MEETING GERMANY'S CHALLENGE
[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress,
February 3, 1917.]
GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:
The Imperial German Government on the thirty-first of January announced
to this Government and to the governments of the other neutral nations
that on and after the first day of February, the present month, it would
adopt a policy with regard to the use of submarines against all shipping
seeking to pass through certain designated areas of the high seas to
which it is clearly my duty to call your attention.
Let me remind the Congress that on the eighteenth of April last, in view
of the sinking on the twenty-fourth of March of the cross-Channel
passenger steamer _Sussex_ by a German submarine, without summons or
warning, and the consequent loss of the lives of several citizens of the
United States who were passengers aboard her, this Government addressed
a note to the Imperial German Government in which it made the following
declaration:
"If it is still the purpose of the Imperial Government to prosecute
relentless and indiscriminate warfare against vessels of commerce by the
use of submarines without regard to what the Government of the United
States must consider the sacred and indisputable rules of international
law and the universally recognized dictates of humanity, the Government
of the United States is at last forced to the conclusion that there is
but one course it can pursue.
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