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seeming to complain--nor even of seeming to seem to complain. But if you think it wise to send or show this letter to the President, I'm willing you should. This job was botched: there's no doubt about that. We shall not recover for many a long, long year. The identical indictment could have been drawn with admirable temper and the way laid down for arbitration and for keeping our interpretation of the law and precedents intact--all done in a way that would have given no offense. The feeling runs higher and higher every day--goes deeper and spreads wider. Now on top of it comes the _Ancona_[15]. The English press, practically unanimously, makes sneering remarks about our Government. After six months it has got no results from the _Lusitania_ controversy, which Bernstorff is allowed to prolong in secret session while factories are blown up, ships supplied with bombs, and all manner of outrages go on (by Germans) in the United States. The English simply can't understand why Bernstorff is allowed to stay. They predict that nothing will come of the _Ancona_ case, nor of any other case. Nobody wants us to get into the war--nobody who counts--but they are losing respect for us because we seem to them to submit to anything. We've simply dropped out. No English person ever mentions our Government to me. But they talk to one another all the time about the political anaemia of the United States Government. They think that Bernstorff has the State Department afraid of him and that the Pacifists dominate opinion--the Pacifists-at-any-price. I no longer even have a chance to explain any of these things to anybody I know. It isn't the old question we used to discuss of our having no friend in the world when the war ends. It's gone far further than that. It is now whether the United States Government need be respected by anybody. W.H.P. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 14: Senator Hoke Smith, of Georgia, was at this time--and afterward--conducting bitter campaign against the British blockade and advocating an embargo as a retaliation.] [Footnote 15: Torpedoed off Sardinia on Nov. 7, 1915, by the Austrians. There was a large toss of life, including many Americans.] CHAPTER XVI DARK DAYS FOR THE ALLIES _To Edward M. House_ June 30, 1915.
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