ircumstances of detail
that may be thought to affect the cases, principles which lift it, as
the Imperial German Government will no doubt be quick to recognize and
acknowledge, out of the class of ordinary subjects of diplomatic
discussion or of international controversy. Whatever be the other
facts regarding the Lusitania, the principal fact is that a great
steamer, primarily and chiefly a conveyance for passengers, and
carrying more than a thousand souls who had no part or lot in the
conduct of the war, was torpedoed and sunk without so much as a
challenge or a warning, and that men, women, and children were sent to
their death in circumstances unparalleled in modern warfare. The fact
that more than one hundred American citizens were among those who
perished made it the duty of the Government of the United States to
speak of these things and once more, with solemn emphasis, to call the
attention of the Imperial German Government to the grave
responsibility which the Government of the United States conceives
that it has incurred in this tragic occurrence, and to the
indisputable principle upon which that 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,[3] 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.

[Footnote 3: The reference made by President Wilson in his first note
of May 13 to the German Government regarding the sinking of the
Lusitania to the "humane and enlightened attitude hitherto assumed by
the Imperial German Government in matters of international right,