[Sidenote: The United States must be the mediator.]
This purpose--the preservation of a strict neutrality in order that later we might be of use in the great task of mediation--dominated all the President's early speeches.
[Sidenote: Invasion of Belgium stirs American opinion.]
The spirit of neutrality was not easy to maintain. Public opinion was deeply stirred by the German invasion of Belgium and by reports of atrocities there. The Royal Belgian Commission, which came in September, 1914, to lay their country's cause for complaint before our National Government, was received with sympathy and respect. The President in his reply reserved our decision in the affair. It was the only course he could take without an abrupt departure from our most treasured traditions of non-interference in Old World disputes. But the sympathy of America went out to the Belgians in the heroic tragedy, and from every section of our land money contributions and supplies of food and clothing poured over to the Commission for Relief in Belgium, which was under the able management of our fellow-countrymen abroad.
Still, the thought of taking an active part in this European war was very far from most of our minds. The nation shared with the President the belief that by maintaining a strict neutrality we could best serve Europe at the end as impartial mediators.
[Sidenote: Complication on the seas imperils American neutrality.]
But in the very first days of the war our Government foresaw that complications on the seas might put us in grave risk of being drawn into the conflict. No neutral nation could foretell what violations of its vital interests at sea might be attempted by the belligerents. And so, on August 6, 1914, our Secretary of State dispatched an identical note to all the powers then at war, calling attention to the risk of serious trouble arising out of this uncertainty of neutrals as to their maritime rights, and proposing that the Declaration of London be accepted by all nations for the duration of the war.
[Sidenote: German Government stirs opinion hostile to United States.]
[Sidenote: American policy not inconsistent with American traditions.]
In the first year of the war the Government of Germany stirred up among its people a feeling of resentment against the United States on account of our insistence upon our right as a neutral nation to trade in munitions with the belligerent powers. Our legal right in the matter was not seriously questioned by Germany. She could not have done so consistently, for as recently as the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 both Germany and Austria sold munitions to the belligerents. Their appeals to us in the present war were not to observe international law, but to revise it in their interest. And these appeals they tried to make on moral and humanitarian grounds. But upon "the moral issue" involved, the stand taken by the United States was consistent with its traditional policy and with obvious common sense.