Above the description of our return voyage I should like to put as a motto what the London Morning Post of 18th July wrote regarding the attitude of the English Government towards the "Deutschland."
"The 'Deutschland,' in view of her peculiar U-Boat qualities, will be considered as a war vessel, and be treated as such.
"The warships of the Allies will therefore make every effort to discover the boat outside American territorial waters, and to sink her without warning."
Thus ran a cablegram which reached America from London on the 19th July. Thus we ourselves read it in a copy of the Morning Post which was sent to us at the end of July. There was at least one advantage, that we knew exactly what we had to expect.
Never has the English point of view been so displayed in all its brutality.
We had no torpedo tubes, no guns on board, not the smallest means of attack. We had not even weapons of defence which are always allowed on every English merchant ship. The most powerful of the neutral states had moreover openly recognised the "Deutschland" as a mere trading vessel, and yet we were to be sunk without warning!
We knew, therefore, what lay before us.
It was already known that eight enemy warships with patrol boats and nets were waiting in front of Chesapeake Bay in order to attack us directly we quitted American territorial waters, and to blow us up like blind fish, with mines.
Foresight was therefore urgently impelled on us, and our only course was, with true U-Boat craftiness, to slip through somehow.
We remembered, moreover, how we had already once succeeded in getting the best of the English and French efforts. Our running of the English blockade in Europe had certainly been by no means a smooth pleasure trip.