Neither custom nor international law forbade doing this,
and the protest stood out in :stark impudence when it came from
Germany, the country which, for fifty years and more, had sold
munitions to every one who asked and had not hesitated to sell
impartially to both antagonists in the Russo-Japanese War. By
playing on the sentimentality of this same "lunatic fringe," the
German intriguers almost succeeded in driving through a bill to
stop this traffic. They knew the true Prussian way of whimpering
when bullying did not avail them. And so they not only whimpered
about our sending shells over to kill- the German soldiers, but
they whimpered also over the dire effects which the Allied
blockade produced upon the non-combatant population of Germany.
These things went on, not only a whole year, but far into the
second after the sinking of the Lusitania. Roosevelt never
desisted from charging that the person ultimately responsible for
them was President Wilson, and he believed that the President's
apparent self-satisfaction would avail him little when he stands
at the bar of History.
Pages:
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524