shopkeeper-spirit about it! The feeling is genuine. Impotent rage! And that was the very thing which caused our danger, and, in the last analysis, that also was the reason why war was brought upon us. England,[2] the nation of sailors, the world power, is overtaken by us juniors, and things exist which enable us to outstrip her. And because this is so, because all her despicable calumny is nothing else than impotent blows to defend herself, typical English weapons, exactly on a par with the senseless confinement of civilians and the fierce reprisals upon, the captured submarine crews—because this is so, the whole matter is contemptible in our eyes and provokes the anger of our people.
The Lusitania carried passengers! In truth we should have been infinitely better
gesehen, wenn das Schiff, das schon seit vielen Monaten dem Feind von Nutzen ist und uns Schaden bringt, hätte vernichtet werden können, ohne dass diese Katastrophe für seine Fahrgäste hätte kommen müssen. Aber müssen wir uns, denen der Feind das Messer in die Kehle stossen will, wir, deren Bezwingung durch den Hunger und den Mangel an Kriegsgerät so ziemlich alle Welt mit Ruhe als ein unvermeidliches Schicksal mitansehen würde, müssen wir uns nicht mit aller Kraft und mit allen Mitteln, die der deutsche Geist erfinden kann und die die Ehre des deutschen Volkes als achtbare Waffen anerkennt, gegen diese furchtbare Gefahr wehren, die uns noch immer bedroht? Haben nicht gerade sie den Kampf bis aufs Messer gepredigt und durch ihre Blockade eröffnet, die jetzt zetern, weil die deutschen Waffen die besseren sind? Oder haben jene ein Recht, uns anzuklagen, die ihre
pleased if the ship, which for many months past has been of aid to the enemy and has done us harm, could have been destroyed without the necessity of this catastrophe befalling its passengers. But must we not, we whose throat the enemy is seeking to cut, we whose defeat by hunger and by lack of war material nearly every one would witness complacently as an unavoidable fate, must we not defend ourselves from this dreadful danger, which still threatens us, with all our might and with all the means that the German spirit can invent and which the honor of the German people recognizes as legitimate weapons? Were not those who now raise outcries because the German weapons are better than their own the very ones who proclaimed war to the knife and opened it with their blockade? Or have they a right to accuse us, those who allowed their friends and relatives to entrust themselves to a ship