Twenty passengers, including several Americans, were drowned. America was again ready to fight. Germany then promised that there would be no more cases of this kind, but she had never been willing to make the affair of the Lusitania right. By this time the English fleet of trawlers and swift motorboats, and nets had bagged most of the first fleet of German U-boats. The early submarines had very noisy engines and the British ships were fitted with hearing devices by which they could locate a moving submarine even when it was completely submerged. When Germany saw her undersea fleet captured and destroyed she made promises of better behavior. In the meantime she was building another fleet of submarines.

From the results of the year 1915 it appeared to be reasonably certain that the submarine campaign had failed. The British government, instead of relaxing her blockade, had drawn more tightly her restrictions. Although considerable injury had been inflicted upon the merchant ships of the Allies and of neutrals the flow of munitions to the Allies had not been seriously disturbed.

For six months after the Arabic case, little happened to ships to complain about. But while Germany was pretending to reason with the United States she was only seeking time to get another under-sea fleet ready.

PROMISES

In March, 1916, the liner, Sussex, was torpedoed without warning with a loss of fifty passengers. GERMANY BREAKS The United States then informed Germany that our patience was at an end that we would break off all relations with her and send her minister home unless she should immediately cease her method of submarine warfare

against freight and passenger vessels. We demanded that before firing she should warn a merchant ship to stop, and that she place passengers and crew in safety before sinking the vessel, according to international law. Germany again promised that merchant vessels should not be sunk without warning and without saving human lives. She was careful, however, to leave a loophole so that she might break her promise if she found it to her advantage.

PROMISES

On January 31, 1917, having more submarines ready, Germany pointed out to us that England had MORE BROKEN failed to respect the freedom of the seas and the rules of international law. Therefore, Germany again announced that she would sink all ships in certain limits around Eng. land and France and in the Mediterranean, which she would mark off as a war zone. She said she would sink them, whether enemy or neutral, warship or merchant ship. Germany informed the United States that we might send one ship a week to England provided we painted the vessel with stripes so it could be easily recognized. The ocean has always been a free public highway, free to all nations for trade. In these waters the Kaiser now told us he would sink all neutral ships. German promises were not only broken and our rights trampled on, as before, but she now attacked our merchant ships. America was wild with anger at the insult.

President Wilson at once broke off relations with Germany and sent her minister, Von Bernstorff, home. It was evident that war was coming in spite of all that we could do. We could not give up all our rights for the sake of peace, much as we longed to keep out of this wretched struggle. England was

stopping neutral ships, to be sure, but such injury might be paid for. Germany was sinking them, and above all, she was murdering our citizens.

BRING WAR

Then came the word that Germany had sent a note to Mexico asking that country to induce Japan GERMAN PLOTS to join her in a war on the United States, suggesting that they take from us Texas and California. This contemptible scheme to involve the nations on the western continent was the climax. Our Monroe doctrine, which pledges the protection of all America by the United States, meant nothing to the Kaiser. When this plot with Mexico became known to the American people, they rose in their wrath and declared that the only reply we could make was to declare war at once.

President Wilson called Congress together, and in a notable address, which will live in history, he stated our difficulties and related the insults heaped upon us by the Kaiser and his war nobles. On April 6, 1917, Congress declared that a state of war existed between the United States and Germany.

The Kaiser thought we would not fight. He thought we could not get troops across the sea. He believed that all German-American citizens would be loyal to Germany in case of war, but in all these matters he was mistaken. The simple story of why we are at war has been given by Secretary Lane to the people of the United States, and from this address the paragraphs in the next chapter are taken. President Wilson's address, given in the appendix of this book, should be studied over and over again and parts of it memorized.

CHAPTER XVII

WHY WE ARE AT WAR WITH GERMANY

ADDRESS

The brief

"Why are we fighting Germany? answer is that ours is a war of self-defense. We did SECRETARY LANE's not wish to fight Germany. She made the attack upon us; not on our shores, but on our ships, our lives, our rights and our future. For two years and more we held to a neutrality which made us apologists for things which outraged man's common sense of fair play and humanity. The invasion of Belgium, the killing of civilian Belgians, the attacks on defenseless towns, the laying of mines in neutral waters.

"We said: "This is war-uncivilized war. All rules have been thrown away, all nobility. Man has come down to the primitive brute. And while we cannot justify, we will not intervene. This is not our war.'

"We talked as men would talk who cared only for peace and the advancement of their own material interests, until we discovered that we were thought to be mere money-makers, devoid of all characteruntil, indeed, we were told that we could not walk the highways of the world without permission of a Prussian soldier; that our ships might not sail without wearing a striped uniform of humiliation upon a narrow path of national subservience.

"We talked as men talk who hope for honest agreement, not for war, until we found that the treaty torn to pieces at Liege, was but the symbol

of a policy that made agreements worthless against a purpose that knew no word but success.

"We are fighting Germany because she sought to terrorize us and then to fool us. We could not believe that Germany would do what she said she would do upon the seas. We still hear the piteous cries of the children coming up out of the seas where the Lusitania went down. And Germany has never asked forgiveness of the world. We saw the Sussex sunk, crowded with the sons and daughters of neutral nations. We saw ship after ship sent to the bottom-ships of mercy bound out of America for the Belgian starving-ships carrying the Red Cross, laden with the wounded of all nations-ships carrying food and clothing to friendly, harmless, terrorized people-ships flying the Stars and Stripessent to the bottom hundreds of miles from shore, manned by American seamen, murdered against all law without warning.

"We held our anger and outrage in check. But now we see that she was holding us off with fair promises until she could build her huge fleet of submarines. For when spring came, she blew her promises into the air, just as in the beginning she had torn up that 'scrap of paper.' Then we clearly saw that there was but one law for Germany, her will to rule.

"We are fighting Germany because she violated our confidence. Paid German spies filled our cities. Officials of her government, received as the guests of the nation, lived with us to bribe and terrorize, defying our laws and the law of nations. We are fighting Germany because while we were yet her friend, the only power that held hands off, she sent the Zimmerman note, calling to her aid Mexico,