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          Germany wanted peace, but only on condition, the Minister said "that the will on the part 
 
of  England to destroy Germany is killed, once and for all. I see no way in which that can be 
 
accomplished except through German victory".
 
          By the time this stage had been reached, I said I would not attempt to speak at any length, 
 
but that I could not refrain from making certain comments upon what the Minister had said.
 
          First of all, the Minister had referred to American-German relations and had drawn the 
 
inference that propaganda was responsible for their bad condition. I said I had no doubt that 
 
propaganda was active in almost every part of the world, and that I felt very deeply, with my own 
 
President, that the more peoples drank from the well of truth, and had freedom of true 
 
information, the more peaceful and happy the world would be.
 
          But if the Minister thought that the unsatisfactory state of American-German relations was 
 
due to propaganda, he was sadly deceived. The American people, I said, were idealistic, 
 
emotional people, profoundly moved by humanitarian considerations. They resented in their 
 
inmost soul the ill-treatment of human beings in any part of the world. The cruel treatment of 
 
minorities in Germany was one of the two compelling causes of American feeling towards 
 
Germany.  The other was the overwhelming feeling in the United States that international 
 
controversies can and must be settled by pacific methods, and that the use of force, such as had 
 
been exercised in recent years, destroyed international relations and those bases of international 
 
life which alone could give real security to the United States and to other nations.