anges
of notes, in which Germany's expressions were specious, and assumed a
right to negotiate. The last of these notes was submitted by President
Wilson to the allied council at Paris; and the council answered by
referring the whole question of armistice to Marshal Foch and the allied
military chiefs.

THE "CROOKED KAMERAD"

In those same months of September and October, 1918, Austria and Turkey
made proffers of separate surrender. This was the logical sequence of a
"crooked kamerad" peace-offensive inaugurated by Germany as soon as she
found herself being rolled, helplessly, toward the Rhine. It was at once
the most vicious game that her genius for the vicious had ever prompted,
and it was put forward at the very time when the fourth liberty loan was
in course of being floated.

Our soldiers on all fronts had often suffered through a trick of false
surrender by German soldiers. It is best described by one of our boys
who was lying on a table in a base hospital, waiting his turn to be
operated upon, when he heard another who was being wheeled out from the
operating room and was muttering through the ether fumes:

"Fired at me ten feet away, he did, point blank, and then he dropped his
rifle and stuck up his hands and called me 'Kamerad'! Kamerad, the dirty
crook! Didn't I stick 'im pritty, Bill"!

It had been a common thing on the western front for a group of boches to
come running toward the American lines unarmed, with their hands in
the air, crying "Kamerad! Kamerad!" And then, when our men went out
to receive them, fall flat, to make way for a force of armed boches
immediately behind them, who opened fire--plain murder as ever was done.

So it was a crooked Kamerad cry, a peace offensive intended to sing us
to sleep, that Germany launched in September, 1918. Of a sudden, our
newspapers were filled with what appeared to be straight news dispatches
dated at Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, London, Paris, Geneva,
and even Berlin, telling tales (that were not so) of starvation and
disaffection in Germany, or broken morale in the German armies, and
riotous demonstrations demanding peace. The impression was immediate and
came near to being disastrous.

Many urgent requests were being made just then for public help from
America. The gigantic fourth loan, the needs of the Red Cross, the
thousand and one things, big and little, that had to be taken care of,
and the very earnest and pressing call for a sharper reali