and was supposed to have had its origin in Germany, as a concomitant of the great drive then taking place at Verdun. Germany was possest of a great national delusion that she could compel peace with the sword. Bethmann-Hollweg, the German Chancellor, gave out at this time, through an American newspaper correspondent,' a statement in which, with true Prussian arrogance and assumption of victory, he said: "Only when statesmen of the warring nations come down to a basis of real facts, when they take the war-situation as every warcamp shows it to be, when, with honest and sincere will, they are prepared to terminate this terrible bloodshed and are ready to discuss the war and peace problems with one another in a practical manner, only then will we be nearing peace. Whoever is not prepared to do that has the responsibility for it if Europe continues to bleed and tear itself to pieces. I cast that responsibility far from myself." HENRY FORD With Germany the issues. in this war had become, not provinces, places in the sun, colonies or fleets, which were merely incidentals, but an issue naked and clear that nothing in the laws of nations or the conventions of humanity was of value when it came between Germany and her purpose. She had applied this purpose to the map of Europe and on the war-map, as it then existed, she would make peace, that is, Germany would give up a portion of her booty in order to save her strength; she would take, perhaps, half instead of all her conquests as a reward for her crimes. President Poincaré, in a few brief words early in May, disposed of any suggestion of peace so far as France was concerned, when he declared that France did not wish Germany to "tender 1 Karl H. von Wiegand of The World (New York). peace" but rather to "ask for peace.' France did not wish to meet Germany's conditions, but to "impose her own on Germany," and so long as Germany would not "recognize herself as vanquished," France "would not cease to fight." There was nothing surprizing in this statement, save for those who had listened to assertions that the French people were weary of the war and that France was exhausted. Nowhere so well as in France were the issues of the war clearly perceived. Germany had educated Frenchmen to understand her purposes. Eleven years before the war, when the Kaiser went to Tangier, the most recent education of the French had been acquired. From that day until Armageddon, German writers like Bernhardi had frankly foretold the day when France was to be permanently crusht. Her decadence, her approaching dissolution, had long been familiar topics in Germany, but France in 1916 had made her answer at Verdun. Not Poincaré, but Pétain, had delivered it. Poincaré merely reechoed what French guns had already been saying. Lloyd George at this time spoke for Great Britain. His words took the form of a defiant statement in which Germany's bid for "a victorious peace" was rejected. The Allies were going on with their great task of saving civilization. Six months later, on December 12, 1916, Germany, at a much advertised meeting of the Reichstag, formally proposed peace, Bethmann-Hollweg speaking. Germany was still in possession of Belgium, of the most of the Balkans, and a part of France, but the Allied Somme offensive, French recovery at Verdun, and the Italian activity against the Austrians had shown that, as affairs stood, Germany could not win by arms alone except at great cost. She therefore wanted peace in order to postpone the present war until she could gather herself together and begin another. Her "peace offensive" took the form of a suggestion that delegates from belligerent countries meet at a neutral point and discuss possible terms. Four days later, the Russian Duma, by a unanimous vote, went on record against acceptance of the German proposals, but President Wilson seized the opportunity to send a note to belligerents asking them to state. terms "upon which the war might be concluded." His note was not well received in Europe, any suggestion to abandon the war while Germany was still unpunished and unrepentant being at that time unwelcome to the Entente Powers. In America, opinion of the note was confused and divided. Many interpreted it as coming from a realization by the President that America was now on the brink of war with Germany (as indeed she was), and that the President did not wish it to be said afterward that he had neglected any step which might honorably have averted it. Germany made a vague answer to his note with no suggestion as to terms, and proposed once more a meeting of delegates to discuss terms. France in reply exprest doubt if the time had come when a peace of lasting benefit to Europe could be secured, but named her peace terms as involving "restoration, reparation, rehabilitation, and guaranties." Lloyd George in reply, making his first speech as Premier, repudiated the German proposals and asserted that Great Britain, with its new cabinet, was not making peace, but war. On January 22, 1917, President Wilson, in addressing Congress, announced as a basis for peace a statement of principles, which were afterward accepted as fundamental to the Allied cause. Only eight days later Germany made public her program of unrestricted and ruthless submarine warfare, which was to begin on the following day. She informed this country that we could send only one ship a week to one English port, and that this ship must follow a route which Germany prescribed. It was out of these conditions that, two months later, the United States declared war on Germany. That Bethmann-Hollweg's spectacular offer in December had been dictated by Germany's consciousness of her own defeat was the only rational interpretation of the proposal that the Entente could make—at least after the policy of unrestricted U-boat warfare was entered upon in the following February. That policy was regarded as an act of desperation no less than one of extraordinary folly. Not until February 22, 1918, however, did people in this country receive any real confirmation of the views they had entertained in 1917 as to Germany's state of desperation. Then there was published in the New York Nation a translation of a letter written by Count Czernin, the Austrian Foreign Minister, to the young Austrian Emperor Charles on April 12, 1917-ten weeks after the submarine order went into effect-as it had been printed in the Frankfurter Zeitung for December 18, 1918. Czernin in this letter recognized that Austria was then at the end of her resources, and that in Germany responsible political circles did not deny that that country was in a similar condition. He said: "It is entirely clear that our military strength is approaching its end. . . I merely refer to the approaching exhaustion of raw material for manufacture of munitions, to the entirely exhausted supply of human material, and above all to the dull despair which, primarily as the result of under-nourishment, has taken possession of all classes of the population and which makes impossible any further endurance of the sufferings of war. . . I am absolutely convinced that another winter campaign is entirely impossible, in other words, that in the late summer or autumn we must finish things at any price. In this situation undoubtedly the most important thing is to begin peace negotiations at a moment when the enemy is not yet fully conscious of our decaying strength. "In this war five monarchs have been dethroned. and the surprizing ease with which the strongest monarchy in the world has |