t responsibility rests.
The Government of the United States is contending for something much
greater than mere rights of property or privileges of commerce. It is
contending for nothing less high and sacred than the rights of humanity,
which every Government honors itself in respecting and which no
Government is justified in resigning on behalf of those under its care
and authority. Only her actual resistance to capture or refusal to stop
when ordered to do so for the purpose of visit 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. This principle the
Government of the United States understands the explicit instructions
issued on August 3, 1914, by the Imperial German Admiralty to its
commanders at sea to have recognized and embodied as do the naval codes
of all other nations, and upon it every traveler and seaman had a right
to depend. It is upon this principle of humanity, as well as upon the
law founded upon this principle, that the United States must stand. * * *

[Sidenote: Americans must be safeguarded.]

"The Government of the United States cannot admit that the proclamation
of a war zone from which neutral ships have been warned to keep away may
be made to operate as in any degree an abbreviation of the rights either
of American shipmasters or of American citizens bound on lawful errands
as passengers on merchant ships of belligerent nationality. It does not
understand the Imperial German Government to question those rights. It
understands it, also, to accept as established beyond question the
principle that the lives of non-combatants cannot lawfully or rightfully
be put in jeopardy by the capture or destruction of an unresisting
merchantman, and to recognize the obligation to take sufficient
precaution to ascertain whether a suspected merchantman is in fact of
belligerent nationality or is in fact carrying contraband of war under a
neutral flag. The Government of the United States therefore deems it
reasonable to expect that the Imperial German Government will adopt the
measures necessary to put these principles into practice in respect of
the safeguarding of American lives and American ships, and asks for
assurances that this will be done. (See White Book of Department of
State entitled 'Diplomatic Correspondence with Belligerent Governments
Relating to Neutral Rights and Duties, European War, No. 2,' at p. 172.
Prin