He expressed himself as amazed at my description of President Wilson and his willingness to fight. “We regard him,” said von Jagow, “as absolutely a man of peace. Nor do we believe that the American people will fight. They are far from the scene of action, and what, after all, have they to fight for? Your material interests are not affected.” “But there is one thing that we will fight for,” I replied, “and that is moral principle. It is quite apparent that you do not understand the American spirit. You do not realise that we are holding off, not because we have no desire to fight, but because we wish to be absolutely fair. We first wish to have all the evidence in. I admit that we are reluctant to mix in foreign disputes, but we shall insist upon our right to use the ocean as we see fit, and we don’t propose to have Germany tell us how many ships we can sail and where they are to go. The American is still, perhaps, a great powerful youth, but, once he gets his mind made up that he is going to defend his rights, he will do so irrespective of consequences. You seem to think that Americans will not fight for a principle; you apparently have forgotten that all our wars have been over matters of principle. Take the greatest of them all--the Civil War, from 1861 to ’65. We in the North fought to emancipate the slaves; that was purely a matter of principle, our material interests were not involved. And we fought that to the end, although we had to fight our own brothers.” “We don’t want to be on bad terms with the United States,” von Jagow replied. “There are three nations on whom the peace of the world depends--England, the United States, and Germany. We three should get together, establish peace and maintain it. I thank you for your explanation; I understand the situation much better now. But I still don’t see why your Government is so hard on Germany and so easy with England.” I made the usual explanation that we regarded our problem with each nation as a distinct matter, and could not make our treatment of Germany in any way conditional on our treatment of England. “Oh yes,” replied von Jagow rather plaintively. “It reminds me of two boys playing in a yard. One is to be punished first and the other is waiting for his turn. Wilson is going to spank the German boy first and, after he gets through, then he proposes to take up England. “However,” he concluded, “I wish you would cable the President that you have gone over the matter with me and now understand the German point of view. Won’t you please ask him to do nothing until you have reached the other side and explained the whole thing personally?” I made this promise and cabled immediately.