NOTICE!
TRAVELLERS intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or of any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travelers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.
IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY Washington, D.C., April 25, 1915.
Why wasn’t this enough to dissuade all the passengers from boarding? Didn’t they have any common sense? Certainly nowadays a similar warning would be enough to cause the authorities, let alone Cunard, to cancel the sailing and launch a major investigation.
Nowadays we live in the shadow of World War 1, or the Great War. The legacy of that war is what makes us so paranoid and suspicious, so cautious, in the twenty-first century. We’ve recently had our own Lusitania sinking in the form of 9/11, and that makes us doubly paranoid. But in 1915 passengers were still Victorians. They were all born in the nineteenth century and accustomed to the Pax Britannica and one hundred years of peace. They assumed everyone in the western world --- and the Germans were in the western world --- were civilized. If the Germans were going to sink the Lusitania it was expected that they would allow the passengers to board lifeboats first.
The fact that the Lusitania was torpedoed on May 7, 1915 at 2:10 in the afternoon just after lunch is what brought westerners from the nineteenth century into the far more grim twentieth century.