CHAPTER XIII THE SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA
The mistress of the seas—Plotting in New York—The Lusitania's escape in February, 1915—The advertised warning—The plot—May 7, 1915—Diplomatic correspondence—Gustave Stahl—The results.
In the eyes of the German Admiralty the Lusitania was the symbol of British supremacy on the seas. There were larger ships flying the Prussian flag, but one of them lay in her German harbor, the other at her Little-German pier in Hoboken, while the Lusitania swept gracefully over the Western Ocean as she regally saw fit, leaving only a thin trail of smoke for the sluggish undersea enemy to follow. Time and again during the early months of war the plotters in Berlin had attempted her destruction, and every time she had slipped away—until the last, when the plot was developed on American soil.
The Lusitania leaving the Hudson River on her last voyage
Her destruction would carry home to Germany news of heartening influence out of all proportion to the mere sinking of a large single tonnage. The German visible navy had, with the exception of scattering excursions into the North Sea, and the swiftly quenched efforts of the South Atlantic fleet, been of negligible—and irksome—consequence. To sink the mistress of the British merchant fleet would be to inform all the world that Britain was incapable of protecting her cargo and passenger vessels, to puncture the comfortable British boast of the moment that business was being performed "as usual," and to gratify the blood-letting instincts of the Junkers. So von Tirpitz, with his colleagues, undertook to sink the Lusitania, and to warn neutrals to travel in their own ships or stay ashore.
Early in December, 1914, the German agents who met nightly at the Deutscher Verein in Central Park South speculated on ways and means of bringing down this attractive quarry. Communication between Berlin and New York at that time was as facile as a telephone conversation from the Battery to Harlem. There were new 110-kilowatt transmitters in the German-owned Sayville wireless station, imported through Holland and installed under the expert supervision of Captain Boy-Ed, and memoranda issued in Berlin to the naval attaché were frequently the subject of guarded conversation in the German Club within a few hours after they had left the Wilhelmstrasse. Occasionally the conspirators found it more tactful to drive through the Park in a limousine during the evening, to discuss the project. Spies had made several trips to Liverpool and back again aboard the ship, under false passports, and Paul Koenig's waterfront henchmen supplied all necessary information of the guard maintained at the piers. All this was passed up to the clearing-house of executives, and their plans began to take shape.
Boy-Ed possessed a copy of the secret British Admiralty code, which explained his frequent trips to Sayville. He knew—and Tirpitz's staff therefore knew—the position of any British vessel at sea which had occasion to utter any message into the air. But before he conceived a use for this code other than as a source of information, he decided to try out a code of his own.
He arranged with Berlin a word-system whose theory was popular with Germany throughout the earlier years of her secret war communication: under the guise of apparently harmless expressions of friendship, or grief, or simple business, were transmitted quite definite and specific secret meanings. A message addressed by wireless from the Lusitania to a friend in England which read for example "Eager to see you. Much love" would scarcely arouse suspicion, especially as there was no word in it which might suggest military information. Yet in February, 1915, a message of that type was despatched from the eastward-bound Lusitania to a British station; it was intercepted and interpreted by a German submarine commander in the "zone" nearby, who presently popped up in the ship's wake and fired a torpedo. His information was better than his aim. The Lusitania dodged the steel shark, and fled to safety, her wireless informing the British naval world meanwhile of the presence of the U-boat.
The plotters had to reckon with her unequalled speed. The Lusitania and her sister ship, the Mauretania, had each rather prided herself in the past on reducing the other's fresh, bright passage-record from Queenstown to New York—a record of four days and a few hours! The submarine of 1915 knew no such speed, and it was necessary, if the liner was to be torpedoed, to select out of the vastness of the ocean one little radius in which the submarine might lie in wait for a pot-shot. But just how?
Spies had reported that it was customary as the Lusitania neared the Irish coast on her homeward voyage for her captain to query the British Admiralty for instructions as to where her convoy might be expected. They reported that under certain conditions German agents might be placed on board. And they reported that the wireless operator was susceptible to bribery. Those three facts formed the nucleus of the final plan.
Audacious as they were in their use of American soil as the base for their plans, the German Embassy had certain obligations to the United States Government, which they felt must be observed. The unspeakable falsifying which is sometimes called expediency, sometimes diplomacy, required that official America must know nothing of the intentions of which the Embassy itself was fully conversant and approving. Further, a palliative must be supplied to the American people in advance. Consequently Count von Bernstorff, under orders from Berlin, inserted in the New York Times of April 23, 1915, the following advertisement:
NOTICE
Travelers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her Allies and Great Britain and her Allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that in accordance with formal notice given by the German Imperial Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain or any of her Allies are liable to destruction in these waters and that travelers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her Allies do so at their own risk.
Imperial German Embassy.
Washington, D. C., April 22d, 1915.
The newspaper advertisement inserted among
"ocean travel" advertising by the Im-
perial German Embassy prior to
the Lusitania's departure on
what proved to be her
last voyage
Germans in New York who knew of the plot dropped hints to their friends; anonymous warnings were received by several passengers who had booked their accommodations; Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt received such a message, signed "Morte." But such whispers were common, the Lusitania had outrun the submarines before and could presumably do it again; further, most Americans at that moment had some confidence left in civilization.
The plot was substantially this: when Captain Turner, on the last day of the voyage, should send his wireless query to the Admiralty, inquiring for his convoy of destroyers, a wireless reply in the British code directing his course must be sent to him from Sayville. His query would be heard and answered by the Admiralty, of course, but the genuine reply must not reach him.
Berlin assigned two submarines to a point ten miles south by west of the Old Head of Kinsale, near the entrance to St. George's Channel. She selected an experienced commander for the especial duty, and with him went a secret agent to shadow him as he opened his sealed instructions, and shoot him if he balked. And about the time when the U-boats slipped out of the Kiel Canal, and threaded their way through the mine-fields into the North Sea, submerging as they picked up the smoke of British ships on the western horizon, the Lusitania warped out of her pier in the Hudson River and set her prow for Sandy Hook, the Grand Banks, and Ireland.
She carried 1,254 passengers and a crew of eight hundred, a total of more than 2,000 souls, of whom 1,214 were sailing to their death. Germany had selected their graves; von Rintelen had two friends aboard who were detailed to flash lights from the portholes in case the ship made the submarine rendezvous at night. The Lusitania carried bombs which Dr. Karl Schimmel placed on board; she carried bombs which wretched little Klein placed on board; she carried, too, the creature who was to betray her. Her company was gay enough, and interesting; besides Mr. Vanderbilt her passenger list included Charles Frohman, the most important of theatrical managers; Elbert Hubbard, a quaint and lovable writer-artisan; Charles Klein, a playwright; Justus Miles Forman, a novelist; and numerous others of more or less celebrity, among them an actress who lived to reënact her part in the tragedy for the benefit of herself and a motion picture company. Ruthless as it was, the Lusitania also carried Lindon W. Bates, Jr., a youth whose family had befriended von Rintelen. And there were the women and children.
Meanwhile, Sayville was in readiness, a trained wireless operator prepared at any moment to hear Captain Turner's inquiry, and to flash a false reply with a perfect British Admiralty touch. On May 5 Captain Boy-Ed received word from Berlin that he had been awarded the Iron Cross. On May 7 the Lusitania spoke: Captain Turner's request for instructions. Presently the reply came, and was hurried to his cabin. From his code book he deciphered directions to "proceed to a point ten miles south of Old Head of Kinsale and thence run into St. George's Channel, arriving at the Liverpool bar at midnight." He carefully calculated the distance and his running time on the assumption that he was protected on every side by the British fleet, and set his course for the Old Head of Kinsale.
The British Admiralty also received Captain Turner's inquiry, just as the Sayville operator had snatched it from the air, and despatched an answer: orders that the Lusitania proceed to a point some 70 or 80 miles south of the Old Head of Kinsale, there to meet her convoy. Captain Turner never received that message. The British Government knows why the message was not delivered, though the fact has not, at this date, been made public.
The Lusitania headed northeast all morning. At 1:20 o'clock she ran the gauntlet of two submarines; a torpedo was released, and found its target. The ghastly details of what followed have been told so fully, so vividly, and so appealingly that they need not be repeated here. They made themselves heard around a world that was already vibrant with uproar. The first sodden tremor of the ship told Captain Turner that he had been betrayed. He described later at the Coroner's inquest how he had received orders supposedly from the Admiralty, and had set out to obey them. He produced the copy of those orders, but of the genuine message from the Admiralty he knew nothing. Asked if he had made special application for a convoy, he said: "No, I left that to them. It is their business, not mine. I simply had to carry out my orders to go, and I would do it again."
America was in a turmoil. Germany had presumed too far; she—it is almost incongruous to call Germany "she"—had believed that her warning declaration that the waters about the British isles were a war zone would be respected, or if not respected, would serve as an excuse, and that the torpedoing would be accepted calmly by America. She was not prepared for Colonel Roosevelt's burning denunciation of this act of common piracy, nor for the angry editorial remonstrance of a people outraged at the loss of one hundred and fourteen American lives. But Germany recovered her presumptuous poise swiftly, and while ugly medals were being struck off commemorating the German triumph over the ship, and while destroyers were still searching British waters for the bodies of the dead, she sent a note of commiseration and sympathy to Washington. Three days later—on May 13—the United States conveyed to Berlin a strong protest against the submarine policy which had culminated in the sinking of the Lusitania. Three days before Germany replied on May 28, a submarine attacked an American steamer, the Nebraska, and the Imperial government followed up its first reply with a supplementary note justifying its previous attacks upon the American vessels Gulflight and Cushing. Germany's fat was in the fire.
A German editor in the United States had the effrontery to announce that American ships would be sunk as readily as the Lusitania. Secretary Bryan, of the Department of State, at that time a confirmed pacifist, resigned his post on June 8, thus drawing the sting of a second and sharper protest which went forward to Germany the next day. To this the Foreign Office replied on July 8 that American ships would be safe in the submarine zone under certain conditions, and the President on July 21 rejected this diplomatic sop as "very unsatisfactory." Count von Bernstorff finally announced, on September 1, that German submarines would sink no more liners without warning, and his government ratified his promise a fortnight later. The promise was at best a quibble, and it in no way restricted undersea depredations upon commerce and human life. After the Lusitania affair followed the Leelanaw, the Arabic, and the Hesperian and on February 16, 1916, Germany acknowledged her liability for the Lusitania's destruction—the day after Secretary Lansing declared the right of commercial vessels to arm themselves in self-defense, and five days before the Crown Prince began the ten-months' battle of Verdun.
The published correspondence of the State Department gives in detail the negotiations regarding maritime relations, a record of Imperial hypocrisy which indicates clearly the desire and intention of the Germans to retain their submarine warfare at any cost. There is not space here to brief the papers, nor any great need, for it was the Lusitania which dictated the tone and outcome of the correspondence, and which brought the United States rudely face to face with the cruel facts of war.
In spite of these facts, Germany employed her agents in desperate, devious and futile attempts to gloss over the crime. Relatives of those who had drowned were persuaded by agents (one of them was "a lawyer named Fowler, now under Federal indictment on another count") to sue the Cunard Line for damages for having mounted guns on the liner, thus making her liable to attack. Paul Koenig paid a German, Gustave Stahl, of Hoboken, to swear to an affidavit that he had seen guns on the ship; this affidavit was forwarded by Captain Boy-Ed on June 1, to Washington, and had a wide temporary effect upon public sentiment until Stahl was convicted of perjury and sentenced to 18 months in Atlanta. It was Koenig who hid Stahl where neither the police nor the press could find him after he made his statement, and it was Koenig who, at the command of the Federal authorities, produced him. It was Rintelen who dined on the night of the tragedy at the home of one of the victims; it was Rintelen who received the news with a mild expression of regret because "he had two good men aboard."
Tactically Germany had attained her objectives; her submarines had obeyed orders and sunk a liner. Strategically Germany had made a gross miscalculation; recruiting in England took a pronounced rise, the Admiralty was shocked into redoubled vigilance, the United States instead of swallowing the affront complicated the question of the freedom of the seas beyond all untangling except by force of arms, and beside the word "Belgium" on the calendar of crime the world wrote the word "Lusitania," as equally typical of the warfare of the Hun.