The intimate papers of Colonel House arranged as a narrative by Charles Seymour.

THE PRESIDENT'S VIEWS ON THE WAR 293

thought it would have made no difference, for the reason
that the Kaiser was at Corfu and it was impossible for me to
approach him sooner than I did....
'I was interested to hear him express as his opinion what I
had written him some time ago in one of my letters, to the
effect that if Germany won it would change the course of our
civilization and make the United States a military nation.
He also spoke of his deep regret, as indeed I did to him in
that same letter, that it would check his policy for a better
international ethical code.
'He felt deeply the destruction of Louvain, and I found
him as unsympathetic with the German attitude as is the
balance of America. He goes even further than I in his condemnation of Germany's part in this war, and almost allows
his feeling to include the German people as a whole rather
than the leaders alone. He said German philosophy was
essentially selfish and lacking in spirituality. When I spoke
of the Kaiser building up the German machine as a means of
maintaining peace, he said, "What a foolish thing it was to
create a powder magazine and risk some one's dropping a
spark into it!"
'He thought the war would throw the world back three or
four centuries. I did not agree with him. He was particularly
scornful of Germany's disregard of treaty obligations, and
was indignant at the German Chancellor's designation of
the Belgian Treaty as being "only a scrap of paper."
' I took occasion here to explain to him Sir Edward Grey's
strong feeling upon the question of treaty obligation, and
his belief that he, the President, had lifted international
ethics to a high plane by his action in the Panama tolls
question.'
But although the personal feeling of the President was
with the Allies, he insisted then and for many months after,
that this ought not to affect his political attitude, which he