e were fighting for their very lives--made a
profoundly dejected feeling; and it made my place and work more
uncomfortable than ever. "Peace without victory" brought us to the
very depths of European disfavour.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 49: "My Three Years in America," by Count Bernstorff, p. 294.]

[Footnote 50: This narrative is based upon memoranda made by Page.]

[Footnote 51: It was delivered and published on January 22nd.]

CHAPTER XXI

THE UNITED STATES AT WAR

I

The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany on
February 3, 1917. The occasion was a memorable one in the American
Embassy in London, not unrelieved by a touch of the ridiculous. All day
long a nervous and rather weary company had waited in the Ambassador's
room for the decisive word from Washington. Mr. and Mrs. Page, Mr. and
Mrs. Laughlin, Mr. Shoecraft, the Ambassador's secretary, sat there hour
after hour, hardly speaking to one another in their tense excitement,
waiting for the news that would inform them that Bernstorff's course had
been run and that their country had taken its decision on the side of
the Allies. Finally, at nine o'clock in the evening, the front door bell
rang. Mr. Shoecraft excitedly left the room; half way downstairs he met
Admiral William Reginald Hall, the head of the British Naval
Intelligence, who was hurrying up to the Ambassador. Admiral Hall, as he
spied Mr. Shoecraft, stopped abruptly and uttered just two words:

"Thank God!"

He then went into the Ambassador's room and read a secret code message
which he had just received from Captain Gaunt, the British naval attache
at Washington. It was as follows:

"Bernstorff has just been given his passports. I shall probably get
drunk to-night!"

It was in this way that Page first learned that the long tension had
passed.

Page well understood that the dismissal of Bernstorff at that time meant
war with the Central Empires. Had this dismissal taken place in 1915,
after the sinking of the _Lusitania_, or in 1916, after the sinking of
the _Sussex_, Page believed that a simple break in relations would in
itself have brought the war to an early end. But by February, 1917,
things had gone too far. For Germany had now decided to stake everything
upon the chance of winning a quick victory with the submarine. Our
policy had persuaded the Kaiser's advisers that America would not
intervene; and the likelihood of rapidly starving Great B