763.72/1764¼
President Wilson to the Secretary of State
My Dear Mr. Secretary: The proposed note to Great Britain,75 drawn by Mr. Lansing, reached me in New York, and I shall at the earliest possible moment go over it and work it into what seems to me its best expression.
But the more I think about this matter the clearer it becomes to me that we ought not to send this note, or any other on this subject, to Great Britain, until we have the reply of the Imperial German Government to our note to it, because we cannot afford even to seem to be trying to make it easier for Germany to accede to our demands by turning in similar fashion to England concerning matters which we have already told Germany are none of her business. It would be so evident a case of uneasiness and hedging that I think it would weaken our whole position fatally.
There is no reason to feel that our note to Germany is being looked upon by them as unfriendly; and it is right that we should oblige them to consider our rights upon the seas so far as they are concerned without regard to anything we mean to say or do in the case of England.
In every such decision I feel very keenly the force of your counter judgment and cannot claim that I feel cock sure of the rightness of my own conclusions; but I can only follow what grows more and more clear to me the more I think the matter out.
Faithfully Yours,