Yet Bell broke forth afresh on New Year's Day with his third letter to Printing House Square, asserting, roundly, that "America will and can support no peace but an Entente peace." On January 25 _The Times_ printed Bell's fourth letter within five weeks, in which he this time declared unequivocally that "Mr. Wilson's purpose is solely to inform the world what America stands for and what he is willing to ask America, if need be, to fight for."
Germany now proclaimed her new policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. Mr. Gerard was recalled from Berlin and Count Bernstorff received his passports in Washington. Yet Allied faith in America, momentarily revived by these events, took wings once more when it became known that Mr. Wilson's next "step" would be armed neutrality. The editor of _The Times_, who had been exceptionally tolerant of the pestiferous Bell, imagined now, I fancy, that events had at length put a timely end to the letter-writing energies of the Chicago scribe; for Englishmen, with notably few exceptions, had by this time pretty well "eliminated" America from their calculations. But on February 22, inspired perhaps by the rugged traditions clinging to that date, Bell cleared for action for the fifth time and next day _The Times_ printed him for the fifth time. He wrote: "I will risk the view that we are on the edge of great things in America--things worthy of the country of Washington and Lincoln. America, I feel, is about to fructify internationally--about to make her real contribution to humanity and history." _The Times_ now went so far as to suggest, with characteristic prudence, that Bell's "sagacious and racy letter deserves careful consideration by all who are trying to understand the situation in Washington." Unhappily, there was little evidence in the continued British mistrust of America that _The Times'_ counsel was being taken widely to heart.
On February 27 Bell craved the indulgence of _The Times_ for his sixth, and final, epistle to the skeptics. With what was destined to turn out to be rare prescience and penetration, he now said that Mr. Wilson's delay in coming to grips with Hohenzollernism meant only that "the president wants the public temper so hot throughout America that it will instantly burn to ash any revolutionary unrest or any opposition by the pacifist diehards." Five weeks later the United States and Germany were at war, with the American nation united in fervent support of the president's pronunciamento that the task which demanded the renunciation of our neutrality was one to which "we can dedicate our lives, our fortunes, everything we are and everything we have." The hour of Europe's awakening from its scornful dreams had come.