War on and under the Sea (4)

In December, 1916, at the close of the victorious German campaign
against Roumania, the central powers, weary of war and beginning to
feel the pinch of starvation and the drain on their young men, made it
known that as they had won the war they were now ready to treat for
peace. This message carried with it a threat to all countries not at
war that if they did not help to force the Entente to accept the
Kaiser's peace terms, Germany could not be held responsible for
anything that might happen to them in the future.

President Wilson, always apprehensive that something might draw the
United States into the conflict, grasped eagerly at this opportunity,
and in a public message he asked both sides to state to the world on
what terms they would stop the war.

The Germans and their allies did not make a clear and definite
proposal. On the other hand, the nations of the Entente, in no
uncertain terms, declared that no peace would be made unless the
central powers restored what they had wrongfully seized, paid the
victims of their unprovoked attack for the damage they had done, and
guaranteed that no such act should ever be committed in the future.
They also declared that the Poles, Danes, Czechs, Slovaks, Italians,
Alsatians, and Serbs should be freed from the tyrannous governments
which now enslaved them. In plain language this meant that the central
powers must give back part of Schleswig to Denmark, allow the kingdom
of Poland to be restored as it once had been; permit the Bohemians and
Slovaks to form an independent nation in the midst of Austria-Hungary;
allow the people of Alsace and Lorraine the right of returning to
France; annex the Italians in Austria-Hungary to Italy, and permit the
Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina to join their cousins to the southeast
in one great Serbian nation.

When these terms were published the German government exclaimed that
while they had been willing to make peace and perhaps even give back
the conquered portions of Belgium and northern France in return for
the captured German colonies in Africa and the Pacific Ocean, with the
payment of indemnities to Germany, now it was plain that the nations
of the Entente intended to wipe out utterly the German nation and
dismember the empire of Austria-Hungary; and that since Germany had
offered her enemies an honorable peace and they had refused, the only
thing left for the central powers to do was to fight to the bitter end
and use any means whatsoever to force their enemies to make peace.

In other words, here were the two conflicting claims: Germany said,
"We have won the war. Don't you recognize the fact that you have been
beaten? Give us back our colonies, organize a kingdom of Poland, out
of the part of Russian Poland which we have conquered, as a separate
kingdom under our protection, but don't expect us to join to this any
part of Austrian or Prussian Poland. (Prussian and Austrian Poland are
ours. You wouldn't expect us to give up any part of them, would you?)
Allow us to keep the port of Antwerp and maintain our control over the
Balkan peninsula. We will restore to you northern France, most of
Belgium, and even part of Serbia. See what a generous offer we are
making!"

The Allied nations replied, in effect: "You now have gotten
three-fourths of what you aimed at when you began the war. If we make
peace now, allowing you to keep the greater part of what you have
conquered, you will be magnanimous and give back a small portion of it
if we in turn surrender all your lost colonies. Hardly! We demand, on
the other hand, that you recompense, as far as you can, the miserable
victims of your savage attack for the death and destruction that you
have caused; that you put things back as you found them as nearly as
possible; that you make it plain to us that never again will we have
to be on guard against the possibility of a ruthless invasion by your
army; that you give to the peoples whom you and your allies have
forcibly annexed or retained under your rule a chance to choose their
own form of government."

Then said the Germans to the world, "You see! They want to wipe us out
of existence and cut the empire of our allies into small bits. Nothing
is left but to fight for our existence, and, as we are fighting for
our existence, all rules hitherto observed in civilized warfare are
now called off!"