airs I'll ask you to
speak," interrupted the Kaiser. "Proceed, Dr. Helfferich."

Gentleman that he is, von Falkenhayn accepted the Imperial rebuke, but
not long afterward his resignation was submitted.

As a result of these conferences and the arguments advanced by
Ambassador Gerard, Secretary von Jagow on May 4th handed the Ambassador
the German note in reply to President Wilson's _Sussex_ ultimatum. In
this communication Germany said:

"Fully conscious of its strength, the German Government has twice in
the course of the past few months expressed itself before all the world
as prepared to conclude a peace safeguarding the vital interests of
Germany. In doing so, it gave expression to the fact that it was not
its fault if peace was further withheld from the peoples of Europe.
With a correspondingly greater claim of justification, the German
Government may proclaim its unwillingness before mankind and history to
undertake the responsibility, after twenty-one months of war, to allow
the controversy that has arisen over the submarine question to take a
turn which might seriously affect the maintenance of peace between
these two nations.

"The German Government guided by this idea notifies the Government of
the United States _that instructions have been issued to German naval
commanders that the precepts of the general international fundamental
principles be observed as regards stopping, searching and destruction
of merchant vessels within the war zone and that such vessels shall not
be sunk without warning and without saving human life unless the ship
attempts to escape or offers resistance_."

At the beginning of the war it was a group of military leaders
consisting of General von Moltke, General von Falkenhayn, General von
Mackensen, General von Herringen, Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, and a few
of the Prussian military clique, which prevailed upon the Kaiser to go
to war after the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne and
his wife. The Allies proclaimed in their publications, in the press
and in Parliaments that they were fighting to destroy and overthrow the
military party in Germany which could make war without public consent.
Millions of Allied soldiers were mobilised and fighting in almost a
complete ring surrounding Germany, Austria Hungary, Bulgaria and
Turkey. They had been fighting since August, 1914, for twenty-one
months, and still their fighting had not shattered or weakened the hold
w