CLXII, pp.

1378-9.

This blunt expression of Great Britain's Foreign Secretary offers an interesting comparison with the words of the American President Wilson, in a parallel statement at the outbreak of the Great War in 1914.

Wilson on August 3, 1914, gave a special audience to newspaper correspondents, begging them to maintain an attitude of calm impartiality.

On August 4 he issued the first of several neutrality proclamations in which, following the customary language of such documents, the people were notified that neutrality did not restrict the "full and free expression of sympathies in public and in private." But on August 18 in an address to the people of the United States, this legal phraseology, required by traditional usage was negatived by Wilson's appeal that "we must be impartial in thought as well as in action, must put a curb upon our sentiments as well as upon every transaction that might be construed as a preference of one party to the struggle before another." And three weeks later, on September 8, came the proclamation setting aside October 4 "as a day of prayer to Almighty God," informing Him that war existed and asking His intervention.