Sussex_ had encountered when
Germany had pledged herself not to make such attacks?

Meantime information reached Washington that the German secret orders
to submarine commanders relating to the armed-merchantmen decree did
not conform to the pledges given to the United States, but urged the
importance of a policy of concealment in their operations, so that it
would be difficult, if not impossible, to lay the proof at Germany's
door, if any vessel was sunk contrary to pledge. By this means the
German Government could decline to acknowledge responsibility for any
attack unless the United States could prove that the submarine was of
German nationality.

Whether Washington was correctly informed or not, Germany's attitude
gave color to the theory that she had predetermined on repudiating
having any hand in submarine attacks if she could successfully cloak
the operations of her U-boat commanders. The situation embarrassed the
United States and influenced the procedure of the diplomatic
negotiations necessary to elucidate any given case. Germany's
attitude, in short, placed the United States in the position of either
assuming that the word of a friendly government could not be accepted
at its face value, or of abandoning further inquiry, as happened in
the case of the _Persia_, recorded in the previous volume. The
President boldly undertook to act on the first of these alternatives.

Before the crisis reached this stage, the German point of view
regarding submarine warfare was, despite pledges, more than ever
unalterably opposed to modifying that warfare to conform to the wishes
of any foreign power. For eleven days after the attack of the _Sussex_
the Berlin Foreign Office preserved an attitude of ignorance regarding
the torpedoing; but the seriousness with which the case was viewed in
the United States, coupled with the instructions from Washington to
Ambassador Gerard, at length caused the Foreign Office to call upon
the admiralty for a report on the destruction of the _Sussex_ if any
submarine commander could throw any light upon it. No hope, however,
was entertained that a satisfactory statement would be received from
Berlin. A resort to evasion, a professed lack of information, the
familiar assumption of an English or French mine being to blame, were
expected to be embodied in any defense Berlin made, and an explanation
of this tenor was rejected in advance.

Germany's answer was received on April 10, 1916, and fulf