The Foreign Office will no doubt reply in good Foreign
Office jargon to the American Note, but we shall be greatly surprised if Sir Edward Grey's answer when translated into common speech does not run somewhat on the following lines : " We folly understand your difficulties, and we desire to do, and mean to do, everything we can to make it easier for your traders—provided only that we do not at the same time weaken our hold on Germany. Even to please the United States we are not going to relax in the slightest degree our efforts to conquer Germany. You must make your people understand that we are fighting for our very existence as a free nation, and that we cannot let copper into Germany—for that is the crux—rem ely because to forbid its entry under neutral aliases deprives very powerful American business people of what they regard as 'a legitimate profit' of thirty per cent. above normal ante-bellum profits. We do not blame them for grumbling at being deprived of that profit, nor do we wonder at the general malaise felt in the American commercial world as a whole. Though notes terrible as our own trouble was in the cotton famine of the 'sixties,' the depression in the United States must be very upsetting. Americans must remember, however, that in the last resort their commercial interests, like ours, are centred in a short war, and the only chance of ending the war quickly rests in the defeat of Germany. But though we cannot yield one hair's-breadth on essentials, we are more than willing to dis- miss in the most friendly spirit every possible suggestion for mitigating the harshness, or apparent harshness, of our naval action. Our only reservation is that we cannot deprive our- selves of the advantages of the command of the sea because American exporters are fretful."
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