The events of 1915 and succeeding years became of great importance to the United States and it is with a record of those having the greatest bearing on our country that this account principally will deal.

On January 20 Secretary of State Bryan found it necessary to explain and defend our policy of neutrality.  January 28 the American merchantman William P. Frye was sunk by the German cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich.  On February 10 the United States dispatched a note to the German government holding it to a “strict accountability if any merchant vessel of the United States is destroyed or any American citizens lose their lives.”  Germany replied February 16 stating that her “war zone” act was an act of self-defense against illegal methods employed by Great Britain in preventing commerce between Germany and neutral countries.  Two days later the German official blockade of Great Britain commenced and the German submarines began their campaign of piracy and pillage.

The United States on February 20 sent an identic note to Germany and Great Britain suggesting an agreement between them respecting the conduct of naval warfare.  The British steamship Falaba was sunk by a submarine March 28, with a loss of 111 lives, one of which was an American.  April 8 the steamer Harpalyce, in the service of the American commission for the aid of Belgium, was torpedoed with a loss of 15 lives.  On April 22 the German embassy in America sent out a warning against embarkation on vessels belonging to Great Britain.  The American vessel Cushing was attacked by a German aeroplane April 28.  On May 1 the American steamship Gullflight was sunk by a German submarine and two Americans were lost.  That day the warning of the German embassy was published in the daily papers.  The Lusitania sailed at 12:20 noon.

Five days later occurred the crime which almost brought America into the second year of the war.  The Cunard line steamship Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine with a loss of 1,154 lives, of which 114 were Americans.  After the policy of frightfulness put into effect by the Germans in Belgium and other invaded territories, the massacres of civilians, the violation of women and killing of children; burning, looting and pillage; the destruction of whole towns, acts for which no military necessity could be pleaded, civilization should have been prepared for the Lusitania crime.  But it seems it was not.  The burst of indignation throughout the United States was terrible.  Here was where the terms German and Hun became synonomous, having in mind the methods and ravages of the barbaric scourge Attilla, king of the Huns, who in the fifth century sacked a considerable portion of Europe and introduced some refinements in cruelty which have never been excelled.

The Lusitania went down twenty-one minutes after the attack.  The Berlin government pleaded in extenuation of the sinking that the ship was armed, and German agents in New York procured testimony which was subsequently proven in court to have been perjured, to bolster up the falsehood.  In further justification, the German government adduced the fact that the ship was carrying ammunition which it said was “destined for the destruction of brave German soldiers.”  This contention our government rightly brushed aside as irrelevant.