The Story of the Great War, Volume VII (of VIII)

resolution recorded in the previous volume, had meantime taken a new turn; bu

ly welcome came from the Central Powers, and even there dissentient voices were heard. The Allies' reception of his note was cold, unresponsive, suspicious, and resentful. "As you were," the Pope virtually proposed to

1, 1917, invited their governments to agree on the following points, whic

according to rules and guarantees to be established, in the necessary and sufficient measure for the maintenance of public order in every State; then, taking the place of arms, the institution of arbitration, with its h

insuring, through rules to be also determined, the true freedom and community of the seas, which, on the one hand, wo

d reciprocal conditions, which would be justified by the immense benefit to be derived from disarmament, all the more as one could not understand that such

Therefore, on the part of Germany, there should be total evacuation of Belgium, with guaranties of its entire political, military, and economic independen

f the immense advantages of durable peace with disarmament, the contending parties will examine them in a conciliatory spirit, taking into account, as far as is just and

tive to Armenia, the Balkan States, and the territories forming part of the old Kingdom of Poland, for which, in particular, its noble

ke her place at the peace council table with all her lost colonies restored, exempt from every demand for reparation for the ruin she had wrought, secure in the possession of all her territory, and with the future of Alsace-Lorraine, Trent, Trieste, Poland, R

lly rejected. President Wilson became their spokesman in a note he addressed to the Pontiff on August 27, 1917. While recognizing the Pope's "moving appeal" and the "dignity and force of the humane motives wh

by an irresponsible Government, which, having secretly planned to dominate the world, proceeded to carry the plan out without regard either to the sacred obligations of treaty or the long-established practices and long-cherished principles of international action and honor; which chose its own time for the war; deliver

how that great people came under its control or submitted with temporary zest to the domination of its purpose;

ould make it necessary to create a permanent hostile combination of nations against the German people, who are its instruments; and would result in abandoning the newborn Russia to the intrig

of the German people themselves as the other peoples of the world would be justified in accepting. Without such guaranties treaties of settlement, agreements for disarmament, covenan

e of the purposes of the great

t might flow from them. There was no responsible person to negotiate with. The Vatican was disappointed, the German press greeted the President's answer with

The Austrian emperor favored disarmament and arbitration in a cloud of platitudes. The kaiser accepted the Pope's general aims, but was mute on particularizing the German aims. Both suppressed whatever terms of peace they longed to offer. Sifted down to essentials, and extricating their meaning from a welter of unctuous verbiage, the Teutonic answers merely conveyed an eager desire to reach a peace conference, withholding terms fo

promise she would expect Great Britain faithfully to fulfill; and a promise of the nations to arbitrate in future-a promise Germany would ignore if conditions favored a new war. She saw "the freedom of the seas"

n Secretary, who had also been Viceroy of India and Governor General of Canada. Fearing that the prolongation of the war might lead to "the ruin

Government, Bonar Law and Lord Robert Cecil declared that Lord Lansdowne only spoke his own views. The Government repudiated them, as did the Unionist party. Lord Lansdowne himself was obliged to acknowledge that his proposals were solely his own and that he consulted no one in formulating them. It was realized that