Excerpt from Knox County in the World War, 1917, 1918, 1919 After the peace negotiations in the fall of 1916 proved fruitless, the German government, yielding to the advice of its military party that this course would put the war to a speedy end, announced on January '31, 1917, that unrestricted submarine warfare would be carried on in specified zones. Four days later Ambassador Bernstorff was handed his passports and our friendly relations with Germany ceased. On February 26 President Wilson asked for authority to arm merchant vessels as a protection against submarine attacks. A few days after, he appeared before a memorable joint session of the Congress, set forth the attempts he had made to maintain friendly relations with Germany, and asked that the existence of a state of war between the two nations be declared. On April 4, 1917, the Senate passed the war resolution by a vote of 82 to 6, while the House Of Representatives, after a wild and stormy session which lasted until 3 o'clock on the morning of April 6, also adopted it by a vote of 373 to 50. The president affixed his Signature to the resolution the same day. Its text was as follows. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.