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'A ship of two furlongs length would not be a ship at all. But the Lusitania is already not very far from a furlong and a half in length, and no one can even guess what is the upward limit of size which the ship-builders of a generation hence will have reached.
Eighteen hundred and sixty-three men, women, and children went down with the ship. No warning had been given. No chance had been offered for women or children or neutral passengers to escape. The disaster duplicated the wrecking of the Lusitania in 1915, but it exceeded it in loss of human life. The American captain and all his men shared the fate of the passengers intrusted to their care.
All the great liners of the present day may justly be styled ocean palaces, as far as luxuries and general appointments are concerned, but as the Mauretania and Lusitania are best known, a description of either of these will convey an idea to stay-at-homes of the regal magnificence and splendors of the floating hotels which modern science places at the disposal of the traveling public.
The thing stood out, a piece of bitterest irony in connection with a people whose kindred across the seas were making civilisation shudder at their atrocities afloat and ashore. The news of the Lusitania massacre on the high seas reached Karibib just after occupation. Did one Teuton in the place have to suffer as a consequence even the insult of a word? No. What would the Germans have done?
Thus the first note which President Wilson wrote in the Lusitania case not only brought the quarrel between the Navy and Foreign Office to a climax but it gave the German people the first opportunity they had had seriously to discuss questions of policy and right. In the Rhine Valley, where the ammunition interests dominated every phase of life, the Navy found its staunchest supporters.
Then he added; "But what I can't for the life of me understand is your Government's failure to express its disapproval of the German utter disregard of its Lusitania notes. After eight months, it has done nothing but write more notes. My love for America, I must confess, is offended at this inaction and puzzled. I can't understand it. You will pardon me, I am sure."
In the criticisms of the United States during the Lusitania troubles Mr. Balfour had never taken part. The era of "neutrality" had not ruffled the confidence which he had always felt in the United States. During all this time the most conspicuous dinner tables of London had rung with criticisms of American policy; the fact was well known, however, that Mr.
But the onus was on Germany to speak before the Administration took action, which could not take the form of another protest. The situation had grown beyond the stage of protests. They had already been made. If Germany could not show extenuating circumstances that palliated the sinking of the Arabic, the President must act on his Lusitania warning, or remain silent must go forward or recede.
Ambassador Gerard's corroboration of German atrocities in the occupied territory of France, and Minister Brand Whitlock's report on the situation in Belgium and the illegal and atrocious deportation of Belgian citizens for hard labor, ill treatment, and starvation in Germany, added fuel to the flame of national indignation, already running high as the result of continued destruction of American merchant vessels and the loss of American lives by submarine piracy and murder, continued almost without cessation since the infamous sinking of the Lusitania, one of the never-to-be-forgotten crimes of German ruthlessness.
I still think that they are on parallel lines with the work of the Clyde forger, who may have read about them in A Vida Moderna 1895, 1896, in Archeologo Portugues, in Encyclopedia dar Familiar, in various numbers, and in Religioes da Lusitania, vol. i. pp. 341, 342, , a work by the learned Director of the Ethnological Museum of Portugal.
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