File No. 763.72/2649
The Ambassador in Germany (Gerard) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 4, 7.15 p. m.]
3839. I returned last night from General Headquarters, having been there from 7 p. m., Friday, to 11.30 p. m., Monday. Grew went with me. We were accompanied by a gentleman from the Foreign Office. In Charleville we were given small villa and dined each day with the Chancellor and lunched there Sunday. I had numerous conversations with the Chancellor and others of the Foreign Office as well as Von Treutler, Prussian Minister to Munich, who represents the Foreign Office and is always with the Emperor. In all these conversations the Chancellor laid great stress on the fact that we had done nothing to England. I said that we could never agree to do anything to another country as a price of obtaining something from Germany, but I did state that I honestly believed both that the President was absolutely neutral and that he intended to enforce international law whenever its violation interfered with the rights of Americans; that, however, if some one murdered my sister I would probably pursue him first in preference to a small boy who had stepped on my flower beds. All agreed that the President’s memorandum about armed merchantmen would seem to mean that he intended in cases where English gave ships orders to fire immediately to either keep such ships out of American ports or warn Americans off. We had general discussion as to what America could do if she came into the war, the Sussex case, etc. In talk of the British blockade I cited the German Frye note which stated that food bound for an enemy fortified port was presumably bound for the enemy army and therefore contraband.
Monday morning I was notified that the Chancellor would call for me to take me to the Emperor at 12.30 and that there would be lunch with the Emperor at 1. I also received a copy of the log of [Page 254] a submarine. When the Chancellor came he [asked]: “Have you read the log of that submarine?” I said, “Yes.” He said: “You see how careful the submarine commanders are; this one did not sink a ship because he would not put the crew in boats 120 miles from land.” I said: “One swallow does not make a summer, and anyway to-day’s papers speak of a crew being put in boats at exactly this distance from land.”
We went to the chateau where the Emperor lives; he received us in the garden; although lunch was at 1 we talked until 1. 30, about three-quarters hour in all. The Emperor said smilingly: “Do you come like a Roman proconsul bringing peace in one hand and war (in the other)?” I said, “No, Your Majesty, only hoping that the differences between two friendly countries may be satisfactorily adjusted.” The Emperor then began a sort of speech. He spoke first of the rather rough and uncourteous tone of our note as he considered it He said that the German notes had spoken of the friendship of the two countries since the days of Frederick the Great. He said that we had charged the Germans with being barbarous in warfare; that at first as Emperor and Christian and head of the Church of his country he had wished to carry on war in a knightly manner; he referred to his speech to the Reichstag members, but he said that the opponents of Germany had used weapons and means which had compelled him to resort to similar means. He said that the French were not at all like the French of 1870 and did not have the same noble feelings and officers, but that the officers came from one did not know where.
He then spoke of the English blockade and the effort of the English to starve out the Germans and keep even milk and Red Cross supplies out, and other instances of breaches of international law by England. He said that this justified any means of submarine war and that before he would permit his wife and little grand-children to die of hunger he would utterly destroy England arid even the whole English royal family. He said that the submarine was a weapon used by all nations including America, that he had lately seen with great interest the plans of a battle submarine of large size in an American paper, that the submarine had come to stay and law must be changed to meet this condition, and then both he and the Chancellor said that there was no international law anyway. He said that if an American travels on a cart behind the battle lines and is hurt by a shell, what right has his nation to complain. I said that, first, I did not believe the note charged the Germans with general barbarity in war, but referred only to the use of submarines; that we could never promise to do anything to one country in return for a concession from another, that if we made it a condition that he should do something to Great Britain, that he would of course refuse; that the President only desired to enforce international law; that an American on the battle field was a far different case from an American on an enemy ship at sea; that the battle field was in some hostile territory, but that outside of the three-mile limit the sea was free and no one could declare it war territory; that as for the British blockade, we want first to settle cases where the lives of Americans were involved; that the President was not acting as a referee for the world in breaches of international law, but was [Page 255] engaged in protecting Americans in their rights; that he had sent me some dumdum bullets alleged to have been used by the French, but that the President had refused to investigate, and that many friends of Germany thought the President had thereby helped Germany, as otherwise for days the White House would have been filled with waiting Belgians exhibiting mutilated women and children alleged to have been mistreated by the Germans. I said that the American ships Carib and Green Brier coming to Germany with cotton had been blown up by German mines; that I had heard of a food ship called the Wilhelmina destined for Germany being taken into an English port, that I believed the cargo had been bought by the English before any decision in the English prize court. The Emperor then spoke of the Dacia, and I said the Dacia was captured because she was a German ship transferred after the war and therefore subject to capture, and the Chancellor said, “That is right.” I also referred to the German Frye note as above.
I said that President Wilson was violently attacked in Germany but that he stood for peace, and the speeches of Roosevelt and Root showed that their parties were for war, even about Belgium; that it was not, as he had said, a case of sending a note after two years of war demanding that the Germans give up a legal weapon, but that the President had stood a great deal as representing America from the Lusitania case on. He said that there was ample warning given in the Lusitania case. I said, “If the Chancellor warns me that if I go on the Wilhelm Platz he will kill me, and I go and he kills me, the fact that he gave me warning does not excuse the killing if I had right to go on [the] Wilhelm Platz.” I said we specify the Arabic where the ship was westward bound, and therefore there was no question of munitions, as well as the Ancona where we knew that everything about the submarine was German except the flag; that it was not the case of coming in late in the war with a note asking Germany to give up a lawful means of war, but of American patience at last coming to an end.
We had some pleasant general conversation. The Emperor said: “Are the German troops not splendid?” and, “It takes some courage to remain six hours under vexing fire from American ammunition.” At lunch I sat next to the Emperor. We talked of Henry Ford, the female suffrage, etc. After lunch he referred to the submarine log and I said the same thing as to the Chancellor. He said that the Tubantia was sunk by an English torpedo fired on purpose to make trouble, but that a German torpedo, which had been fired and missed some days previously and which was floating in the North Sea, happened to run against the Tubantia at the same time. He said that Holland and its corvette captain in Berlin were convinced of this and that Holland had sent a note to England demanding payment.
In the evening the Chancellor said he hoped the President would be great enough to take up peace, that Germany had won enough to be able to talk of peace without suspicion of weakness, and that this awful loss of life should cease. He said that he hoped Colonel House would take up the question and shall perhaps come here, under the President’s direction.