This general query was followed by a long silence, which I broke by saying that Germany would do anything he said.

“What should I say?” he asked.

“That we would not treat until Germany was across the Rhine.”

This he thought impossible.

Then others took a hand.  Wilson said the Allies should be consulted.  Houston thought there was no real reform inside Germany.  McAdoo made a long talk favoring an armistice on terms fixed by the military authorities.  Strangely enough, Burleson, who had voted against all our stiff action over the Lusitania and has pleaded for the Germans steadily, was most belligerent in his talk.  He was ferocious—­so much so that I thought he was trying to make the President react against any stiff Note—­for he knows the President well, and knows that any kind of strong blood-thirsty talk drives him into the cellar of pacifism. ...

One of the things McAdoo said was that we could not financially sustain the war for two years.  He was for an armistice that would compel Germany to keep the peace, military superiority recognized by Germany, with Foch, Haig, and Pershing right on top of them all the time.  Secretary Wilson came back with his suggestion that the Allies be consulted.  Then Baker wrote a couple of pages outlining the form of such a Note suggesting an armistice.  I said that this should be sent to our “partners” in the war, without giving it to the world, that we were in a confidential relation to France and England, that they were in danger of troubles at home, possible revolution, and if the President, with his prestige, were to ask publicly an armistice which they would not think wise to grant, or which couldn’t be granted, the sending of such a message into the world would be coercing them.  The President said that they needed to be coerced, that they were getting to a point where they were reaching out for more than they should have in justice.  I pointed out the position in which the President would be if he proposed an armistice which they (the Allies) would not grant.  He said that this would be left to their military men, and they would practically decide the outcome of the war by the terms of the armistice, which might include leaving all heavy guns behind, and putting, Metz, Strasburg, etc., in the hands of the Allies, until peace was declared.

I suggested that Germany might not know what the President’s terms were as to Courland, etc., that this was not “invaded territory.”  He replied that they evidently did, as they now were considering methods of getting out of the Brest-Litovsk treaty.  He said he was afraid of Bolshevism in Europe, and the Kaiser was needed to keep it down—­to keep some order.  He really seemed alarmed that the time would come soon when there would be no possibility of saving Germany from the Germans.  This was a new note to me.