g the
specific settlement to be made in the case of the Lusitania.

On February 4th, 1916, arrived a German proposition which, coupled with
personal parleys carried on between German Ambassador von Bernstorff and
United States Secretary of State Lansing, seemed in a fair way to
conclude the whole controversy. It was announced on February 8th that
the two nations were in substantial accord and Germany was declared to
have admitted the sinking of the liner was wrong and unjustified and
promised that reparation would be made.

However, a week later, when Germany took advantage of tentative American
proposals concerning the disarming of merchant ships, by announcing that
all armed hostile merchantmen would be treated as warships and attacked
without warning, the almost completed agreement was overthrown. The
renewed negotiations were continuing when the torpedoing of the
cross-channel passenger ship Sussex, without warning, on March 24th,
impelled the United States to issue a virtual ultimatum, demanding that
the Germans immediately cease their present methods of naval warfare on
pain of the rupture of diplomatic relations with the most powerful
existing neutral nation.

The Lusitania, previous to her sinking, had figured in the war news,
first at the conflict, when it was feared she had been captured by a
German cruiser while she was dashing across the Atlantic toward
Liverpool, and again in February of 1915, when she flew the American
flag as a ruse to deceive submarines while crossing the Irish Sea. This
latter incident called forth a protest from the United States.

On her fatal trip the cargo of the Lusitania was worth $735,000.

As a great transatlantic liner, the Lusitania was a product of the race
for speed, which was carried on for years among larger steamship
companies, particularly of England and Germany. When the Lusitania was
launched, it was the wonder of the maritime world. Its mastery of the
sea, from the standpoint of speed, was undisputed.

Progress of the Lusitania on its first voyage to New York, September 7,
1907, was watched by the world. The vessel made the voyage in five days
and fifty-four minutes, at that time a record. Its fastest trip, made on
the western voyage, was four days eleven hours forty-two minutes. This
record, however, was wrested from it subsequently by the Mauretania, a
sister ship, which set the mark of four days ten hours forty-one
minutes, that still stands.

Although the