New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 | Page 3

such
a warning of danger to operate as in any degree an abbreviation of the
rights of American shipmasters or of American citizens bound on
lawful errands as passengers on merchant ships of belligerent
nationality, and that it must hold the Imperial German Government to a
strict accountability for any infringement of those rights, intentional or
incidental. It does not understand the Imperial German Government to
question those rights. It assumes, on the contrary, that the Imperial
Government accept, as of course, the rule that the lives of
noncombatants, whether they be of neutral citizenship or citizens of one
of the nations at war, cannot lawfully or rightfully be put in jeopardy by
the capture or destruction of an unarmed merchantman, and recognize
also, as all other nations do, the obligation to take the usual precaution
of visit and search 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, desires to call the
attention of the Imperial German Government with the utmost
earnestness to the fact that the objection to their present method of
attack against the trade of their enemies lies in the practical
impossibility of employing submarines in the destruction of commerce
without disregarding those rules of fairness, reason, justice, and
humanity which all modern opinion regards as imperative. It is

practically impossible for the officers of a submarine to visit a
merchantman at sea and examine her papers and cargo. It is practically
impossible for them to make a prize of her; and, if they cannot put a
prize crew on board of her, they cannot sink her without leaving her
crew and all on board of her to the mercy of the sea in her small boats.
These facts it is understood the Imperial German Government frankly
admit. We are informed that in the instances of which we have spoken
time enough for even that poor measure of safety was not given, and in
at least two of the cases cited not so much as a warning was received.
Manifestly, submarines cannot be used against merchantmen, as the
last few weeks have shown, without an inevitable violation of many
sacred principles of justice and humanity.
American citizens act within their indisputable rights in taking their
ships and in traveling wherever their legitimate business calls them
upon the high seas, and exercise those rights in what should 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 his
Government, 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 it 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