His vision was fixed upon a much greater purpose.

Parliamentary orators might rage because the British fleet was not permitted to make indiscriminate warfare on commerce, but the patient and far-seeing British Foreign Secretary was the man who was really trying to win the war.

He was one of the few Englishmen who, in August, 1914, perceived the tremendous extent of the struggle in which Great Britain had engaged.

He saw that the English people were facing the greatest crisis since William of Normandy, in 1066, subjected their island to foreign rule.

Was England to become the "Reichsland" of a European monarch, and was the British Empire to pass under the sway of Germany?
Proud as Sir Edward Grey was of his country, he was modest in the presence of facts; and one fact of which he early became convinced was that Great Britain could not win unless the United States was ranged upon its side.