“There was talk of a British invasion (of Norland) but I knew this to be absolute nonsense, for the British had learned by this time that it would be sheer murder to send transports full of soldiers to sea in the face of submarines. When they have a Channel tunnel, they can use their fine expeditionary force upon the Continent but until then it might not exist so far as Europe is concerned.”
“Heavens, what would England have done against a foe with thirty or forty submarines?”
The British navy could do nothing to stop Captain John Sirius. One of his submarines was sunk by an armed liner, but with the remaining seven he sank the Olympic and so many other vessels that no one dared try to bring food into Great Britain. At the end of six weeks, fifty thousand people there had died of starvation and the British government had to make peace with Norland and pay for all the damage the submarines had done to neutrals.
As a warning to his countrymen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote this story in May, 1914. Before it was published,[26] England was at war with Germany. On February 4, 1915, the famous “War Zone Decree” was published in Berlin.
“The waters around Great Britain, including the whole of the English Channel, are declared hereby to be included within the zone of war, and after the 18th inst, all enemy merchant vessels encountered in these waters will be destroyed, even if it may not be possible always to save their crews and passengers.
“Within this war-zone neutral vessels are exposed to danger since, in view of the misuse of the neutral flags ordered by the government of Great Britain on the 31st ult., and of the hazards of naval warfare, neutral ships cannot always be prevented from suffering from the attacks intended for enemy ships.
“The routes of navigation around the north of the Shetland Islands in the eastern part of the North Sea and in a strip thirty miles wide along the Dutch coast are not open to the danger-zone.”
But those routes had been closed three months before by the British government, which declared that it had had the North Sea planted with anchored contact mines, but that all ships trading to neutral ports would, if they first called at some British port, be given safe conduct to Holland or Scandinavia, by way of the English Channel. This way would run through the proposed “war-zone.”
International law says nothing about either “war-zones” or submarines. In all probability, special rules for undersea warfare will be drawn up by a conference of delegates from the leading countries of the world soon after the end of the present war. But till then, no such conference can be held, and the United States has always maintained, even when it has been to its disadvantage to do so, that no one nation can change international law to suit herself. We insist that the game be played according to the rules. A submarine has no more rights than any other warship. It may sink a merchantman if the latter tries to fight or escape. If the captured vessel is found to be carrying contraband to the enemy’s country, the warship may either take her into port as a prize or, if this is impracticable, sink her. But before an unarmed and unresisting merchant vessel can be sunk, the passengers and crew must be given time and opportunity to escape.
President Wilson gave notice on February 10, 1915, that if, by act of the commander of any German warship, an American vessel or the lives of American citizens should be lost on the high seas, the United States “would be constrained to hold the Imperial government of Germany to a strict accountability for such acts of their naval authorities and to take any steps that might be necessary to safeguard American lives and property and to secure to American citizens the full enjoyments of their acknowledged rights on the high seas.”