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Updated: June 14, 2025
The Crown Prince's answer was very friendly and full of anxiety to help, though it was also obvious that the German military leaders had succeeded in nipping his efforts in the bud. When I met Ludendorff some time afterwards in Berlin this was fully confirmed by the words he flung at me: "What have you been doing to our Crown Prince? He had turned very slack, but we have stiffened him up again."
The truth no doubt is that Ludendorff had only a choice between a confession of failure which was bound to ruin the Government and the class he represented, and a desperate effort to make what he could out of the military situation; and he preferred gambling, so long as he had anything with which to play, to an immediate confession of bankruptcy.
Immediately after my visit to General Ludendorff at G. H. Q., I made notes of the essential passages of our interview; because I suspected, what in my opinion has since become a certainty, to wit, that the General wished to heap all the blame of the war with America upon my shoulders. Wilson's offer of mediation.
Ludendorff admits the severity of that defeat. "The battle near Arras on April 9th formed a bad beginning to the capital fighting during this year. "April 10th and the succeeding days were critical days. A breach twelve thousand to fifteen thousand yards wide and as much as six thousand yards and more in depth is not a thing to be mended without more ado.
The attack was, indeed, a matter of common anticipation, and its adoption suggested that Ludendorff was getting to the end of his expedients. The Americans at Cantigny set a western, and the French success at Lagache an eastern limit to its front; and thus confined it advanced no more than six miles in four days.
As I studied the countenance of General Stockwell on that country road at Boisdinghem that afternoon I realized that he was no ordinary twopenny-halfpenny brigadier; but I did not then know that this was the man who, less than twelve months later, was destined to stand between Ludendorff and decisive victory in his last dramatic throw at Givenchy on the glorious ninth of April, and seven months later still to be chosen to command the flying column known by his name which captured Ath on Armistice Day and fired the last shots of the Great War.
The material comments on the value of his second thoughts were that the Germans might have had the Channel ports for the asking in 1914 but did not think them worth it, and that in April 1918 Ludendorff employed but nine divisions in his initial effort to break through.
Late in February, 1918, General Ludendorff had told a Berlin newspaper correspondent that on the first of April he would be in Paris. From the 21st of March until along in May, 1918, it looked as though they might succeed.
He was powerless against Ludendorff and little by little was turned aside by him. My first visit to Berlin afforded me the opportunity of thoroughly discussing the U-boat question with the Imperial Chancellor, and we were quite agreed in our disapproval of that method of warfare.
While I was kicking my heels in Berlin for all those weeks, waiting upon a summons to the Emperor, I was urged by many people to try and obtain an interview with General Ludendorff, in order to enlighten him regarding American affairs, as in this respect he was very badly informed.
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