plans, however, prevailed,
and the upshot of the matter was that a stern note was sent to Berlin
notifying the Kaiser that the United States could not permit vessels
carrying Americans to be torpedoed without warning on the open seas.
The German papers proceeded to make jokes about this matter. They
pictured every French and English boat as refusing to sail until at
least two Americans had been persuaded to go as passengers, so that
the boat might be under the protection of the United States.

However, in spite of Germany's solemn promise that nothing of the sort
would happen again, similar incidents kept occurring, although on a
smaller scale. The American steamers Falaba and Gulflight were
torpedoed without warning, in each case with the loss of one or two
lives. Finally, the steamer Sussex, crossing the English Channel, was
hit by a torpedo which killed many of the passengers. As several
Americans lost their lives, once more the United States warned Germany
that this must not be repeated. Germany acknowledged that her
submarine commander had gone further than his orders allowed him and
promised that the act should not be repeated--provided that the United
States should force England to abandon what Germany called her illegal
blockade. The United States in reply made it plain that while the
English blockade was unpleasant to American citizens, still it was
very different from the brutal murder of women and children on the
high seas. England, when convinced that an American ship was carrying
supplies which would be sold in the end to Germany, merely took this
vessel into an English port, where a court decided what the cargo was
worth and ordered the British government to pay that sum to the
(American) owners.

This was resented by the American shippers, but it was not anything to
go to war over. The United States gave warning that she would hold
Germany responsible for any damage to American ships or loss of
American lives.

All of this time the Germans were accusing the United States of
favoring the nations of the Entente because they were selling
munitions of war to them and none to Germany. They said that it was
grossly unfair for neutral nations to sell to one side when, owing to
the blockade, they could not sell to the other also. When a protest
was made by Austria, the United States pointed out that a similar case
had come up in 1899. At that time the empire of Great Britain was at
war with two little Dutch R