Here was the country--so Sir Edward reasoned--that contained the largest effective white population in the world; that could train armies larger than those of any other nation; that could make the most munitions, build the largest number of battleships and merchant vessels, and raise food in quantities great enough to feed itself and Europe besides.

This power, the Foreign Secretary believed, could determine the issue of the war.

If Great Britain secured American sympathy and support, she would win; if Great Britain lost this sympathy and support, she would lose.

A foreign policy that would estrange the United States and perhaps even throw its support to Germany would not only lose the war to Great Britain, but it would be perhaps the blackest crime in history, for it would mean the collapse of that British-American cooeperation, and the destruction of those British-American ideals and institutions which are the greatest facts in the modern world.

This conviction was the basis of Sir Edward's policy from the day that Great Britain declared war.