Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward полностью

The response was a flat denial of any knowledge of such cargo.

Seeing that the Wilson Administration was tacitly approving the shipment, the German embassy made one final effort to avert disaster. It placed an ad in fifty East Coast newspapers, including those in New York City, warning Americans not to take passage on the Lusitania. The ad was prepaid and requested to be placed on the paper's travel page a full week before the sailing date. It read as follows:

NOTICE!

TRAVELERS intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage

are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany

and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial

German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great

Britain, or of any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travelers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.

IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY

Washington, D.C., April 22,1915.

SINK THE LUSITANIA!

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Although the ad was in the hands of newspapers in time for the r e q u e s t e d deadline, the State Department intervened and, raising the specter of possible libel suits, frightened the publishers into not printing it without prior clearance from State Department attorneys.

Of the fifty newspapers, only the Des Moines Register carried the ad on the requested date. What happened next is described by Simpson:

G e o r g e Viereck [ w h o w a s t h e e d i t o r o f a G e r m a n - o w n e d newspaper at that time and w h o had placed the ads on behalf of the e m b a s s y ] s p e n t A p r i l 2 6 a s k i n g t h e S t a t e D e p a r t m e n t w h y h i s advertisement h a d not b e e n published. Eventually h e m a n a g e d t o obtain an interview with [Secretary of State, William Jennings] Bryan and pointed out to him that on all but one of her wartime voyages the Lusitania h a d c a r r i e d m u n i t i o n s . H e p r o d u c e d c o p i e s of her supplementary manifests, which were open to public inspection at the collector's office. M o r e important, he informed Bryan, no fewer than six million r o u n d s of a m m u n i t i o n w e r e d u e to be s h i p p e d on the Lusitania the following Friday and could be seen at that moment being loaded on pier 54. Bryan picked up the telephone and cleared the publication of the advertisement. He promised Viereck that he would endeavor to persuade the President publicly to warn Americans not to travel. No such warning was issued by the President, but there can be no doubt that President Wilson was told of the character of the cargo destined for the Lusitania. He did nothing, but was to concede on the day he was told of her sinking that his foreknowledge h a d given him m a n y sleepless hours.1

It is probably true that Wilson was a pacifist at heart, but it is equally certain that he was not entirely the master of his own destiny. He was a transplanted college professor from the ivy-covered walls of Princeton, an internationalist at heart who dreamed of helping to create a world government and to usher in a millennium of peace. But he found himself surrounded by and dependent upon men of strong wills, astute political aptitudes, and powerful financial resources. Against these forces, he was all but powerless to act on his own, and there is good reason to believe that he inwardly suffered over many of the events in which he was compelled to participate. We shall leave it to others to moralize about a man who, by his deliberate refusal to warn his countrymen of their mortal peril, sends 195 of them to their watery graves. We may wonder, also, 1. Simpson, p. 97.

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THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND

about how such a man can commit the ultimate hypocrisy of condemning the Germans for this act and then doing everything possible to prevent the American public from learning the truth. It would be surprising if the extent of his private remorse was not greater than merely a few sleepless hours.

THE FINAL VOYAGE

But we are getting slightly ahead of the story. While Morgan and Wilson were setting the deadly stage on the American side of the Atlantic, Churchill was playing his part on the European side.