But President Wilson and his advisers had not been fooled by the German plot. President Wilson, some time before, had laid down conditions on which Germany and Austria might have peace, and to these he stuck. He had informed the German and Austrian people that they might have peace at any time by laying down their arms, provided they ousted the militarists who were responsible for the war. Several efforts had been made by German and Austrian officials to fool America by changes of cabinets and other political tricks but President Wilson, with his allies, was adamant. So the situation stood in the middle of October, when the allies girded themselves for what they felt sure would prove the deciding effort. All along the great battle line, which stretched from the North Sea to the frontier of Switzerland, British, French, Belgians and Americans supported by their own allies, Portuguese, some few Brazilians and troops from British and French colonial possessions, gathered themselves for the final spring. The last great offensive was begun by the British and Belgians to the north. Through Belgium and western France they plowed, pushing the enemy back on all sides. Brussels, the capital of Belgium, in German hands since early in the war, was recaptured. The Belgian government, which after the fall of Brussels had moved into France, returned to Brussels amid the cheering of thousands of Belgians. As the Germans retreated, they followed their customary tactics of cruelty. Fire and sword were applied to the abandoned towns until a threat from France put a stop to it. France’s threat was this: That for every town destroyed by the Germans in their retreat, retaliation would be made. For every town thus destroyed by the Germans, a German town would also be put to the torch. This threat, carried by neutral envoys to the German high command, resulted in the abandonment of the German campaign of destruction, for the German high command was now more far-seeing than it had been a year before. The kaiser and his generals at last had been forced to the conclusion that they were waging a losing war. Also, they knew that the French troops had not forgotten the horrors of the early days of the war, and their hatred of everything Prussian dated farther back even than that—to the days of the Franco-Prussian war, when they had been able to gauge for the first time the workings of the Prussian mind. To the south of the Belgian frontier, the French wrested St. Quentin, Lille and other important railroad towns from the enemy. No longer did the Germans offer the fierce resistance that had characterized their earlier activities. They withdrew now without the stubbornness of yore. Their morale had been shattered, and they were glad to retire.