Early in the session grounds for grave apprehension concerning our relations with Germany developed, and Senator Kern looked upon the probability of war with dread. Aside from the usual horrors of armed conflict, he keenly felt the situation in which the hundreds of thousands of Americans of German decent would find themselves should we be forced into the war by the mingled stubbornness, stupidity and perfidy of Berlin. When on that morning in January the word flashed over the capitol that Vice-President Marshall had received a note from President Wilson informing him of his desire to address the senate, Senator Kern was one of many who was depressed at the possibilities of the message. Contrary to custom, he had not been previously consulted by the president concerning his intentions, and neither had the chairman of the committee on Foreign Relations. The president had kept his own councils and the note to the vice-president but hinted at the general nature of the communication. That morning senators generally were prepared for something smacking of a preliminary to a war declaration. It was a solemn assemblage of senators that witnessed the entrance of Woodrow Wilson to the chamber, and a breathless audience both on the floor and in the galleries that listened to the remarkable peace plea, couched in the president’s characteristically beautiful English, read in a measured beautifully modulated voice. No one was more delighted than Senator Kern. But there was to be no peace, neither in Europe or for America, and as the session drew to a close, with no certainty that the congress would again meet for nine months, and with Germany persisting in her mad course with her submarines, the president again appeared, this time before both branches, with a request for congressional authorization for the arming of our merchant ships in self-defense. This request, made on February 26, did not reach the senate for discussion until March 1st, and the last three days of the session were days of excitement and bitterness born of the indisposition of some few senators to arm the president with the power he asked and in the way he asked it. The debate, which was not, as usually charged a fillibuster in the ordinary meaning of the term, in that none of the speeches of the “eleven wilful men” were of great length, was of significant duration to prevent a vote before the expiration of the congress at noon March 4th. Senator Kern, who favored the granting of the power, did not participate in the discussion, taking the position that the friends of the measure would serve it best by consuming no time in talk. It was in the midst of this bitter battle, on March 3, that he delivered a brief valedictorian address which was a heart expression on the pain of parting from associations that had become dear to him. This, his last utterance in the senate of which he had been the leader for four years, called forth at least one tribute that he greatly cherished. He said: