763.72/2760½
The Ambassador in Germany (Gerard) to the Secretary of State
[Received June 6.]
My Dear Mr. Secretary: Yesterday I had a talk with the Chancellor. The occasion was the Polish Relief question which I shall now take up direct with Helfferich who, as I predicted, is the new Minister of the Interior and Vice Chancellor. He is a very business like man and did much for the favorable settlement of our last crisis.
The Chancellor seemed rather downcast yesterday, without apparent cause. He says that Germany from now on will have two months of hardship on the food question but that after that things will be all right. The crops as I have seen on my shooting place are magnificent and the rye harvest will probably begin even before July 15th.
Mrs. Gerard has just returned from a week in Buda Pest with her sister. The Hungarians are once more gay and confident. The Italians their hereditary foes are being driven back and on the Russian front there seems to be a sort of tacit truce of God—no fighting and visiting in trenches etc—on terms of great friendliness. Food is plentiful.
At the races here last Sunday there was an absolutely record crowd and more money bet than on any previous day in German racing history. The cheaper field and stands were so full of soldiers that the crowd seemed grey, which goes to show that the last man is not at the front.
State Socialism makes advances ever here. A proposition is now mooted to compel the young men who are earning large wages to save a part thereof.
On the Sussex question—I got my Spanish Colleague, who has orders to ask about the punishment of the Commander to say at the Foreign Office, after he had once been refused any information, that I had heard that the people at large in America believed the Commander has received “Pour le Merite”. Von Jagow said that he was sure that this was not so, but that he did not know the name of the Commander, and that it was not “usual” to tell what punishment [Page 687] had been given. So that I suppose the matter will rest, unless I get orders to formally ask about the punishment.
The German military people and ruling “Squire” (Junker) class are furious at the settlement with America, and abuse America, the President and me indiscriminately.
Any thing the President says about peace is prominently placed in the newspapers. See to-day’s enclosed paper giving the President’s speech at Charlotte—no time to translate it.27
Yours ever
- For the text of president wilson’s remarks at Charlotte, N. C., May 20, 1916, see the New York Times, May 21, 1916.↩