papers."


_To the President_

London,
January 5, 1916.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

I wish--an impossible thing of course--that some sort of guidance
could be given to the American correspondents of the English
newspapers. Almost every day they telegraph about the visits of the
Austrian Chargé or the German Ambassador to the State Department to
assure Mr. Lansing that their governments will of course make a
satisfactory explanation of the latest torpedo-act in the
Mediterranean or to "take one further step in reaching a
satisfactory understanding about the _Lusitania_." They usually go
on to say also that more notes are in preparation to Germany or to
Austria. The impression made upon the European mind is that the
German and Austrian officials in Washington are leading the
Administration on to endless discussion, endless notes, endless
hesitation. Nobody in Europe regards their pledges or promises as
worth anything at all: the _Arabic_ follows the _Lusitania_, the
_Hesperian_ follows the _Arabic_, the _Persia_ follows the
_Ancona_. "Still conferences and notes continue," these people say,
"proving that the American Government, which took so proper and
high a stand in the _Lusitania_ notes, is paralyzed--in a word is
hoodwinked and 'worked' by the Germans." And so long as these
diplomatic representatives are permitted to remain in the United