New York Tribune: “Failing these things, no American should misunderstand the meaning of the present crisis; no American should shrink from the facts that cannot be evaded or avoided. If Germany has once and for all embarked upon a deliberate campaign of murder directed against American citizens, there can be but one consequence—the end is inescapable.”
New York World: “The main thing that concerns the American government today is not the subordinate question of reparation for the assassination of American citizens who were traveling on the Lusitania. It is the broader question of whether Germany can be brought to her senses and induced to abandon methods of warfare that are a crime against civilization and an affront to humanity.”
New York Times: “Neither in law nor in custom is there any extenuation for this act of monstrous inhumanity, no exception, no condition, can be made to shield it from the full force and condemnation it deserves and has received. And the warning advertisement published by the German Embassy here, being notice of an intent to commit a crime, is of no more avail for exculpation than a Black Hand letter of threat.”
New York Globe: “The duty of this government is sufficiently clear. In a formal and emphatic manner, not shrinking from explicit characterization, it should denounce the greatest international outrage that has occurred since the Boxer savages of China, with the countenance of a treacherous government, attacked the women and children in the legations at Pekin.”
Philadelphia Public Ledger: “As it stands the horror is almost inconceivable. There has been nothing like it before. One of the consequences of this war ought to be that nothing like it can ever happen again. Unless civilization is to relapse into barbarism, helpless non-combatants must not be exposed in such a fashion to the worst calamities of war.”
Boston Transcript: “The torpedoing of the Lusitania was not battle—it was massacre. To destroy an enemy ship, an unarmed merchant vessel of great value and power, is an act of war; to sink her in such a manner as to send hundreds of her passengers, among them many neutrals, to their death, is morally murder, and no technical military plea will avail to procure any other verdict at the bar of civilized public opinion.”
Boston Post: “The sinking of the British liner Lusitania by the torpedo of a German submarine with terrible loss of life, is the worst crime against civilization and humanity that the modern world has ever known. It is a reversion to barbarism that will set the whole world, save perhaps the little world of its perpetrators, aflame with horror and indignation.”
Boston Traveler: “With the destruction of this queen of the ocean liners and the hundreds of lives of non-combatant men, women and children, also came the ruin of the last vestige of the structure of international law and humane consideration that through the centuries mankind has been striving to erect. The very life and honor of the nation depend upon the manner in which this attack upon its integrity is adjudicated, even if any adjudication of a civil nature will be deemed sufficient to permit of a peaceful, to say nothing of a friendly, adjustment.”
Hartford Courant: “It is hard to find in the dictionary the words strong enough to fit such conduct, and the effect of the destruction of the ship and the loss of lives will be to turn public sentiment more than ever against the Germans.”