FOR SEVERAL DAYS AFTER THE SINKING, WILSON SAID nothing about it in public. He stuck to his routines. He golfed on the Saturday morning after the attack, took a drive that afternoon, went to church on Sunday morning. During a conversation in his study, Wilson told his secretary, Joe Tumulty, that he understood his cool response might trouble some people. “If I pondered over those tragic items that daily appear in the newspapers about the Lusitania, I should see red in everything and I am afraid that when I am called upon to act with reference to this situation I could not be just to anyone. I dare not act unjustly and cannot indulge my own passionate feelings.”
Sensing that Tumulty did not agree, Wilson said, “I suppose you think I am cold and indifferent and little less than human, but my dear fellow, you are mistaken, for I have spent many sleepless hours thinking about this tragedy. It has hung over me like a terrible nightmare. In God’s name, how could any nation calling itself civilized purpose so horrible a thing.”
Wilson believed that if he went then to Congress to ask for a declaration of war, he would likely get it. But he did not think the nation was truly ready for that kind of commitment. He told Tumulty, “Were I to advise radical action now, we should have nothing, I am afraid, but regrets and heartbreaks.”
In fact, apart from a noisy pro-war faction led by former president Teddy Roosevelt, much of America seemed to share Wilson’s reluctance. There was anger, yes, but no clear call to war, not even from such historically pugnacious newspapers as the Louisville Courier-Journal and Chicago Tribune. In Indiana, newspapers serving smaller communities urged restraint and support for the president, according to one historian’s study of Indiana’s reaction to the disaster. The state’s “six-and eight-page dailies and the weekly journals were practically of one mind in their hope for peace.” Petitions arrived at the White House counseling caution. The Tennessee State Assembly voted a resolution expressing confidence in Wilson and urging the state’s residents “to refrain from any intemperate acts or utterances.” The Louisiana Legislature voted its support as well and warned that the crisis at hand “calls for coolness, deliberation, firmness and precision of mind on the part of those entrusted with the power of administration.” The students of Rush Medical College in Chicago weighed in, all signing a petition expressing “confidence in the sagacity and patience of our President” and urging him to continue his policy of neutrality. Dental students at the University of Illinois took time out to do likewise.
German popular reaction to the sinking of the Lusitania was exultant. A Berlin newspaper declared May 7 “the day which marked the end of the epoch of English supremacy of the seas” and proclaimed: “The English can no longer protect trade and transport in their own coastal waters; its largest, prettiest and fastest liner has been sunk.” Germany’s military attaché in Washington told reporters that the deaths of the Americans aboard would at last show the nation the true nature of the war. “America does not know what conditions are,” he said. “You read of thousands [of] Russians or Germans being killed and pass it over without qualm. This will bring it home to you.”
WILSON KEPT SILENT until Monday evening, May 10, when he traveled to Philadelphia to give a previously scheduled speech before four thousand newly minted citizens. He had seen Edith that afternoon, and by the time he reached Philadelphia was still roiled in the emotional after-sea of that encounter. In his speech he talked of the importance of America as a force for instilling peace in the world and of the need for the nation to stand firm even in the face of the Lusitania tragedy. He used an outline, not a fixed text, and improvised as he went along, not the best approach given his emotional state. “There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight,” he told his audience. “There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.”
These were lofty sentiments, but that phrase “too proud to fight” struck a dull chord. America did not want to go to war, but being too proud to fight had nothing to do with it. A pro-war Republican, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, called it “probably the most unfortunate phrase that [Wilson] had ever coined.”
Wilson told Edith he had spoken while in an emotional haze caused by his love for her. In a letter composed Tuesday morning, he wrote, “I do not know just what I said at Philadelphia (as I rode along the street in the dusk I found myself a little confused as to whether I was in Philadelphia or New York!) because my heart was in such a whirl from that wonderful interview of yesterday and the poignant appeal and sweetness of the little note you left with me; but many other things have grown clear in my mind.”