any way mitigate the terrors of the
present distressing conflict.

In the meantime, whatever arrangement may happily be made between the
parties to the war, and whatever may in the opinion of the Imperial
German Government have been the provocation or the circumstantial
justification for the past acts of its commanders at sea, the
Government of the United States confidently looks to see the justice
and humanity of the Government of Germany vindicated in all cases
where Americans have been wronged or their rights as neutrals invaded.

The Government of the United States therefore very earnestly and very
solemnly renews the representations of its note transmitted to the
Imperial German Government on the 15th of May, and relies in these
representations upon the principles of humanity, the universally
recognized understandings of international law, and the ancient
friendship of the German Nation.

The Government of the United States cannot admit that the proclamation
of a war zone from which neutral ships have been warned to keep away
may be made to operate as in any degree an abbreviation of the rights
either of American shipmasters or of American citizens bound on lawful
errands as passengers on merchant ships of belligerent nationality. It
does not understand the Imperial German Government to question those
rights. It understands it, also, to accept as established beyond
question the principle that the lives of non combatants cannot
lawfully or rightfully be put in jeopardy by the capture or
destruction of an unresisting merchantman, and to recognize the
obligation to take sufficient precaution to ascertain whether a
suspected merchantman is in fact of belligerent nationality or is in
fact carrying contraband of war under a neutral flag. The Government
of the United States therefore deems it reasonable to expect that the
Imperial German Government will adopt the measures necessary to put
these principles into practice in respect of the safeguarding of
American lives and American ships, and asks for assurances that this
will be done.

ROBERT LANSING,
Secretary of State ad Interim.

THE LUSITANIA'S "GUNS"

_In a Washington dispatch of June 2, 1915, to_ THE NEW YORK TIMES,
_the following report appeared:_

In his conversation with President Wilson today the German Ambassador
said that he had obtained evidence through means of affidavits that
the Lusitania was an armed vessel, as asserted by the German
Gov