The London Daily Mail of May 16 quotes from Der Tag the following article by Herr von Rath, who is described as a favorite spokesman in the Wilhelmstrasse:

President Wilson is very much troubled by the drowning of so many American citizens, and we Germans sincerely share his feelings, but we see in the Lusitania affair one of the many cruel necessities which the struggle for existence brings with it.

If, as English reports try to make us believe, Mr. Wilson is now meditating revenge, we will not disturb him in this occupation, but would only hope that his demands will be addressed to the right and not the wrong quarters.

The right address is England.  On the German side, everything was done to warn American travelers from the impending peril, while British irresponsibility and arrogance nullified the effect of the German admonition.

Mr. Wilson is certainly in a precarious position.  After showing himself so weak in the face of the long and ruthless British provocations, he has to play the strong man with Germany.  Otherwise he will lose what prestige he has left, and he knows that in the background the pretender to the throne, Mr. Roosevelt, is lurking.

But what are the gallant shouters in the United States thinking about?  Should the United States send troops to take part in the fighting in Flanders?  The gigantic losses of their Canadian neighbors should not exactly encourage them, from a military standpoint.  Moreover the United States are so weak that they have never even been able to impose their will on Mexico or to do anything to the still more unpleasant Japanese than to clench their fists in their pockets.

Should their superdreadnoughts cross the Atlantic Ocean?  England has not even useful work for her own ironclads in this war.  What would American warships do?

How about our Germanic brethren in the United States—­the half million German and Austro-Hungarian reservists who are not permitted to take part in the defense of their home lands?  Will they stand with folded arms and see their fatherlands attacked?

What the United States has already done to support our enemies is, apart from interference with private property, the worst which she could do to us.  We have nothing more to expect or to fear.  Therefore, the threats of our erstwhile friend Roosevelt leave us quite cold.

Let the United States also preserve up from warmed-up humanitarian platitudes, for her craven submission to England’s will is promoting an outrageous scheme to deliver Germany’s women and children to death by starvation.

A wireless dispatch from Berlin to Sayville, L.I., on May 16 reported this outgiving by the Overseas News Agency:

The whole German press, particularly the Cologne Gazette, the Frankfort Gazette and the Berliner Tageblatt, deeply regret the loss of American lives caused by the sinking of the Lusitania.