With this much introduction to the man and his point of view, we will allow him to speak for himself.
CHAPTER THREE
"Do I realize that you are pro-Ally over here? Well, somehow I have always felt it, but now I know it. When I get home I shall rub that fact into everyone I meet. What our people at home don't grasp is the fact that America is inhabited by two distinct races—Americans, and others. The others appear to me—mind you, I'm only giving you a personal impression—to consist either of alien immigrants who have not yet absorbed their new nationality, or professional anti-Ally propagandists, or people of mixed nationality with strong commercial interests in Germany, whose heart is where their treasure is. These make a surprising amount of noise, and attract a disproportionate amount of attention: but I know, and I intend the people at home to know, that the genuine American is with us in this business heart and soul.
"What's that? The Blockade? Yes, I want to talk to you about that. I take it you will admit that a blockade is a justifiable expedient of war. There have been one or two of them in history. In the American Civil War, for instance, the North established a pretty successful blockade against the Southern ports. British cotton ships were everlastingly trying to run through that cordon. In fact, I rather think we exchanged a few cousinly notes on the subject. Of course blockades are irksome and irritating to neutrals. But we look to you here to endure the inconvenience, not merely as one of the chances of war, but rather to show us that you in this country do recognize and indorse the ideal for which we are fighting. We are fighting for an ideal, you know: I think the way the old country came into this war, all unprepared and spontaneously, just because she felt she must stand by her friends, was the finest thing she has ever done. Of course no sane person expected America to saddle herself gratuitously with a European War—without good and sufficient reason, that is—but we in England would like to feel that your acquiescence in the inconveniences caused by our blockade is your contribution to the cause—your slap on the back, signifying:—Go in and win!
"Open your mails? Yes, I'm afraid we do. And we find a good lot inside them! Do you know, there is a great warehouse in London filled from top to bottom with rubber, and nickel, and other commodities for which the Hun longs, disguised as all sorts of things—rubber fruit, for instance—taken from the most innocent-looking parcels—all dispatched from the United States to neutral countries in touch with Germany? But we are most punctilious about it all. Every single article retains its original address-label, and will be forwarded direct to its proper consignee, directly the war is over. Can you beat that?
"Would we welcome Intervention? My dear sir, is it likely? Supposing you had been caught entirely unprepared, and had been sticking your toes in for two years—fighting for time and playing a poor hand pretty well—and were at last ready to hit back, and hit back, until you had rendered your opponent incapable of further outrage, and were in a fair way to fix this war so that it never could happen again—would you welcome Mediation, or offers of Mediation? I think not.
"Submarines? We aren't attaching too much importance to submarine frightfulness. It is true we have lost a number of merchant ships, and that a number of innocent lives have been sacrificed. But let us put our hearts in the background for the present and look at the matter from the economic and military point of view. We have lost, in twenty-seven months, about one tenth of our original merchant fleet. Against that you have to set the fact that we have been steadily building new merchant ships during the same period. The dead loss of merchandise involved amounts to about one half per cent. of the total value—ten shillings in every hundred pounds; or fifty cents per hundred dollars. That won't starve us into submission.
"But the Germans will build more and more submarines? Very probably. Still, I think we can leave it to the British and French navies to prevent undue exuberance in that direction. Our sailors have not been exactly garrulous during this war, but I think we may take it that they have not been entirely idle. Has it ever occurred to you that although there are hundreds of Allied warships patrolling the ocean to-day, you hardly ever hear of one being torpedoed by a submarine? Passenger ships and freight ships suffer to the extent I have quoted, but not the warships. Why is that? Don't ask me: ask Jellicoe! But it rather looks as if the submarine, as an instrument of naval warfare—as opposed to a baby-killing machine—had rather failed to deliver the goods.