The war party has got the upper hand." At this point Sir Edward's eyes filled with tears.
"Thus the efforts of a lifetime go for nothing.

I feel like a man who has wasted his life." "This scene was most affecting," Page said afterward.

"Sir Edward not only realized what the whole thing meant, but he showed that he realized the awful responsibility for it." Sir Edward then asked the Ambassador to explain the situation to President Wilson; he expressed the hope that the United States would take an attitude of neutrality and that Great Britain might look for "the courtesies of neutrality" from this country.

Page tried to tell him of the sincere pain that such a war would cause the President and the American people.
"I came away," the Ambassador afterward said, "with a sort of stunned sense of the impending ruin of half the world[64]." The significant fact in this interview is that the British Foreign Secretary justified the attitude of his country exclusively on the ground of the violation of a treaty.

This is something that is not yet completely understood in the United States.