter of yesterday and in reply would say that I think you get impressions about public opinion in New York which by no means apply to the whole country, but nevertheless I think that your plan for a full exposition of some of the principal lines of German intrigue is an excellent one and I hope you will undertake to write and publish the book you speak of.
I am writing in great haste, but not in hasty judgment you may be sure.