Well I think that bit about the mixed cargo might sort of be a retrospective projection onto a common mixed use of a liner, even in wartime. I don't think one c

Well I think that bit about the mixed cargo might sort of be a retrospective projection onto a common mixed use of a liner, even in wartime. I don't think one can say with any certainty that other liners did not do this. Post-Lusitania, line operators might have refused it as a general rule, but those were early days of submarine warfare. I do think (as a Brit) that the argument they were deliberately left unprotected from U-boats has significant credibility; I would not be at all surprised. I am not a pacifist at this stage of my life, but I am regularly surprised at what my fellow Brits in particular do not know about our military history. Then again, in this country, schoolkids don't generally study the First World War until they are of an age where the boys among them would have been illicitly signing up for it, and by that age, studying history is optional.