Page:The web (1919).djvu/26

 And, quite aside from the idea of material profit, we tried to be fair and impartial in a fight that was not yet ours, though every American heart bled with France and Belgium, ached in pain with that of Britain, locked in death grapple in her greatest war—that which must name her still free or forever enslaved. And from Washington came admonition to be calm. President Wilson's appeal went out again and again to the people, and whether or not it ever once seemed to all of us a possible thing for the United States to keep out of this war, at least we sought to do so and were advised and commanded to do so by the chief of our own forces.

Whether or not we all wished to be neutral so many years, we officially and nationally were neutral. Therefore we retained our commercial rights under neutrality. Doing no more than Germany always previously had done, we made and sold arms and munitions in the open markets of the world.

But Germany could not come and get her arms and munitions had she wished to do so. Great Britain had something to say about that. Wherefore Germany hated us, secretly and openly—hated us for doing what she once had done but could no longer do.

The enforcement of blockade made Germany hate us. Germany's psychology has always been double-faced—one face for herself and one for the rest of the world. The Austrian double-headed eagle belongs of right also on the German coat of arms. "What I do not wish to have done to me is Wrong; what I wish to do to others is Right!" That is the sum and substance of the German public creed and the German private character—and now we fairly may say we know them both. The German is not a sportsman—he does not know the meaning of that word. He has not in his language any word meaning "fair play." Nothing is fair play to a German which does not work to his advantage. The American neutrality in combination with the British blockade did not work to his advantage. Hence—so he thought—it was all wrong.

The Germans began to hate America more and more. We did not know, at that time, that Germany had been planning many years for "diesen aufunsangehängten