We always feel that it is tragic and all too hard when war inflicts wounds on those who do not carry its weapons.
We lament similarly the fate of the unfortunate villages and towns where war rages and the innocent victims of bombs who, far behind the trenches, and often without our being able to estimate the meaning of this murder, are snatched from the ranks of the unarmed.
Much more terrible is the fate of those who on the high sea, many hundreds in number, suddenly see death before their eyes.
A German war vessel has sunk the ship. It has done its duty.
For the German Navy the sinking of the Lusitania means an extraordinary success. Its destruction demolished the last fable with which the people of England consoled themselves; on which hostile shipping relied when it dared to defy the German warnings.
We do not need to seek grounds to justify the destruction of a British ship. She belonged to the enemy and brought us harm. She has fallen to our shots.
The enemy and the whole world were warned that he who ventured to trust himself within her staked his life.
_The London Daily Mail of May 16 quotes from Der Tag the following article by Herr von Rath, who is described as a favorite spokesman in the Wilhelmstrasse:_
President Wilson is very much troubled by the drowning of so many American citizens, and we Germans sincerely share his feelings, but we see in the Lusitania affair one of the many cruel necessities which the struggle for existence brings with it.
If, as English reports try to make us believe, Mr. Wilson is now meditating revenge, we will not disturb him in this occupation, but would only hope that his demands will be addressed to the right and not the wrong quarters.
The right address is England. On the German side, everything was done to warn American travelers from the impending peril, while British irresponsibility and arrogance nullified the effect of the German admonition.
Mr. Wilson is certainly in a precarious position. After showing himself so weak in the face of the long and ruthless British provocations, he has to play the strong man with Germany. Otherwise he will lose what prestige he has left, and he knows that in the background the pretender to the throne, Mr. Roosevelt, is lurking.