n
which had brought new prestige to the German armies. The triumph was of
more value in appearance than in reality, for no decision had been
reached on the main fronts and none of the chief belligerents was
willing to give up. Germany was under a terrible strain, and the
civilian Government concluded that the end of 1916 offered an
opportunity to make a peace proposal, without loss of prestige, which
might lead to a settlement of the war that would leave Germany
substantially the victor. For it was known that unless some such
decisive result were soon attained the military party would unloose the
submarines in the effort to win a complete victory, and thereby bring
about complications too serious for the civilian officials to
contemplate with any sense of security.

So on Dec. 12 Bethmann Hollweg proposed a peace conference. He
mentioned no terms which Germany would consider; he spoke in the
arrogant tones of a victor; and the total effect of his speech was to
convince the world that he was trying to influence the pacifist
elements in the allied countries rather than to bring about an end of
the war. But his step caused profound uneasiness in Washington, for he
had anticipated the action which the President had long been
considering. If Mr. Wilson could not have offered mediation before the
election, he might have tried it in November had not the German
deportation of Belgian workingmen just then aroused such a storm of
anti-German feeling in America that it would have been unsafe to take a
step which public opinion would have generally regarded as favorable to
Germany. Now that Bethmann Hollweg had anticipated him, it was evident
that any proposal which the President might make would be regarded as a
sort of second to the German motion.

Nevertheless, the situation was urgent, and the President seems to have
felt that his interposition could perhaps accomplish something which
the German initiative could not. Colonel House in the last two years
had made a number of trips to Europe as a sort of super-Ambassador to
all the powers in the endeavor to find out what their Governments
regarded as suitable terms of peace. Mr. Wilson's own interest lay
first of all in the establishment of conditions that would reduce--or,
as men would have said in 1916, prevent--the possibility of future
wars. On May 27, 1916, he had delivered a speech before the League to
Enforce Peace in which he favored the formation of an international
as