Then I saw that the whole thing went wrong from the place where that Knox legal note came in.

Congressmen in the backwoods quoted cryptic passages from it, thought they were saying something, and proceeded to make their audiences believe that somehow England had hit us with a club--or would have hit us but for Knox.

That pure discourtesy kept us apart from English sympathy for something like two years.
Then the President took it up.

He threw the legal twaddle into the gutter.

He put the whole question in a ten-minutes' speech to Congress, full of clearness and fairness and high courtesy.