CHAPTER VI
GREAT BRITAIN UNYIELDING—EFFECT OF THE BLOCKADE—THE CHICAGO MEAT PACKERS' CASE
The existing restrictions satisfied Great Britain that Germany, without being brought to her knees, was feeling the pinch of food shortage. To that extent—and it was enough in England's view—the blockade was effective, the contentions of the United States notwithstanding. So Great Britain's course indicated that she would not relax by a hair the barrier she had reared round the German coast; but she sought to minimize the obstacles to legitimate neutral trade, so far as blockade conditions permitted, and was disposed to pay ample compensation for losses as judicially determined. The outlook was that American scores against her could only be finally settled by arbitral tribunals after the war was over. Satisfaction by arbitration thus remained the only American hope in face of Great Britain's resolve to keep Germany's larder depleted and her export trade at a standstill, whether neutrals suffered or not. Incidentally, the United States was reminded that in the Civil War it served notice on foreign governments that any attempts to interfere with the blockade of the Confederate States would be resented. The situation then, and the situation now, with the parts of the two countries reversed, were considered as analogous.
A parliamentary paper showed that the British measures adopted to intercept the sea-borne commerce of Germany had succeeded up to September, 1915, in stopping 92 per cent of German exports to America. Steps had also been taken to stop exports on a small scale from Germany and Austria-Hungary by parcel post. The results of the blockade were thus summarized:
"First, German exports to overseas countries have almost entirely stopped. Exceptions which have been made are cases in which a refusal to allow the export goods to go through would hurt the neutral country concerned without inflicting injury upon Germany.
"Second, all shipments to neutral countries adjacent to Germany have been carefully scrutinized with a view to the detection of a concealed enemy destination. Wherever there has been a reasonable ground for suspecting the destination, the goods have been placed in charge of a prize court. Doubtful consignments have been detained pending satisfactory guarantees.
"Third, under agreement with bodies of representative merchants of several neutral countries adjacent to Germany, stringent guarantees have been exacted from importers. So far as possible all trade between neutrals and Germany, whether arising from oversea or in the country itself, is restricted.
"Fourth, by agreements with shipping lines and by vigorous use of the power to refuse bunker coal in large proportions the neutral mercantile marine which trades with Scandinavia and Holland has been induced to agree to conditions designed to prevent the goods of these ships from reaching Germany.
"Fifth, every effort is being made to introduce a system of rationing which will insure that the neutrals concerned will import only such quantities of articles as are specified as normally imported for their own consumption."
The case of the Chicago meat packers, involving food consignments to neutral European countries since the war's outbreak, came before a British prize court before the American protest had been lodged. Apparently the issues it raised dictated in some degree the contentions Secretary Lansing made. The British authorities had seized thirty-three vessels mainly bearing meat products valued at $15,000,000, twenty-nine of which had been held without being relegated for disposal to the prize courts. The remaining four cargoes, held for ten months, and worth $2,500,000 were confiscated by a British prize court on September 15, 1915. The goods were declared forfeited to the Crown. One of the factors influencing the decision was the sudden expansion in shipments of food products to the Scandinavian countries immediately after the war began. The president of the prize court, Sir Samuel Evans, asserted that incoming vessels were carrying more than thirteen times the amount of goods to Copenhagen—the destination of the four ships involved—above the volume which under normal conditions arrived at that port. He cited lard, the exportation of which by one American firm had increased twentyfold to Copenhagen in three weeks after the war, and canned meat, of which Denmark hitherto had only taken small quantities, yet the seized vessels carried hundreds of thousands of tins.
The confiscation formed the subject of a complaint made by Chicago beef packers to the State Department on October 6, 1915. The British Court condemned the cargoes on the grounds: (1) that the goods being in excess of the normal consumption of Denmark, raised a presumption that they were destined for, i. e., eventually would find their way into Germany. (2) That, owing to the highly organized state of Germany, in a military sense, there was practically no distinction between the civilian and military population of that country and therefore there was a presumption that the goods, or a very large proportion of them, would necessarily be used by the military forces of the German Empire. (3) That the burden of proving that such goods were not destined for, i. e., would not eventually get into the hands of the German forces, must be accepted and sustained by the American shippers.
The Chicago beef firms besought the Government to register an immediate protest against the decision of the prize court and demand from the British Government adequate damages for losses arising from the seizure, detention and confiscation of the shipments of meat products. They complained that the judgment and the grounds on which it was based were contrary to the established principles of international law, and subversive of the rights of neutrals. The judgment, they said, was unsupported by fact, and was based on inferences and presumptions. Direct evidence on behalf of the American firms interested, to the effect that none of the seized shipments had been sold, consigned or destined to the armed forces or to the governments of any enemy of Great Britain, was uncontradicted and disregarded and the seizures were upheld in the face of an admission that no precedent of the English courts existed justifying the condemnation of goods on their way to a neutral port.
An uncompromising defense of the prize court's decision came to the State Department from the British Government a few days later. Most of the seizures, it said, were not made under the Order in Council of March 11, 1915, the validity of which and of similar orders was disputed by the United States Government. The larger part of the cargoes were seized long before March, 1915. The ground for the seizures was that the cargoes were conditional contraband destined from the first by the Chicago beef packers, largely for the use of the armies, navies and Government departments of Germany and Austria, and only sent to neutral ports with the object of concealing their true destination.
From cablegrams and letters in the possession of the British Government and produced in court, the statement charged, "it was clear and that packers' agents in these neutral countries, and also several of the consigners, who purported to be genuine neutral buyers, were merely persons engaged by the packers on commission, or sent by the packers from their German branches for the purpose of insuring the immediate transit of these consignments to Germany.... No attempt was made by any written or other evidence to explain away the damning evidence of the telegrams and letters disclosed by the Crown. The inference was clear and irresistible that no such attempt could be made, and that any written evidence there was would have merely confirmed the strong suspicion, amounting to a practical certainty, that the whole of the operations of shipment to Copenhagen and other neutral ports were a mere mask to cover a determined effort to transmit vast quantities of supplies through to the German and Austrian armies."
A portion of the Western press had denounced the confiscation as a "British outrage" and as "robbery by prize court"; but the more moderate Eastern view was that, while American business men had an undoubted right to feed the German armies, if they could, they were in the position of gamblers who had lost if the British navy succeeded in intercepting the shipments.
Exaggerated values placed on American-owned goods held up for months at Rotterdam and other neutral ports by British became largely discounted on October 1, 1915, under the scrutiny of the Foreign Trade Advisers of the State Department. These goods were German-made for consignment to the United States, and would only be released if the British Government were satisfied that they were contracted for by American importers before March 1, 1915, the date on which the British blockade of Germany began. Early protests against their detention complained that $50,000,000 was involved; later the value of the detained goods was raised to $150,000,000. But actual claims made by American importers to the British Embassy, through the Foreign Trade Advisers, seeking the release of the consignments, showed that the amount involved was not much more than $11,000,000 and would not exceed $15,000,000 at the most.[Back to Contents]
CHAPTER VII
SEIZURE OF SUSPECTED SHIPS—TRADING WITH THE ENEMY—THE APPAM—THE ANGLO-FRENCH LOAN—FORD PEACE EXPEDITION
The next issue the United States raised with Great Britain related to the seizure of three ships of American registry—the Hocking, Genesee and the Kankakee—in November, 1915, on the ground that they were really German-owned. France had also confiscated the Solveig of the same ownership for a like reason. The four vessels belonged to the fleet of the American Transatlantic Steamship Company, the formation of which under unusual circumstances was recorded earlier in this history. Great Britain and France served notice that this company's vessels were blacklisted, and became seizable as prizes of war because of the suspicion that German interests were behind the company, and that its American officials with their reputed holdings of stock were therefore really prizes for German capital. The Bureau of Navigation had at first refused registry to these vessels, but its ruling was reversed, and the vessels were admitted, the State Department taking the view that it could not disregard the company's declaration of incorporation in the United States, and that its officers were American citizens. Great Britain sought to requisition the vessels for navy use without prize-court hearings, but on the United States protesting she agreed to try the cases.
Another dispute arose, in January, 1916, over the operation of the Trading with the Enemy Act, one of Great Britain's war measures, the provisions of which were enlarged to forbid British merchants from trading with any person or firm, resident in a neutral country, which had German ownership or German trade connections. The United States objected to the prohibition as constituting a further unlawful interference with American trade. It held that in war time the trade of such a person or firm domiciled in a neutral country had a neutral status, and consequently was not subject to interference; hence goods in transit of such a trader were not subject to confiscation by a belligerent unless contraband and consigned to an enemy country.
An example of the working of the act was the conviction of three members of a British glove firm for trading with Germany through their New York branch. They had obtained some $30,000 worth of goods from Saxony between October, 1915, and January, 1916, the consignments evading the blockade and reaching New York, whence they were reshipped to England. One defendant was fined $2,000; the two others received terms of imprisonment.
While the act would injure American firms affiliated with German interests, it aimed to press hardest upon traders in neutral European countries contiguous to Germany who were trading with the Germans and practically serving as intermediaries to save the Germans from the effect of the Allies' blockade.
The appearance of a captured British steamer, the Appam, at Newport News, Va., on February 1, 1916, in charge of a German naval lieutenant, Hans Berg, and a prize crew, involved the United States in a new maritime tangle with the belligerents. One of the most difficult problems which Government officials had encountered since the war began, presented itself for solution. The Appam, as elsewhere described, was captured by a German raider, the Moewe (Sea Gull), off Madeira, and was crowded with passengers, crews, and German prisoners taken from a number of other ships the Moewe had sunk. Lieutenant Berg, for lack of a safer harbor, since German ports were closed to him, sought for refuge an American port, and claimed for his prize the privilege of asylum under the protection of American laws—until he chose to leave. Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador, immediately notified the State Department that Germany claimed the Appam as a prize under the Prussian-American Treaty of 1828, and would contend for possession of the ship.
This treaty was construed as giving German prizes brought to American ports the right to come and go. The British Government contested the German claim by demanding the release of the Appam under The Hague Convention of 1907. This international treaty provided that a merchantman prize could only be taken to a neutral port under certain circumstances of distress, injury, or lack of food, and if she did not depart within a stipulated time the vessel could not be interned, but must be restored to her original owners with all her cargo. Were the Appam thus forcibly released she would at once have been recaptured by British cruisers waiting off the Virginia Capes. The view which prevailed officially was that the case must be governed by the Prussian treaty, a liberal construction of which appeared to permit the Appam to remain indefinitely at Newport News. This was what happened, but not through any acquiescence of the State Department in the German contention. The Appam owners, the British and African Steam Navigation Company, brought suit in the Federal Courts for the possession of the vessel, on the ground that, having been brought into a neutral port, she lost her character as a German prize, and must be returned to her owners. Pending a determination of this action, the Appam was seized by Federal marshals under instructions from the United States District Court, under whose jurisdiction the vessel remained.
After twelve months of war Great Britain became seriously concerned over the changed conditions of her trade with the United States. Before the war the United States, despite its vast resources and commerce, bought more than it sold abroad, and was thus always a debtor nation, that is, permanently owing money to Europe. In the stress of war Great Britain's exports to the United States, like those of her Allies, declined and her imports enormously increased. She sold but little of her products to her American customers and bought heavily of American foodstuffs, cotton, and munitions. The result was that Great Britain owed a great deal more to the United States than the latter owed her. The unparalleled situation enabled the United States to pay off her old standing indebtedness to Europe and became a creditor nation. American firms were exporting to the allied powers, whose almoner Great Britain was, commodities of a value of $100,000,000 a month in excess of the amount they were buying abroad. Hence what gold was sent from London, at the rate of $15,000,000 to $40,000,000 monthly, to pay for these huge purchases was wholly insufficient to meet the accumulating balance of indebtedness against England.
The effect of this reversal of Anglo-American trade balance was a decline in the exchange value of the pound sterling, which was normally worth $4.86-½ in American money, to the unprecedented level of $4.50. This decline in sterling was reflected in different degrees in the other European money markets, and the American press was jubilant over the power of the dollar to buy more foreign money than ever before. Because Europe bought much more merchandise than she sold the demand in London for dollar credit at New York was far greater than the demand in New York for pound credit at London. Hence the premium on dollars and the discount on pounds. It was not a premium upon American gold over European gold, but a premium on the means of settling debts in dollars without the use of gold. Europe preferred to pay the premium rather than send sufficient gold, because, for one reason, shipping gold was costly and more than hazardous in war time, and, for another, all the belligerents wanted to retain their gold as long as they could afford to do so.
An adjustment of the exchange situation and a reestablishment of the credit relations between the United States and the allied powers on a more equitable footing was imperative. The British and French Governments accordingly sent a commission to the United States, composed of some of their most distinguished financiers—government officials and bankers—to arrange a loan in the form of a credit with American bankers to restore exchange values and to meet the cost of war munitions and other supplies. After lengthy negotiations a loan of $500,000,000 was agreed upon, at 5 per cent. interest, for a term of five years, the bonds being purchasable at 98 in denominations as low as $100. The principal and interest were payable in New York City—in gold dollars. The proceeds of the loan were to be employed exclusively in the United States to cover the Allies' trade obligations.
The loan was an attractive one to the American investor, yielding as it did a fraction over 5-½ per cent. It was the only external loan of Great Britain and France, for the repayment of which the two countries pledged severally and together their credit, faith, and resources. No such an investment had before been offered in the United States.
Strong opposition to the loan came from German-American interests. Dr. Charles Hexamer, president of the German-American Alliance, made a country-wide appeal urging American citizens to "thwart the loan" by protesting to the President and the Secretary of State. Threats were likewise made by German depositors to withdraw their deposits from banks which participated in the loan. The Government, after being consulted, had given assurances that it would not oppose the transaction as a possible violation of neutrality—if a straight credit, not as actual loan, was negotiated. Conformity to this condition made all opposition fruitless.
Toward the close of 1915 an ambitious peace crusade to Europe was initiated by Henry Ford, the automobile manufacturer. Accompanied by 148 pacifists, he sailed on the Scandinavian-American liner, Oscar II, early in December, 1915, with the avowed purpose of ending the war before Christmas. The expedition was viewed dubiously by the allied powers, who discerned pro-German propaganda in the presence of Teutonic sympathizers among the delegates. They also suspected a design to accelerate a peace movement while the gains of the war were all on Germany's side, thus placing the onus of continuing hostilities on the Allies if they declined to recognize the Ford peace party as mediators. The American Government, regardful of the obligations of neutrality, notified the several European Governments concerned that the United States had no connection with the expedition, and assumed no responsibility for any activities the persons comprising it might undertake in the promotion of peace.[Back to Contents]
CHAPTER VIII
AMERICAN PACIFICISM—PREPAREDNESS—MUNITION SAFEGUARD
The Ford peace mission, lightly regarded though it was, nevertheless recorded itself on the annals of the time as symptomatic of a state of mind prevailing among a proportion of the American people. It might almost be said to be a manifestation of the pacifist sentiment of the country. This spirit found a channel for expression in the Ford project, bent on hurling its protesting voice at the chancellories of Europe, and heedless of the disadvantage its efforts labored under in not receiving the countenance of the Administration.
"The mission of America in the world," said President Wilson in one of his speeches, "is essentially a mission of peace and good will among men. She has become the home and asylum of men of all creeds and races. America has been made up out of the nations of the world, and is the friend of the nations of the world."
But Europe was deaf alike to official and unofficial overtures of the United States as a peacemaker. The Ford expedition was foredoomed to failure, not because it was unofficial—official proposals of mediation would have been as coldly received—but more because the pacifist movement it represented was a home growth of American soil. The European belligerents, inured and case-hardened as they were to a militarist environment, had not been sufficiently chastened by their self-slaughter.
The American pacifists, with a scattered but wide sentiment behind them, consecrated to promoting an abiding world peace, and espousing the internationalism of the Socialists to that end, and President Wilson, standing aloof from popular manifestations, a solitary watchman on the tower, had perforce to wait until the dawning of the great day when Europe had accomplished the devastating achievement of bleeding herself before she could extend beckoning hands to American mediation.
In the autumn of 1915 the President inaugurated his campaign for national defense, or "preparedness," bred by the dangers more or less imminent while the European War lasted. "We never know what to-morrow might bring forth," he warned. In a series of speeches throughout the country he impressed these views on the people:
The United States had no aggressive purposes, but must be prepared to defend itself and retain its full liberty and self-development. It should have the fullest freedom for national growth. It should be prepared to enforce its right to unmolested action. For this purpose a citizen army of 400,000 was needed to be raised in three years, and a strengthened navy as the first and chief line of defense for safeguarding at all costs the good faith and honor of the nation. The nonpartisan support of all citizens for effecting a condition of preparedness, coupled with the revival and renewal of national allegiance, he said, was also imperative, and Americans of alien sympathies who were not responsive to such a call on their patriotism should be called to account.
This, in brief, constituted the President's plea for preparedness. But such a policy did not involve nor contemplate the conquest of other lands or peoples, nor the accomplishment of any purpose by force beyond the defense of American territory, nor plans for an aggressive war, military training that would interfere unduly with civil pursuits, nor panicky haste in defense preparations.
The President took a midway stand. He stood between the pacifists and the extremists, who advocated the militarism of Europe as the inevitable policy for the United States to adopt to meet the dangers they fancied.
The country's position, as the President saw it, was stated by him in a speech delivered in New York City:
"Our thought is now inevitably of new things about which formerly we gave ourselves little concern. We are thinking now chiefly of our relations with the rest of the world, not our commercial relations, about those we have thought and planned always, but about our political relations, our duties as an individual and independent force in the world to ourselves, our neighbors and the world itself.
"Within a year we have witnessed what we did not believe possible, a great European conflict involving many of the greatest nations of the world. The influences of a great war are everywhere in the air. All Europe is embattled. Force everywhere speaks out with a loud and imperious voice in a Titanic struggle of governments, and from one end of our own dear country to the other men are asking one another what our own force is, how far we are prepared to maintain ourselves against any interference with our national action or development.
"We have it in mind to be prepared, but not for war, but only for defense; and with the thought constantly in our minds that the principles we hold most dear can be achieved by the slow processes of history only in the kindly and wholesome atmosphere of peace, and not by the use of hostile force.
"No thoughtful man feels any panic haste in this matter. The country is not threatened from any quarter. She stands in friendly relations with all the world. Her resources are known and her self-respect and her capacity to care for her own citizens and her own rights. There is no fear among us. Under the new-world conditions we have become thoughtful of the things which all reasonable men consider necessary for security and self-defense on the part of every nation confronted with the great enterprise of human liberty and independence. That is all."
Readiness for defense was also the keynote of the President's address to Congress at its opening session in December, 1915; but despite its earnest plea for a military and naval program, and a lively public interest, the message was received by Congress in a spirit approaching apathy.
The President, meantime, pursued his course, advocating his preparedness program, and in no issue abating his condemnation of citizens with aggressive alien sympathies.
In one all-important military branch there was small need for anxiety. The United States was already well armed, though not well manned. The munitions industry, called into being by the European War, had grown to proportions that entitled the country to be ranked with first-class powers in its provision and equipment for rapidly producing arms and ammunition and other war essentials on an extensive scale. Conditions were very different at the outset of the war. One of the American contentions in defense of permitting war-munition exports—as set forth in the note to Austria-Hungary—was that if the United States accepted the principle that neutral nations should not supply war materials to belligerents, it would itself, should it be involved in war, be denied the benefit of seeking such supplies from neutrals to amplify its own meager productions.
But the contention that the country in case of war would have to rely on outside help could no longer be made on the face of the sweeping change in conditions existing after eighteen months of the war. From August, 1914, to January, 1916, inclusive, American factories had sent to the European belligerents shipment after shipment of sixteen commodities used expressly for war purposes of the unsurpassed aggregate value of $865,795,668. Roughly, $200,000,000 represented explosives, cartridges, and firearms; $150,000,000 automobiles and accessories; and $250,000,000 iron and steel and copper manufacturing.
This production revealed that the United States could meet any war emergency out of its own resources in respect of supplies. Its army might be smaller than Switzerland's and its navy inadequate, but it would have no cause to go begging for the guns and shells needful to wage war.
How huge factories were built, equipped, and operated in three months, how machinery for the manufacture of tinware, typewriters, and countless other everyday articles was adapted to shell making; and how methods for producing steel and reducing ores were revolutionized—these developments form a romantic chapter in American industrial history without a parallel in that of any other country.
The United States, in helping the European belligerents who had free intercourse with it, was really helping itself. It was building better than it knew. The call for preparedness, primarily arising out of the critical relations with Germany, turned the country's attention to a contemplation of an agreeable new condition—that the European War, from which it strove to be free, had given it an enormous impetus for the creation of a colossal industry, which in itself was a long step in national preparedness, and that much of this preparedness had been provided without cost. The capital sunk in the huge plants which supplied the belligerents represented, at $150,000,000, an outlay amortized or included in the price at which the munitions were sold. Thus, when the last foreign contract was fulfilled, the United States would have at its own service one of the world's greatest munition industries—and Europe will have paid for it.[Back to Contents]
CHAPTER IX
NAVAL ENGAGEMENTS IN MANY WATERS
The months which brought the second year of war to a close were marked by increased activity on the part of all the navies engaged. Several single-ship actions took place, and the Germans pursued their submarine tactics with steady, if not brilliant, results.
It was during this period that they sent the first submersible merchant ship across the Atlantic and gave further proof of having developed undersea craft to an amazing state of efficiency. On their part the British found new and improved methods of stalking submarines until it was a hazardous business for such craft to approach the British coast. A considerable number were captured; just how many was not revealed.
After a slackening in the submarine campaign against merchant ships, due partly to a division of opinion at home and largely to the growing protests of neutrals, Germany declared that after March 1, 1916, every ship belonging to an enemy that carried a gun would be considered an auxiliary, and torpedoed without warning. (For an account of the negotiations with the United States in relation to this edict, see United States and the Belligerents, Vol. V, Part X.)
A spirited fight took place in the North Sea on March 24, 1916, when the Greif, a German auxiliary of 10,000 tons, met the Alcantara, 15,300 tons, a converted British merchantman. The Greif was attempting to slip through the blockade under Norwegian colors when hailed. She parleyed with the British vessel until the latter came within a few hundred yards of her. Then, seeing a boat put out, the German unmasked her guns and opened fire. Broadside after broadside. In twelve minutes the Greif was on fire and the Alcantara sinking from the explosion of a torpedo. The Greif might have got away had not two other British vessels come on the scene, the converted cruiser Andes ending her days with a few long-range shots. One hundred and fifteen men and officers out of 300 on the Greif were saved, and the British lost five officers and sixty-nine men. Both vessels went to the bottom after as gallant an action as the war had produced. The Greif was equipped for a raiding cruise and also was believed to have had on board a big cargo of mines. When the fire started by exploding shells reaching her hold she blew up with a terrific detonation and literally was split in twain. Officers of the Alcantara spoke warmly of their enemy's good showing. One of them said that they approached to within two hundred yards of the Greif before being torpedoed and boarding parties actually had been ordered to get ready. They were preparing to lash the rigging of the two vessels together in the time-honored way and settle accounts with sheath knives when the torpedo struck and the Alcantara drifted away helpless.
On the stroke of midnight, February 29, 1916, the German edict went into effect placing armed merchantmen in a classification with auxiliary cruisers. The opening of March also was marked by the deliverance of a German ultimatum in Lisbon, demanding that ships seized by the Portuguese be surrendered within forty-eight hours. Thirty-eight German and Austrian steamers had been requisitioned, striking another blow at Teutonic sea power. Most of these belonged to Germany. Coincident with Portugal's action Italy commandeered thirty-four German ships lying in Italian ports, and several others in her territorial waters. All Austrian craft had been seized months before, but the fiction of peace with Germany still was punctiliously observed by both nations. Despite this action Germany did not declare war upon her quondam ally.
Italy brought another issue sharply to the fore in the early days of March. A few of her passenger vessels running to America and other countries had been armed previous to that time. It was done quietly, and commanders found many reasons for the presence of guns on their vessels. Of a sudden all Italian passenger craft sailed with 3-inch pieces fore and aft.
Berlin announced that on the first day of March, 1916, German submarines had sunk two French auxiliaries off Havre, and a British patrol vessel near the mouth of the Thames. Paris promptly denied the statement, and London was noncommittal. No other particulars were made public. Russian troops landed on the Black Sea coast on March 6, 1916, under the guns of a Russian naval division and took Atina, seventy-five miles east of Trebizond, the objective of the Grand Duke Constantine's army. Thirty Turkish vessels, mostly sailing ships loaded with war supplies, were sunk along the shore within a few days.
Winston Spencer Churchill, former First Lord of the Admiralty, on March 7, 1916, delivered a warning in the House of Commons against what he believed to be inadequate naval preparations. He challenged statements made by Arthur J. Balfour, his successor, on the navy's readiness. Mr. Balfour had just presented naval estimates to the House, and among other things set forth that Britain had increased her navy by 1,000,000 tons and more than doubled its personnel since hostilities began. This encouraging assurance impressed the world, but Colonel Churchill demanded that Sir John Fisher, who had resigned as First Sea Lord, be recalled to his post.
An announcement from Tokyo, March 8, 1916, served to show the new friendship between Russia and Japan. Three warships captured by the Japanese in the conflict with Russia were purchased by the czar and added to Russian naval forces. They were the Soya, the Tango and the Sagami, formerly the Variag, Poltava and Peresviet, all small but useful ships. Following the capture of Atina, the Russians took Rizeh on March 9, 1916, a city thirty-five miles east of Trebizond, an advance of forty miles in three days toward that important port. The fleet cooperated, and it was announced that the defenses of Trebizond itself were under fire and fast crumbling away.
On March 16, 1916, the Holland-Lloyd passenger steamer Tubantia, a vessel of 15,000 tons, was sunk near the Dutch coast by a mine or torpedo. She was commonly believed to have been the victim of a submarine. Her eighty-odd passengers and 300 men reached shore. Several Americans were aboard. Statements by some of the crew that four persons lost their lives could not be verified, but several of the Tubantia's officers made affidavit that the vessel was torpedoed.
The incident aroused public feeling in Holland to fever pitch, and there were threats of war. Germany hastened to deny that a submarine attacked the ship, and made overtures to the Dutch Government, offering reparation if it could be established that a German torpedo sank the steamer. This was never proved, and nothing came of the matter. But it cost Germany many friends in Holland and intensified the fear and hatred entertained toward their neighbor by the majority of Hollanders. It served to keep Dutch troops, already mobilized, under arms, and gave Berlin a bad quarter hour.
Fast on the heels of this incident came the sinking of another Dutch steamer, the Palembang, which was torpedoed and went down March 18, 1916, near Galloper Lights in a Thames estuary. Three torpedoes struck the vessel and nine of her crew were injured. This second attack in three days upon Dutch vessels wrought indignation in Holland to the breaking point. The Hague sent a strong protest to Berlin, which again replied in a conciliatory tone, hinting that an English submarine had fired on the Palembang in the hope of embroiling Holland with Germany. This suggestion was instantly rejected by the Dutch press and people. Negotiations failed to produce any definite result, save to prolong the matter until tension had been somewhat relieved. The French destroyer Renaudin fell prey to a submarine in the Adriatic on the same day. Three officers, including the commander, and forty-four of her crew, were drowned. Vienna also announced the loss in the Adriatic of the hospital ship Elektra on March 18, 1916. She was said to have been torpedoed, although properly marked. One sailor was killed and two nuns serving as nurses received wounds.
German submarine activity in the vicinity of the Thames was emphasized March 22, 1916, when the Galloper Lightship, well known to all seafaring men, went to the bottom after being torpedoed. The vessel was stationed off dangerous shoals near the mouth of the river. The Germans suffered the loss of a 7,000-ton steamship on this day, when the Esparanza was sunk by a Russian warship in the Black Sea. She had taken refuge in the Bulgarian port of Varna at the outbreak of the conflict and attempted to reach Constantinople with a cargo of foodstuffs, but a Russian patrol vessel ended her career.
Another tragedy of the sea came at a moment when strained relations between Germany and the United States made almost anything probable. The Sussex, a Channel steamer plying between Folkestone and Dieppe, was hit by a torpedo March 24, 1916, when about three hours' sail from the former port, and some fifty persons lost their lives. A moment after the missile struck there was an explosion in the engine room that spread panic among her 386 passengers, many of whom were Belgian women and children refugees bound for England. One or two boats overturned, and a number of frightened women jumped into the water without obtaining life preservers. Others strapped on the cork jackets and were rescued hours later. Some of the victims were killed outright by the impact of the torpedo and the second explosion. Fortunately the vessel remained afloat and her wireless brought rescue craft from both sides of the Channel.
The rescuers picked up practically all of those in the water who had donned life belts and took aboard those in the boats. Many of the passengers, including several Americans, saw the torpedo's wake. It was stated that the undersea craft approached the Sussex under the lee of a captured Belgian vessel, and when within easy target distance fired the torpedo. According to this version, the Belgian ship then was compelled to put about and leave the stricken steamer's passengers and crew to what seemed certain destruction. The presence of this third craft never was definitely established, although vouched for by a number of those on the Sussex.
Of thirty American passengers five or six sustained painful injuries. The victims included several prominent persons, one of whom was Enrique Granados, the Spanish composer, and his wife. They had just returned from the United States where they had witnessed the presentation of his opera "Goyescas."
The Sussex, which flew the French flag, although owned by a British company, had no guns aboard and was in no wise an auxiliary craft. She reached Boulogne in tow, and the American consul there reported that undoubtedly she had been torpedoed. (For an account of the negotiations between the United States and Germany in relation to this affair see United States and the Belligerents, Vol. V, Part X.) Ambassador Gerard, in Berlin, was instructed to ask the German Government for any particulars of the incident in its possession, so as to aid the United States in reaching a conclusion. Berlin, after much evasion, admitted that a submarine had sunk a vessel near the spot where the Sussex was lost, but gave it an entirely different description.
The British converted liner Minneapolis, used as a transport, was torpedoed in the Mediterranean with a loss of eleven lives, although this vessel also stayed afloat, according to a statement issued in London, March 26, 1916. She was a ship of 15,543 tons and formerly ran in the New York-Liverpool service. In a brush between German and British forces near the German coast, March 25, 1916, a British light cruiser, the Cleopatra, rammed and sunk a German destroyer. The British destroyer Medusa also was sunk, but her crew escaped to other vessels. In addition the Germans lost two of their armed fishing craft.
Fourteen nuns and 101 other persons were killed or drowned March 30, 1916, when the Russian hospital ship Portugal was sunk in the Black Sea between Batum and Rizeh on the Anatolian coast by a torpedo. The Portugal had stopped and was preparing to take aboard wounded men on shore. Several of those on the vessel saw the periscope of a submarine appear above the waves, but had no fear of an attack, as the Portugal was plainly marked with the Red Cross insignia and was flying a Red Cross flag from her peak.
The submarine circled about the ships twice and then, to the horror of those who were watching, fired a torpedo. The missile went astray, but another followed and found its mark. Although the ship was at anchor, with the shore near by, it was impossible to get all of her crew and wounded to safety.
This attack greatly incensed Russia. She sent protests to all of the neutral powers, calling attention to the deed perpetrated against her. The flame of national anger was fanned higher when Constantinople issued a statement saying that a Turkish submarine had sunk the Portugal, claiming that she flew the Russian merchant flag without any of the usual Red Cross markings upon her hull. It was said that the explosion which shattered the vessel was caused by the presence of ammunition.
On the morning of March 30, 1916, the steamship Matoppo, a British freighter, put into Lewes, Delaware, with her master and his crew of fifty men held prisoners by a single individual. Ernest Schiller, as he called himself, had gone aboard the Matoppo in New York, March 29, 1916, and hid himself away until the vessel passed Sandy Hook, bound for Vladivostok. Then he came out and with the aid of two weapons which the captain described as horse pistols, proceeded to cow the master and crew. Schiller announced that the Matoppo was a German prize of war and that he would shoot the first man who moved a hostile hand. The crew believed him. They also had an uneasy fear that certain bombs which Schiller mentioned would be set off unless they obeyed.
With Schiller in command the Matoppo headed down the coast, her captor keeping vigil. Off Delaware he ordered the captain to make port. The latter obeyed, but also signaled to shore that a pirate was aboard. Port authorities then sent a boat alongside, and Schiller was arrested. He admitted under examination that he and three other men had plotted to blow up the Cunard liner Pannonia. They bought the dynamite and made the bombs, but his companions' courage failed, and the plan was abandoned. Then it was proposed to stow away on some outward bound ship, seize her at sea and make for Germany. With this purpose in mind Schiller got aboard the Matoppo, but the other conspirators deserted him. Not to be foiled, he captured the vessel single-handed. It developed that his name was Clarence Reginald Hodson, his father having been an Englishman, but he was born of a German mother, had been raised in Germany, and was fully in sympathy with the German cause. After a trial he was sent to prison for life, the only man serving such a sentence in the United States on a charge of piracy.[Back to Contents]