Excerpt from The Merchant Navy, Vol. 2<br><br>Thoroughly exasperated, the American Government now issued what amounted to an ultimatum. The Germans gave way, and early in May Count Bernstorff presented a Note in which his Government promised that henceforth the campaign would be conducted in accordance with the general principles of international law, and that no vessel would be sunk until some provision had been made for the safety of the passengers and crew.<br><br>These concessions ushered in a new phase of the con flict. The Imperial Chancellor had yielded to the American demands in the teeth of fierce opposition from the officers of the naval and military commands. The thought of loyally supporting the Government in the attitude it had adopted evidently never entered their minds, as the events recorded in this volume attest; and for the rest of the year they strove, by making progressive encroachments upon the pledges given, to restore the submarine campaign to the position which it had lost. They were tolerably successful for at the end of 1916 merchant vessels were being sunk without warning in the Atlantic and North Sea as well as the Mediterranean: in January 1917 the number of lives lost in British merchant ships was 276, and 245 of these died as a result of the submarine campaign. When, a few weeks later, the German Government declared unrestricted submarine war, it was practically announcing an accomplished fact, but the decision proved the final influence which brought the United States into the war.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.