ff. On May 17, 1915 the German U-boats sank the Lusitania even though it carried nothing related to the military whatsoever. Of the 1200 people onboard the ship 128 were American. The American sentiment was still peace; war would be too costly. Wilson would write three notes to the German government trying to maintain peace, and also prevent such occurrences in the future. Germany paid no intention to the notes, even though Wilson used extremely diplomatic language to avoid the conflict, stating the any future attack as deliberately unfriendly. Germany would ignore the notes completely, and sank another non-military ship killing two Americans. Wilson was outraged, he and new Secretary of State Lansing demanded that Germany stop attacking commercial ships without giving warning, and proper safety to passengers, this became known as the Arabic pledge named after the sunken ship. This event elevated anti-German sentiment in a time of much conspiracy in German-American relations. The American government would also denounce Britains blockade, as a prevention of neutral international trade.Maintaining neutrality became a hardship. During 1915 and 1916 America was on the brink of war, with any one enemy action against the United States, and war was inevitable. There was such tension in diplomacy, that when Wilson sent Colonel House to Europe to try and mediate a peace settlement, both sides refused without ridiculous opposing clauses. House would try numerous times in diplomatic missions only to fail. A major issue was the preparedness controversy. It was Wilsons belief that having a large standing army and building munitions was unfavorable. In 1915 he would make a concession to allow the expansion by 400,000 troops, but they would serve very short terms. In 1916 he had to satisfy Congress, and he doubled the size of the military, but left the National Guard as it was. The preparedness changes set off debate throughout the gove...
