commercial shipping, and those ships were being sunk by germa germany. and woodrow wilson, president woodrow wilson was outraged, senate leaders was outraged. how could a small faction allow our ships to go unarmed in a situation where they're being sunk? that's unacceptable. well, that small faction had their reasons. they felt once you put armaments on to a ship, you are probably going to be firing shots. and when you fire shots, you're involved in the war and they wanted to block the u.s. getting involved in the war. but there were only a small group in the senate that believed that that was the right response and that we should just allow germany to continue sinking our ships with -- with no -- no response. and so the senate came together and said, okay, we're going to respond to a small faction objecorinstructing the bill of s body not allowing us to go forward. they've had their say, we've heard them out, they've had their opinions, and we're not going to allow two-thirds to shut down debate and get to a vote. that was 1917. the chamber adopted the