The general assembly had, on the 1st of March, convoked the people to elect on the first Sunday of December a president and vice-president for the second constitutional term to begin February 1, 1876, and end February 1, 1880. Andrés Valle was chosen president, and Santiago Gonzalez, vice-president. The latter offered his resignation, but the assembly did not accept it. They were inducted into office on the appointed date. But previous to this, Guatemala having assumed a menacing attitude, congress decreed that in the event of the president going to the field at the head of the army, Valle, then a senator, should act in his stead, pro tempore. On the same date a forced loan of $500,000 was also ordered to be raised. [Sidenote: PENDING HOSTILITIES.] The difficulties arose from a supposed understanding of President Gonzalez with Guatemalan refugees in Salvador, and the government of Ponciano Leiva in Honduras, with the ulterior object of bringing about the downfall of Barrios. The latter alleged also that Gonzalez intended to uphold with his forces the government of Leiva, which, according to him, was entirely unpopular, because of its subserviency to Salvador. This intervention was deemed not only an attack against Honduran autonomy, but a menace to Guatemala. Gonzalez was notified that if he persisted in that course, Guatemala would then interfere in favor of General Medina, who was then trying to overthrow Leiva. The result of this attitude was a renewed assurance by Gonzalez of friendly feeling, and a proposition to hold a verbal conference on Honduran affairs, which Barrios accepted, and such a conference was held now with President Valle at Chingo, and a convention was signed on the 15th of February, under which Marco Aurelio Soto, an Honduran by birth, was to undertake the pacification of his country, backed by equal forces of Guatemala and Honduras.[XIX-25] Barrios contended that, though Valle was president, Gonzalez was the real power in Salvador, whom he accused in a public manifesto of hypocrisy and treachery. Angry words continued, the two nations being now armed for the conflict, till they agreed to disband their forces. Both governments claimed to have done so, imputing to the other a wilful neglect of its obligation. The probability is, that, distrusting one another, they merely pretended compliance, keeping their troops ready for action. Barrios sent 1,500 men into Honduras, and came himself with a force to threaten Salvador on the west, and actually invaded the latter without a previous declaration of war. At last, on the 20th of March, José María Samayoa, minister of war in charge of the executive of Guatemala, formally declared all official relations with Salvador at an end, and then again on the 27th, alleging that Salvadoran troops had invaded Guatemala, decreed the existence of war, giving Barrios unlimited power to make such uses of this declaration as befitted the