They were said by some to be accompanied by a “mother ship” which would keep them supplied for an indefinite stay. There was talk of a possible base in Mexico from which whole fleets of U-boats would come and go. Did all this have the slightest effect on those nurses or on their eagerness to sail? Not a bit of it. They simply said, wouldn’t it be the limit if Secretary Daniels stopped all sailings? But of course he wouldn’t.
One morning I opened my door and saw a group of these California nurses standing guard over an enormous pile of hand luggage, suit-cases, satchels and hold-alls. The women greeted me with broad smiles.
“Well,” I said, “you look as if you had packed all your troubles in your old kit bags.”
“We have,” they chorused. “Nobody’s got a trouble in the world. We sail ‘from an Atlantic port’ this afternoon!”
Right out into the submarines. Across three thousand miles of peril. Into the unknown. Without a fear. This is not exactly what the war lords planned when they sent their biggest submarines to blockade the American coast. They did not hope, of course, to stop all shipping from this side. But they undoubtedly counted on terrorizing the American people, especially the women.
Not even the inflated German mind conceived the notion that their submarines would prevent the sailing of army transports. But we can easily imagine the kaiser and his councilors reasoning that the mothers and fathers and wives of the soldiers would be so terrified that there would be trouble in the United States, trouble for President Wilson and Congress. Riots in the streets, maybe. Breakdown of American morale. They must have licked their lips at the thought.
The German psychology has been curiously twisted before on this terror question, but it persists in spite of the fact that nothing they have done in this war, not even the ultimate horrors they committed in Belgium, Serbia and Armenia, ever frightened anybody except the immediate victims. The nations that are bent on crushing out the authors of horror have never been terrorized.
Nevertheless I know that the mothers and fathers and wives of soldiers, and the immediate relatives of trained nurses who are crossing the seas in these perilous times, must suffer great anxiety. Perhaps it may give them a little comfort to know that the travelers suffer less fear than they do. Perhaps they might like to know what a sea voyage is really like in war time. Some know, for they have crossed. The majority, however, have not.
I have crossed the Atlantic four times since we entered the war, twice in a neutral boat, once in an American, and once in a French boat. The first two voyages scarcely count because the lane through which we traveled was out of the submarine zone. Making due allowances for the shifting of the zone, and for the boche’s criminal practise of sinking neutral boats “by mistake,” our steamer was lighted up at night like Coney Island, and her name and nationality was displayed on both sides of the hull in letters which could be read at a great distance.
In sharp contrast, the American and French boats were kept as dark as pockets all the way over. They were camouflaged in a manner that made me laugh when I went aboard. All portholes were painted a dark green, and they were locked every day at sundown. No lights were shown, and travelers were strictly forbidden after dark to smoke or to light a match on deck.