The Republican leader in the House of Representatives, Representative Mann, in 1916 had declared “Wilson is determined to plunge us into war with Germany.” Three years later the admission that we would have been in the war even “if Germany had committed no act of war or no act of injustice against our citizens” came from the White House, and Senators stood appalled at the revelation. The President’s frank admission that the administration would have drifted into war regardless of what Germany had done or might do, is strangely in accord with statements contained in the great historic work on the World War by the former French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hanotaux, who writes: =Just before the Battle of the Marne, when the spirits of many of the leading politicians in France were so depressed that they were urging an immediate peace with Germany, three American ambassadors presented themselves to the government--the then functioning ambassador, his predecessor and his successor--and implored the government not to give up, promising that America would join in the war.= “=At present there are but 50,000 influential persons in America who want it to enter the war, but in a short time there will be a hundred million.=” The description makes it easy to identify the three diplomats who gave France this assurance; they were Robert Bacon, Roosevelt’s ambassador; Myron T. Herrick, Taft’s ambassador, and William G. Sharp, Wilson’s ambassador to Paris. This promise was given in September, 1914. There had then been no alleged outrages against American rights. The U-boat war had not been started. The Lusitania was not sunk until May, 1915. Obviously, then, the sinking of the Lusitania, the U-boat raids, and other alleged offenses, were mere pretexts of these “50,000 influential persons” in a propaganda to precipitate their hundred million fellow-citizens into the bloody European complication. No compromise now seemed possible. The Senate was determined to take charge of the treaty, and the President prepared to appeal to the country by a series of speeches which carried him through the West as far as the Pacific Coast. During the trip he denounced the opposition Senators with strong invective, culminating in violent outbreaks of temper. But apparently his spell over the public mind, the seduction of his phrases, had been broken. Suddenly came the news of his physical breakdown, followed by his immediate return to Washington under the care of physicians, and a long period of confinement with the attendance of various specialists. Still he continued to direct the fight in the Senate for the ratification of the League of Nations and the treaty with Germany without the crossing of a “t” or the dotting of an “i.”