Ahmet Rustem took up the post of ambassador to the United States in June 1914. His first task was to defend his country's treatment of Armenians and to respond to the anti-Ottoman perspective of the American press. In September, he admitted that massacres had occurred in the past, but he argued that the Ottoman treatment of Armenians was no worse than American treatment of blacks (alluding to lynchings) or Filipinos (alluding to the so-called water cure). President Woodrow Wilson took great offense to this and a letter was sent to the Ottoman government informing them that Ahmet would no longer be of use to them in Washington, D.C. The United States did not label him "persona non grata" only because of the outbreak of World War I at the end of July. Ahmet defended his words in a letter to Secretary of State Robert Lansing, but the Ottoman government recalled him and he left in October. His duties were taken over by the chargé d'affaires Abdülhak Hüseyin Bey, who remained in office until the two countries severed relations on 20 April 1917 as the United States entered the war that the Ottomans had joined in November 1914.