The American Consul at Boulogne sent this message to the Secretary of State, Washington: “Sussex torpedoed by German submarine incontestably proved by piece of torpedo found on board Sussex by Balincourt, French Commandant, le front de Mere, Boulogne.”
On the 25th March, 1916, the Divisional Naval Transport officer at Boulogne writes: “I personally inspected the Sussex this morning, and was shown by the French authorities pieces of the torpedo which had been found in the ship, thus establishing the fact that she was torpedoed.”
The reckless and unscrupulous methods of the German were well illustrated in the sinking of the Sussex. The U-boat commander obviously took no pains to discover what kind of vessel he was going to attack. He simply fired a torpedo and disappeared. Afterwards he tried to shuffle off the responsibility for his deed by a number of falsehoods. While admitting that he had destroyed a certain vessel at a certain time, he declared that he believed her to have been a war vessel of the Arabis class. Stories founded on his statements were freely circulated by the German Government; but they were effectively answered by a British official reply in the following terms:—
1. There is no resemblance whatever between a vessel of the Arabis class and the Sussex, and it is quite impossible to mistake one vessel for the other.
2. The Germans are condemned out of their own mouths by their statement that the commander of the German submarine fired on some vessel at a certain moment. Now that certain moment was precisely the time at which the Sussex was attacked.
3. The German submarine commander admitted that he had destroyed the fore part of the vessel he attacked. No other ship but the Sussex suffered in this way.
It was unfortunate for the Germans that the Sussex, although so badly damaged, could be towed in and beached. Had she sunk, the German contention that her fate was due to a mine would have been more difficult to refute. When, however, pieces of a torpedo were discovered on board, the method of her destruction was proved beyond all doubt.
Meanwhile, on the 18th April, 1916, the United States sent a Note to the German Imperial Government. The Note pointed out that—“The Sussex was never armed; she was a ship which, as is well known, was regularly employed only for the transport of passengers across the English Channel. She did not follow the route pursued by troop transports or munition ships. About 80 passengers, non-combatants of every age and both sexes, including citizens of the United States, were killed or wounded.” The outrageous methods of German submarine warfare are so admirably exposed by the American Government in this official communication that we cannot do better than reproduce certain of the passages here.
“If the sinking of the Sussex had been an isolated case,” says the Note, “that would enable the Government of the United States to hope that the officer responsible for the deed arbitrarily exceeded his instructions, or in criminal negligence failed to observe the prescribed measures of precaution, and that satisfaction might be done to justice by his appropriate punishment, associated with a formal disavowal of his conduct and the payment of appropriate compensation by the Imperial Government. But although the attack on the Sussex was evidently indefensible and caused so tragic a loss of human life that it appears as one of the most terrible examples of the inhumanity of the submarine warfare as waged by the commanders of German vessels, it unhappily stands not alone.”
After recalling former protests by the American Government and Germany’s unlawful attempt to close a part of the high seas, the Note continues:—
“The international law, which here applies and upon which the United States Government based its protest, is not of recent origin or based on purely arbitrary principles established by agreement. On the contrary, it rests on obvious principles of humanity, and has long been in force, with the approval and the express assent of all civilised nations. The Imperial Government insisted, notwithstanding, on prosecuting the policy announced, while it expressed the hope that the existing dangers, at least for neutral ships, would be restricted to a minimum by instructions given to the commanders of its submarines, and assured the United States Government that it would apply every possible precaution to respect the rights of neutrals and protect the lives of non-combatants.