s the German method of submarine
warfare, which he has repeatedly denounced as illegal, immoral,
inhuman--a direct and brutal attack upon us and upon all mankind. These
words cannot be forgotten, nor is it likely that the President will
retract them.

They set up at least one steadfast mark in the midst of the present
flood of peace talk. There can be no parley with a criminal who is in
full and exultant practice of his crime. Unless the U-boat warfare is
renounced, repented of, and abandoned by the Potsdam pirates, an
honorable peace is unattainable except by fighting for it and winning
it. [Footnote 8]

[Footnote 8: Belgian Relief ships sunk: S.S. Camilla, Trevier, Feistein,
Storstad, Lars Kruse, Euphrates. Haelen, and Tunis (the last two shelled
but not sunk).

Hospital ships sunk: Britannic (probably but not certainly torpedoed);
Asturias, March 24. 1917; Gloucester Castle, March 30; Donegal, April
17; Lanfranc, April 17 (with British wounded and German wounded
prisoners).

Among the neutral nations Norway alone has lost more than six hundred
ships by mines and torpedoes of German origin. The dance of death still
goes on.]

IV

Only a little space is left for writing of my retirement from the post
at The Hague and my experiences thereafter in England and France.

The reader may have gathered from the tenor of these chapters that the
work at the legation was hard and that the situation was trying to a man
with strong convictions and the habit of expressing them frankly. My
resignation was tendered in September, 1916, with the request that it
should not be made public until after the re-election of President
Wilson, which I earnestly desired and expected. My reasons for resigning
were partly of a domestic nature. But the main reason was a personal
wish to get back to my work as a writer, "with full freedom to say what
I thought and felt about the war."

The German-American press has tried to start a rumor that I was recalled
to Washington to explain my action on a certain point. That is
absolutely and entirely false. The government never asked for an
explanation of anything in my conduct while in office, or afterward. On
the contrary, the President has been kind enough to express his approval
of my services in terms too friendly to be quoted here.

In November, after President Wilson had been triumphantly chosen for a
second term, I ventured to recall his attention to my letter of
September. He answered