The writer declares, further, that Germany had full and trustworthy information that the Lusitania carried a cargo of war material, as she had on previous trips.

The Lokal Anzeiger also assumes that the steamship was carrying munitions of war, and maintains that this and “the fact that she was a fully armed cruiser completely justifies her destruction under the laws of warfare."

The Kreuz Zeitung, after referring to the warning issued by Ambassador von Bernstorff, adds:

If citizens of neutral States were lost with the sunken ship they must bear the full blame.

Some papers further testify the sinking of the steamer because on a previous occasion she had resorted to the expedient of flying the American flag.  Germania, the clerical organ, deprecates probable attempts by Germany’s antagonists to make moral capital against her out of the sinking of the Lusitania and the loss of life.  The paper says:

We can look forward to such efforts with a clear conscience, for we have proceeded correctly.  We can only answer to those who place their sympathies above justice, that war is war.

An editorial article in the Frankfurter Zeitung was quoted in an Amsterdam dispatch to The London Times of May 10, as follows:

The Lusitania has been sent to the bottom.  That is the announcement which must arouse measureless horror among many thousands.

A giant ship of the British merchant fleet, a vessel of over 31,000 tons, one of the most famous of the fast steamers of the British-American passenger service, a ship full of people, who had little or nothing to do with the war, has been attacked and sunk by a German torpedo.  This is the announcement which in a few words indicates a mighty catastrophe to a ship with 2,000 people aboard.

We always feel that it is tragic and all too hard when war inflicts wounds on those who do not carry its weapons.

We lament similarly the fate of the unfortunate villages and towns where war rages and the innocent victims of bombs who, far behind the trenches, and often without our being able to estimate the meaning of this murder, are snatched from the ranks of the unarmed.

Much more terrible is the fate of those who on the high sea, many hundreds in number, suddenly see death before their eyes.

A German war vessel has sunk the ship.  It has done its duty.

For the German Navy the sinking of the Lusitania means an extraordinary success.  Its destruction demolished the last fable with which the people of England consoled themselves; on which hostile shipping relied when it dared to defy the German warnings.

We do not need to seek grounds to justify the destruction of a British ship.  She belonged to the enemy and brought us harm.  She has fallen to our shots.

The enemy and the whole world were warned that he who ventured to trust himself within her staked his life.