While at luncheon that afternoon, the President sent for me to come to the White House. I found him in conference with Secretary Lansing, Colonel House, and Mr. Polk. The German reply was discussed and I was happy when I found that it was a refusal on the part of the President to accept the German proposal. The gist of the President's reply was a demand from him of evidence of a true conversion on the part of Germany, and an inquiry on the part of the President in these words: "Does the Imperial Chancellor mean that the German Government accepts the Fourteen Points?" "Do the military men of Germany agree to withdraw all their armies from occupied territories?", and finally: "The President wishes to know whether the Chancellor speaks for the old group who have conducted the war, or does he speak for the liberated peoples of Germany?" Commenting upon the receipt of the President's reply to the Germans, André Tardieu says: It is a brief reply which throws the recipients into consternation they cannot conceal. No conversation is possible, declares the President, either on peace or on an armistice until preliminary guarantees shall have been furnished. These are the acceptation pure and simple of the bases of peace laid down on January 8, 1918, and in the President's subsequent addresses; the certainty that the Chancellor does not speak only in the names of the constituted authorities who so far have been responsible for the conduct of the war; the evacuation of all invaded territories. The President will transmit no communication to his associates before having received full satisfaction on these three points. What must be the thought of those partisans in America who were crying out against the preliminary course of the President in dealing with Germany, who read this paragraph from Tardieu's book as to the impressions made in France and Germany by the notes which the President from week to week addressed to the Germans with reference to the Armistice? Again Tardieu says: