Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [248]
It was clear, all the same, that a German torpedo had sunk the biggest ship in the Cunard fleet, with a mostly American manifest, just offshore of County Cork in Ireland. Many of the first-class passengers listed were known to Roosevelt, including Alfred G. Vanderbilt and Miss Theodate Pope, a young architect and member of the Progressive Party. He went to his lodgings and paced up and down in front of Horace Wilkinson, debating what to say about the catastrophe. On Monday, the twelve Syracusans who would pass judgment on him were due to start hearing from William Barnes, Jr. Two or three had German-sounding names. What verdict were they likely to render, if he criticized Germany’s action against an enemy vessel?
“I’ve got be right in this matter,” he said, and went to bed early.
The inevitable telephone call from an Associated Press reporter came around midnight. Wilkinson took it and went to wake Roosevelt.
“All right, I’ll speak to him.”
The reporter gave him the full story that would appear in tomorrow’s papers. There had been 1,918 souls aboard the Lusitania, and only 520 had so far been rescued. The ship had sunk in fifteen minutes, going down so fast that at least a thousand passengers were presumed dead, many of them mothers with children.
“That’s murder,” Wilkinson heard the Colonel saying. “Will I make a statement? Yes, yes. I’ll make it now. Just take this.”
It appeared as dictated on Saturday, 8 May, in newspapers across the country.
I can only repeat what I said a week ago [sic], when in similar fashion the American vessel the Gulflight was destroyed off the English coast and its captain drowned.…
This represents not merely piracy, but piracy on a vaster scale of murder than any old-time pirate ever practiced. This is the warfare which destroyed Louvain and Dinant, and hundreds of men, women and children in Belgium. It is warfare against innocent[s] traveling on the ocean, and to our fellow countrywomen, who are among the sufferers.
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.
WOODROW WILSON’S FIRST reaction to the sinking of the Lusitania had been to flee the White House. Evading his secret service detail, he walked the drizzly streets of Washington unrecognized, while newsboys shrieked the story he already knew. When he came back he retired to his study and refused to see any advisers through the weekend. The White House issued a statement saying that the President was pondering “very earnestly, but very calmly, the right course of action to pursue.”
Colonel House, who was in London, tried to point him in the direction of an ultimatum. “America has come to the parting of the ways,” he cabled, “when she must determine whether she stands for civilized or uncivilized warfare. We can no longer remain neutral.”
It seemed to Wilson that all warfare was uncivilized. After going to church on Sunday he spent most of the afternoon being chauffeured around the countryside. It was dark before he got home. Sitting down at his typewriter, he began to tap out a formal note to the German foreign minister, pursuant to the one he had issued in February holding the Reich responsible for any act of violence against American citizens. He called no special session of his cabinet for the following morning. Late in the afternoon he traveled to Philadelphia to speak at a gathering of recently naturalized immigrants. By the time he stepped onstage in Convention Hall, three and a half days had elapsed since the tragedy in the Celtic Sea, and expectation around the world was intense as to what he would say. William Howard Taft had no doubt that if the President called for revenge, Congress would oblige him with a declaration of war.
To general amazement, Wilson did not mention the Lusitania, or Germany, or the war. He talked about “ideals” and “visions” and “dreams,” and “touching hearts with all the nations of mankind.”