It was to President Wilson that Prince Max made his overtures for an armistice based on the Fourteen Points,[121] and the negotiations continued all through October. No one who lived through those days will forget the high, austere dignity of the American President’s replies, which fell on the German Government and people with all the inexorable force of impartial justice. He insisted that the Germans should leave all invaded soil, that they should cease their barbarisms on land and sea, and that the terms of Armistice must be such as to make a renewal of hostilities impossible.[122] President Wilson carried the correspondence with Prince Max as far as he could without being in control of the armies, and then he telegraphed the letters to the Governments of his Allies in Europe. Mr. Lloyd George at once saw the practical peril of the new situation. It was that the German military chiefs might use the Armistice for a recovery of strength, and Ludendorff’s Memoirs show that he had full justification for that fear.[123] He resolved at once that the only safe armistice would be one of complete disarmament, and with that policy in his mind he went to Paris to meet M. Clemenceau and Marshal Foch. There at Versailles a full historic conference of all the Allies took place, and lasted a fortnight. The European Allies modified President Wilson’s terms on certain essential points. Great Britain excluded the control of the seas from the sphere of negotiations, and France insisted on a wider interpretation of President Wilson’s reparation demand. President Wilson agreed to both these modifications. Then the Versailles Council passed to their immediate practical conditions. Marshal Foch insisted that the Germans must ask for an Armistice in the ordinary military way from himself, the Allied Commander. That being agreed, the terms were framed—and they were pretty drastic terms. The German armies must retire across the Rhine and must be demobilised. German guns and ships must be surrendered.[124] In fact, Germany must be rendered incapable of resuming the war. Only on those terms was an Armistice possible with an enemy who had given such dire proofs of ill-faith. Faced with these terrible terms, Ludendorff made a last effort to rally Germany to a final war of defence. But he was too late. He himself had fatally weakened the German fighting power when he suggested negotiations in August. Then the civilians had protested. But now that they had been converted to peace, nothing could make Germany face the guns again. Their military strength suddenly collapsed. Turkey surrendered on October 31st, and Austria-Hungary on November 4th. The bell of doom had begun to toll.