he will see fit to remind the German Chancellor that each and all of these problems must be faced." Slaughter of men and women on the Leinster and the Hirano Maru, the German refusal to exchange prisoners, and the wanton devastation by the retreating German armies in Northern France served but to strengthen the demand for no leniency, for no armistice. To all this, said the Dispatch, the answer is "Get out! No arrangements are necessary. Men who believe in God cannot bargain with the fiends who sank the Leinster."

October 10 while the Leinster, a mail packet steamer plying between England and Ireland, was crossing the Irish Sea with six hundred and eighty-seven passengers and a crew of seventy, she was struck by two torpedoes and sank in fifteen minutes. No warning was given. Upwards of four hundred persons, of whom one hundred and thirty-five were women and children, were drowned. The Hirano Maru was a Japanese steamer homeward bound from an English port with two hundred passengers. When three hundred miles south of Ireland she was torpedoed and in a few minutes sank, with all on board, save such as were able to jump into the sea. Nearby was an American destroyer, and hearing the sound of the explosion her captain hurried to the scene and picked up thirty survivors. A British freighter, on October 10, brought to one of our ports twenty soldiers and sailors, all that were left of two hundred and fifty on board the United States steamer Ticonderoga, torpedoed early in the month in mid-Atlantic. Seven of her eight life boats were destroyed by shell fire.

All these new atrocities were duly noticed by the President in his reply to the German note.

The unqualified acceptance by the present German Government and by a large majority of the Reichstag of the terms laid down by the President of the United States of America in his address to the Congress of the United States on the eighth of January, 1918, and in his subsequent addresses justified the President in making a frank and direct statement of his decision with regard to the

communication of the German Government of the 8th and 12th of October, 1918.

It must be clearly understood that the process of evacuation and the conditions of an armistice are matters which must be left to the judgment and advice of the military advisers of the Government of the United States and the Allied Governments, and the President feels it his duty to say that no arrangement can be accepted by the Government of the United States which does not provide completely satisfactory safeguards and guarantees of the maintenance of the present military supremacy of the armies of the United States and the Allies in the field.

He feels confident that he can safely assume that nothing but this will also be the judgment and decision of the Allied Governments.

The President feels that it is also his duty to add that neither the Government of the United States nor, he is quite sure, the Governments with which the Government of the United States is associated as a belligerent will consent to consider an armistice so long as the armed forces of Germany continue the illegal and inhumane practices which they still persist in.

At the very time that the German Government approaches the Government of the United States with proposals of peace its submarines are engaged in sinking passenger ships at sea, and not the ships alone, but the very boats in which their passengers and crews seek to make their way to safety; and in their present enforced withdrawal from Flanders and France the German armies are pursuing a course of wanton destruction which has always been regarded as in direct violation of the rules and practices of civilized warfare. Cities and villages, if not destroyed, are being stripped of all they contain not only but often of their very inhabitants.

The nations associated against Germany cannot be expected to agree to a cessation of arms while acts of inhumanity, spoliation and desolation are being continued which they justly look upon with horror and with burning hearts.

it is necessary, also, in order that there may be no possibility of misunderstanding, that the President should very solemnly call the attention of the Government of Germany to the language and plain intent of one of the terms of peace which the German Government has now accepted. It is contained in the address of the President delivered at Mount Vernon on the Fourth of July last.

It is as follows: "The destruction of every arbitrary power anywhere that can separately, secretly and of its single choice disturb

the peace of the world, or, if it cannot be presently destroyed, at least its reduction to virtual impotency."

The power which has hitherto controlled the German nation is of the sort here described. It is within the choice of the German nation to alter it. The President's words just quoted naturally constitute a condition precedent to peace, if peace is to come by the action of the German people themselves. The President feels bound to say that the whole process of peace will, in his judgment, depend upon the definiteness and the satisfactory character of the guarantees which can be given in this fundamental matter. It is indispensable that the Governments associated against Germany should know beyond a peradventure with whom they are dealing.

The President will make a separate reply to the Royal and Imperial Government of Austria-Hungary.

With this reply the country was delighted. Peace by negotiation which threatened, it was said, is now far removed. The reply will be read by the American people with a deep sigh of relief. It is not a note but a decision. An armistice is declined; the Kaiser and his autocratic government must go; U-boat frightfulness on the seas must stop; burning and pillaging the towns of Belgium and France must stop, definite and satisfactory guarantees must be given, and when all these conditions have been met the question of an armistice will be referred to the Allied and American commanders in the field. It is an American answer, given by a great American, and gives voice to the deep convictions of the whole American people. It will stir the blood of the American people and command their instant assent by acclamation. It is an ultimatum to a defeated power. Only two courses are open to Germany; submission, which means present surrender; or resistance, which means ultimate destruction. Senators approved the answer; the Allies approved, and the whole world waited to see what would be the effect on Germany.

Turkey meantime had joined her allies in an appeal for an armistice. The note, received October 12 by the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs from the Chargé d'Affaires of Turkey

in Madrid, was delivered by the Spanish Ambassador at Washington to Secretary Lansing October 14.

The undersigned, Chargé d'Affaires of Turkey, has the honor, acting upon instructions from his Government, to request the Royal Government to inform the Secretary of State of the United States of America, by telegraph, that the Imperial Government requests the President of the United States of America to take upon himself the task of the reëstablishment of peace; to notify all belligerent States of this demand and to invite them to send delegate plenipotentiaries to initiate negotiations. It (the Imperial Government) accepts as a basis for the negotiations the program laid down by the President of the United States in his message to Congress of January 8, 1918, and in his subsequent declarations, especially the speech of September 27.

In order to put an end to the shedding of blood the Imperial Ottoman Government requests that steps be taken for the immediate conclusion of a general armistice on land, on sea, and in the air.

CHAPTER V

THE ARMISTICE

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY now seemed to be fast going to pieces. Discontent, war weariness, demands for peace, signs of revolution were everywhere. Hungary was in ferment; the CzechoSlovaks had broken away from the Empire, and the Emperor Charles, alarmed by the prospect before him, proclaimed the reorganization of Austria-Hungary on a federal basis.

To my faithful Austrian peoples:

Since I have ascended the throne I have tried to make it my duty to assure to all my peoples the peace so ardently desired and to point the way to the Austrian peoples of a prosperous development unhampered by obstacles which brutal force creates against intellectual and economic prosperity.

The terrible struggles in the world war have thus far made the work of peace impossible. The heavy sacrifices of the war should assure to us an honorable peace, on the threshold of which, by the help of God, we are to-day.

We must, therefore, undertake without delay the reorganization of our country on a natural, and therefore solid, basis. Such a question demands that the desires of the Austrian peoples be harmonized and realized.

I am decided to accomplish this work with the free collaboration of my peoples in the spirit and principles which our Allied monarchs have adopted in their offer of peace.

Austria must become, in conformity with the will of its people, a confederate state in which each nationality shall form on the territory which it occupies its own local autonomy.

This does not mean that we are already envisaging the union of the Polish territories of Austria with the independent Polish State. The city of Trieste with all its surroundings shall, in conformity with the desire of its population, be treated separately.