GROWING DISTRESS AND AMAZEMENT.
"The sinking of the British passenger steamship Fabala and other German acts constitute a series of events which the Government of the United States has observed with growing concern, distress and amazement," said President Wilson in a note on the submarine warfare. "This Government cannot admit the adoption of such measures or such a warning of danger as in any degree an abbreviation of the rights of American shipmasters or American citizens, bound on lawful errands as passengers on merchant ships of belligerent nationality. It must hold the Imperial German Government to a strict accountability for any infringement of those rights, international or incidental.
"The objection to their present method of attack lies in the practical impossibility of employing submarines in the destruction of commerce without disregarding those rules of fairness, reason, justice and humanity which all modern opinions regard as imperative.
"American citizens act within their indisputable rights in taking their ships and traveling wherever their legitimate business calls them upon the high seas.
"No warning that an unlawful and an inhuman act will be committed can possibly be accepted as an excuse or palliation for that act, or as an abatement of the responsibility for its commission. * * *
"The Imperial German Government will not expect the Government of the United States to omit any word or any act necessary to the performance of its sacred duty or the inalienable rights of the United States and its citizens, and of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoyment."
WHOLESALE DESTRUCTION OF VESSELS.
Apparently Germany modified her submarine policy for a period of upward of a year, or until in February, 1917, when to the astonished world she threw aside all pretense and declared her intention of destroying any vessel which attempted to cross or sailed into a zone which she established along the English coast and around English and French ports. America's further protests availed not; her citizens, many of them, went to the bottom of the seas, and some of them suffered almost unbelievable cruelties or neglect, when the captain of a German sea raider with some humanitarian instincts permitted these innocent passengers or seamen to be rescued from the torpedoed vessels on which they were.
Even the Red Cross vessels and Belgian relief ships carrying supplies and food to the maimed or sick at war and the starving children of Belgium did not escape the torpedo from the submarine. English hospital ships were attacked, and men unable to protect themselves were subjected to danger because the Germans feared that something might be carried on the boat which would prove valuable to the Allied forces in making war.
Dozens—even hundreds of vessels of all sorts—were sunk from week to week. Food and supplies for the Allied forces were destroyed, until both England and France were threatened with starvation.