Only by a plebiscite could it be determined how the men and women of the United States stand on the war. Small hazard, however, would be incurred in making the statement that ninety or ninety-five per cent of those who are of American stock, and of English or Scottish ancestry, are wholehearted in their sympathy with the Allies. Despite this fact it cannot be said that the official reports of proceedings in Congress on questions raised directly or indirectly by the war are pleasant reading for sympathizers with the Allies. In the first part of the first session of the Sixty-fourth Congressin the period from Dec. 6, 1915, to the end of March, 1916—the questions arising out of the war that had come before the Senate and the House of Representatives were the proposed embargo on the export of munitions, the British blockade, the censorship of mails exercised by the British Government, and Germany's threat of Feb. 10, 1916, that she would treat all armed enemy merchantmen as war vessels, and torpedo them without warning. In the discussion of these questions there were singularly few expressions of sympathy with the Allies; and, as was obvious in the discussions and divisions on the Gore and McLemore resolutions, there were, in both the Senate and the House, large groups of members who readily associated themselves with a movement which, had it succeeded, would unmistakably have been to the advantage of Germany in her submarine warfare, and with two or three other movements that, whatever may have been the domestic reasons for their origin, would greatly have hampered the Allies in equipping their forces, and hindered Great

*Congressional Record. Sixty-fourth Congress First Session. Vol. LIII, Nos. 1 to 86. Government Printing Bureau, Washington, D. C., 1916.

Britain in the blockade of Germany. President Wilson's neutrality proclamation of Aug. 20, 1914, sufficiently explains the fewness and the guarded character of expressions of sympathy with the Allies in the Senate and the House. The President, it will be recalled, urged that the citizens of the United States, "drawn from many nations, and chiefly from the nations now at war," must be impartial in thought as well as in action; that they must put a curb on their sentiments as well as upon every transaction that might be construed as a preference of one party to the struggle before the other. In the unprecedented conditions of the war, the President's proclamation, so far as the people of the United States are concerned, was a counsel of perfection. After twentyone months of war, it cannot be asserted, either as regards the press or the platform, that there has ever been anything approaching a general acceptance of the counsel offered to the American people from the White House. Neither sympathizers with the Allies nor pro-Germans have found it possible to follow the President's advice. The German propaganda has been continuous in one form or another since the autumn of 1914. On the other hand, organizations have come into existence in recent months avowedly hostile to Germany. One of these is the American Rights Committee of New York, which advocates the severance of diplomatic relations with Germany. Another, the Citizens League for America and the Allies, insists that "our political ideals and our national safety are bound up with the cause of the Allies; that their defeat, would mean moral and material disaster to our country"; and adds that "therefore this league is formed to use all lawful

means to put this nation in a position of definite sympathy with the Allies, and in an equally definite position of moral disapprobation of the central Teutonic powers." There is, moreover, at least one instance in which a great iron and steel manufacturing company made it a condition in contracts for partly-finished material, that none of this material, and no finished materials made from it, should be exported to any European country except the United Kingdom, France, Italy or Russia, with a further condition that it should not be exported to any countries outside Europe or Canada without written notice of such shipments to the British Consul General at New York.

Senators and Representatives who sympathize with the Allies in general heeded the President's advice in their utterances in Congress. But there are eight million people of German origin in the United States; and the proGerman propaganda, at least that part of it which is addressed to German-Americans, has gone on continuously since August 1914. The division of it that was aimed at Americans-the division of which Dr. Dernburg was in charge until the "Lusitania" outrage made an abrupt end to his mission was much less active after his departure. The other division, which is carried on among GermanAmericans, increased its activity as the war dragged on; and its leaders were particularly alert in organizing petitions to Congress for an embargo on munitions, for the prohibition of travel by American citizens on armed merchant ships, for the prohibition of war-loans in the United States, against the British blockade, and in opposition to any action by Congress with a view to "preparedness."

German-Americans are scattered all over the United States. They are most numerous in the states of New

York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota, Indiana, New Jersey, California, Nebraska. Kansas, and North and South Dakota. It is asserted by men who are active in the pro-German movement-a movement that has the support of eight hundred daily and weekly newspapers printed in the German language -that in these fifteen states there are 1,860,000 voters of German birth or descent;* and none of the foreign-born citizens of the United States are today or ever were as well organized or as closely held together by race, language and interest as the German-Americans. The sympathies of many SwedishAmericans, Irish-Americans and Jewish-Americans are also with Germany. Moreover, there is in the cottongrowing states much irritation at the blockade, which has kept American cotton out of Germany, and curtailed the supplies of fertilizers that are used by the cotton-growers of the South. These conditions account for the fact that in both Houses of Congress, but particularly in the House of Representatives, there are many members who, in discussions on the embargo, on the blockade, and on the German demand that merchantmen shall not be armed, made speeches which, while not openly conflicting with the President's desire for neutrality, were evidently intended to ingratiate them with the pro-Germans in their constituencies. Senators and Congressmen were reminded almost daily in the earlier part of the session of the organization and activity of German-Americans in all parts of the country. Petitions in favor of movements in Congress which, if they had succeeded, would have been to the advantage of Germany, were numerous and largely signed. One petition against the export of munitions, promoted by the Organization of American Women for Strict Neutrality, was *"Frank Retort of a pro-German," N. Y. Times, May 18, 1916,