The real purpose was not a peace, but a truce; and the cause which was to be advanced was not democracy but Prussian absolutism.

Between the Battle of the Marne and the sinking of the _Lusitania_ four attempts were made to end the war; all four were set afoot by Germany.

President Wilson was the man to whom the Germans appealed to rescue them from their dilemma.

It is no longer a secret that the Germans at this time regarded their situation as a tragic one; the success that they had anticipated for forty years had proved to be a disaster.

The attempt to repeat the great episodes of 1864, 1866, and 1870, when Prussia had overwhelmed Denmark, Austria, and France in three brief campaigns, had ignominiously failed.