I have said the ambassador would lay his situation before the President was to have stated the obvious, for even from this side the ocean the gathering clouds have been in plain sight. The contribution Mr. Suope has made to American understanding is in his declaration that the danger of remaking more ruthless submarine warfare is the chief inspiration of the ambassador's visit.

Mr. Gerard had not intended to come home. He journeyed from Berlin to Copenhagen to arrange for the departure of Mrs. Gerard, and it was while he was in the Danish capital, on this mission that he received orders or suggestions which led him aboard the liner. It is clear enough this is not exactly the time the American ambassador in Berlin would select for a vacation here must be some compelling reason which takes Mr. Gerard away from his post at this perilous juncture. That he comes to warn the President of the grave danger that impends is supported not only by Mr. Swope's positive statement, but by all the extrinsic evidence and all the intrinsic probability.

"The defeat of President Wilson on the way to Berlin," Mr. Suope said in his telegram, "would be greeted in the German empire as a gigantic German victory, and I was told by Cabinet members and business men so-and-professors, that flags would be hung out of every window in honor of the occasion."

It is not difficult to understand what effect the President's defeat, so interpreted and  I heralded, would have on the campaign to inaugurate a new era of righteousness. What Germany can do was shown on Sunday off the coast of England. What she would do, being the American President who had held within the limits of law had been released and repudiated by the American people, is a fixed and dreadful certainly. 