To further increase the pressure, in late October he asked Congress to appropriate funds for a second three-year naval spending programme. And in unguarded moments on the passage to Europe in early December he made clear what this meant. If Britain would not come to terms, America would ‘build the biggest Navy in the world, matching theirs and exceeding it . . . and if they would not limit it, there would come another and more terrible and bloody war and England would be wiped off the face of the map’.43 When Wilson arrived in Europe there seemed little prospect of Britain gaining either of
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