Most of them acquiesced in these instructions by maintaining silence.

There was only one London newspaper, the _Westminster Gazette_, which made even a faint-hearted attempt to explain away the President's statement.

From the first day of the war the British people had declared that President Wilson did not understand the issues at stake; and they now declared that this note confirmed their worst forebodings.

The comments of the man-in-the-street were unprintable, but more serious than these was the impression which Mr.Wilson's dubious remarks made upon those Englishmen who had always been especially friendly to the United States and who had even defended the President in previous crises.

Lord Bryce, who had accepted philosophically the Presidential statement that the United States was not "concerned with the causes" of the war, could not regard so indulgently this latest judgment of Great Britain and Germany.