Wilson commission

Hi,

Please look at the following sentence.Only one of the 5 options is correct.I can not understand which one is correct and why are the remaining incorrect.

Please explain and help. Did you type a colon accicdentally, instead of a semi-colon?

In presenting his modus vivendi proposal, Lansing implied that the American government accepted the German view that armed merchant vessels were warships: however, when the proposal was dropped by the Wilson administration, it seemed to be reverting to the British view on this question.

(A) when the proposal was dropped by the Wilson administration, it This is fine.The 'it' here refers to 'the Wilson administration'. 

(B) after it was dropped, the Wilson administration The 'it' here refers to  'the German view', which is not the writer's intention.

(C) by dropping the proposal, the Wilson administration This suggests that the 'dropping' was the reason for the 'seeming'. The original does not say that so explicitly.

(D) the Wilson administration dropped the proposal when it The 'it' here refers to 'the proposal', which is not the writer's intention.

(E) when they dropped the proposal, the Wilson administration This seems OK to me. It's just active instead of passive. Perhaps the 'they' could be interpreted to refer to the American government' rather than 'the Wilson administration'. 

Best wshes, Clive

Also (C) is the only one that gives a reason why the Wilson administration seemed to be reverting to the British view.  All the others simply mention a relation in time (when, after).  The relationship between cause (dropping the proposal) and effect (the appearance of reverting to the British view) is stronger than a temporal relationship for creating coherence within a composition.

CJ 

Hi,

I understood why B,D and E are eliminated.

I have been told that the correct answer is C. So now I can not understand why is C correct As I noted before, in C the word 'by' adds an element of meaning that is not in the original. I guess whoever is telling you that C is correct does not see that.

and A incorrect. Is it because "reverting to" has been used in the last clause,therefore "dropping the proposal" should be used instead of "proposal was dropped" in the previous clause? No. 'Revert' is used correctly in A. I don't know why someone is telling you that A is incorrect. If this is from a book, is it by a native-speaker author?

Best wishes, Clive