On April 19, 1916, President Wilson had the issue with Germany before Congress and addressed that body in person, solemnly informing the legislators that "a situation has arisen in the foreign relations of the country of which it is my plain duty to inform you very frankly." This he proceeded to do, speaking, he said, on behalf of the rights of the United States and its citizens and the rights of humanity in general. He announced that he had notified Germany that "unless the Imperial Government should now immediately declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods of submarine warfare against passenger and freight-carrying vessels, the Government of the United States can have no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the German Empire altogether." The President's address was more or less a paraphrase of the note he had that day sent to Berlin, and was in fulfillment of a promise he made to notify Congress of any action he took to bring Germany to realize the serious condition of her relations with the United States. CHAPTER LIX THE AMERICAN ULTIMATUM--GERMANY YIELDS The American note was an indictment of Germany's conscienceless practices and broken faith. Secretary Lansing informed the kaiser's advisers that their note denying any attack on the _Sussex_, but acknowledging that another vessel had been torpedoed under identical circumstances as to time, place, and result, confirmed the inferences the American Government had drawn from information it possessed establishing "the facts in the case of the _Sussex_." A "statement of facts" relating to the _Sussex_ accompanied the virtual American ultimatum. It set forth a chain of testimony, citing the source thereof, showing that the passengers of the _Sussex_, which included about twenty-four American citizens, were of several nationalities, many of them women and children, and half of them subjects of neutral states; that the _Sussex_ carried no armament; that the vessel has never been employed as a troopship, but solely as a Channel ferryboat, and was following a route not used for transporting troops from Great Britain to France; that a torpedo was seen driving toward the vessel and the captain was unable to swing the vessel out of the torpedo's course; that on a subsequent inspection of the broken hull a number of pieces of metal were found which American, French, and British naval experts decided were not parts of a mine, but of a torpedo, with German markings, and were otherwise different from parts of torpedoes used by the French and British. Regarding the sketch made by the German submarine commander of the steamer which he said he torpedoed, showing that it did not agree with a photograph of the _Sussex_ as published, the American statement made this comment: