He felt that “we could, if not entirely prevent the production of war material in Bethlehem and in the middle west, at any rate strongly disorganize it and hold it up for months.”

The letter was intrusted to an American newspaper correspondent named Archibald, who was just setting out for Europe under the protection of an American passport.  Archibald’s vessel was held up at Falmouth, England, his papers seized and their contents cabled to the United States.  On September 8 Secretary Lansing instructed our ambassador at Vienna to demand Dr. Dumba’s recall and the demand was soon acceded to by his government.

On December 4 Captain Karl Boy-Ed, naval attache of the German embassy in Washington, was dismissed by our government for “improper activity in naval affairs.”  At the same time Captain Franz von Papen, military attache of the embassy, was dismissed for “improper activity in military matters.”  In an intercepted letter to a friend in Germany he referred to our people as “those idiotic Yankees.”

As a fitting wind-up of the year and as showing what the German promise to protect liners amounted to, the British passenger steamer Persia was sunk in the Mediterranean by a submarine December 30, 1915.

The opening of 1916 found the president struggling with the grave perplexities of the submarine problem, exchanging notes with the German government, taking fresh hope after each disappointment and endeavoring by every means to avert the impending strife and find a basis for the preservation of an honorable peace.

It was now evident to most thinking people that the apparent concessions of the Germans were granted merely to provide them time to complete a larger program of submarine construction.  This must have been evident to the president; but he appears to have possessed an optimism that rose above his convictions.

Our government, January 18, put forth a declaration of principles regarding submarine attacks and inquired whether the governments of the allies would subscribe to such an agreement.  This was one of the president’s “forlorn hope” movements to try and bring about an agreement among the belligerents which would bring the submarine campaign within the restrictions of international law.  Could such an agreement have been effected, it would have been of vast relief to this country and might have kept us out of the war.  The Allies were willing to subscribe to any reasonable agreement provided there was assurance that it would be maintained.  They pointed out, however, the futility of treating on the basis of promises alone with a nation which not only had shown a contempt for its ordinary promises, but had repudiated its sacred obligations.