the German merchant vessels interned in
United States ports showed that most of them had been seriously damaged
by their crews to render them unseaworthy, and it was rumored that the
partial wreckage of these ships had been ordered February 1 by the
German government. Twenty-three German ships seized by the naval
authorities at Manila were also found to have received willful damage.

On February 8 the State Department notified all American vessel-owners
that merchant ships under the American flag might arm against submarines
but that no naval convoys would be supplied by the Government. Sailings
of American liners were still held up pending decision about their
armament.

The United States Senate indorsed the stand of the President in the
break with Germany, by a vote of 78 to 5.

On February 13 it was announced at Washington that an advance was made
by the German government, through the Swiss legation, offering to reopen
the discussion of submarine methods. The answer of the United States was
to the effect that the Government refused to discuss the international
situation with Germany until the U-boat warfare was abandoned and the
pledges made in the case of the steamer Sussex were restored. The
Spanish ambassador took over the deserted American embassy at Berlin.
President Wilson, with his cabinet, prepared a bill of particulars
containing the grievances against the German government, with special
emphasis on the refusal of the latter to liberate seventy-two American
seamen taken to Germany as prisoners on the steamer Yarrowdale, one of
the vessels captured in the South Atlantic by the raider supposed to be
the Moewe.

GERMAN PLOT IN MEXICO.

Intense feeling was aroused throughout the United States when it was
learned on February 28 that Germany had suggested to Mexico an alliance
by which war was to be made on the United States if it did not remain
neutral. Mexico was to have German aid to regain the southwestern
territory acquired from it, and to have a share in the ultimate peace
conference. It was to induce Japan to leave the Allies and join in
making war on America. Documentary proof of such plots was said to be
in the hands of the President, but a few days later the German foreign
secretary admitted the scheme as his own and sought to justify it as a
necessary precaution against war. The discovery of the plot did more
than anything else to arouse the American people to a sense of the
danger impending from