"Public opinion, both official and unofficial, is expressed by these
newspaper comments, with far greater restraint than it is expressed in
private conversation. Ridicule of the Administration runs through the
programmes of the theatres; it inspires hundreds of cartoons; it is a
staple of conversation at private dinners and in the clubs. The most
serious class of Englishmen, including the best friends of the United
States, feel that the Administration's reliance on notes has reduced our
Government to a third-or fourth-rate power. There is even talk of
spheres of German influence in the United States as in China. No
government could fall lower in English opinion than we shall fall if
more notes are sent to Austria or to Germany. The only way to keep any
shred of English respect is the immediate dismissal without more
parleying of every German and Austrian official at Washington. Nobody
here believes that such an act would provoke war.

"I can do no real service by mincing matters. My previous telegrams and
letters have been purposely restrained as this one is. We have now come
to the parting of the ways. If English respect be worth preserving at
all, it can be preserved only by immediate action. Any other course than
immediate severing of diplomatic relations with both Germany and Austria
will deepen the English opinion into a conviction that the
Administration was insincere when it sent the _Lusitania_ notes and that
its notes and protests need not be taken seriously on any subject. And
English opinion is allied opinion. The Italian Ambassador[12] said to
me, 'What has happened? The United States of to-day is not the United
States I knew fifteen years ago, when I lived in Washington.' French
officers and members of the Government who come here express themselves
even more strongly than do the British. The British newspapers to-day
publish translations of ridicule of the United States from German