FROM REPORT OF HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
[Sidenote: Momentous results must follow.]
It is with the deepest sense of responsibility of the momentous results which will follow the passage of this resolution that your committee reports it to the House, with the recommendation that it be passed.
The conduct of the Imperial German Government toward this Government, its citizens, and its interests has been so discourteous, unjust, cruel, barbarous, and so lacking in honesty and fair dealing that it has constituted a violation of the course of conduct which should obtain between friendly nations.
In addition to this, the German Government is actually making war upon the people and the commerce of this country, and leaves no course open to this Government but to accept its gage of battle, declare that a state of war exists, and wage that war vigorously.
[Sidenote: The announcement of the submarine war zone.]
On the 31st day of January, 1917, notice was given by the Imperial German Government to this Government that after the following day--"Germany will meet the illegal measures of her enemies by forcibly preventing, in a zone around Great Britain, France, Italy, and in the Eastern Mediterranean, all navigation, that of neutrals included, from and to England and from and to France, &c. All ships met within that zone will be sunk."
Since that day seven American ships flying the American flag have been sunk and between twenty-five and thirty American lives have been lost as a result of the prosecution of the submarine warfare in accordance with the above declaration. This is war. War waged by the Imperial German Government upon this country and its people.
[Sidenote: Review of Germany's hostile acts.]
A brief review of some of the hostile and illegal acts of the German Government toward this Government and its officers and its people is herewith given.
[Sidenote: German note of February, 1915.]
In the memorial of the Imperial German Government accompanying its proclamation of February 4, 1915, in regard to submarine warfare, that Government declared: "The German Navy has received instructions to abstain from all violence against neutral vessels recognizable as such." In the note of the German Government dated February 16, 1915, in reply to the American note of February 10, it was declared that "It is very far indeed from the intention of the German Government * * * ever to destroy neutral lives and neutral property. * * * The commanders of German submarines have been instructed, as was already stated in the note of the 4th instant, to abstain from violence to American merchant ships when they are recognizable as such."