"I very earnestly hope that we will act promptly. The proper time for
deliberation was prior to sending the message that our Government would
hold Germany to a strict accountability if it did the things it has now
actually done. The 150 babies drowned on the Lusitania the hundreds of
women drowned with them, scores of these women and children being
Americans, and the American ship, the Gulflight, which was torpedoed,
offer an eloquent commentary on the actual working of the theory that
force is not necessary to assert, and that a policy of blood and iron
can with efficacy be met by a policy of milk and water.
"I see it stated in the press dispatches from Washington that Germany
now offers to stop the practice on the high seas, committed in violation
of the neutral rights that she is pledged to observe, if we will abandon
further neutral rights, which by her treaty she has solemnly pledged
herself to see that we exercise without molestation. Such a proposal is
not even entitled to an answer. The manufacturing and shipment of arms
and ammunition to any belligerent is moral or immoral according to the
use to which the arms and munitions are to be put.
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