As the true facts of the matter are not yet clear, and were never explained officially, I have no means of saying whether the destruction of the _Lusitania_ was the result of a deliberate purpose on the part of our naval authorities. To the best of my belief technical factors render it impossible for a submarine commander to make any one particular ship the object of his attack, so that the officer responsible for the sinking of the _Lusitania_ could not have been certain what vessel he had to deal with. In any case, whether the action of our naval authorities was planned out beforehand or not, we in America had no knowledge of any such plan; indeed, until it actually occurred, I believed the destruction of the _Lusitania_ to be unthinkable, not merely for humanitarian reasons, but because it was obviously sound policy to refrain as far as possible from any attack on passenger ships. I did not at the time realize how difficult it was for our naval forces to insure the safety of such vessels without impairing the efficiency of the submarine blockade. Again, I did not believe it possible to torpedo a rapidly-moving ship like the _Lusitania_ if she were going at full speed; and, finally, I supposed that a modern liner, if actually struck, would remain afloat long enough to allow of the rescue of her passengers. The captain of the _Lusitania_ himself seems to have been quite at ease in his mind on the matter; at all events, he took no precautionary measures to avoid the danger threatening him, or to insure the safety of the people on board in case of need. The rapidity with which the ship went down and the resulting heavy death-roll can only be attributed to the explosion of the masses of ammunition which formed part of the cargo.
Let me once more lay stress on the fact that our notice to the Press had no particular reference to the _Lusitania_, but was simply a general warning, the publication of which was motived simply by humanity and wise policy, and was rendered necessary by the apathetic behavior of the Washington authorities in the matter. We rightly imagined that many Americans had not taken the trouble to read the Notes officially exchanged, and would thus rush blindly into danger. Our failure to achieve any result by our efforts may be appreciated from an extract from the London _Daily Telegraph_ of May 3rd, which is before me as I write. The New York correspondent of this paper dealt with our warning in the following headlines:
