been created, and vindicate once more the position of that Government
with regard to the sacred freedom of the seas.

The Government of the United States has been apprised that the Imperial
German Government considered themselves to be obliged by the
extraordinary circumstances of the present war and the measures adopted
by their adversaries in seeking to cut Germany off from all commerce, to
adopt methods of retaliation which go much beyond the ordinary methods
of warfare at sea, in the proclamation of a war zone from which they
have warned neutral ships to keep away. This Government has already
taken occasion to inform the Imperial German Government that it cannot
admit the adoption of such measures or such a warning of danger to
operate as in any degree an abbreviation of the rights of American
shipmasters or of American citizens bound on lawful errands as
passengers on merchant ships of belligerent nationality, and that it
must hold the Imperial German Government to a strict accountability for
any infringement of those rights, intentional or incidental. It does not
understand the Imperial German Government to question those rights. It
assumes, on the contrary, that the Imperial Government accept, as of
course, the rule that the lives of noncombatants, whether they be of
neutral citizenship or citizens of one of the nations at war, cannot
lawfully or rightfully be put in jeopardy by the capture or destruction
of an unarmed merchantman, and recognize also, as all other nations do,
the obligation to take the usual precaution of visit and search 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, desires to call the
attention of the Imperial German Government with the utmost earnestness