It mattered little in 1812 on which side the United States took its stand; in 1914 such a decision Mould inevitably determine the issue.

Of all European statesmen there was one man who saw this point with a definiteness which, in itself, gives him a clear title to fame.

That was Sir Edward Grey.

The time came when a section of the British public was prepared almost to stone the Foreign Secretary in the streets of London, because they believed that his "subservience" to American trade interests was losing the war for Great Britain; his tenure of office was a constant struggle with British naval and military chiefs who asserted that the Foreign Office, in its efforts to maintain harmonious relations with America, was hamstringing the British fleet, was rendering almost impotent its control of the sea, and was thus throwing away the greatest advantage which Great Britain possessed in its life and death struggle.
"Some blight has been at work in our Foreign Office for years," said the _Quarterly Review_, "steadily undermining our mastery of the sea." "The fleet is not allowed to act," cried Lord Charles Beresford in Parliament; the Foreign Office was constantly interfering with its operations.

The word "traitor" was not infrequently heard; there were hints that pro-Germanism was rampant and that officials in the Foreign Office were drawing their pay from the Kaiser.