It will only play into Hoke Smith[14]--German hands and accomplish nothing here.

We make as much fuss about points which we have silently to yield later as about a real principle.

Hence they all say that the State Department is merely captious, and they pay less and less attention to it and care less and less for American opinion--if only they can continue to get munitions.

We are reducing English regard to this purely mercenary basis....
We are--under lawyers' quibbling--drifting apart very rapidly, to our complete isolation from the sympathy of the whole world.
Yours forever sincerely, W.H.P.
Page refers in this letter to the "blockade"; this was the term which the British Government itself used to describe its restrictive measures against German commerce, and it rapidly passed into common speech.

Yet the truth is that Great Britain never declared an actual blockade against Germany.