For a time the government of the United States tried to take the view that this intrigue, plotting, spying, and insidious warfare was the work of irresponsible agents, not countenanced by the Imperial German Government; but the proof was too strong. The government finally had to request the recall of the Austro-Hungarian ambassador and of the German military and naval attachés, presenting proof of their criminal violations of our hospitality. Their governments offered no reply to us, issued no reprimands to them. In spite of all this the temper of the American people was that we should keep out of war as long as it was possible to maintain our national honor without war. The President even began the preparation of a communication to the warring nations, asking them to define their war aims, as this would be a step toward peace. Before this note was completed, the German Government sent out a communication, asking the same definition. But the German Government issued this document on the idea that the German armies had triumphed, and incorporated in it a threat to neutral governments. From a thousand sources, official and unofficial, word came to our government that unless the United States used her influence to end the war on the terms dictated by Germany, Germany and her allies would consider themselves free from obligation to respect the rights of neutrals. The Kaiser was frankly ordering the neutral nations of the world to force those Powers which fought him to accept the peace he offered. If they failed to do this, Germany would resume her submarine warfare on neutral commerce with new ruthlessness. The President, continuing his own purpose, finished his note to both sides, sending it on the 18th of December, 1916. Both sides replied, the Powers who resisted Germany declaring that their principal end in the war was the lasting restoration of peace. Germany and her associates refused to state their terms, and merely proposed a conference--another method of delay. The President, in an address to the Senate on the 22d of January, 1917, outlined the terms of the peace which the United States could honorably join in guaranteeing. “No peace can last,” he stated, “or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand people about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property.... “I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that freedom of the seas which in international conference after conference representatives of the United States have urged with the eloquence of those who are the convinced disciples of liberty; and that moderation of armaments which makes of armies and navies a power for order merely, not an instrument of aggression or of selfish violence.”