September 11, 1915 
LAND AND .WATER 
of over forty days after the receipt of the Ameri- 
can warning the submarine commanders have 
been acting exactly as if that warning had either 
not been given or could he treated with supreme 
and utter contempt. Now, seven of these cases 
occurred before the Arabic was sunk (n 
August 19. An observer, noting the character 
and meaning of Mr. Wilson's definition of civi- 
lised war, and of his threat of American resent- 
ment, may have been pardoned for supposing that 
the Arabic case must terminate all controversy 
once and for all. 
GERMAN OLIVE BRANCH. 
But a complete and final breach was averted 
by Count Bernstorff's announcement to Mr. Lans- 
ing, made on August 27, that Germany had 
decided to change the character of her submarine 
war in a manner that should be satisfactory to 
American opinion. This announcement was fol- 
lowed bv a wireless statement from Berlin that 
Admiral von Tirpitz had been given a much- 
needed holiday. It looked as if tlie civilians had 
prevailed. On August 31 Count Bernstorff put 
the German concession into writing. It ran as 
follows : " Liners shall not be sunk by submarines 
without warning, and without provision for the 
safety of the lives of non-combatants, provided 
that they do not try to escape or offer resistance." 
This passage, it was understood, was quoted tex- 
tually from instructions received from Berlin. 
The Ambassador continued : " Although I know 
that you do not wish to discuss the Lusitania 
question until the Arabic incident has been satis- 
factorily settled, I desire to inform you of the 
above, because this is the policy my Government 
had decided ufon before the Arabic incident had 
occurred.'' But it was not at all clear from these 
words that the German surrender was as com- 
plete as the American Government seems bound 
to demand. As we have already seen, it is always 
possible that there may be American employees in 
the ordinary' merchant ships of belligerent 
Powers; and it is notorious that a considerable 
number of private persons travel in ships that by 
no stretch of sea nomenclature can be called liners 
at all. To exclude the latter textually from 
attack and to leave the smaller ships open to 
instant destruction, would be very far from con- 
ceding the case which President Wilson has, with 
such patience and persistency, tried for the last 
eig^-t months to establish. On September 3 
the New York correspondent of the Daily Tele- 
graph asked from the State Department a definite 
answer as to what was understood by the term 
" liners " in Count Bernstorff's Note. And he 
was officially authorised to say that the under- 
standing of the American Government was that 
the term covered all classes of vessels. And 
indeed, adds the correspondent, were this not the 
case, the tributes paid in America to the 
" glorious moral victory " of Dr. Wilson's ad- 
ministration would be correctly described as 
gush and nothing more. 
PROFIT AND LOSS. 
The general assumption has been that the 
American Government has correctly interpreted 
the German attitude. In the most recent of his 
exquisite letters on various aspects of the naval 
campaign, Mr. Balfour has adopted the view that 
the Germans have now yielded to America, 
although not in deference to the sweet reasonable- 
ness of America's case, but because their " for- 
midable " losses of submarines, and their utter 
failure to injure Great Britain materially, baa 
made them realise that the crimes of March and 
May have become the mere blunders of September. 
But it should be noted that Avhile the American 
interpretation may be right, and Mr. Balfour's 
inferences "from the position perfectly correct, 
there has not been, up to September 5, any Ger- 
man confirmation that the word " liners " in- 
cluded all classes of ships. Still, while this is so. 
the Bernstorff memorandum undoubtedly changed 
the position materially from what it was before 
the Arabic incident occurred. If Germany had 
not conceded everything she had at any rate con- 
ceded much, and, much or little, she had at any 
rate made a reply to America in which the merits 
of the controversy were at last recognised. It 
seemed obviously a position capable of improve- 
ment and adjustment. 
Has the sinking of the Hesperian materially 
altered the situation? The first thing to bear in 
mind is that the case of the Hesperian, like the 
case of the Arabic, does not stand alone It is 
one of seven cases in which ships have been sunk 
without warning since August 19. The latest is 
the case of the Cymbeline, sunk apparently on 
September 6 with a loss of six killed and six 
wounded. The whole point of the Bernstorff 
Note M'as that the German Administration had 
decided upon a change of policy at some time 
before August 19. Are we, then, to believe that 
all the submarines engaged in these murderous 
attacks in the 19 days between August 19. and 
September 6 have been acting either in ignorance 
or in defiance of the German Government's 
orders? Or are we to understand that there is a 
conflict of authority in the German Government, 
that the Foreign Office speaks with one voice, and 
von Tirpitz with another? At anj^ rate, it is 
clear that if Germany is resolved upon not risk- 
ing a breach with America she will have to disown 
the murderer of twenty-six of the Hesperian's 
crew as heartily and as promptly as }X)ssible. 
WILL GERMANY SURRENDER? 
For several reasons it seems to me now very 
highly probable that the surrender announced in 
part on August 27 will be completed before this 
month is much older. In coming to this conclu- 
sion I have to confess to a change of previous 
opinion. From the very beginning of the sub- 
marine campaign until a week ago, I have re- 
garded it as inevitable that America would be 
drawn into the war. America, after all, stands 
to-day as she has historically stood from the 
earliest days of her nationhood, for the broad 
principles of right and humanity in international 
relations. In no country has the moral sense of 
the community been more acutely shocked by the 
perfidy and cruelty of Germany's outrage of the 
neutrality of Belgium. In no country has greater 
sympathy with the victims of the outrage been 
shown or a greater generosity displayed in mitigat- 
ing its awful and heartbreaking consequences. 
But, for reasons that seemed adequate to the 
majority of Americans, the United States 
Government did not feel called upon to enter any 
protest whatever again.st either this or any sub- 
sequent breaches of tlie agreements solemnly 
entered into by all civilised nations at The Hague 
for the prevention of unnecc-s.sary suffering m 
