A situation has arisen in the foreign relations of the country of which
it is my plain duty to inform you very frankly.
It will be recalled that in February, 1915, the Imperial German
Government announced its intention to treat the waters surrounding Great
Britain and Ireland as embraced within the seat of war and to destroy
all merchant ships owned by its enemies that might be found within any
part of that portion of the high seas, and that it warned all vessels,
of neutral as well as of belligerent ownership, to keep out of the
waters it had thus proscribed or else enter them at their peril. The
Government of the United States earnestly protested. It took the
position that such a policy could not be pursued without the practical
certainty of gross and palpable violations of the law of nations,
particularly if submarine craft were to be employed as its instruments,
inasmuch as the rules prescribed by that law, rules founded upon
principles of humanity and established for the protection of the lives
of non-combatants at sea, could not in the nature of the case be
observed by such vessels. It based its protest on the ground that
persons of neutral nationality and vessels of neutral ownership would be
exposed to extreme and intolerable risks, and that no right to close any
part of the high seas against their use or to expose them to such risks
could lawfully be asserted by any belligerent government. The law of
nations in these matters, upon which the Government of the United States
based its protest, is not of recent origin or founded upon merely
arbitrary principles set up by convention. It is based, on the contrary,
upon manifest and imperative principles of humanity and has long been
established with the approval and by the express assent of all civilized
nations.
Notwithstanding the earnest protest of our Government, the Imperial
German Government at once proceeded to carry out the policy it had
announced. It expressed the hope that the dangers involved, at any rate
the dangers to neutral vessels, would be reduced to a minimum by the
instructions which it had issued to its submarine commanders, and
assured the Government of the United States that it would take every
possible precaution both to respect the rights of neutrals and to
safeguard the lives of non-combatants.
What has actually happened in the year which has since elapsed has shown
that those hopes were not justified, those assurances insusceptible of
being fulfilled. In pursuance of the policy of submarine warfare against
the commerce of its adversaries, thus announced and entered upon by the
Imperial German Government in despite of the solemn protest of this
Government, the commanders of German undersea vessels have attacked
merchant ships with greater and greater activity, not only upon the high
seas surrounding Great Britain and Ireland but wherever they could
encounter them, in a way that has grown more and more ruthless, more and
more indiscriminate as the months have gone by, less and less observant
of restraints of any kind; and have delivered their attacks without
compunction against vessels of every nationality and bound upon every
sort of errand. Vessels of neutral ownership, even vessels of neutral
ownership bound from neutral port to neutral port, have been destroyed
along with vessels of belligerent ownership in constantly increasing
numbers. Sometimes the merchantman attacked has been warned and summoned
to surrender before being fired on or torpedoed; sometimes passengers or
crews have been vouchsafed the poor security of being allowed to take to
the ship's boats before she was sent to the bottom. But again and again
no warning has been given, no escape even to the ship's boats allowed to
those on board. What this Government foresaw must happen has happened.
Tragedy has followed tragedy on the seas in such fashion, with such
attendant circumstances, as to make it grossly evident that warfare of
such a sort, if warfare it be, cannot be carried on without the most
palpable violation of the dictates alike of right and of humanity.
Whatever the disposition and intention of the Imperial German
Government, it has manifestly proved impossible for it to keep such
methods of attack upon the commerce of its enemies within the bounds set
by either the reason or the heart of mankind.
In February of the present year the Imperial German Government informed
this Government and the other neutral governments of the world that it
had reason to believe that the Government of Great Britain had armed all
merchant vessels of British ownership and had given them secret orders
to attack any submarine of the enemy they might encounter upon the seas,
and that the Imperial German Government felt justified in the
circumstances in treating all armed merchantmen of belligerent ownership
as auxiliary vessels of war, which it would have the right to destroy
without warning. The law of nations has long recognized the right of
merchantmen to carry arms for protection and to use them to repel
attack, though to use them, in such circumstances, at their own risk;
but the Imperial German Government claimed the right to set these
understandings aside in circumstances which it deemed extraordinary.
Even the terms in which it announced its purpose thus still further to
relax the restraints it had previously professed its willingness and
desire to put upon the operations of its submarines carried the plain
implication that at least vessels which were not armed would still be
exempt from destruction without warning and that personal safety would
be accorded their passengers and crews; but even that limitation, if it
was ever practicable to observe it, has in fact constituted no check at
all upon the destruction of ships of every sort.
Again and again the Imperial German Government has given this Government
its solemn assurances that at least passenger ships would not be thus
dealt with, and yet it has again and again permitted its undersea
commanders to disregard those assurances with entire impunity. Great
liners like the _Lusitania_ and the _Arabic_ and mere ferryboats like
the _Sussex_ have been attacked without a moment's warning, sometimes
before they had even become aware that they were in the presence of an
armed vessel of the enemy, and the lives of non-combatants, passengers
and crew, have been sacrificed wholesale, in a manner which the
Government of the United States cannot but regard as wanton and without
the slightest color of justification. No limit of any kind has in fact
been set to the indiscriminate pursuit and destruction of merchantmen of
all kinds and nationalities within the waters, constantly extending in
area, where these operations have been carried on; and the roll of
Americans who have lost their lives on ships thus attacked and destroyed
has grown month by month until the ominous toll has mounted into the
hundreds.
One of the latest and most shocking instances of this method of warfare
was that of the destruction of the French cross-Channel steamer
_Sussex_. It must stand forth, as the sinking of the steamer _Lusitania_
did, as so singularly tragical and unjustifiable as to constitute a
truly terrible example of the inhumanity of submarine warfare as the
commanders of German vessels have for the past twelvemonth been
conducting it. If this instance stood alone, some explanation, some
disavowal by the German Government, some evidence of criminal mistake or
wilful disobedience on the part of the commander of the vessel that
fired the torpedo might be sought or entertained; but unhappily it does
not stand alone. Recent events make the conclusion inevitable that it is
only one instance, even though it be one of the most extreme and
distressing instances, of the spirit and method of warfare which the
Imperial German Government has mistakenly adopted, and which from the
first exposed that Government to the reproach of thrusting all neutral
rights aside in pursuit of its immediate objects.
The Government of the United States has been very patient. At every
stage of this distressing experience of tragedy after tragedy in which
its own citizens were involved it has sought to be restrained from any
extreme course of action or of protest by a thoughtful consideration of
the extraordinary circumstances of this unprecedented war, and actuated
in all that it said or did by the sentiments of genuine friendship which
the people of the United States have always entertained and continue to
entertain towards the German nation. It has of course accepted the
successive explanations and assurances of the Imperial German Government
as given in entire sincerity and good faith, and has hoped, even against
hope, that it would prove to be possible for the German Government so to
order and control the acts of its naval commanders as to square its
policy with the principles of humanity as embodied in the law of
nations. It has been willing to wait until the significance of the facts
became absolutely unmistakable and susceptible of but one
interpretation.
That point has now unhappily been reached. The facts are susceptible of
but one interpretation. The Imperial German Government has been unable
to put any limits or restraints upon its warfare against either freight
or passenger ships. It has therefore become painfully evident that the
position which this Government took at the very outset is inevitable,
namely, that the use of submarines for the destruction of an enemy's
commerce is of necessity, because of the very character of the vessels
employed and the very methods of attack which their employment of course
involves, incompatible with the principles of humanity, the long
established and incontrovertible rights of neutrals, and the sacred
immunities of non-combatants.
I have deemed it my duty, therefore, to say to the Imperial German
Government that if it is still its purpose to prosecute relentless and
indiscriminate warfare against vessels of commerce by the use of
submarines, notwithstanding the now demonstrated impossibility of
conducting that warfare in accordance with what the Government of the
United States must consider the sacred and indisputable rules of
international law and the universally recognized dictates of humanity,
the Government of the United States is at last forced to the conclusion
that there is but one course it can pursue; and that unless the Imperial
German Government should now immediately declare and effect an
abandonment of its present methods of warfare against passenger and
freight carrying vessels this Government can have no choice but to sever
diplomatic relations with the Government of the German Empire
altogether.
This decision I have arrived at with the keenest regret; the possibility
of the action contemplated I am sure all thoughtful Americans will look
forward to with unaffected reluctance. But we cannot forget that we are
in some sort and by the force of circumstances the responsible spokesmen
of the rights of humanity, and that we cannot remain silent while those
rights seem in process of being swept utterly away in the maelstrom of
this terrible war. We owe it to a due regard for our own rights as a
nation, to our sense of duty as a representative of the rights of
neutrals the world over, and to a just conception of the rights of
mankind to take this stand now with the utmost solemnity and firmness.
I have taken it, and taken it in the confidence that it will meet with
your approval and support. All sober-minded men must unite in hoping
that the Imperial German Government, which has in other circumstances
stood as the champion of all that we are now contending for in the
interest of humanity, may recognize the justice of our demands and meet
them in the spirit in which they are made.