looking toward peace, he had an idea that he
might, as a friend of both parties, preside over such a conference and
exert his personal influence to bring the belligerents into agreement. A
service of this sort undoubtedly appealed to the President's
humanitarian instinct and to his earnest desire to end the devastating
war, while the novelty of the position in which he would be placed would
not have been displeasing to one who in his public career seemed to find
satisfaction in departing from the established paths marked out by
custom and usage.

When, however, the attempt at mediation failed and when six weeks later,
on February 1, 1917, the German Government renewed indiscriminate
submarine warfare resulting in the severance of diplomatic relations
between the United States and Germany, President Wilson continued to
cherish the hope that he might yet assume the role of mediator. He even
went so far as to prepare a draft of the bases of peace, which he
purposed to submit to the belligerents if they could be induced to meet
in conference. I cannot conceive how he could have expected to bring
this about in view of the elation of the Allies at the dismissal of
Count von Bernstorff and the seeming certainty that the United States
would declare war against Germany if the latter persisted in her
ruthless sinking of American merchant vessels. But I know, in spite of
the logic of the situation, that he expected or at least hoped to
succeed in his mediatory programme and made ready to play his part in
the negotiation of a peace.

From the time that Congress declared that a state of war existed between
the United States and the Imperial German Government up to the autumn of
1918, when the Central Alliance made overtures to end the war, the
President made no attempt so far as I am aware to enter upon peace
negotiations with the enemy nations. In fact he showed a disposition to
reject all peace proposals. He appears to have reached the conclusion
that the defeat of Germany and her allies was essential before permanent
peace could be restored. At all events, he took no steps to bring the
belligerents together until a military decision had been practically
reached. He did, however, on January 8,1918, lay down his famous
"Fourteen Points," which he supplemented with certain declarations in
"subsequent addresses," thus proclaiming his ideas as to the proper
bases of peace when the time should come to negotiate.

Meanwhile, in anti