New-York tribune., 1918-05-07
Since Three Years


Cunard liner Lusitania was torpedoed
without warning by a German U-boat
and sank ntwenty minutes. The num-
Der lost was 1,150 passengers and crew,
of whom ia were Americans.
In world already benumbed by war
to the thought of wholesale killing this
news was passed in whispers. People
could not bear to name the deed out
loud Why? For reason which could
not be analyzed on the instant For
reason the German soul is not permitted
to understand. Something much more
precious than human life was dead.
"But what is the matter?" the Ger
mans here. "Did we not publish in the
newspapers what we were going to do?
They have only themselves to blame
those who sailed on the Lusitania."
Then for the first time we knew what
a German does not know, and turned in
horror from this glimpse Of his archaic
inwardness We turned to see in our
minds eye the picture of people on the
Lusitania's pier the day she sailed,
laughing at the oblique three-inch "warn-
ing" which the German Embassy had in
serted in the New York newspapers.
"Do they mean to torpedo us?" the
passengers asked each other. "No,"
they said, answering their own question.
"They want us to think they might.
They are only trying to scare US off
British ships. They wouldn't sink US.
Pooh They are civilized people"
The world could not have paid Ger
many a finer compliment. None of all
that great ships company was afraid
to sail through the U-boat zone. At
worst the ship might be captured. That
would be only an adventure. But that
she would be sunk with all on board
nobody could possibly imagine. We
laughed with our departing friends,
waved them bon voyage, threw the
crumpled bits Of newspaper into the
river and came home. We never thought
of it again until the news was whispered
in our ear: "The Lusitania has been tor
pedoed"
And now we know why we couldn't
say it out loud. 1t was not that 1,150
lives had been taken suddenly in the
most dramatic manner possible, not
that ia Americans had been slain, not
that some of our most beloved citizens
were among that number 1t was not
that Germany had done a dastardly
thing in a CHASTITY way
Unconsciously we realized that some
thing infinitely more dreadful had hap
pened. A great and powerful nation
had broken the faith of civilization.
Germany had betrayed the sacred trust
which makes human society possible
She had turned barbarian in our midst.
The thought of nation so power
fully equipped with the knowledge Of
civilization using it for the ends of tiger
nationality filled US with awful pre-
monitions.
From that moment we have been at
war with Germany.
1t was as futile then as it is idle now
to say that the U-boat commander. lono
trained in iron discipline, had merely
obeyed orders; that he had been told to
SINK the Lusltania, and sank her, without
thought OF his own moral responsibility
and that the crime lies not at b;s door
nor at the door of Germany, but upon
the heads of the Hohenzollern war lords.
The answer to this is that no really civ
ilized human being could have either con.
ceived or executed the deed. You
cannot imagine an American or an Eng.
lish or Japanese submarine crew
having sunk the Lusitania, no matter
hat Won Tirpitz issued the order
Therein lies the abysnal distinction
between what is German and what is not.
The German has not in his soul those in
tuitiye restraints which cause the civilized
man to stop on the thseshold of purely