(Part I.)
(This post is split into pages. Simply click the numbers at the bottom of each page to read the next portion of the entry.)
A Time of War
May, 1915
The Lusitania was at the bottom of the ocean, and Woodrow Wilson was under fire. The President of the United States was being called a coward by the British, among others. After all, the great Cunard liner had been torpedoed by a German submarine, and Great Britain and her allies were already involved in trench warfare throughout Europe against the German Kaiser’s horde. The deaths of more than 1,000 souls on-board the ship drew only a formal protest from the American President, infuriating European leaders and many in the U.S.
Wilson was holding fast against public outrage. America, a land filled with German immigrants, would not be drawn into this war in Europe. It was not our affair, Lusitania notwithstanding.
American financier and philanthropist, John Pierpont “J.P.” Morgan Jr. disagreed. One of the wealthiest men in the world, Morgan had already loaned $12,000,000 to Russia at the beginning of the war. The British were using Morgan’s firm to purchase American-made munitions.
Only British Parliament’s actions after the Morgan purchase of the White Star Line — the shipbuilders who produced the Titanic – had saved the Lusitania from being a Morgan property. Parliament, distressed at the idea that another great name in British shipping might also end up in American hands, granted Cunard a 20-year-contract in return for the Line’s promise to remain British-owned.
Morgan, whose financing of the war was already public knowledge, still had something to say about the sinking of the Lusitania. Reached at home by reporters, he said, “I am overcome with horror and the details are appalling.”
Morgan was crossing the Atlantic after a trip to London on the S. S. St. Louis when he received word of the tragedy, a telegram from another ship reading, in part: “Latest report states 1,214 lost in Lusitania, including 137 Americans. A. G. Vanderbilt, Charles Klein, Justus Forman and many children and women lost…”