U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of State Robert Lansing feared that the German government might annex Denmark, in which case the Germans might also secure the Danish West Indies as a naval or submarine base from where they could launch additional attacks on shipping in the Caribbean and the Atlantic. Lansing thus approached Constantin Brun, the Danish Minister to the United States, about the possible purchase of the Danish West Indies in October of 1915, but Brun rejected the proposal. Many Danes resisted U.S. acquisition of these islands as they expected that the unfortunate civil rights record of the U.S. in the early twentieth century would have disastrous consequences for the predominantly black population of the Danish West Indies. […] Concerned about recent events and Danish recalcitrance, Lansing implied that if Denmark was unwilling to sell, the United States might occupy the islands to prevent their seizure by Germany.