Finally, what of the possibilities opened up by the system under which the German Chargé d’Affaires at Buenos Ayres communicated with the Foreign Office in Berlin, sending cypher telegrams which passed as Swedish official messages? “I beg that the small steamers Oran and Guazo, now nearing Bordeaux, may be spared, or else sunk without a trace being left,” he telegraphed on the 19th May, 1917. Precise information as to the position, cargo, and destination of a vessel often reaches the U-boat commander, and more than one very suggestive instance of this appears in these pages. On such an occasion, after the submarine has appeared, a certain member of the steamer’s crew announces that he is a German, and the U-boat commander takes the spy away with him. These sailor-spies sign on under the cloak of some neutral nationality.
Surely the members of the German Submarine Service stand convicted by their own deeds as unscrupulous pirates, with whom even savages might well hesitate to claim any fellowship. The verdict of civilised humanity has been pronounced against these men who have destroyed the Brotherhood of the Sea and horrified Civilisation.
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FOOTNOTES:
[A] Great Germany, 1911 (page 231).
[B] Patriotism, Art, and Art-Handicraft (p. 23).
[C] Politics, 1916 (p. 230).
[D] German Speeches in Difficult Days, 1914 (p. 13).
[E] Hurrah and Hallelujah, by J. P. Bang, 1916 (p. 83).
[F] German Note to America, 4th May, 1916.