File No. 763.72/3620
The Minister in Denmark (Egan) to the Secretary of State
[Received April 1, 9 a.m.]
535. Following is the German Chancellor’s speech from the Berlin Morgen Post, March 30, concerning America: [Page 193]
Gentlemen: In the next few days the representatives of the American people meet who have been called together by President Wilson for an extraordinary session of Congress to decide the question of war or peace between the German people and America. Germany has never had the slightest desire to attack America and even to-day she has not this desire; she has never wanted war with America and she desires it as little as she ever did. But how then has this question come about?
We have told the United States more than once that we have renounced the unrestrained practice of the submarine in the expectation that England would not have brought us to use it and that she would have observed the laws of humanity and of international agreement in her blockade policy. This English blockade I expressly remember was pointed out by President Wilson and his Secretary of State Lansing as illegal and not defensible. (Hear! Hear!) Our expectations to which we have clearly adhered for eight months have been, as you all know, disappointed. England has not only not in the least given up her illegal and indefensible blockade policy but on the other hand has strengthened it, has in secret meetings with her allies declined our peace offer in a haughty manner and has proclaimed a kind of war which goes even further than our annihilation and that of those allied to us. Consequently we have resorted to the unrestrained use of the submarine and we must follow this policy. If the American people can find ground to declare war on the German people with whom they have been at peace for over a hundred years and if they will prolong by this the flow of blood it is not us who are responsible for this. (Applause.) The German people who feel neither hate nor enmity toward America will know also how to endure and overcome this.