Meanwhile, Sayville was in readiness, a trained wireless operator prepared at any moment to hear Captain Turner's inquiry, and to flash a false reply with a perfect British Admiralty touch. On May 5 Captain Boy-Ed received word from Berlin that he had been awarded the Iron Cross. On May 7 the Lusitania spoke: Captain Turner's request for instructions. Presently the reply came, and was hurried to his cabin. From his code book he deciphered directions to "proceed to a point ten miles south of Old Head of Kinsale and thence run into St. George's Channel, arriving at the Liverpool bar at midnight." He carefully calculated the distance and his running time on the assumption that he was protected on every side by the British fleet, and set his course for the Old Head of Kinsale.
The British Admiralty also received Captain Turner's inquiry, just as the Sayville operator had snatched it from the air, and despatched an answer: orders that the Lusitania proceed to a point some 70 or 80 miles south of the Old Head of Kinsale, there to meet her convoy. Captain Turner never received that message. The British Government knows why the message was not delivered, though the fact has not, at this date, been made public.
The Lusitania headed northeast all morning. At 1:20 o'clock she ran the gauntlet of two submarines; a torpedo was released, and found its target. The ghastly details of what followed have been told so fully, so vividly, and so appealingly that they need not be repeated here. They made themselves heard around a world that was already vibrant with uproar. The first sodden tremor of the ship told Captain Turner that he had been betrayed. He described later at the Coroner's inquest how he had received orders supposedly from the Admiralty, and had set out to obey them. He produced the copy of those orders, but of the genuine message from the Admiralty he knew nothing. Asked if he had made special application for a convoy, he said: "No, I left that to them. It is their business, not mine. I simply had to carry out my orders to go, and I would do it again."
America was in a turmoil. Germany had presumed too far; she—it is almost incongruous to call Germany "she"—had believed that her warning declaration that the waters about the British isles were a war zone would be respected, or if not respected, would serve as an excuse, and that the torpedoing would be accepted calmly by America. She was not prepared for Colonel Roosevelt's burning denunciation of this act of common piracy, nor for the angry editorial remonstrance of a people outraged at the loss of one hundred and fourteen American lives. But Germany recovered her presumptuous poise swiftly, and while ugly medals were being struck off commemorating the German triumph over the ship, and while destroyers were still searching British waters for the bodies of the dead, she sent a note of commiseration and sympathy to Washington. Three days later—on May 13—the United States conveyed to Berlin a strong protest against the submarine policy which had culminated in the sinking of the Lusitania. Three days before Germany replied on May 28, a submarine attacked an American steamer, the Nebraska, and the Imperial government followed up its first reply with a supplementary note justifying its previous attacks upon the American vessels Gulflight and Cushing. Germany's fat was in the fire.
A German editor in the United States had the effrontery to announce that American ships would be sunk as readily as the Lusitania. Secretary Bryan, of the Department of State, at that time a confirmed pacifist, resigned his post on June 8, thus drawing the sting of a second and sharper protest which went forward to Germany the next day. To this the Foreign Office replied on July 8 that American ships would be safe in the submarine zone under certain conditions, and the President on July 21 rejected this diplomatic sop as "very unsatisfactory." Count von Bernstorff finally announced, on September 1, that German submarines would sink no more liners without warning, and his government ratified his promise a fortnight later. The promise was at best a quibble, and it in no way restricted undersea depredations upon commerce and human life. After the Lusitania affair followed the Leelanaw, the Arabic, and the Hesperian and on February 16, 1916, Germany acknowledged her liability for the Lusitania's destruction—the day after Secretary Lansing declared the right of commercial vessels to arm themselves in self-defense, and five days before the Crown Prince began the ten-months' battle of Verdun.
The published correspondence of the State Department gives in detail the negotiations regarding maritime relations, a record of Imperial hypocrisy which indicates clearly the desire and intention of the Germans to retain their submarine warfare at any cost. There is not space here to brief the papers, nor any great need, for it was the Lusitania which dictated the tone and outcome of the correspondence, and which brought the United States rudely face to face with the cruel facts of war.
In spite of these facts, Germany employed her agents in desperate, devious and futile attempts to gloss over the crime. Relatives of those who had drowned were persuaded by agents (one of them was "a lawyer named Fowler, now under Federal indictment on another count") to sue the Cunard Line for damages for having mounted guns on the liner, thus making her liable to attack. Paul Koenig paid a German, Gustave Stahl, of Hoboken, to swear to an affidavit that he had seen guns on the ship; this affidavit was forwarded by Captain Boy-Ed on June 1, to Washington, and had a wide temporary effect upon public sentiment until Stahl was convicted of perjury and sentenced to 18 months in Atlanta. It was Koenig who hid Stahl where neither the police nor the press could find him after he made his statement, and it was Koenig who, at the command of the Federal authorities, produced him. It was Rintelen who dined on the night of the tragedy at the home of one of the victims; it was Rintelen who received the news with a mild expression of regret because "he had two good men aboard."
Tactically Germany had attained her objectives; her submarines had obeyed orders and sunk a liner. Strategically Germany had made a gross miscalculation; recruiting in England took a pronounced rise, the Admiralty was shocked into redoubled vigilance, the United States instead of swallowing the affront complicated the question of the freedom of the seas beyond all untangling except by force of arms, and beside the word "Belgium" on the calendar of crime the world wrote the word "Lusitania," as equally typical of the warfare of the Hun.