865.857 An 2/110½
President Wilson to the Secretary of State
My Dear Mr. Secretary: I have your letter of yesterday about our relations with Austria-Hungary.
What new elements in the case make you feel now, what, I remember, you did not feel at the outset of this matter, that a breach of [Page 509] diplomatic relations would probably, rather than possibly, mean war? I do not now recall any new influences that have recently come into the field, and I would very much like to know what has made this impression on your mind.
You may of course be right. All along there has been reason to fear that such might be the outcome. And I quite agree with you that we ought to think our course out very frankly and carefully, blinking nothing.
I do not think that it would be wise in any case to lay the matter publicly before Congress. The most that I could do would be to consult with the leaders on the hill. To lay the matter publicly before Congress would in effect be to announce that we expected war and might be the means of hastening it.
There are some wise and experienced men on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and it is quite possible that we might get useful guidance from them. For myself I do not doubt the constitutional powers of the Executive in this connection; but power is a different matter from wise policy.
Your answer to some of the questions I raised or suggested in my last brief note to you on the news from Vienna will necessarily form a part and a very fundamental part of our discussion of the whole situation. If the Imperial and Royal Government thinks that it can put a very different face upon the Ancona case by representations which it thinks us bound in fairness to it to consider, how can we refuse to discuss the matter with them until all the world is convinced that rock bottom has been reached?
Cordially and faithfully Yours,