Re-elect President Woodrow Wilson! An October 18, 1916 cartoon from the British magazine Punch. The German sinking of ships that killed American citizens and sabotage such as the July 30, 1916 attack that destroyed the Black Tom munitions plant in Jersey City, New Jersey, were not enough to make Wilson call for a declaration of war on Germany, much to the distress of Great Britain and the other Entente allies. The date on Wilson's desk calendar is October 8, 1916, a day on which German submarine U-53 sank five vessels — three British, one Dutch, and one Norwegian — off Nantucket, Massachusetts. One of the British ships was a passenger liner traveling between New York and Newfoundland.
Re-elect President Woodrow Wilson! An October 18, 1916 cartoon from the British magazine Punch. The German sinking of ships that killed American citizens and sabotage such as the July 30, 1916 attack that destroyed the Black Tom munitions plant in Jersey City, New Jersey, were not enough to make Wilson call for a declaration of war on Germany, much to the distress of Great Britain and the other Entente allies.Text:Bringing it home.President Wilson. 'What's that? U-boat blockading New York? Tut! Tut! Very inopportune!'Vote for Wilson who kept you out of the War![Calendar date:] October 8, 1916
"I have deemed it my duty, therefore, to say to the Imperial German Government that if it is still its purpose to prosecute relentless and indiscriminate warfare against vessels of commerce by use of submarines, notwithstanding the now demonstrated impossibility of conducting that warfare in accordance with 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 and that unless the Imperial German Government should now immediately declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods of warfare against passenger and freight-carrying vessels, this Government can have no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the Government of the German Empire altogether."
Excerpt from President Woodrow Wilson's Address to the United States Congress on April 19, 1916. After the sinking of Lusitania on May 7, 1915, Germany had somewhat restricted its submarine warfare, but as Wilson pointed out, 'again and again, no warning has been given, no escape even to the ship's boats allowed to those on board.'
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. IV, 1916, p. 89, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
1916-04-19, 1916, April, submarine warfare, unrestricted submarine warfare, Wilson, President Wilson, President Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson
