to the fact that the objection to their present method of attack against
the trade of their enemies lies in the practical impossibility of
employing submarines in the destruction of commerce without disregarding
those rules of fairness, reason, justice, and humanity which all modern
opinion regards as imperative. It is practically impossible for the
officers of a submarine to visit a merchantman at sea and examine her
papers and cargo. It is practically impossible for them to make a prize
of her; and, if they cannot put a prize crew on board of her, they
cannot sink her without leaving her crew and all on board of her to the
mercy of the sea in her small boats. These facts it is understood the
Imperial German Government frankly admit. We are informed that in the
instances of which we have spoken time enough for even that poor measure
of safety was not given, and in at least two of the cases cited not so
much as a warning was received. Manifestly, submarines cannot be used
against merchantmen, as the last few weeks have shown, without an
inevitable violation of many sacred principles of justice and humanity.

American citizens act within their indisputable rights in taking their
ships and in traveling wherever their legitimate business calls them
upon the high seas, and exercise those rights in what should be the
well-justified confidence that their lives will not be endangered by
acts done in clear violation of universally acknowledged international
obligations, and certainly in the confidence that their own Government
will sustain them in the exercise of their rights.

There was recently published in the newspapers of the United States, I
regret to inform the Imperial German Government, a formal warning,
purporting to come from the Imperial German Embassy at Washington,
addressed to the people of the United States, and stating, in effect,
that any citizen of the United States who exercised his right of free