Cornus y'a won la sals name was bespoed is ty a fenlund on så war against the whole world. Spendera y amoyed % a tentaration of war against the Tared Sures. Vojens tre serx, e of the United States were viga te tama Toutrora tem Germany as to what ships ther Mond und out on the high was and how they should sa thema, with death as an alternative The new polig wis a with wome added and more chooxdins dels of She policy Germany had declared in Fehmary. 1915, and aquina wales President Wilson had protested by saying that Germany would be held to "strict ace untability" if Ameriwan rights were injured or American lives were lost. The President had then said the United States regarded such a picy as "an indefensible violation of neutral rights which it would be very hard indeed to reconcile with the friendly relations existing between the two Governments.1

The German Government now said it would torpedo every American ship found in this zone, other than one that was proceeding on a certain date over a route Germans had preseribed. In the same breath it had the audacity to assert that "the freedom of the seas has always formed part of the leading principles of Germany's political program." The note concluded with a hope that the United States would "view the new situation from the lofty heights of impartiality, and assist, on their part, to prevent further misery and unavoidable sacrifice of human life." This expectation from Germany that the United States would cheerfully put its merchant marine under the specific charge of the German Government would have been thought comic, had it not been so fragie, so utterly self-sufficient. Read after the return of pence, it seemed like a bit of German sarcasm, rather than a sober and determined statement of war policy by men still possest of sane minds. It had become clear to the Allies, moreover, that the Chancellor's peace bid of December 12 was merely a mask covering an ulterior purpose; that what the Chancellor really meant was, "Now be good and give us what we want, or you'll be sorry."

Of this note, and other negotiations with Germany covering two years and pertaining to the sinking of the Lusitania and other ships on which American yen were lost, more detailed accounts are given in that part of this work which deals with the war on the sea. See Volume IX.

THE NEW YORK PREPAREDNESS PARADE OF MAY, 1916 One of the earliest notable demonstrations of the growing popular conviction that a break with Germany was inevitable

A second memorandum which followed from the German embassy, on instructions from Berlin, said that Germany would meet the activities of her enemies by forcibly preventing, in a zone around Great Britain, France, Italy, and in the eastern Mediterranean, all navigation, that of neutrals included, from and to England, and from and to France. "All ships met within that zone," said the memorandum,

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"will be sunk." The Imperial Government was confident that this measure would result "in a speedy termination of the war and in the restoration of peace which the Government of the United States has so much at heart"-a statement which to most Americans seemed still more a piece of sarcasm, or insolent irony rather than a grave diplomatic utterance.

Three days later President Wilson sent to Count von Bernstorff his passports and recalled the American Ambassador, Mr. Gerard, from Berlin -an act which met with much

American Aribassador to Germany popular approval. When Bernstorff learned that he was to

until 1917

go home he said: "I am not surprized. My Government will not be surprized either. The people of Berlin knew what was bound to happen if they took the action they have taken a statement seen later to have been strictly true. Germany really believed she could starve England before the United States could become effective, should we choose to go to war, and hence Germany was safe in defying us. President Wilson told Congress on February 3 that the United States Government had announced, after the sinking of the Sussex, that it would break off diplomatic relations with Germany unless she abandoned certain features of her submarine warfare. As she had now declared her purpose

to resume these methods-in fact was greatly to intensify and extend them-our Ambassador at Berlin had been recalled and passports had been handed to the German Ambassador at Washington. President Wilson had informed Germany that if American ships and American lives should again be sacrificed by. German submarine commanders "in heedless contravention of the just and reasonable understandings of international law

and the obvious dictates of humanity," he would go again before the Congress and ask that authority be given him to use any means that might be necessary for the protection of our seamen and our people in the prosecution of their peaceful and legitimate errands on the high seas.

Germany's action as to submarine warfare was interpreted in neutral countries as in one sense due to her having virtually reached the end of her land victories. Brusiloff's

advance in 1916 had been PRESS ILLUSTRATING SERVICE. stopt only after a pro-German minister, Protopopoff, had become the Russian Minister of the Interior and virtually master of the Government, just as the year before the Grand Duke Nicholas, like Brusiloff, had swept all before him, only to find, when he got into the enemy's territory, that another pro-German minister, Sukhomlinoff, had deprived him of ammunition and other supplies. Germany had been able to keep up the illusion of victory for a while longer when Roumania, in the late autumn of 1916, dashed gayly and light-headedly into the eagle's talons, but meanwhile she had found it impossible to defeat her real adversaries. It had been easy enough to grab little kingdoms and conquer them-easy in the case of Belgium, Serbia, and Montenegro, easy in the case of

Roumania, when Germany had Bulgaria, Austria and Turkey to help her, but her people at home were losing faith in the fiction of an irresistible and all-conquering Imperialism, based on successful invasions of four small kingdoms, each having only a minor fraction of her own military resources. With the supply of Roumanias, Serbias, Montenegros, and Belgiums exhausted, Germany at last saw around her the real adversaries whom she had to overcome; they had been growing continually and were now stronger than she was. She saw that the Turks could not long resist the Russians and the British; that she must give up her foremost line in France; that her allies in the Petrograd Government would not last much longer; that, in several trials of strength on the Western Front, she had failed to reach any success that suggested an ultimate decision in her favor; on the contrary, she had had terrible losses on the Somme.

In these conditions Germany proposed that peace be arranged in secret around a table at which the shrewdest manipulator would come off best. When the Allies refused to be drawn into her trap and announced their peace terms openly, a complete discomfiture came to the German plan and Germany had to put forth a second plan which meant that she had cut loose from the restrictions of civilized warfare and declared a war of "frightfulness" on all the world, in the hope that by starving England she could halt the Allied military operations before spring was far advanced. She had thus far failed completely in her effort to starve England, and her submarine war had become less terrible as it went on, altho it was still terrible enough.

Meanwhile the Allied military operations she had hoped to check had not been checked. The British had taken Bagdad and were pursuing the demoralized Turks into the jaws of the Grand Duke Nicholas's army, which was coming on from Persia without serious opposition and driving another Turkish army before it. Defeat for the Turks was certain; the only question was whether it would involve the capture of Turkey as well. In the west the Germans had retired to the Aisne, giving up before the Allied spring drive began more than Joffre and Haig had aimed at in their Somme campaign. On the 1,300-mile Russian front the weather still