Freedom of the Seas 617While commerce with the Central Powers fell to a
trickle, that with the Allies soared from $825 million
in 1914 to over $3.2 billion in 1916. An attempt to
limit this commerce would have raised a storm; to
have eliminated it would have caused a catastrophe.
Munitions makers and other businessmen did not
want the United States to enter the war. Neutrality
suited their purposes admirably.
Britain and France soon exhausted their ready
cash, and by early 1917 they had borrowed well over
$2 billion. Although these loans violated no principle
of international law, they fastened the United States
more closely to the Allies’ cause.
During the first months of the Great War, the
Germans were not especially concerned about neu-
tral trade or American goods because they expected
to crush the Allied armies quickly. When their first
swift thrust into France was blunted along the
Marne River, only twenty miles from Paris, and the
war became a bloody stalemate, they began to chal-
lenge the Allies’ control of the seas. Unwilling to
risk their battleships and cruisers against the much
larger British fleet, they resorted to a new weapon,
the submarine, commonly known as the U-boat (for
Unterseeboot). German submarines played a role in
World War I not unlike that of American privateers
in the Revolution and the War of 1812: They ranged
the seas stealthily in search of merchant ships.
However, submarines could not operate under the
ordinary rules of war, which required that a raider
stop its prey, examine its papers and cargo, and give
the crew and passengers time to get off in lifeboats
before sending it to the bottom. U-boats when sur-
faced were vulnerable to the deck guns that many
merchant ships carried; they could even be sunk by
ramming, once they had stopped and put out a
boarding party. Therefore, they commonly launched
their torpedoes from below the surface without
warning, often resulting in a heavy loss of life.
In February 1915 the Germans declared the
waters surrounding the British Isles a zone of war and
announced that they would sink without warning all
enemy merchant ships encountered in the area. Since
Allied vessels sometimes flew neutral flags to disguise
their identity, neutral ships entering the zone would
do so at their own risk. This statement was largely
bluff, for the Germans had only a handful of sub-
marines at sea; but they were feverishly building more.
Wilson—perhaps too hurriedly, considering the
importance of the question—warned the Germans
that he would hold them to “strict accountability”
for any loss of American life or property resulting
from violations of “acknowledged [neutral] rights on
the high seas.” He did not distinguish clearly
between losses incurred through the destruction of
Americanships and those resulting from the sinking
of other vessels. If he meant to hold the Germans
responsible for injuries to Americans on belligerent
vessels, he was changing international law as arbitrar-
ily as the Germans were. Secretary of State Bryan,
who opposed Wilson vigorously on this point, stood
on sound legal ground when he said, “A ship carry-
ing contraband should not rely upon passengers to
protect her from attack—it would be like putting
women and children in front of an army.”
Correct or not, Wilson’s position reflected the atti-
tude of most Americans. It seemed barbaric to them
that defenseless civilians should be killed without warn-
ing; Americans refused to surrender their “rights” as
neutrals to cross the North Atlantic on any ship they
wished. The depth of their feeling was demonstrated
when, on May 7, 1915, the submarineU–20sank the
British liner Lusitaniaoff the Irish coast. The torpedo-
ing of the Lusitaniacaused a profound and emotionalThree weeks before the Lusitaniawas torpedoed, this notice
appeared in the classified sections of Washington newspapers.