4 “felt like a machine”: Ibid., 48. Harlakenden House was owned by an American author named Winston Churchill, whose books were, at the time, very popular—enough so that he and the other Winston exchanged correspondence and the latter resolved that in all his writings he would insert a middle initial, S, for Spencer. His full and formal name was Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill.
5 The South in particular suffered: Berg, Wilson, 341–42.
6 The lead story: New York Times, June 27, 1914.
7 In Europe, kings and high officials: Keegan, First World War, 53–54, 55, 57, 58; Thomson, Twelve Days, 89.
8 In England, the lay public: Thomson, Twelve Days, 186. When Shackleton read a report in the press that Britain was soon to mobilize, he rather chivalrously volunteered to cancel his expedition and offered his ship and services to the war effort. Churchill telegraphed back: “Proceed.”
9 “These pistols”: Ibid., 64, 65, 67, 97.
10 Far from a clamor for war: Keegan, First World War, 10, 12, 15.
11 the Ford Motor Company: New York Times, June 27, 1914.
12 But old tensions and enmities persisted: Devlin, Too Proud to Fight, 220; Keegan, First World War, 17, 18, 19, 38, 42–43.
13 “Europe had too many frontiers”: Thomson, Twelve Days, 23.
14 As early as 1912: Tuchman, Zimmermann Telegram, 11.
15 In Germany, meanwhile, generals tinkered: Keegan, First World War, 29, 30, 32–33.
16 “It’s incredible—incredible”: Berg, Wilson, 334.
17 “We must be impartial”: Ibid., 337, 774.
Britain resented American neutrality. On December 20, 1914, First Sea Lord Jacky Fisher wrote, “The time will come when the United States will be d—d sorry they were neutral.… We shall win all right. I am only VERY sorry” (Marder, Fear God, 3:99). In the same letter Fisher made reference to a widely published poem, popular in Britain, by William Watson, entitled “To America Concerning England.” Watson asks:
… The tiger from his den
Springs at thy mother’s throat, and canst thou now
Watch with a stranger’s gaze?
18 “The United States is remote”: Brooks, “United States,” 237–38.
19 Louvain: Keegan, First World War, 82–83; Link, Wilson: Struggle, 51; New York Times, Oct. 4, 1914.
20 “felt deeply the destruction”: Link, Wilson: Struggle, 51.
21 The German toll: Keegan, First World War, 135–36.
22 By year’s end: Ibid., 176.
23 For Wilson, already suffering depression: Berg, Wilson, 337.
24 “I feel the burden”: Link, Wilson: Struggle, 50.
25 “The whole thing”: Ibid., 52.
26 There was at least one moment: Berg, Wilson, 339–40; Devlin, Too Proud to Fight, 227; Schachtman, Edith and Woodrow, 52.
27 “We are at peace”: Berg, Wilson, 352.
28 On entering waters: Doerries, Imperial Challenge, 94. Wilson wrote to House, later: “Such use of flags plays directly in the hands of Germany in her extraordinary plan to destroy commerce” (290).
And indeed, news of the Lusitania flag episode incensed the German press and public, as reported by America’s ambassador to Germany, James Watson Gerard. “The hate campaign here against America has assumed grave proportions,” he cabled to Secretary Bryan, on Feb. 10, 1915. “People much excited by published report that Lusitania by order of British Admiralty hoisted American flag in Irish Channel and so entered Liverpool.” Telegram, Gerard to Bryan, Feb. 10, 1915, Foreign Relations.
29 At the beginning of the war: Germany’s first U-boat sortie seemed to affirm the German navy’s initial skepticism about the value of submarines. On Aug. 6, 1914, after receiving reports that English battleships had entered the North Sea, Germany dispatched ten U-boats to hunt for them. The boats set out from their base on Germany’s North Sea coast, with authority to sail as far as the northern tip of Scotland, a distance no German submarine had hitherto traveled. One boat experienced problems with its diesel engines and had to return to base. Two others were lost. One was surprised by a British cruiser, the HMS Birmingham, which rammed and sank it, killing all aboard. The fate of the other missing boat was never discovered. The remaining submarines returned to base having sunk nothing. “Not encouraging,” one officer wrote. Thomas, Raiders, 16; see also Halpern, Naval History, 29; Scheer, Germany’s High Sea Fleet, 34–35.
30 “this strange form of warfare”: Churchill, World Crisis, 723.
31 Only a few prescient souls: See Doyle, “Danger!” throughout.
32 Doyle’s forecast: New York Times, Nov. 16, 1917.
33 “The essence of war”: Memorandum, Jan. 1914, Jellicoe Papers.
34 “abhorrent”: Churchill, World Crisis, 409. In British eyes the sinking of a civilian ship was an atrocity. “To sink her incontinently was odious,” Churchill wrote; “to sink her without providing for the safety of the crew, to leave that crew to perish in open boats or drown amid the waves was in the eyes of all seafaring peoples a grisly act, which hitherto had never been practiced deliberately except by pirates” (672).
35 “if some ghastly novelty”: Ibid., 144, 145.