the British passenger steamship Fabala and other German
acts constitute a series of events which the Government of the United
States has observed with growing concern, distress and amazement," said
President Wilson in a note on the submarine warfare. "This Government
cannot admit the adoption of such measures or such a warning of danger
as in any degree an abbreviation of the rights of American shipmasters
or American citizens, bound on lawful errands as passengers on merchant
ships of belligerent nationality. It must hold the Imperial German
Government to a strict accountability for any infringement of those
rights, international or incidental.

"The objection to their present method of attack 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 opinions regard as imperative.

"American citizens act within their indisputable rights in taking their
ships and traveling wherever their legitimate business calls them upon
the high seas.

"No warning that an unlawful and an inhuman 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. * * *

"The Imperial German Government will not expect the Government of the
United States to omit any word or any act necessary to the performance
of its sacred duty or the inalienable rights of the United States and
its citizens, and of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoyment."

WHOLESALE DESTRUCTION OF VESSELS.

Apparently Germany modified her submarine policy for a period of upward
of a year, or until in February, 1917, when to the astonished world she
threw aside all pretense and declared her intention of destroying any
vessel which attempted to cross or sailed into a zone which she
established along the English coast and around English and French ports.
America's further protests availed not; her citizens, many of them, went
to the bottom of the seas, and some of them suffered almost unbelievable
cruelties or neglect, when the captain of a German sea raider with some
humanitarian instincts permitted these innocent passengers or seamen to
be rescued from the torpedoed vessels on which they were.

Even the Red Cross vessels and Belgian relief ships carrying supplies
and food to the maimed or sick at war and the starving children of
Belgium did not escap