London, Feb. 7.
Passengers on the Cunard liner Lusitania 30,396 tons, which arrived in Liverpool this morning, state that when off the coast of Ireland they received @ wireless rom the British Admiralty ordering them to hoist the American flag. Accordingly the ship sailed under it to Liverpool.
The Foreign Office has issued a statement in which it declares that the British Government has always recognized the use of a neutral flag by a merchant ship, for the purpose of escaping capture, as legitunate and as involving ho breach of International Law but to destroy a ship, with its non-combatant crew and cargo, as Germany has announced her intention of doing, is nothing less than an act of piracy.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.