ended to allow submarine
commanders a broad discretion in deciding the circumstances under
which passenger ships may be torpedoed. The ambassador was informed of
the Administration's conviction that the torpedoing of the _Arabic_
could not have been a mistake, justified or unjustified. Germany's
unreadiness to disavow responsibility for the act of the submarine
commander as "arbitrary" and "unsanctioned," to quote the German
Chancellor, showed that she accepted her submarine commander's
purported report, not the _Arabic_ testimony. In this impasse the
Administration was credited with being almost ready to break off
relations with Germany, but deferred doing so until the German
Government had studied the evidence on which the American Government
had decided that the submarine commander was solely to blame.

In the negotiations which followed, the _Arabic_ issue went the way of
the unsettled _Lusitania_ case by its withdrawal from being threshed
out in public. The exchange of notes was abandoned for pourparlers,
which were resorted to as seeming to afford a more supple means of
arriving at a settlement. Germany was afforded an opportunity of
privately establishing her good faith--which was in serious
question--by reconciling her acts on the seas with her pledge not to
attack passenger vessels without warning. No official disclosure was
made to enlighten a forgetful public as to the extent to which she had
done so in the negotiations which occupied the American and German
Governments throughout September, 1915. But a communication from Count
von Bernstorff to Secretary Lansing, which passed October 2, 1915, was
permitted to be revealed acknowledging that the submarine commander
was mistaken in believing that the _Arabic_ intended to ram his
vessel, and disavowing the act. The Von Bernstorff note contained this
passage: "The order issued by His Majesty the Emperor to the
commanders of the German submarines, of which I notified you on a
similar occasion, has been so stringent that the recurrence of
incidents similar to the _Arabic_ case is considered out of the
question."

The United States had thus brought Germany to an admission that the
sinking of the liner was unjustified. This important point gained,
the issue was removed from the acute stage at which it had dangerously
lingered, and only left undetermined the question of indemnity to be
paid by Germany to the _Arabic_ victims.

It cleared the diplomatic decks suffi