AMERICAN OPINION OF GERMAN EXCUSES

The effect of the German note on American opinion was to create a sense of angry disappointment. The newspapers were a unit in calling it evasive. It “does not meet the issue,” declared the New York World, while the New York Times viewed it as being “not responsive to our demand. It tends rather to becloud understanding.” The Albany Knickerbocker Press denounced it as “an answer which purposely does not answer. Germany evidently is playing for time.” This thought was reiterated by the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times, which pointed out that “it is palpable that Germany proposes to consume time by raising points which call for further correspondence, in the meanwhile continuing in the course to which the United States has objected.”

Survivors of the Lusitania Disaster.

Mr. Cowper, a Canadian journalist, holding little Helen Smith, a six-year-old American girl, who lost both father and mother. (C. Int. News Service.)

“The Man Who Cannot Be Drowned.” This stoker was saved from the Titanic, the Empress of Ireland and, lastly, from the Lusitania.

Sapping and Mining the Enemy’s Trenches.

When the hostile trenches are near together an open zig-zag trench is dug to a point very close to the enemy’s line, then a covered gallery is excavated to a point almost under the hostile trench.

Gaining a Foot of Ground Per Hour.

Here a charge of explosive is placed and fired from a distance by an electric wire. At the same instant the men charge over the ground and occupy the ruined trench of the enemy. (Il. L. News copr.)

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Belgian Refugees Find Safety in Holland.

This photograph, made at Putte, a Holland frontier town, shows some of the three hundred thousand refugees who sought safety in Holland. (Copyright by Underwood and Underwood.)

United States’ Note of Protest and
Germany’s Reply Compared

President Wilson Demanded:

Practical cessation of submarine attacks on non-combatant vessels.

Observance of the rule of visit and search in the case of all suspected merchantmen before any such ship shall be subjected to capture or destruction.

Protection of non-combatants who may be on suspected merchantmen.

Disavowal of official German responsibility for injury to Americans in the Cushing, Gulflight and Lusitania cases.

Reparation, so far as reparation is possible, for irreparable damage.

Immediate steps by Germany to prevent the recurrence of incidents “so obviously subversive of the principles of warfare.”

The first three items, as noted above, were stated not as actual demands, but as assumptions of what Germany would agree to in view of previous communications from this country in the matter of what is allowable in maritime warfare according to previously acknowledged international law and the dictates of humanity.

Germany Conceded:

No intention of attacking neutral ships not guilty of hostile acts in “war zone.”

Regrets and indemnity where neutral ship, not itself at fault, is damaged.

Attacks on the American ships Gulflight and Cushing unintentional, the circumstances being rigidly investigated.

Keen regret at loss of lives of neutral citizens on Lusitania.

Germany Evaded:

Issue as to humanitarian aspect and facts in Lusitania case.

Giving of any direct promise to abandon submarine warfare.

Any attempt to justify such warfare, except as “self-defense.”

Germany Countered:

By raising question as to Lusitania being an “auxiliary armed cruiser,” and not of the “undefended merchantmen” class.

By accusing Cunard company of using American citizens to protect the “ammunition” carried by Lusitania, and of being guilty of their death.

The Chicago Herald more specifically pointed out the evasiveness of the German reply, claiming that it “fails wholly to meet the main points at issue, both the specific point of the slaughter of American citizens on the Lusitania and the general point of the impossibility of employing submarines in the destruction of commerce without disregarding rules of fairness, reason, justice and humanity—established principles of international law.”