Ferdinand was bribed, and bribed heavily, we may be certain; and, like the rulers of other Balkan States, he and his advisers thought for a time that the Central Powers were going to win. He thought he saw his way to an increase of territory at the expense of Serbia, perhaps also of Greece. Some say that he dreamed of reigning at Constantinople. These hopes must be wearing rather thin now. The time has not yet come for turning his coat; but if, or when, it seems to him safe and expedient to leave the Kaiser in the lurch, he will do it without the slightest scruple.
Meanwhile, there was no danger in making the Emperor of Austria his confidant; the poor old gentleman, if he understood what was said to him, probably thought the idea a very sensible one, and wished heartily that he had come to terms with Russia.
Murder on the High Seas
GERMANY stands convicted of such bestial crime upon land and sea that one can only come to the conclusion her offence results not from passing aberration or the ebriety of war, but indicates an infection deep-seated and chronic. Her recent Imperial Government statistics of crime before the war indicated very surely that some deep, moral distemper was conquering the German character and running like a plague through her spiritual and sociological life.
It has been said that the problem is one for the anthropologist rather than the lawyer; yet even if the Prussian be not a Teuton, but a Tatar, his indifference to every human instinct would still remain inexplicable. For others of the Tatar stock are amenable to the evolution that time brings, and now pursue the business of war under modern conditions that embrace respect for prisoners and wounded, non-combatants, women and children.
Among the numberless instances of murder and piracy on the high seas space permits here but to dwell upon one, which has by no means received the attention it deserves. International problems involved by the destruction of American citizens have tended to focus public opinion on the “Lusitania” and “Essex” murders; but consider again a crime in the Black Sea and the depraved temper it implies.
On the thirtieth day of March, while lying motionless off Cape Fathia, the Russian hospital ship “Portugal” was destroyed in broad daylight by a submarine, despite the fact that she bore all necessary marks demanded by the Geneva Convention and Hague Covenant.