In private, Franklin Roosevelt made no effort to disguise his support for the Allied cause despite the Wilson government’s strictly neutral stance. He was quite open about the warm relations he maintained with many of the British and French diplomats in Washington, and in a cheerful letter to Eleanor he described dining with the British ambassador at the Metropolitan Club: “Today Sir C. Spring-Rice lunched with me.… Von Bernstorff [the German ambassador] was at the next table, trying to hear what we were talking about! Springy and Von B. would kill each other if they had a chance! I just know I shall do some awful unneutral thing before I get through!”
In the spring of 1915, the European war entered a new phase which would severely challenge the strict neutrality of the White House. On April 22, an advertisement appeared in some fifty American newspapers, including those in New York. The advertiser had specifically instructed that the ads be placed directly adjacent to the Cunard Line notice advertising the sailing of the giant steamer Lusitania for Liverpool:
TRAVELLERS intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travelers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.
IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY
WASHINGTON, D.C. APRIL 22, 1915
The Lusitania sailed from New York on May 1 with 1265 passengers and a crew of 702. Virtually all the Americans holding tickets for the voyage had received anonymous telegrams beseeching them to cancel their bookings. Everyone recognized that the telegrams had come from the Germans in what was perceived as a clumsy attempt to intimidate them. The Germans, it was generally agreed, were bluffing. Only one American cancelled.
For most of the crossing, the ship proceeded without incident. A week after leaving New York, as she approached the Irish coast, a blackout was imposed on board as a precaution, and the ship’s forty-eight lifeboats, more than adequate to accommodate everyone on board, were run out on their davits, ready to be lowered should the need arise. Then, shortly after noon on May 7, 1915, the German submarine U-20 fired a single torpedo into the Lusitania, ripping a hole in her starboard bow. The original explosion was almost immediately followed by a second explosion, which puzzled the U-boat captain, since he had fired only one torpedo. In just eighteen minutes, the huge 30,396-ton liner listed and sank, bow first, with the loss of 1198 souls, including 274 women and 94 children. Of the 139 Americans on board, 128 perished.
As the news of the Lusitania raced around the world, shock waves spread. The sinking was seen as an unparalleled act of barbarism. In the United States, newspaper headlines labeled it WANTON MURDER ON THE HIGH SEAS. Theodore Roosevelt pronounced it as “piracy on a vaster scale of murder than the old-time pirates ever practiced.… It seems inconceivable that we can refrain from taking action in this matter, for we owe it not only to humanity but to our own national self-respect.”
President Wilson, shocked to tears, made no immediate comment and took no action, and went into virtual seclusion for three days. Then in a speech in Philadelphia he proclaimed his justification for inaction in the face of provocation. “There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.”
His apathetic response was met with scorn and contempt by millions, and applauded only by those determined to keep America out of the war by any means. Wilson almost immediately regretted his words and tried to take them back at a press conference the following day. Goaded by the jeers of an angry nation, he wrote a protest note to the German government, demanding that it disavow the torpedoing of the Lusitania, make reparations for losses incurred, and “take immediate steps to prevent the recurrence of anything so obviously subversive of the principles of warfare.” His note was unanimously approved by the cabinet and, when the text was released to the public, it was overwhelmingly supported by the press.
But William Jennings Bryan, the strongly pacifist secretary of state, had only signed off on Wilson’s note on the understanding that the president would take an equally strong stand against the British blockade, which Bryan claimed was just as illegal as Germany’s submarine campaign. He pointed out that the Lusitania had been carrying contraband in the form of 4,200,000 rounds of rifle cartridges and 1,250 unarmed fragmentation shells, all designed to kill Germans, and the purpose of the Royal Navy’s blockade included starving the German civilian population, which he claimed was an equally barbaric course of action.
Franklin Roosevelt was not an active participant in the deliberations arising from the Lusitania sinking, but there was no question where his heart lay. He was deeply committed to the Allied cause and determined that America, and its Navy in particular, should be prepared to join the fight if necessary—although he did not go as far as Uncle Ted, who wanted to declare war. While Wilson and the country awaited a response to the president’s note, Franklin Roosevelt and Josephus Daniels both addressed a Navy League dinner in New York. The secretary of the Navy advocated a stay-the-course policy, in keeping with Wilson’s call for a slow but orderly program of naval improvement, while the assistant secretary, constricted by his subsidiary position but determined to propound a greater urgency to naval expansion regardless, demanded—to great applause—a stronger, larger, more modern navy. The contrasting views of the two men did not go unnoticed, and an unrepentant Roosevelt may have wondered whether once again he had gone too far in catering to his “big navy” audience. As on previous occasions, Josephus Daniels once again was willing to overlook any signs of insubordination in his assistant.
On his return to Washington, Roosevelt wrote Eleanor on May 20, “Quantities of things to do at the office and dinner at the Daniels’, who were cordial (!) but no reference was made to the New York episodes.”
When the German response to Wilson’s note finally arrived, it was notable chiefly for its pious legalisms and lack of any sense of repentance. It argued that since the Lusitania was carried on the Royal Navy’s rolls as an auxiliary naval vessel, she was a legitimate target, and charged further that the mysterious second explosion, which had caused the ship to sink so quickly, and which had not been caused by a second torpedo, may actually have been caused by high explosives carried illegally in the ship’s hold. It held the Cunard Line responsible for the American deaths.
The German response to Wilson’s letter was clearly unsatisfactory, so the president prepared a second, stronger note, demanding that Germany stop its “ruthless” submarine campaign, and if it did not do so, the United States would hold Germany strictly responsible.
When the president submitted the text to his cabinet for approval, Secretary of State Bryan, noting that once again it included no condemnation of the British blockade, could not bring himself to sign it and, after much soul-searching, resigned.
William Jennings Bryan was a man of unquestioned moral authority and more than ordinary political stature, and he had been a major figure in Democratic politics for decades. His resignation made headlines across the country and generated thoughtful editorials, but it elicited only jeering catcalls from Franklin Roosevelt. “These are the hectic days all right,” he wrote Eleanor. “What d’ y’ think of W. Jay B.? It’s all too long to write about, but I can only say I’m disgusted clear through. J. D. will not resign!”
Over half a century later, in 1973, British investigative reporter Colin Simpson discovered that the Germans had been right. He established that nearly the whole of the Lusitania’s cargo was contraband and that a false manifest had been prepared to conceal the fact. Simpson later dived on the wreck and brought up some of the 10½ tons of explosives. The 1,250 cases of shrapnel were falsely franked “non explosive in bulk.” Some 3,813 40-pound packages assigned to the Naval Experimental Establishment at Shoeburyness and labeled “cheese” were actually pyroxylin, a nitrocellulose explosive highly susceptible to seawater, and were almost certainly the cause of the second explosion.