"Secretary Lane thought that the most effective way to wake the country up out of its dream of security was to tell the truth about the submarine losses, the country up to that time not having really appreciated what the losses amounted to. He said, 'The President is going to address the State representatives at the White House, and I am going to urge him to cut loose on the submarine losses,' and he asked me to prepare a memorandum for him to give to the President. This I did. The President, however, apparently decided not to go into the subject, and Secretary Lane, with a courage that can only be appreciated by those who knew the atmosphere of official Washington at that time, decided to take the bull by the horns himself, and at the next meeting with the representatives with the Council in Secretary Baker's office, Secretary Lane ... cut loose and told the actual truth about submarine losses at that time. ... The next morning it was the story of the day in the newspapers and it did as much to arouse the country as a whole as to what we were up against as any one thing that occurred during this period, save only the President's war message itself. "Secretary Lane became chairman of the field division of the Council of National Defense toward the end of the war. This was the body that guided and coordinated the work of the 184,000 units of the state, county, community, and municipal Councils of Defense, and of those of the Woman's Committee of the Council--no doubt the greatest organization of the kind that the world has ever known." To George W. Lane Washington, May 3, 1917 These are great days. Their significance will not be realized for many years. We are forming a close union with France and England. The most impressive sight I have ever seen was that at Washington's tomb last Sunday. We went down on the Mayflower--the French and the English commissions and the members of the Cabinet. Viviani and Balfour spoke. Joffre laid a bronze palm upon Washington's tomb, then stood up in his soldierly way and stood at salute for a minute, Balfour laid a wreath of lilies upon the tomb, and leaned over as if in prayer. Above the tomb, for the first time, flew the flag of another country than our own, the Stars and Stripes, and on either side, the British Jack and the French Tricolor. This is a combination of the Democracies of the world against feudalism and autocracy.