class="pnext">Many Americans found themselves, for reasons never entirely clear to them, the objects of "congratulation." I know of at least one instance in which a very estimable American lady, showered with "congratulations" by British friends on the action of her country, preserved sufficient presence of mind to suggest that she thought "congratulations" were due to the Allies. Another favorite view advanced by vox populi was that America had only "come in" at this late stage of the sanguinary game because "the war was won" and intervention now was "safe" and "cheap." It was not uncommon to be told that our determination to "spend the whole force of the nation" was due to commercial acumen and our desire to safeguard the heavy "investment" we had already made in the Allied cause. Last-ditchers--their name was legion: the Englishmen who refused to believe even yet that America "meant business"--declined to throw their hats into the air and shout until "big words" had become "big deeds." Much more impressive in my own ears seemed the explanation that Britons were not tumultuous in our honor because these days of endless sacrifice--the spring offensive in France was at its height and the nation's best were falling in thousands--were not days for cheering and flag-waving. And, finally, there was that extensive school of thought which had always and sincerely opposed American intervention on the ground that America, as a neutral granary and arsenal, was a more effective Allied asset than a belligerent America which would naturally and necessarily husband its vast resources for its own military requirements.

The story of Germany's state of mind toward America's entry into the lists against her is soon told. The German government and German people looked upon us as all but declared enemies throughout the war. They felt, and repeatedly said, that we were doing them quite as much damage as neutrals as we could possibly inflict in the guise of belligerents. That, indeed, was the argument on which Hindenburg and his fellow-strategists based the "safety" of inaugurating unrestricted submarine warfare and the moral certainty of war with the United States as a result. Not all Germans blithely relegated the prospect of a formally hostile America to the realm of inconsequence. Hindenburg and Ludendorff know nothing about America. But men like Ballin, Gwinner, Rathenau and Dernburg know that the United States, in a famous German idiom, is, indeed, "the land of unlimited possibilities." There can be no manner of doubt that the vision of America's limitless resources harnessed to those of the nations already at war with their country always filled the business giants of the Fatherland with all the terror of a nightmare. But as those elements, both before and during the war, were as a voice crying in the wilderness of Prussian militarism, they were condemned to silence when the dreaded thing became a reality; and the only note that issued forth from Berlin was the "inspired" croak in the government-controlled press that only the expected had happened; that Hindenburg's plans had been made with exact regard for that which had now supervened, and that Germany's irresistible march to victory would not and could not be arrested by anything the Americans could do.

Doubts were universally expressed in America and in Allied Europe as to whether the Kaiser's government would permit President Wilson's crushing indictment of Prussianism to be published in Germany. One heard of picturesque schemes to drop millions of copies of the speech over the German trenches and towns from aeroplanes. In at least one widely-read German newspaper, the Berliner Tageblatt, a Radical-Liberal journal which has not entirely surrendered its old-time independence, the president's speech was printed almost verbatim. In nearly every paper there were adequate extracts. But such effect as they may have been designed to create upon the German body politic--particularly the president's insistence that America's war is with "the Imperial German Government" and not with "the German people"--was nullified by the press bureau's imperious orders to editors to reject Mr. Wilson's "moral clap-trap" as impudent and insolent interference with Germany's domestic concerns. Under the leadership of the celebrated Berlin theologian, Professor Doctor Adolf Harnack, meetings of German scholars and savants were organized for the purpose of giving public expression to the "unanimity and indignation with which the German nation protests against the American president's officious intrusion upon matters which are the affair of the German people and themselves alone." Or words to that effect.

Meantime the so-called comic press of Germany, which to an extent probably unknown in any other country of the world gives the keynote for popular sentiment, engaged in an orgy of unbridled abuse of President Wilson, the United States and Americans in general. The leitmotif of hundreds of cartoons, caricatures and jokes was that the "American money power" had "dragged" us into the war. Simplicissimus epitomized German thoughts of the moment in a full-page drawing entitled "High Finance Crowning Wilson Autocrat of America by the Grace of Mammon." The president was depicted enthroned upon a dais resting on bulging money-bags and surmounted by a canopy fringed with gold dollars. A crown of shells and cartridges is being placed upon his head by the grinning shade of the late J. Pierpont Morgan. In the background is the filmy outline of George Washington, delivering the farewell address.

Then, of a sudden, German press policy toward the United States underwent a radical change. Silence supplanted abuse. It became so oppressive and so profound as to be eloquent. The purpose of this organized indifference soon became crystal-clear: on the one hand to bolster up German confidence in the innocuousness of American enmity, and, on the other, to slacken the United States' war preparations by committing no "overt act" of word or deed designed to stimulate them. Bernstorff had by this time reached Berlin and there is reason to suspect that his was the crafty hand directing the new policy of ostensible disinterestedness in American belligerency. The arrival of American naval forces in European waters; the inauguration of conscription; the far-reaching preparations for succoring our Allies with money, food and ships; the splendid success of the Liberty Loan; the presence of General Pershing and the headquarters staff of the United States Army in France; the enrollment of nearly ten million young men for military service; our ambitious plans for the air war; the girding up of our loins in every conceivable direction, that we may play a worthy part in the war--all these things have been either deliberately ignored in Germany, by imperious government order, or, when not altogether suppressed from public knowledge, been slurred or glossed over in a way designed to make them appear as harmless or "bluff." Finally, in an "inspired" article which offered sheer affront to the large body of truly patriotic American citizens of German extraction, the Cologne Gazette bade Germans to continue to pin their faith in "our best allies," i.e., the German-Americans, who might be relied upon (quoth the semi-official Watch on the Rhine) to "inject into American public opinion an element of restraint and circumspection which has already often been a cause of embarrassment to Herr Wilson and his English friends." "We may be sure," concluded this impudent homily, "that our compatriots are still at their post."

Events have marched fast since America "came in." In Great Britain and France men of