763.72/2346½
The Ambassador in Germany (Gerard) to the Secretary of State
[Received January 13, 1916.]
My Dear Mr. Secretary: I am very glad to hear Colonel House is coming over. There are many things I want to tell the President and you but which I do not dare commit to paper.
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[Page 675]My impression is that the Austrians will eventually give in, owing to pressure from here, on the Ancona business and I have already cabled you I thought the present a good time to force the settlement of the Lusitania question. I think the German Government will allow Ford or any of his angels to come here but the Peace Ark seems pretty well wrecked.
Provincial and small newspapers are much more bitter against America than the larger ones. I shall try to get and enclose herewith a very bitter article in the Cologne People’s Gazette (not the Cologne Gazette) an organ of the Catholic party.
I am sending by the courier the general economic view you requested.
Von Jagow told me the other day that he thought the feeling here against America so bitter that eventually war would be inevitable. Today he seems more optimistic. Possibly a question of digestion.
The Kaiser is laid up—only a boil on the neck.
Yours ever