Meanwhile several sensational incidents cropped up in connection with the negotiations, chief of which was the sending of a message to the Berlin Foreign Office by Doctor Dumba, the Austrian Ambassador, afterward recalled at the request of President Wilson, which was represented as stating substantially that Mr. Bryan had intimated to the Ambassador that the vigorous tone of the American notes should not be regarded in Berlin as too warlike.
Secretary Lansing took office as Mr. Bryan's successor, and his reply to the German note took issue with every contention Germany had set up in the Falaba and Lusitania cases, denied flatly the contention that the Lusitania was armed or was to be treated as other than a peaceful merchant ship.
The note averred that the declaration of a submarine war zone could not abbreviate the rights of Americans on lawful journeys, and added: "The Government of the United States therefore very earnestly and solemnly renews the representations of its note transmitted to the Imperial German Government on May 15, and relies in these representations upon the principles of humanity, the universally recognized understandings of international law and the ancient friendship of the German nation."
JAGOW'S EVASIVE ANSWER.
To that note Germany did not reply until July 8, and the German rejoinder was preponderately characterized by American newspapers not as a note, but as an address by Foreign Minister von Jagow to the American people. In official circles it was said to come no nearer to meeting the American contentions than did the former German note.
The nature of the reply was regarded officially as convincing evidence that Germany was holding the submarine warfare negotiations as a club over the United States to force this Government into some action to compel Great Britain to relax the food blockade. President Wilson steadfastly refused to permit the diplomatic negotiations of the United States with one belligerent to become entangled with the relations with another.
To that the United States replied on July 21 that the German note was "very unsatisfactory," because it failed to meet "the real differences between the two Governments." The United States, it declared, was keenly disappointed with Germany's attitude. Submarine attacks without warning, endangering Americans and other neutrals, were characterized as illegal and inhuman and manifestly indefensible. The German retaliation against the British blockade, it maintained, must not interfere with the rights of neutrals, which the note declared were "based upon principles, not expediency, and the principles are immutable." It declared that the United States would continue to contend for the freedom of the seas "from whatever quarter violated, without compromise and at any cost." The American note concluded with these words of warning:
"Friendship itself prompts it (the United States Government) to say to the Imperial Government that repetition by the commanders of German naval vessels of acts in contravention of those rights must be regarded by the Government of the United States, when they affect American citizens, as deliberately unfriendly."
"INFORMAL CONVERSATIONS."
The negotiations at this point seemed to have come to such an impasse that the exchanges of notes between Washington and Berlin were stopped and the controversy was brought into the realm of "informal conversations" between Secretary Lansing and Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador. It was thought that much could be accomplished by personal contact which was lost in a cold exchange of documents.