German Government can readily appreciate that the Government
of the United States would be constrained to hold the
Imperial German Government to a strict accountability for
such acts of their naval authorities and to take any steps
it might be necessary to take to safeguard American lives
and property and to secure to American citizens the full
enjoyment of their acknowledged rights on the high seas."

The war-zone decree went into effect on Feb. 18. Two days later
dispatches were cabled to Ambassador Page at London and to Ambassador
Gerard at Berlin suggesting that a modus vivendi be entered into by
England and Germany by which submarine warfare and sowing of mines at
sea might be abandoned if foodstuffs were allowed to reach the German
civil population under American consular inspection.

Germany replied to this on March 1, expressing her willingness to act
favorably on the proposal. The same day the British Government stated
that because of the war-zone decree of the German Government the
British Government must take measures to prevent commodities of all
kinds from reaching or leaving Germany. On March 15 the British
Government flatly refused the modus vivendi suggestion.

On April 4 Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador at Washington,
submitted a memorandum to the United States Government regarding
German-American trade and the exportation of arms. Mr. Bryan replied
to the memorandum on April 21, insisting that the United States was
preserving her strict status of neutrality according to the accepted
laws of nations.

On May 7 the Cunard steamship Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine
in the war zone as decreed by Germany, and more than 100 American
citizens perished, with 1,000 other persons on board.

Thereupon, on May 13, the United States transmitted to the German
Government a note on the subject of this loss. It said:

"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."

This note concluded: