File No. 763.72112/164
The Ambassador in Great Britain (Page) to the Secretary of State
London, October 15, 1914, 11 p.m.
[Received October 16, 9:15 a.m.]
[Telegram ]
For the President:
Present controversy about shipping. I cannot help fearing we are getting into deep water needlessly. The British Government has yielded without question to all our requests and has shown a sincere desire to meet all our wishes short of admitting war materials into Germany. That it will not yield. We would not yield it if we were in their place. Neither would the Germans. The English will risk a serious quarrel or even war with us rather than yield. This you may regard as final.
Since the last lists of contraband and conditional contraband were made, such articles as rubber and copper and petroleum have come to play an entirely new part in war. They simply will not admit them. Nothing that can be used for war purposes in Germany now will be used for anything else. Representatives of Spain, Holland, and all the Scandinavian states have conferred with me. They agree they can do nothing but acquiesce and file protests and claims. They admit that England has the right to revise the list. This is not a war in the sense we have hitherto used the word. It is a world-clash of systems of government, a struggle to the extermination of English civilization or of Prussian military autocracy. Precedents have gone to the scrap heap. There is a new measure for military and diplomatic action. Suppose we press for a few shippers’ theoretical rights. The American people as a whole gain nothing and the result is friction with Great Britain which is precisely what a very small minority of agitators would like. Great Britain can any day close the Channel to all shipping or can drive Holland to the enemy and blockade her ports.
Look a little further ahead. If Germany wins, it will make no matter what position Great Britain took on the Declaration of London. We shall see the Monroe Doctrine shot through. We shall have to have a great army and a great navy. If England wins, and we have an ugly academic dispute with her because of this controversy, we shall be in a bad position for helping to compose the quarrel or for any other service.
The present controversy seems here, close to the struggle, academic and of the smallest practical consequence compared with the grave danger we incur of shutting ourselves off from a position to be of some service to civilization and to the peace of the world.
There is no practical need to consult other neutral governments. If we accept the proposed new order in council all the others will accept it and thank us after the event. Their representatives all come to me for advice and leadership here.
The question seems wholly different here from what it probably seems in Washington. There it is a more or less academic discussion. Here it is a matter of life and death for English-speaking civilization. It is not a happy time to raise controversies that can be [Page 249] avoided or postponed. Nothing can be gained and every chance for useful cooperation for peace can easily be thrown away and is now in jeopardy. In jeopardy also are our friendly relations with Great Britain in the sorest time of need in her history. I know that this is the correct, larger view. I recommend most earnestly the substantial acceptance of the new order in council or our acquiescence with a reservation of whatever rights we may have; and I recommend prompt information to the British Government of such action. I should like so to inform Grey.
So far as our neutrality obligations are concerned I do not believe that they require us to demand that Great Britain should adopt for our benefit the Declaration of London which has never been ratified by Great Britain or any other nation except the United States and the effect of which in its application to the situation presented by this war is altogether to the advantage of Germany.
I have delayed to send this perhaps too long for fear I might possibly seem influenced by sympathy with England and by the atmosphere here. But I write of course solely with reference to our own country’s interest and its position after the reorganization of Europe. Anderson and Laughlin agree with me emphatically.