We are all agreed that there can be no peace obtained by any kind of bargain or compromise with the governments of the Central Empires, because we have dealt with them already and have seen them deal with other governments that were parties to this struggle, at Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest. They have convinced us that they were without honour and do not intend justice. They observe no covenants, accept no principle but force and their own interest. We cannot come to terms with them. They have made it impossible. The German people must by this time be fully aware that we cannot accept the word of those who forced this war upon us. We do not think the same thoughts or speak the same language of agreement. At the time of the receipt of Prince Max's note by the State Department, on October 5, 1918, the President was in New York, staying at the Waldorf- Astoria, preparatory to attending a concert given by the Royal Italian Grenadiers. A message from the Army Intelligence Department, conveyed to me by General Churchill, at the Knickerbocker Hotel, in New York, where I was staying, was the first word we had of Germany's desire for an armistice. General Churchill read me the German proposal over the 'phone and I carried it to the President, who was in conference with Colonel House at the Waldorf. The offer of Germany was so frank and unequivocal in seeming to meet the terms of the President's formal proposals of peace, that when Colonel House read it to the President, he turned and said: "This means the end of the war." When I was interrogated as to my opinion, I replied that, while the German offer of peace seemed to be genuine, in my opinion no offer from Germany could be considered that bore the Hohenzollern-Hapsburg brand. For a moment this seemed to irritate the President, and he said: "But, at least, we are bound to consider in the most serious way any offer of Germany which is practically an acceptance of my proposals of peace." There our first discussion regarding the German peace offer ended. At the conclusion of this talk I was invited to take dinner with the President and Colonel House and with the members of the President's family, but the matter of the note which we had just received weighed so heavily upon me that my digestive apparatus was not in good working order, and yet the President was seemingly unmindful of it, and refused to permit the evening to be interfered with because of the note, attending the concert and apparently enjoying every minute of the evening, and applauding the speeches that were made by the gentlemen who addressed us.