that the President should call an extra session of the new Congress, to convene immediately on the expiration of the old Congress, and to force this action they had been filibustering for several days over important revenue and appropriation bills. Under the then existing rules of the Senate, there was no limit to debate, and a very small opposition group could block all legislation and indefinitely postpone final action on any measure by dilatory motions and long speeches.

When the armed neutrality measure came up for debate a small but determined opposition developed, which undertook to prevent a vote until the session ended, at noon March 4. Senator La Follette of Wisconsin was at the head of this group, and he was assisted by Senators Norris of Nebraska, Cummins of Iowa, Gronna of North Dakota, Clapp of Minnesota, and Works of California, Republicans, and Senators Stone of Missouri, O'Gorman of New York, Kirby of Arkansas, Lane of Oregon, and Vardaman of Mississippi, Democrats.

Senator Stone was Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. In consequence of his opposition to the bill, he relinquished parliamentary control of it to Senator Hitchcock of Nebraska, the next ranking member of the committee. The debate over the measure proceeded with more or less bitterness for three days, but it was not until the final day of the session, when it was clear that this small group had determined to defeat the measure by dilatory tactics, that the acri

mony reached its acute stage. The leaders of the Senate, both Democratic and Republican, as well as all the influence of the Administration, exerted all possible pressure on the filibusters to allow the measure to reach a vote, but in vain. Senators La Follette and Clapp were deaf to all appeals, and throughout the long session, lasting all night of the 3d of March and until the stroke of 12 on the 4th, they blocked every effort to have a vote. At noon the bill died by the automatic end of the session.

The Famous Manifesto

During the early hours of March 4, when it was apparent that the filibuster would succeed, the Senate majority performed the unprecedented act of signing a manifesto declaring that the will of the overwhelming majority of the Senate was being defeated by a small group of recalcitrants. Seventy-five of the ninety-six members of the body signed the document, and eight more would have signed it could they have been reached. This historic manifesto was as follows:

The undersigned, United States Senators, favor the passage of Senate Bill 8322, to authorize the President of the United States to arm American merchant vessels.

A similar bill already has passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 403 to 13.

Under the rules of the Senate, allowing unlimited debate, it now appears to be impossible to obtain a vote prior to noon March 4, 1917, when the session of Congress expires. We desire the statement entered in the record to establish the fact that the Senate favors the legislation and would pass it if a vote could be obtained.

RESIDENT WILSON was deeply in

RESIDENT WILSON was the Sen

ate filibusters in defeating the armed neutrality measure, and issued the following address to the country a few hours after Congress adjourned, following closely on the heels of his second inauguration:

The termination of the last session of the Sixty-fourth Congress by constitutional limitation disclosed a situation unparalleled in the history of the country, perhaps unparalleled in the history of any modern Government. In the immediate presence of a crisis fraught

with more subtle and far-reaching possibilities of national danger than any the Government has known within the whole history of its international relations, the Congress has been unable to act either to safeguard the country or to vindicate the elementary rights of its citizens. More than 500 of the 531 members of the two houses were ready and anxious to act; the House of Representatives had acted, by an overwhelming majority; but the Senate was unable to act because a little group of eleven Senators had determined that it should not.

The Senate has no rules by which debate can be limited or brought to an end, no rules by which dilatory tactics of any kind can be

prevented. A single member can stand in the way of action, if he have but the physical endurance. The result in this case is a complete paralysis alike of the legislative and of the executive branches of the Government.

This inability of the Senate to act has rendered some of the most necessary legislation of the session impossible at a time when the need of it was most pressing and most evident. The bill which would have permitted such combinations of capital and of organization in the export and import trade of the country as the circumstances of international competition have made imperative-a bill which the business judgment of the whole country approved and demanded-has failed. The opposition of one or two Senators has made it impossible to increase the membership of the Interstate Commerce Commission to give it the altered organization necessary for its efficiency. The Conservation bill, which should have released for immediate use the mineral resources which are still locked up in the public lands, now that their release is more imperatively necessary than ever, and the bill which would have made the unused water power of the country immediately available for industry have both failed, though they have been under consideration throughout the sessions of two Congresses and have been twice passed by the House of Representatives. The appropriations for the army have failed, along with the appropriations for the civil establishment of the Government, the appropriations for the Military Academy at West Point and the General Deficiency bill. It has proved impossible to extend the powers of the Shipping Board to meet the special needs of the new situations into which our commerce has been forced or to increase the gold reserve of our national banking system to meet the unusual circumstances of the existing financial situation.

It would not cure the difficulty to call the Sixty-fifth Congress in extraordinary session. The paralysis of the Senate would remain. The purpose and the spirit of action are not lacking now. The Congress is more definitely united in thought and purpose at this moment, I venture to say, than it has been within the memory of any men now in its membership. There is not only the most united patriotic purpose, but the objects members have in view are perfectly clear and definite. But the Senate cannot act unless its leaders can obtain unanimous consent. Its majority is powerless, helpless. In the midst of a crisis of extraordinary peril, when only definite and decided action can make the nation safe or shield it from war itself by the aggression of others, action is impossible.

Although, as a matter of fact, the nation and the representatives of the nation stand back of the Executive with unprecedented unanimity and spirit, the impression made abroad will, of course, be that it is not so and that other Governments may act as they please without fear that this Government can do anything at all. We cannot explain. The

explanation is incredible. The Senate of the United States is the only legislative body in the world which cannot act when its majority is ready for action. A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.

The remedy? There is but one remedy. The only remedy is that the rules of the Senate shall be so altered that it can act. The country can be relied upon to draw the moral. I believe that the Senate can be relied on to supply the means of action and save the country from disaster.

Supplementary Statement

At the same time the President authorized the further statement that what rendered the situation even more grave than had been supposed, was the discovery that, while the President under his general constitutional powers could do much of what he had asked Congress to empower him to do, it had been found that there were certain old statutes as yet unrepealed which might raise insuperable practical obstacles and nullify his power.

Popular Indignation

A wave of indignant protest swept the country. Legislatures of many States passed resolutions denouncing the filibustering Senators and pledging support to the President; mass meetings were held in many cities, and at some places the opposing Senators were hanged in effigy. Telegrams of protest poured in from all parts of America and resolutions of protest were passed by important bodies and associations throughout the country.

The Senate had been convened in extra session, as is the custom after the inauguration of the President, to act upon nominations. As soon as the body convened steps were taken to amend the` rules so that there could never be a repetition of such a filibuster. An amendment was agreed upon by the Democratic and Republican caucuses, and on March 8 it was adopted by a vote of 76 to 3, the three negative votes being cast by Senators La Follette, Gronna, and Sherman of Illinois. This rule provides that a twothirds vote of the Senators present may bring a measure to a vote, and thereafter each Senator may debate the measure

only one hour, when it is to be put upon its passage without any dilatory motions or further debate being in order.

This rule is regarded as the most farreaching change in the procedure of the Senate since the organization of our

Government. The adoption of the rule, as was anticipated, removed all obstacles to the effectiveness of an extra session of Congress, and President Wilson therefore called such a session by proclamation on March 9, summoning the body to meet on April 16, 1917.

PRE

RESIDENT WILSON declared in his address of Feb. 3, in which he severed diplomatic relations with Germany, that "only actual overt acts" of German submarines against American citizens and ships on the high seas could change the situation into one of war. The succeeding weeks brought a growing list of acts of that nature. On Feb. 3 the German submarine U-53 sank the American freight steamer Housatonic, bound from Galveston to Liverpool with grain. On Feb. 12 the American sailing schooner Lyman M. Law, en route with lumber from Maine to Italy, was destroyed by a submarine off the coast of Sardinia. Five Norwegian steamers with Americans on board were sunk without adequate warning in the next ten days.

The first American to perish by submarine attack after the break with Germany was Robert A. Haden, a missionary, traveling from China on the French steamer Athos, which was carrying Senegalese troops and colonial laborers. The Athos was torpedoed 210 miles east of Malta on Feb. 17. Mr. Haden perished while trying to aid the Chinese on board. Two American members of the crew of the British bark Calgorm Castle were reported lost after the torpedoing of that vessel in British waters on Feb. 27.

The Laconia Disaster

A far graver case, however, occurred at 10:30 o'clock Sunday night, Feb. 27, when the Cunard liner Laconia, 18,000 tons burden, carrying seventy-three passengers-men, women, and children-of whom six were American citizensmanned by a mixed crew of 216, bound from New York to Liverpool and loaded with foodstuffs, cotton, and war material, was torpedoed without warning by a German submarine 150 miles off the

Irish coast. The vessel sank in about forty minutes. Twelve persons perished in the bitter weather before the survivors in open boats were rescued by British patrol vessels.

Two of the dead were American citizens- -Mrs. Mary E. Hoy and her daughter, Miss Elizabeth Hoy, of Chicago. Both were in a lifeboat that was swamped, and, though taken into another open boat, they died of exposure and were buried at sea. The Rev. Dunstan Sargent of Grenada, British West Indies, a passenger on the Laconia, who administered the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church to seven persons who perished, gave the following account of tragic events in his boat:

"Mrs. Hoy died in the arms of her daughter. Her body slipped off into the sea out of her daughter's weakened arms. The heartbroken daughter succumbed a few minutes afterward, and her body fell over the side of the boat as we were tossed by the huge waves.

In icy water up to her knees for two hours, the daughter all the time bravely supported her aged mother, uttering words of encouragement to her. From the start both were violently seasick, which, coupled with the cold and exposure, gradually wore down their courage. They were brave women.

"The first to die in our boat was W. Irvine Robinson of Toronto. After his body had been consigned to the sea we tossed about for an hour, getting more and more water until the gunwales were almost level with the sea. Then Cedric P. Ivatt of London, who was not physically strong, succumbed in the arms of his fiancée, who was close beside him, trying in vain to keep him warm by throwing her wealth of hair about his neck. Even after he died she refused to give him up,