Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated President of the United States, March 4, 1913; was reelected and began his second term March 4, 1917. He signed the Declaration of War, April 6, 1917.
Germany had already been assured that the crews were in no danger. The conviction grew that she meant to detain the Yarrowdale seamen as hostages pending a determination of the crisis as to peace or war. The Administration had been inclined to subordinate all collateral issues between the two countries to the major and vital one created by the submarine peril; but the plight of these seamen caused their case to become one of the chief factors in the crisis. Germany seemed to conclude that their continued detention, in view of the indignation roused in Washington by such a wanton violation of international law, to say nothing of the open insult hurled at the dignity and good faith of the United States, would only precipitate war. On February 16, 1917, came a report that the men had been released. This proved to be a false alarm. On February 26, 1917, Berlin notified that their release, although ordered "some time ago," had been deferred because an infectious disease had been discovered in their concentration camp at Brandenburg. They were consequently placed in quarantine "in the interest of neutral countries." On March 2, 1917, Dr. Ritter informed Secretary Lansing that the transfer of the American sailors to the frontier had been arranged but delayed until the quarantine ended. On March 8, 1917, they were finally released from quarantine and sent to the Swiss frontier. Members of other neutral crews were sent home through various frontier towns. All were said to have been penniless and in rags. Apart from the necessary quarantine (a Spanish doctor found typhus in the camp), the record stands as an example of Germany's gift for unscrupulous temporizing and for using procrastination as a club to hold the United States at bay when on the brink of war.
The Reichstag met shortly after Germany had compulsorily disposed of her connections with the United States. An expected address by the kaiser's Chancellor, Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, had been deferred until February 27, 1917, when a tardy official recognition was made of the American action.
The most deliberate official notice of the course the United States would take was served on the German Government in the President's ultimatum arising out of the torpedoing of the Sussex early in 1916. If Germany continued her ruthless sea warfare, the President warned her, "the Government of the United States can have no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the German Empire altogether." Now the time had come for the President to go even beyond that step. The day before the Reichstag listened to the Chancellor's complaint the voice of the American President was again heard in the Capitol at Washington.[Back to Contents]
CHAPTER LXIII
ARMED NEUTRALITY
President Wilson addressed Congress in joint session, February 26, 1917, asking authority to use the armed forces of the United States to protect American rights on the high seas. He desired to establish a state of "armed neutrality." This was not a request for a declaration of war, nor was it an act of war. It was to prepare the United States to resist what might be warlike acts by Germany.
Reviewing the maritime conditions caused by Germany's submarine order of January 31, 1917, which produced the diplomatic rupture, the President disclosed an unexpected view—that Germany's misdeeds in carrying out her new decree had not, in his opinion, so far provided the "overt act" for which the United States was waiting.