England vast quantities of munitions. Throughout the
controversy, however, Great Britain profited by the fact that while
her methods caused only financial injury to neutrals, those employed
by Germany destroyed or imperiled human lives.

_The Submarine Campaign_

[Illustration: From _The Blockade of Germany_, Alonzo E. Taylor,
WORLD'S WORK, Oct. 1919.

EFFECTS OF THE BLOCKADE OF GERMANY

Decreased supply of commodities in successive years of the war.]

The German submarine campaign may be dated from February 18, 1915,
when Germany, citing as a precedent Great Britain's establishment
of a military area in the North Sea, proclaimed a _war zone_ "in
the waters around Great Britain and Ireland, including the whole
English Channel," within which enemy merchant vessels would be sunk
without assurance of safety to passengers or crew. Furthermore, as
a means of keeping neutrals out of British waters, Germany declared
she would assume no responsibility for destruction of neutral ships
within this zone. What this meant was to all intents and purposes a
"paper" submarine blockade of the British Isles. Its illegitimacy
arose from the fact that it was conducted surreptitiously over a
vast area, and was only in the slightest degree effective, causing
a destruction each month of less than one percent of the traffic.
Had it been restricted to narrow limits, it would have been still
less effective, owing to the facility of countermeasures in a small
area.

Determined, however, upon a spectacular demonstration of its
possibilities, Germany first published danger notices in American
newspapers, and then, on May 7, 1915, sank the unarmed Cunard liner
_Lusitania_ off the Irish coast, with a loss of 1198 lives, including
102 Americans. In spite of divided American sentiment and a strong
desire for peace, this act came little short of bringing the United
States into the war. Having already declared its intention to hold
Germany to "strict accountability," the United States Government
now stated that a second offense would be regarded as "deliberately
unfriendly," and after a lengthy interchange of notes secured the
pledge that "liners will not be sunk without warning and without
safety of the lives of non-combatants, provided that the liners do
not try to escape or offer resistance." Violations of this pledge,
further controversies, and increased friction with neutrals marked the
next year or more, during which, however, sinkings did