Baltimore American: “Americans must and will resent the invasion of their rights, and in this there can be no division of American sentiment.”
Charleston News and Courier: “The destruction of the Lusitania has been accomplished, it now appears, with the most diabolically cruel deliberation. If this shall be established as a fact, there can be no question that the wrath of the American people will flame—and should flame.”
New Orleans Times-Picayune: “What is Washington going to do about it? Slaughter of American citizens in contravention of all laws of warfare has placed the United States in a position that is intolerable. Our people were wantonly done to death.”
SENTIMENT OF THE CANADIAN PRESS
Even sterner was the tone of the editorial opinion of the Canadian press. In many cases the actual intervention of the United States in the war was advocated. The following excerpts are characteristic of the opinion of the newspapers of Canada:
Toronto Daily News: “This fresh display of Teutonic Kultur raises anew the question as to how long the Washington government is going to be scorned and trampled upon by the most unscrupulous and barbarous race of modern times. What effect will this deliberate destruction of hundreds of American citizens in cold blood have upon public sentiment throughout the United States? Can President Wilson forever stand aside while international law and international moral standards are cast to the winds by a brutal and infuriated people?”
Toronto Mail and Empire: “The Washington government knows why the American citizens whose names are on the passenger list of the Lusitania trusted themselves to the ship despite the warnings of the Kaiser’s agents and accomplices in New York. Those American men and women disregarded the warnings, not because they believed the Germans incapable of torpedoing a passenger vessel, but because they felt that the neutrality and puissance of their nation would be respected. The Washington government cannot let these American citizens who relied on its protection go unavenged.”
Toronto Globe: “But what of the United States. Does President Wilson propose to let German submarines destroy the lives of American citizens because they choose to cross the Atlantic in a passenger ship flying the British flag? Does he still think the mad dog of Europe can be trusted at large? Is it not almost time to join in hunting down the brute?”
Toronto Daily Star: “The sinking of the Lusitania was not necessary to prove what was already abundantly demonstrated—that there is no length of vindictiveness to which Germany will not go. There is no lesson to be drawn from it except that Germany must be fought to a finish, and that all the resources of the allied countries must be marshalled for that purpose. We are engaged in no ordinary war. The very existence of civilization is at stake. The civilized world is threatened by a nation that has deliberately gone back to barbarism and given a free rein to criminal instincts. Denunciation and rebuke are of no avail in such a case. The conflict is between a powerful criminal and those who desire to live under the reign of law; and the time has come for every man who believes in law, in every nation, to fight for the life of civilization.”