841.857 L 97/126½
Memorandum by the Secretary of State of a Conversation With the German Ambassador (Bernstorff)
The German Ambassador called this morning and read me a wireless dispatch which he had received from his Government,94 a copy of which he handed me, upon the understanding that it would be treated as strictly confidential.
After I had made a few comments on the dispatch I referred directly to the Lusitania case and said that I feared that the proposed note, copy of which he had given me, would not be satisfactory; that the question of indemnity was only important so far as it was an admission of liability; and that as I read his draft of the note the indemnity was given as an act of grace and not because Germany was liable for illegal conduct. I told him that I thought it was necessary that Germany should admit liability frankly as that would amount to a disavowal, and disavowal in some form we must have.
He replied that they had great difficulty on account of Great Britain’s continuance of her illegal blockade and that the German public, and many in the Government were not willing to abandon the policy of reprisals.
I told him that I did not see that that was at all necessary; that while there might be justification for retaliation against Great Britain, that retaliation was necessarily illegal conduct in a strict [Page 517] sense and that all it was necessary to do was to admit that it was illegal and that insofar as neutrals were concerned it imposed liability on the German Government. I said to him that that was the same course we were taking with regard to Great Britain—that Great Britain’s interruption of trade to Germany was admittedly retaliatory and that it, therefore, was illegal and so far as neutrals were concerned it imposed liability on Great Britain; and that I could not see how we could treat the matter differently with the two Governments.
He told me he would at once communicate these views to his Government in the hope that a course might be found which would meet our views.
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