Despite the Allied reply, President Wilson did not lose hope of a comparatively early peace. The German Ambassador at Washington, Count Bernstorff, invoking the authority of Colonel House, asked the German Government for its peace terms on January 28, 1917. Thereupon Germany sent, on January 29, a list of her demands in which she made the most of the military status quo, foreshadowing, in particular, a frontier rectification at the expense of Russia, and pleading for Poland as a country under German control. Washington found this answer unsatisfactory.
It is characteristic of German diplomacy that, simultaneously with the peace terms, it should have notified Wilson of the beginning of unrestricted submarine warfare. This notification was published on January 31, 1917; and, on February 5, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. Next day President Wilson called upon the neutrals to do the same. Their answers were interesting. As far as I could find out, ten of them replied, some in the negative, others evasively. Austria, for her part, made a parallel peace move when feeling against Germany began to rise in America. Through his brother-in-law, Prince Sixtus of Parma, the Emperor Charles secretly approached Poincaré and other Western statesmen. To this I shall refer more fully later on.
All these peace moves I watched very carefully. No less than the operations in the field, they indicated the general situation. Hopes of peace, and pacifism, had everywhere been stimulated by the downfall of Tsardom and by the Russian Revolution. On April 10 a declaration of the Russian Provisional Government promised self-determination to all Russian nationalities. This was followed on April 15 by a manifesto of the Russian Workmen’s and Soldiers’ representatives demanding peace without annexations or indemnities and, on April 19, by a manifesto of German, Austrian and Hungarian Social Democrats supporting that of the Russian Workmen and Soldiers pronouncements of which the effect was weakened by the American declaration of war. From Wilson’s utterances and those of the Allies it was obvious that America had declared war in earnest, not as a momentary means of pressure. All doubt on that score was set at rest by the rapidity of American armaments for which, indeed, some preparation had already been made.
