Chapter Twelve
SINK THE
LUSITANIA! The role of J.P. Morgan in providing loans to England and France in World War I; the souring of those loans as it became apparent that Germany would win; the betrayal of a British ship and the sacrifice of American passengers as a stratagem to bring America into the war; the use of American taxes to pay off the loans. The origin of World War I usually is attributed to the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand of AustriaHungary by a Serbian nationalist in 1914. This was a serious affront to Austria but hardly sufficient reason to plunge the world into a mortal conflict that would claim over ten million lives and twenty million wounded. American schoolchildren are taught that Uncle Sam came into the war "to make the world safe for democracy." But, as we shall see, the American war drums were pounded by men with far less idealistic objectives. Since the latter part of the eighteenth century, the