A Higher Form of Killing by Diana Preston

British ambassador Sir Cecil Spring-Rice thought talking to Bryan was “like writing on ice” and Bryan himself “a jellyfish . . . incapable of forming a settled judgement on anything outside party politics.” Continental Europeans gagged when served nonalcoholic grape juice by the teetotaler as a substitute for wine at his diplomatic receptions.
    Immediately before the outbreak of war Wilson was preoccupied with the illness of his wife Ellen, who was dying of kidney disease. They were a devoted couple—he referred to them as “wedded sweethearts.” When he first heard of Austro-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia, Wilson put his hands to his face and said: “I can think of nothing, nothing when my dear one is suffering.” Ellen died on August 6. When the British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey, who had lost his own wife in a carriage accident a few years before, wrote him a letter of condolence, Wilson replied, “My hope is that you will regard me as your friend. I feel that we are bound together by common principle and purpose.” One of Grey’s main aims in the early years of the war would be to maintain that sense of shared understanding and empathy with Wilson.
    Nevertheless, Wilson was as committed as Bryan to maintaining U.S. neutrality and, if possible, to mediating peace. On August 3 he told a press conference that America stood ready to help the rest of the world resolve their differences peacefully and to “reap a permanent glory out of doing it.” On August 18 he asked his people to be “neutral in fact as well as in name during these days that are to try men’s souls . . . impartial in thought as well as in action” so that the United States could “speak the counsels of peace” and “play the impartial mediator.” Early in September he would make his first tentative offer to Germany to mediate, which would be rebuffed on the grounds that Germany had had war forced on it and that accepting mediation at this stage would be “interpreted as a sign of weakness and not understood by our people.”
    Even before war had begun, Wilson had shown his determination to ensure neutrality among his officers and officials by muzzling the now retired Admiral Mahan, who had long warned Britain through the press of the need to thwart German commercial and colonial ambitions before it was too late. On August 3 he advised the British navy to strike at once, or Germany would defeat France and Russia and turn on Britain. He also suggested that Britain should immediately make a preemptive attack on Italy, then teetering on the brink of joining Germany and Austro-Hungary because of a previous alliance. Under pressure from public opinion, not least from Italian Americans, Wilson initiated a special order on August 6 that prohibited officers of the navy and army of the United States, active or retired, from commenting publicly on the military or political situation in Europe. Mahan asked to be exempted from the order and was refused. He died less than four months later on December 1, 1914, before he could see many of his ideas on sea power vindicated.
    Sharing a language and increasingly a common popular culture, the American public with the exception of nearly all German Americans and some Irish Americans were generally sympathetic to Britain. The kaiser would complain in early October, “England has managed to make the whole world believe that we are the guilty party.” However, in reality the actions of his troops were mainly responsible for increased anti-German sentiment in the United States and elsewhere as reports emerged of war crimes committed by them during the early days of the German invasion of Belgium and France. Fearing or believing they were under attack by “citizen guerrillas,” German troops routinely took hostages to ensure good behavior. They shot at least 110 citizens at Andenne Seilles near Namur and burned the town down. At Leffe on the outskirts of Dinant, German soldiers