Germany replied to this on March 1, expressing her willingness to act favorably on the proposal. The same day the British Government stated that because of the war-zone decree of the German Government the British Government must take measures to prevent commodities of all kinds from reaching or leaving Germany. On March 15 the British Government flatly refused the modus vivendi suggestion.
On April 4 Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador at Washington, submitted a memorandum to the United States Government regarding German-American trade and the exportation of arms. Mr. Bryan replied to the memorandum on April 21, insisting that the United States was preserving her strict status of neutrality according to the accepted laws of nations.
On May 7 the Cunard steamship Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine in the war zone as decreed by Germany, and more than 100 American citizens perished, with 1,000 other persons on board.
Thereupon, on May 13, the United States transmitted to the German Government a note on the subject of this loss. It said:
"American citizens act within their indisputable rights in taking their ships and in traveling wherever their legitimate business calls them upon the high seas, and exercise those rights in what should be the well justified confidence that their lives will not be endangered by acts done in clear violation of universally acknowledged international obligations, and certainly in the confidence that their own Government will sustain them in the exercise of their rights."
This note concluded:
"The Imperial 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 of maintaining the rights of the United States and its citizens and of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoyment."
Germany replied to this note on May 29. It stated that it had heard that the Lusitania was an armed naval ship which had attempted to use American passengers as a protection, and that, anyway, such passengers should not have been present. It added:
"The German commanders are consequently no longer in a position to observe the rules of capture otherwise usual and with which they invariably complied before this."
To the foregoing the United States maintained in a note sent to the German Government on June 9 that the Lusitania was not an armed vessel and that she had sailed in accordance with the laws of the United States, and that "only her actual resistance to capture or refusal to stop when ordered to do so ... could have afforded the commander of the submarine any justification for so much as putting the lives of those on board the ship in jeopardy."