From ‘The United States and Germany’, The Spectator, 12 June 1915:
THE resignation of Mr. Bryan, the powerful American Secretary of State, which took the United States by surprise, must of course affect considerably the methods by which the American Cabinet will conduct their negotiations with Germany. Mr. Bryan, as he has in effect told his countrymen, was the brake, and the brake has removed itself.
The difference between Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bryan is, in fine, this: Mr. Wilson thinks the beginning of pacificism is the respect for international law, which is being entirely set at naught by the German submarine war on merchantmen, and Mr. Bryan thinks that you can still accept the word of men who are breaking their word. Nearly all complicated questions in politics can be reduced to a very simple issue, and it is the mark of statesmanship so to reduce them. For Mr. Wilson the issue is merely between international law and submarines ; and he chooses international law. We cannot now doubt, though we have not seen even a forecast of the American Note to Germany as we write, that Mr. Wilson will step out strongly along the path which he has chosen. Otherwise there would be no sense whatever in losing the services of Mr. Bryan, who, with his popularity and his devoted following in the West, was a great strength to Mr. Wilson’s Administration.
Let us repeat what we have often said before. We do not want to influence the United States on the issue of peace or war. We shall not say a word which might seem like an incitement to her to come in. But if events should bring her in, as may well happen, since even pacific principles after all cannot invariably bring a satisfactory solution to a ruler determined to do what is right, it would be an affectation in us to pretend that the authority which the United States would lend us would not be great. It would be immense. The world would never have seen such a spectacle as the English-speaking races standing for international law as the hope and foundation of the civilization which we mean to make secure as the result of this war.
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