Baralong.—An English pirate ship commanded by Capt. William McBride, which sailed under the American flag, with masked batteries, and sank a German submarine which had been deceived by the Stars and Stripes and the American colors painted on both sides of her hull. On August 19, 1915, the “Nicosian,” an English ship loaded with American horses and mules and with a number of American mule tenders aboard, was halted by a German submarine about 70 miles off Queenstown. The men took to the boats and the U-boat was about to sink the “Nicosian” when a ship flying the American flag came alongside. Without suspecting anything, the submarine allowed the ship to approach, when suddenly the American flag was lowered and the English ensign hoisted, and a destructive fire was opened on the U.The latter soon sank. Half a dozen German sailors swam alongside of the “Nicosian” and clambered on deck, concealing themselves in the holds and engine rooms as the English followed them aboard. They were dragged out and murdered in cold blood. The German captain swamtoward the “Baralong” and held up his hand in token of surrender but while in the water was first shot in the mouth and then repeatedly hit by bullets aimed at him by the English, and killed without compunction. The story of the “Baralong” is one of the most brutal in the history of the seas and illuminates the inhuman character of English warfare toward a weaker foe in the most glaring light.The history of the tragedy first came to light through a letter written by Dr. Charles B. Banks, the veterinary surgeon aboard the “Nicosian,” to relatives in Lowell, Mass., giving some of the gruesome details as follows: “A number of German sailors were swimming in the water. Some swam to our abandoned ship and climbed up to the deck. Shots from the patrol boat (the ‘Baralong’) swept several from the ropes. We were taken aboard the patrol boat, and then the boat steamed slowly around our ship while the marines shot and killed all the Germans in the water. As we had left three carbines and cartridges aboard the ‘Nicosian,’ we had reason to believe the Germans had found them. So marines went on our ship and killed seven men there. We were then towed to port.” The infamous wretch who performed this murder, Capt. McBride, later wrote a letter to the captain of the “Nicosian,” warning him not to speak of the affair, and requesting that the Americans aboard especially be cautioned to keep the matter from the public. But one of the American mule tenders made an affidavit to the truth at Liverpool and forwarded it to the American Embassy in London and three others made affidavit to the same facts on their return to New Orleans. The affidavits were sent to the State Department, but neither President Wilson nor Secretary Lansing complied with the request of the German Ambassador to demand an inquiry into the misuse of the American flag, and the cold-blooded murder of German sailors. Dr. Bank’s letter was published in the N. Y. “Times” of September 7, 1915, but that paper was among the most active in preventing an investigation.
Berliner, Emile.
Berliner, Emile.—One of the most important inventors in the United States, distinguished for his improvements of the telephone; born at Hanover, Germany, May 20, 1851; came to the United States in 1870. Invented the microphone and was first to use an induction coil in connection with the telephone transmitters; patentee of other valuable inventions in telephony. Invented the Gramophone, known also as the Victor Talking Machine, for which he was awarded John Scott Medal and Elliott Crosson Gold Medal by Franklin Inst. First to make and use in aeronautical experiments light weight revolving cylinder internal combustion motor, now extensively used on aeroplanes.
The Boers—England’s Record of Infamy.
The Boers—England’s Record of Infamy.—The success in causing the surrender of the Boers by exterminating their women and childrenby slow starvation and disease is the incentive which prompted the British nation to violate international law by stopping the shipment of non-contraband goods, Red Cross supplies and milk for babies, to Germany and contiguous countries. The number of deaths (in the Boer concentration camps) during the month of September, 1901, was 1,964 children and 328 women. There were then 54,326 children and 38,022 women under Kitchener’s tender care. The “Daily News” on November 9, 1901, said: “The truth is that the death rate in the camps is incomparably worse than anything Africa or Asia can show. There is nothing to match it even in the mortality figures of the Indian famines, where cholera and other epidemics have to be contended with.” “Reynold’s Newspaper” (London) of October 20, 1901, spoke of “the women and children perishing like flies from confinement, fever, bad food, pestilential stinks and lack of nursing in these awful death traps,” with a rate of 383 per 1,000. The “Sydney Bulletin” said: “The authority granted by Lord Roberts to Red Cross nurses to attend our camps has been withdrawn.” The English wanted the women and children to perish for want of Red Cross supplies, as in the case of Germany. President Steyn of the Orange Free State, in a letter of protest to Lord Kitchener, dated August, 1901, among other things said:
Your Excellency’s troops have not hesitated to turn their artillery on these defenseless women and children to capture them when they were fleeing with their wagons or alone, whilst your troops knew that they were only women and children, as happened only recently at Graspan on the 6th of June near Reitz, where a women and children laager was taken and recaptured by us, whilst your Excellency’s troops took refuge behind the women; and when reinforcements came they fired with artillery and small arms on that woman laager. I can mention hundreds of cases of this kind.
On December 16, 1913, the Boers, in the presence of immense throngs, dedicated a monument at Blomfontein with the following inscription:
This Monument is Erected by the Boers of South Africa in memory of
26,663 WOMEN AND CHILDREN
who died in the Concentration Camps during the War 1900-1902
No better evidence can be desired than is contained in a speech which the present British Premier, Lloyd George, made in 1901, charging that the English army had burned villages, swept away the cattle, burned thousands of tons of grain, destroyed all agricultural implements, all of the mills, the irrigation works, and left the territory a blackened, devastated wilderness. Then the women and childrenwere herded, in winter, in thin, leaky tents, surrounded by barbed wire fences, where thousands died of unnecessary privations. He said:
Is there any ground for the reproach flung at us by the civilized world that, having failed to crush the men, we have now taken to killing babies?