To these allegations, unaccompanied by the slightest proof and contradicted by the testimony both of British and American eye-witnesses, the United States replied calmly and categorically. It was pointed out that if the German ambassador at Washington or the German consul at New York had complained to the Federal authorities before the Lusitania sailed and either guns or troops had been found concealed on her, she would have been interned. The statement of Mr. Dudley Field Malone, collector of the Port of New York, that the Lusitania was not armed, may be accepted as final. Gustav Stahl, the German reservist who signed an affidavit that he had seen guns on board her, later pleaded guilty to a charge of perjury and was sentenced to eighteen months in a Federal penitentiary. As for her cargo, every passenger train and steamer in this country is allowed to transport boxes of revolver and rifle cartridges—the only explosives carried on the Lusitania—because it is extremely difficult to set off any number of them together, either by heat or concussion.
Dropping these points, Germany then pledged the safety of American ships in the war zone, if distinctly marked, and to facilitate American travel offered to permit the United States to hoist its flag on four belligerent passenger steamers. This, if accepted, would by implication have made Americans fair game anywhere else on the high seas, and was accordingly rejected in the strong American note of July 21.
“The rights of neutrals in time of war,” declared President Wilson through the medium of Secretary Lansing, “are based upon principle, not upon expediency, and the principles are immutable. It is the duty and obligation of belligerents to find a way to adapt the new circumstances to them.
“The events of the past two months have clearly indicated that it is possible and practicable to conduct such submarine operations as have characterized the activity of the Imperial German naval commanders within the so-called war-zone in substantial accord with the accepted practices of regulated warfare. The whole world has looked with interest and increasing satisfaction at the demonstration of that possibility by German naval commanders. It is manifestly possible, therefore, to lift the whole practice of submarine attack above the criticism which it has aroused and remove the chief causes of offense.”
Repetition by the commanders of German naval vessels of acts contravening neutral rights “must be regarded by the Government of the United States, where they effect American citizens, as deliberately unfriendly.”
On July 9, a German submarine discharged a torpedo at the west-bound Cunard liner Orduna, narrowly missed her, rose to the surface and fired some twenty shells before the steamer got out of range. Fortunately, none of these took effect. There were American passengers on board and nothing but bad marksmanship averted another Lusitania horror.
Three days later, another German submarine stopped an American freight steamer, the Leelanlaw, and had her visited and searched by a boarding party, who reported that she was carrying contraband to Great Britain. Because the vessel could not be taken into a German port and there was no time to throw her cargo overboard, the crew were taken off and she was sunk.
Here was a perfectly proper procedure, where no neutral lives had been endangered and the question of the damage to property could be settled amicably in a court of law. It was to the practice in the Leelanlaw case that President Wilson referred to so hopefully in his note of July 21. Though the weeks went by without any answer from Germany, it was hoped that the Imperial government had quietly amended the orders to its submarine commanders and that no more passenger ships would be attacked without warning.
But on the 19th of August, the White Star liner Arabic sighted and went to the rescue of a sinking ship. This proved to be the British steamer Dunsley, which had been torpedoed by a German submarine. As the Arabic came up and prepared to lower her boats, another torpedo from the same submarine exploded against the liner’s side, killing several of her crew and sending her to the bottom in eleven minutes. She went down within fifty miles of the resting place of the Lusitania. She was sunk without warning and without cause, for she had been bound to New York, with neither arms nor ammunition on board, nor had she made the slightest attempt either to escape or attack the submarine. She carried one hundred and eighty-one passengers, twenty-five of whom were Americans. Two Americans were drowned.
The German government at once asked for time in which to explain, and the Imperial chancellor hinted that the commander of the submarine that sank the Arabic might have “gone beyond his instructions, in which case the Imperial government would not hesitate to give such complete satisfaction to the United States as would conform to the friendly relations existing between both governments.”