THIS DAY IN THE RECORD IN 1917

Tuesday, Feb. 27, 1917. As the latest reports confirm that American lives were lost in the sinking of the British ocean liner Laconia, pressure grows on President Woodrow Wilson to take more forceful action against Germany.

The Laconia was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland last Sunday. Eight Americans on the crew are believed lost, while an American mother and daughter, Mary and Elizabeth Hoy, died of exposure on board a lifeboat.

The President went before Congress yesterday to request authorization to arm U.S. merchant ships and declare a state of “armed neutrality.” At the same time, Wilson claimed that Germany had not yet committed an “overt act” against U.S. shipping that would require a declaration of war in response.

Congress is considering legislation to meet the President’s requests. His agenda faces opposition from a pacifist faction within his own Democratic party, and from Republicans who worry that a vaguely worded bill would give Wilson a “blank check” and create a dangerous precedent for future presidents.

In today’s lead editorial, The Record responds to the President’s address. While insisting that “It is essential … that Congress stand back of him,” our editorial writer sharply criticizes Wilson for an inadequate response to German provocation.

“There are but two ways to account for the mildness of the President in his address to Congress yesterday. Either he lacks the courage to take a definite position and stand by it, or else he is striving to secure the unanimous support of Congress for a program he dares not describe in detail for fear of offending the pacifist element in the lower house.

“It is difficult for an American to bring himself to believe the first of these hypotheses; we look for leadership and valor in our chief magistrates. But the alternative is equally painful to contemplate, for it implies that the President is striving to tie members of Congress to him by a trick.”

The tone of the President’ s address was all wrong, the writer claims. “Instead of a clarion call to the manhood of the nation he offers a mosaic of apology and irresolution… .He insisted that there had been no overt act, although Americans have been drowned through torpedo attacks, shot at in small boats and waylaid by submarines repeatedly while pursuing their legal rights.

“The President ought not to seek votes through any hazy half-disclosures of his probable course; he should act like a leader, not like a hesitating, swerving bit of flotsam on a stormy sea. We want a pilot, not a phrasemaker; we want a patriot, not a philosopher.”

-- Kevin Gilbert