This, too, was objectionable and the President and I together softened it down into the one you received.
Faithfully yours, E.M.

HOUSE.
In justice to Mr.Lansing, a passage in a later letter of Colonel House must be quoted: "It seems that Lansing did not write the particular dispatch to you that was objected to.

Someone else prepared it and Lansing rather too hastily submitted it to the President, with the result you know." This suppressed communication is probably for ever lost, but its tenor may perhaps be gathered from instructions which were actually sent to the Ambassador about this time.

After eighteen typewritten pages of not too urbanely expressed discussion of the Declaration of London and the general subject of contraband, Page was instructed to call the British Government's attention to the consequences which followed shipping troubles in previous times.

It is hard to construe this in any other way than as a threat to Great Britain of a repetition of 1812: _Confidential_.