The Approaching Storm by Neil Lanctot

Author:Neil Lanctot [Lanctot, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

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The current international situation would also have an impact on Hughes’s decision. If a break with Germany and war followed, Wilson would be especially hard to beat as a sitting president in the midst of a national crisis. But Wilson, who knew and respected Hughes more than Roosevelt, was not thinking about the election at the moment. His note had reached German hands on the evening of Thursday, April 20, with no expectation that a reply would be forthcoming over the upcoming Easter holiday.

In the midst of enormous pressure, Wilson tried to project his usual air of calm to the public. That same afternoon, he threw out the first ball at the Washington Senators season opener, followed by a reception for the Daughters of the American Revolution in the Blue Room. The next day, Good Friday, was summerlike in Washington, with temperatures cracking 80 degrees. Still, the Wilsons boarded a train that afternoon to head to Philadelphia to see his new granddaughter, Eleanor Axson Sayre, born to Jessie and her husband, Frank Sayre, a few weeks earlier. Back in the capital on Saturday, they took in an evening performance at Keith’s theater, where they watched the great Harry Houdini escape from a water tank.

If Wilson was calm and collected, Bernstorff was anything but. He believed he would be sent home in the next few days. “I tried hard to prevent them from sending that note, but it’s gone,” he told his lover. “My life has been unbearable for the last eighteen months.” The German ambassador’s conversation with Colonel House over the weekend encouraged him somewhat. The President had to be tough on the Germans, House explained. Otherwise, the Allies would never take him seriously as a peace intermediary. Meanwhile, the Allies had somehow thought now was the time to answer and politely dismiss America’s November note about blockade abuses. “The British Government is not lacking in stupidity,” House complained. “The sending of their answer to our notes at this time is an incredible performance.” In the coming days, the British would have their hands full with the outbreak of the Easter Rebellion in Ireland.

In Germany, the mood was not optimistic. American women and children were already leaving the country in droves for Denmark and Holland. Bethmann, who understood what the note meant, tried to alert the kaiser, who “refused to interrupt his skat [card game]” and strangely believed that Wilson “by demanding other methods against armed merchantmen had left the door open and was holding out a helping hand to us.” Other German leaders were also in denial, such as Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff, who offered the peculiar theory that an “English submarine using a German torpedo” must have been the culprit in the Sussex attack.

Bethmann, like Bernstorff back in America, strongly believed a break had to be avoided and concessions would have to be made. Once again, a bitter struggle was shaping up between Bethmann and the naval and military authorities. And the impact on the civilian

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