COMMANDER SCHMITZ'S STORY.
[From The New York Times, May 6, 1915.]
J.J. Ryan, the American cotton broker who went to Germany on March 30 and sold 28,000 bales of cotton he had shipped to Bremen and Hamburg, returned yesterday on the Cunard liner Carpathia very well satisfied with the results of his trip. He said:
While I was in Bremen I met Commander Schmitz of the German submarine U-28, which sank the British African liner Falaba off the English coast on March 28. He told me that he regretted having been compelled to torpedo the vessel, as she had passengers on board. In explanation, he said:
"I warned the Captain of the Falaba to dismantle his wireless apparatus and gave him ten minutes in which to do it and get his passengers off. Instead of acting upon my demand he continued to send messages out to torpedo destroyers that were less than twenty miles away, to come as quickly as possible to his assistance.
"At the expiration of the ten minutes I gave him a second warning about dismantling his wireless apparatus and waited twenty minutes, and then I torpedoed the ship, as the destroyers were getting close up and I knew they would go to the rescue of the passengers and crew."
I mentioned the fact to the commander that it had been reported by some of the survivors of the liner that while the men and women were struggling for their lives in the icy water his crew were standing on the deck of the submarine laughing. He looked very gravely at me and replied, "That is not true, and is most cruelly unjust to my men. They were crying, not laughing, when the boats were capsized and threw the people into the water."