the assurance of "the present supremacy" of the allied armies, and
they strove desperately to convince him that the democratization of the
German Government was real. Delegates went to Marshal Foch to discuss
the armistice terms, and on Nov. 5 the Allies formally notified the
President that they accepted the Fourteen Points, with the reservation
of the freedom of the seas and subject to a definition of the
restitution which the Germans must make for damage done.

On the same day sailors of the German High Sea Fleet, ordered out to
die fighting in a last thrust at the British, mutinied and began a
revolution that spread all over the empire. From the balcony of the
Imperial Palace in Berlin Karl Liebknecht proclaimed the republic; the
Kaiser fled across the Dutch border between two days; and on Nov. 11
the fighting ended and the Germans submitted to the terms imposed by
Marshal Foch.

_Peace Conference and Treaty, 1919_

So the war had been ended by the military defeat of the Germans. In
arranging the preliminaries of peace Mr. Wilson's influence had been
dominant. But the personal aspect of his triumph was far more imposing
in 1918 than it could possibly have been in 1916. Had his mediation
ended the war before America entered it would have been bitterly
resented in the allied countries and by American sympathizers of the
Allies. But in the interval the President had appeared as the leader of
the nation which furnished the decisive addition to allied strength
that brought the final victory; he had at last condemned in strong
terms the German Government, toward which he had to maintain a neutral
attitude earlier in the war, and he had had the satisfaction of seeing
that Government overthrown at last when the German people realized that
it had cost them more than it was worth. So now the war was ended in
victory, but still ended by Wilson's mediation, and moreover on terms
which he himself had laid down--another triumph that would have been
unthinkable two years earlier. In November, 1918, Woodrow Wilson was
exalted in the estimation of the world more highly than any other human
being for a century past, and far more highly than any other American
had ever been raised in the opinion of the peoples of Europe.

But he had just suffered a surprising defeat at home. It became evident
to Democratic leaders in the early Fall of 1918 that they were likely
to lose the Congressional elections. Democratic leadership in the Hous