A despatch from the latter to the British Ambassador in Washington gives a splendid summary of the British attitude on such approaches at this time.
_Sir Edward Grey to Sir Cecil Spring Rice_ Foreign Office, September 9, 1914.
SIR: The American Ambassador showed me to-day a communication that he had from Mr.Bryan.It was to the effect that Mr.Straus and Mr.
Speyer had been talking with the German Ambassador, who had said that, though he was without instructions, he thought that Germany might be disposed to end the war by mediation.

This had been repeated to Mr.Bryan, who had spoken to the German Ambassador, and had heard the same from him.

Mr.Bryan had taken the matter up, and was asking direct whether the German Emperor would accept mediation if the other parties who were at war would do the same.
The American Ambassador said to me that this information gave him a little concern.

He feared that, coming after the declaration that we had signed last week with France and Russia about carrying on the war in common[100], the peace parties in the United States might be given the impression that Germany was in favour of peace, and that the responsibility for continuing the war was on others.
I said that the agreement that we had made with France and Russia was an obvious one; when three countries were at war on the same side, one of them could not honourably make special terms for itself and leave the others in the lurch.

As to mediation, I was favourable to it in principle, but the real question was: On what terms could the war be ended?
If the United States could devise anything that would bring this war to an end and prevent another such war being forced on Europe I should welcome the proposal.
The Ambassador said that before the war began I had made suggestions for avoiding it, and that these suggestions had been refused.
I said that this was so, but since the war began there were two further considerations to be borne in mind: We were fighting to save the west of Europe from being dominated by Prussian militarism; Germany had prepared to the day for this war, and we could not again have a great military power in the middle of Europe preparing war in this way and forcing it upon us; and the second thing was that cruel wrong had been done to Belgium, for which there should be some compensation.