According to Colonel House, during his 1915 peace mission to Europe and in the tense aftermath of the sinking of Lusitania, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, James Gerard, told him,

The people here in Berlin are firmly convinced that we Americans can be slapped, insulted, and murdered with absolute impunity,

and refer to our diplomatic notes as things worse than waste paper.

They feel that our new freedom is against their ideas and ideals,

and they hate President Wilson because he embodies peace and learning rather than caste and war.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century. The

The Oh! Episode 138, Make the world safe for democracy.

Back in episode 132, we examined the history of the efforts made in 1914 and 1915 to force or

cajole or shame the combatants in the Great War into making peace.

I want to continue with that narrative thread today into

1916. The collapse of Henry Ford's amateur peace effort at the end of 1915, which I told you

about in that episode, effectively marks the end of private efforts to stop the fighting, but it

won't stop Woodrow Wilson. His first effort also failed in 1915, but by

2016 he was ready to try again. Wilson sent his ambassador without portfolio, Colonel Edward

House, back to Europe at the beginning of 1916, for another try at persuading the warring nations

there to agree to American-sponsored mediation.

House spent two months in London, Paris, and Berlin, but mostly in London,

where he developed a close relationship with the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Gray.

Wilson had instructed House not to get mixed up in discussions about territorial claims or payment of indemnities.

Per Woodrow Wilson, the only topics that interested the United States were, A, ending the war,

B, military and naval disarmament, and C, the establishment of a League of Nations to act as a deterrent against future

aggression.

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