ld 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.

There was recently published in the newspapers of the United States, I
regret to inform the Imperial German Government, a formal warning,
purporting to come from the Imperial German Embassy at Washington,
addressed to the people of the United States, and stating, in effect,
that any citizen of the United States who exercised his right of free
travel upon the seas would do so at his peril if his journey should take
him within the zone of waters within which the Imperial German Navy was
using submarines against the commerce of Great Britain and France,
notwithstanding the respectful but very earnest protest of the
Government of the United States. I do not refer to this for the purpose
of calling the attention of the Imperial German Government at this time
to the surprising irregularity of a communication from the Imperial
German Embassy at Washington addressed to the people of the United
States through the newspapers, but only for the purpose of pointing out
that no warning that an unlawful and inhumane act will be committed can
possibly be accepted as an excuse or palliation for that act or as an
abatement of the responsibility for its commission.

Long acquainted as this government has been with the character of the
Imperial Government, and with the high principles of equity by which
they have in the past been actuated and guided, the Government of the
United States cannot believe that the commanders of the vessels which
committed these acts of lawlessness did so except under a
misapprehension of the orders issued by the Imperial German naval
authorities. It takes for granted that, at least within the practical
possibilities of every such case, the commanders even of submarines were
expected to do nothing that would involve the lives of noncombatants or
the safety of neutral ships, even at the cost of failing of their object
of capture or destruction. It confidently expects, therefore, that the
Imperial German Government will disavow the acts of which the Government
of the United States complains; that they will make reparation so far as
reparation is possible for injuries which are without measure, and that
they will take immediate steps to prevent t